DOE Hires a VC for The Green FDR

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Under the new Green FDR administration of President Obama, there has been such an increase in renewable technologies funding, that keeping up with qualifying and selecting the best of the best in innovative new renewable energy tech is overwhelming the Department of Energy.

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So Nobel-prizewinning scientist Steven Chu of the DOE has hired a professional Venture Capitalist to help run the DOE renewable energy loan guarantee program. VC Jonathan Silver of Core-Capital Partners will help the DOE eliminate the so-called “Valley of Death” between the university lab and commercialization of groundbreaking renewable technologies.

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President Obama had hired the the Nobel-prizewinning Steven Chu to bridge the gap between between unknown geniuses in university labs and the hungry VC’s searching for the next big thing. But the process of filtering through the pent-up supply of potential is overwhelming.

Our newly ramped up Department of Energy is having a hard time whisking out loan guarantees fast enough to keep up with both the demand for and the supply of these highly competitive DOE and ARPA-E awards.

To help speed up the processing, the Department of Energy has hired a former managing general partner at Core-Capital Partners who began his career at energy efficiency consultancy McKinsey&Co and through the 1990’s served as policy advisor to the Secretaries of Commerce, Interior and Treasury.

As Executive Director, Jonathan Silver will report directly to Secretary Steven Chu. As he describes himself at Washington Biz Journals: “There aren’t an enormous number of people who understand both private equity investment and government — how the sausage of public policy is made, where the opportunities are and how to access them”.

Silver’s responsibilities will cover staffing the programs and leading origination, analysis, and negotiation, and managing the full range of the Department’s alternative energy investments.

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Image: VC Steve Jurvetson

Source: Bnet