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Cleantech Advocacy

My Weber Shandwick colleague William Brent heads our cleantech practice. Cleantech has over two million hits on Google.  What is cleantech? According to Wikipedia, cleantech is “a term used to describe knowledge-based products or services that improve operational performance, productivity, or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste, or pollution.”  William is an uber-cleantech advocate and is called Mr Cleantech by many. It is also the name of his blog. Some might call him a green advocate but he notes on his blog that the word “green” was voted one of the most overused words in 2008. William says that he interested in working with people and companies that develop technologies and business models that challenge the way we consume.

At the start of 2009, Mr Cleantech reported on his first Annual Cleantech Media Survey among 100 media types including bloggers, magazine writers, etc. and found:

·         77% said they expect media to significantly emphasize policy-related cleantech coverage this year

·         Nearly 75% expect to see growing demand for cleantech sector news this year relative to last year

·         Solar, according to the media, will be the most covered renewable in 2009, followed at a distance by wind and next generation biofuels.  Energy efficiency will be the top covered non-renewable cleantech story for 2009, followed by carbon market and related technologies.

·         More than half of the media surveyed report that blogs are the tool of choice to tell the clean tech story over the next 12 months. They also expect new media to grow in the months ahead and for traditional media to slow in reporting on this sector.

William has more information on his survey but notes that policy will play a big role in 2009. No surprise as Obama finally takes office. In fact, the Financial Times had a full page article on Clean Technology and Obama. “Much of the immediate hope rests on the promised economic stimulus package. The buzz in the Valley is that as much as $100bm could be used to support green technologies.”

Looking forward to William’s 2010 survey….