The Modern Energy Matchmaker: Connecting Investors with Entrepreneurs

By Michele Ashby

Explaining the trends and key words in the green energy movement, this book examines the idea of modern energy—a combination of old and new energy resources—and the costs involved in making them operational. Resources that include wind, solar, nuclear, wave, biofuels, biomass, smart grid technologies, magnetics, hydropower, oil, gas, and coal all need to be partnered with entrepreneurs to bring them to life. Fusing intellectual and financial resources can secure a modern energy-reliant future, and this proposal directs the world's investors to begin that partnership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781936374212

Michele Ashby

Michele Ashby is an author, speaker, and coach who provides guidance to those stressed or frustrated with money matters. She has three decades of experience working as a stockbroker, holistic financial guide, and business consultant. She became a well-known mining analyst and parlayed her exposure to the mining industry into a successful trade association for the gold mining business and their largest institutional investors. Her experience furthered her career in mining and energy to international status with major executives and investors.Ashby is also founder and president of Dani’s Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in memory of Michele’s daughter, Dani Stell, who passed away in 1999 from Ewing’s Sarcoma.Michele is an accomplished ultra-athlete in running and indoor rowing. She currently lives her husband Keith in Denver, Colorado, where they enjoy hiking, biking, and skiing.Michele speaks and runs workshops for individuals and business owners, championing participants to reach financial well-being and live debt free. Michele and Keith together also provide dynamic counseling and guidance for couples, showing them ways to build successful relationships with each other and their money.

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Introduction

Ihave been working in the natural resources arena for nearly three decades. Today, I am utilizing my extensive contact base of investors, analysts, bankers, entrepreneurs, C-level executives (CEOs, CFOs, and COOs), resource and energy companies, government contacts, experts, and businesses to match the right people and to produce the best possible outcomes. Energy companies that require financing to move forward often need considerable help getting in front of the right investors and analysts. I can help them make the appropriate connections. My company, MiNE LLC, finds and showcases companies that offer innovative and proven modern energy technologies. We then facilitate relationships between these entrepreneurial leaders and motivated investors, with the intent to help foster collaborative ventures.

Many of these matchmaking exercises are working spectacularly for all parties. This is due, in large measure, to the modern energy sector itself, which is proving its worth and value daily. Even at this early stage of the industry, investors are profiting, and companies are both saving and making money. We are beginning to see how the world can, and ultimately will, shape up as a better place for us, and especially for our children and our children’s children.

As we progress toward a cleaner and greener world, I believe that I am witnessing a sea change in attitude, a great global consensus about modern energy—an umbrella term I coined to encompass new and old forms of energy. This includes wind, solar, nuclear, wave, biofuels, biomass, smart-grid technologies, magnetics, hydropower, energy efficiencies, coal, oil, and gas—and even things we have not yet thought of or developed that will be part of the current and future energy equation. I now consistently use modern energy to broadly reference the entire cutting-edge, up-to-the-minute, clean, green renewable, and traditional energy sector in all its aspects and prospects.

Every day, technological advances are moving the modern energy industry forward. I am delighted to see companies that started on a shoestring successfully acquire the funding needed to build their better technologies or projects. I also am encouraged to see many more in this arena seeking funding to bring their promising products and projects to fruition. Thanks to such dedication and innovation, we have solar panels, wind towers, and biomass power plants. And even though the recession has impacted the growth of modern energy deals, the enthusiasm and interest in the sector continues to grow.

While exciting, these current forms of energy are not sufficient to meet all of society’s energy needs, and they certainly do not work reliably in every situation. Will they do so in ten years? Will we ever be completely unshackled from oil and gas or even coal? Can we, in the meantime, make dirty energy at least cleaner, safer, and less ubiquitous?

I am an optimist. A grounded, informed, realistic optimist. I firmly believe that all the energy we need to meet our lifestyles exists in nature, and it is there for the taking. And I do mean all the energy needed everywhere, by everyone in every corner of the planet. Energy is equally plentiful for people in privileged societies, for people in third-world countries, and for urban, rural, and tribal people. I strongly disagree with collective Chicken Littles terrified by what they see as the prospect of Armageddon if we don’t go fully green in this exact year or even this exact decade. But just like advances in other fields, for example, smart phones, 3-D movies, and health care, our modern energy-related technology will have to catch up with our vision. In fact, that is the very definition of the word vision: something imagined or created in our mind’s eye that has not yet been created in the physical world.

Of course, it will take time for the modern energy industry to mature. Far more research and development are needed to acquire key knowledge and achieve advancements, before we can celebrate major milestones along the way.

You may be asking what we should do in the meantime, while we wait for our reality to catch up with our vision.

Good question. Glad you asked! That’s exactly what this book is about.

Think of this book as a primer on modern energy. It offers you, the reader, a high-level perspective of the modern energy industry, some emerging technologies, and ideas for how to begin your own analysis of the industry. By the end of the book, you’ll have a much better idea of how to determine your interest in and readiness for exploring opportunities in the modern energy industry.

Are you a good candidate for a modern energy partnership or investment? Read on to find out.

1

Coloring Our World Green

Modern energy has come to be known by many names: clean, green, alternative, and renewable. Regardless of what you call it, this type of energy is here to stay. Growing demand and higher prices for energy are leading to increased development of modern energy sources around the world. Making the shift from tried-and-true energy sources to alternative, cutting-edge forms is a daunting, yet exhilarating, undertaking.

The transformation will require tremendous human and financial resources, and huge doses of innovation, collaboration, and prudent risk taking. We’ll need to learn from early failures and build on early successes. And, most important, we’ll need to balance our strong sense of urgency to achieve our clean-energy vision, with a significant supply of patience for carrying out the steps to achieve our vision. We will get there, not just because we want to, but because we have to.

We want—and need—a clean, green planet, where Mother Nature in all her generous bounty provides us with an infinite supply of inexpensive renewable energy.

Energy Jargon

Clean. By clean energy, we actually mean cleaner energy—that which produces fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause atmospheric pollution. Clean also refers to better methods of processing resources for fuel, greater efficiencies, smart-grids, and any improvement on consumption, recycling, emissions, or production.

Clean-tech. The term clean tech implies that we can attain cleaner energy regardless of the method, when the method is paired with new technologies.

Alternative. When paired with the word energy, this term describes an energy source other than today’s common sources. Alternative energy primarily refers to wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal energy sources. (It does not include other forms of modern energy such as nuclear, smart-grid, magnetic, and others.)