Green investing: Scenes from an Earth Day confab

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Times Staff Writer Edward Silver, who keeps a close eye on green investing trends, filed this report from a conference on the green economy held this week at Pasadena’s Langham hotel:

Fortune magazine brought corporations, financiers, activists and scientists together to do some green brainstorming at a conference rich with information and inspiration. Panels and luminaries spoke before a sculptural backdrop of newspaper stacks, crushed soda cans and other symbols of ill-treated resources. Insights, confrontations and deal-making were abundant.

Three scenes from the conference:

Rountable: Is clean coal an oxymoron?

Coal is the least costly, most plentiful and dirtiest fossil fuel. David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out that in the last five years, China has built the equivalent of the entire U.S. fleet of coal-based power plants. Along with India, it’s firing up at a breakneck pace.

For foes of coal, it’s painful to concede that these fresh investments in Asia may be with us for 50 to 60 years.

That’s why Hawkins, though certainly a friend of the Earth, backs carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants, a little-tested approach that aims to bury emissions in the ground before they enter the atmosphere. The technique is full of drawbacks, and many enviros reject it as a marker of renewed commitment to a lethal substance. But its success, or at least its commercialization, could be a boon to the coal business as well as for General Electric and other engineering giants.

It’s sure to raise costs, though. Groans went up as one participant delved into the logistics, subterranean infrastructure and monitoring that comes with large-scale sequestration. And if we expect China to follow suit, can we also expect tip-top adherence to the rules?

There are no good answers. But Hawkins recalled that China had adopted the West’s efforts to rein in tailpipe emissions, including catalytic converters and unleaded gasoline. As for proliferating coal, he said, ‘We have to show China and India that there’s a technology to address this, or we will lose this war.’

CEO interview: Hugh Grant of Monsanto

Monsanto has been vilified not just for rearranging the genetics of seeds but for its Superfund sites and alleged unsavory dealings with farmers. In 2008, however, the idea of sustainability has to include the reliable supply of food and water. As food prices climb and many go hungry, progressives might soon see Monsanto in a new light.

Investors already love the company. When Grant took over five years ago the stock traded in single digits. Wednesday it closed at $125.58.

Monsanto is all about improving yields. The human family has more mouths to feed, and new middle classes want protein. Yet much of our stock of arable land is eroding or being turned to other uses, like building megalopolises and planting fuel grains. There’s no way around it, Grant said: We will need bigger harvests on less dirt.

Even more crucial, he said, noting the recent ‘biblical’ drought in Australia, is the supply of water to nurture crops. That led him to a fact you’re sure to repeat: It takes 700 gallons of water to grow the cotton to make a pair of blue jeans.

Both cotton and water are big businesses for Monsanto, and a line of drought-resistant seeds is in development. Grant exited with a suggestion: ‘Think water, think food availability. . . . And those of you who wear blue jeans on the weekend, think about those 700 gallons.’

Lunch in the garden

Pasadena entrepreneur Bill Gross, whose Idealab ‘incubator’ hatched CitySearch and EToys, is heavy into solar energy now. And he was in a sunny mood on Earth Day. The day before, he announced that another fledgling he helped launch had raised $130 million from Google, venture firm Oak Investment Partners and other parties. The company, ESolar, specializes in ‘solar thermal’ technology that uses mirrors to power generators.

Through its charitable arm, Google has become a prominent clean-tech financier, spurring research under the slogan Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal. Many in the industry believe that crossing that price threshold is the key to widespread adoption of renewable technologies.

Gross told guests enjoying coq au vin and other delicacies that ESolar installations can get up and running faster and at lower cost than standard solar plants. They also require less space, allowing them to set up closer to cities. Another ESolar edge, he said, is that the mirrors are managed by computer, keeping them in the best position relative to the sun.

An exec at the table liked what he heard. The household name company he works for spends $750 million a year to power its services. Get us ‘off the grid’ and cut our costs, he said, and we may have a deal.

For this potential client, who leads his firm’s corporate-responsibility group, looking into solar has something to do with saving the world from fossil fuels but is mainly about saving money.

If Gross can do that, more power to him and to us all.

Top photo: A man cycles past cooling towers of the coal-powered Fuxin Electricity Plant in Fuxin, in northeast China. Greg Baker/Associated Press

Middle photo: Hugh Grant.

Posted April 24, 2008