Follow the money

We've all seen trillions of dollars of alleged assets disappear in recent weeks. A few big-time financial firms as well. This is having reverberations across the greentech energy sector. Here's a story on a wind-power project in Michigan that is now waiting for another gust of capital. Despite the renewed federal tax credits for wind and other alternative energy tech, the main fuel of any new enterprise is always capital. And right now that's problematic whether you're buying a car or building a company.

However, the non-institutional money which dominates many venture capital funds is still leaning toward green tech. In Q3 of this year, the stock market was drooping, housing prices were dropping further, gasoline was still expensive and financial firms were getting a little shakier. But a record of over $1.5 billion of VC money went into greentech companies, much of it for alternative energy. Whether that will continue this quarter remains to be seen.

During Q3 solar energy to produce electricity was the leader in getting VC investment. Actual flow of money toward biofuel was down from some previous quarters, reflecting some of the queasiness about getting fuel stock that was not coming off soombody's menu.

And it's way to soon to predict how investors and entrepreneurs will read the current crude oil price, which is less than half of its record high just a few months back. Where will oil prices stabilize? Is that old-fashioned thinking? Oil is the new volatile investment? Newly capitalist countries China and Russia, one as consumer and the other as producer are now critical to fossil fuel prices and nobody would pretend to be able to predict how they will react over the coming months.