Venture Capital and Private Equity Turning Green
Further evidence of the rise of “green investing” emerged today with the announcement that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has raised $500 million to target large companies pursuing “green” ventures.
Dow Jones Venture Wire reports that the energy-related fund was announced this morning with another fund that will bring the total being raised by the Menlo Park, Calif., firm to $1.2 billion.
Kleiner, which a few years ago began targeting fledgling ventures in areas such as biofuels and electric cars, now also wants to fund larger clean-technology companies that need bigger sums of money to get to market, said Kleiner partner John Denniston. Kleiner expects to invest anywhere from $10 million to $50 million in each of the companies - many of which already have revenue - and has hired an energy-investing expert from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Ben Kortlang, to help run the fund.
A chunk of the money for the green fund is coming from Generation Investment Management LLP, the socially conscious London investment firm that was co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, now a Kleiner partner.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Environmental Defense Fund has signed on to help Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company improve its green credentials.
Kohlberg Kravis’s partnership with Environmental Defense is aimed at creating measurement tools of environmental performance across several areas, from energy efficiency and greenhouse-gas emissions to water consumption and containment of toxic substances across all of its businesses.
The new partnership grew out of a watershed deal last year in which the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council brokered an agreement with Kohlberg Kravis and the Texas Pacific Group to back their acquisition of TXU. In exchange, the companies pledged to reduce carbon emissions and abandon plans to build coal-fired power plants that would produce millions of tons of emissions that are linked to climate change.
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