Eckhouse covers energy at Bloomberg News in New York.BE: You stayed in cleantech when many investors—you’ve
described them previously as “drive-bys”—left. Why?
NP: We’ve fared extremely well. Tesla and SolarCity were big
wins in part because we were in early, so our cost basis was
extremely low.
After the dot-com crash, people had an allergic reaction to
the internet. That led to some heated rounds in cleantech. But
many people didn’t understand cleantech, including the policy
and regulatory sides, and it was being politicized at the time. Some
investments started going awry, and broader tech got healthy
again. That was sort of the tourist phase of cleantech; it didn’t
work well. But fast-forward to today, there are family offices and
corporates doing cleantech. It’s a much healthier ecosystem.
BE: What technologies interest you today?
NP: Among other things, energy storage to reshape the grid and
inverter technologies that can help drive down the cost of solar
power. Like what Zola Electric is doing in Nigeria. When you have
a weak grid, people use diesel generators to fill in gaps. With better
smart batteries and inverters, you can allow your solar and your
battery to seamlessly take over for the grid and vice versa without
blowing up your devices. There are at least 100 million diesel gen-
erators in Africa alone. We’re also looking at conservation; one
company that we’re invested in, Better Place Forests, allows people
to use protected trees in forests instead of tombstones in cem-
eteries to commemorate the dead.
BE: You’ve invested in cleantech. Do you use cleantech products
at home?
NP: I have solar panels, two Teslas, and home-charging. I don’t
have batteries yet—I got solar before batteries were available—but
eventually I will.Pfund<GO> INSIDE THE TERMINAL 43