http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
Spotlight on Gore ‘s Dual Role As an Advocate and Investor
New York Times, The (NY) - Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Author: JOHN M. BRODER
Abstract: Al Gore finds himself in position of having to defend decision to invest, through his venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in Silver Spring Networks, which produces hardware and software to make electricity grid more efficient; Gore and his partners invested $75 million in Silver Spring, which wanted to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of smart meters in home and businesses; deal appears to have paid off now that Energy Dept has announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, with $560 million going to Silver Spring; Gore and his partners could reap great returns from investment and he is defending that investment against critics who say he stood to benefit personally from energy and climate policies he urged Congress to adopt; Gore contends his investmenet activities are consistent with his public advocacy; photo (M)
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He is a founder of Generation Investment Management, based in London and run by David Blood, a former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (the firm was quickly dubbed Blood and Gore ). Mr. Gore earns a partner’s salary at Kleiner Perkins. He has substantial personal finances invested at both firms, officials of the companies said.
He also serves as an adviser to high-profile technology companies including Apple and Google, relationships that have paid him handsome dividends over the last eight years.
Mr. Gore ‘s spokeswoman would not give a figure for his current net worth, but the scale of his wealth is evident in a single investment of $35 million in Capricorn Investment Group, a private equity fund started by his friend Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay.
Ion Yadigaroglu, a co-founder of Capricorn, said that Mr. Gore does not sit on the fund’s investment committee, but obviously agrees with the partners’ strategy of putting long-term money into promising ventures in energy, technology and health care around the globe.
“Aspirationally,” said Mr. Yadigaroglu, who holds a doctorate from Stanford in astrophysics, “we’re trying to make more money than others doing the same thing and do it in a way that is superior in ethics and impacts.”
Mr. Gore has said he invested in partnerships and funds that try to identify and support companies that are advancing cutting-edge green technologies and are paving the way toward a low-carbon economy.
He has a stake in the world’s pre-eminent carbon credit trading market and in an array of companies in bio-fuels, sustainable fish farming, electric vehicles and solar power.
Capricorn holds a major stake in Falcon Waterfree Technologies, the world’s leading maker of waterless urinals. Generation has holdings in Ausra, a solar energy company based in California, and Camco , a British firm that develops carbon dioxide emissions reduction projects. Kleiner Perkins has a green ventures fund with nearly $1 billion invested in renewable energy and efficiency concerns.
Mr. Gore also has substantial interests in technology, media and biotechnology ventures that have no direct tie to his environmental advocacy, an aide said.
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Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire
Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.
The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
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http://resources.bnet.com/topic/kleiner+perkins+caufield+&+byers.html
Former Secretary Colin Powell Named Strategic Limited Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers KPCB — an innovator in providing venture and relationship capitalSM services to entrepreneurs — announced former Secretary of State Colin Powell has become a KPCB strategic limited partner.
bastards bump
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2086494/posts
Chicago Climate Exchange Names Founding Members
Chicago Climate Exchange and Joyce Foundation via Washington Post ^ | 1.17.2003 | Chicago Climate Exchange
Posted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 8:22:37 AM by Calpernia
Excerpt of first source:
Chicago Climate Exchange Names Founding Members
Leaders from Automotive, Chemical, Commercial Real Estate, Environmental Services,Electric Power Generation, Electronics, Forest Products, Municipal, Pharmaceutical and Semiconductor Sectors to join North American Voluntary Private Sector Program to Reduce and Trade Greenhouse Gases
(CSRwire) CHICAGO,IL - Efforts to develop market-based solutions to global warming reach a milestone today as leading U.S. and international companies and the City of Chicago announce they will be the Founding Members of Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX®), a voluntary cap-and-trade program for reducing and trading greenhouse gas emissions. In an unprecedented voluntary action, these entities have made a legally binding commitment to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by four percent below the average of their 1998-2001 baseline by 2006, the last year of the pilot program.
The founding members of CCX include American Electric Power (AEP), Baxter International Inc., the City of Chicago, DuPont, Equity Office Properties Trust, Ford Motor Company, International Paper, Manitoba Hydro, MeadWestvaco Corporation, Motorola, Inc., STMicroelectronics, Stora Enso North America, Temple-Inland Inc. and Waste Management,Inc.
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CCX will administer this pilot program for emission sources, farm and forest carbon sinks, offset projects and liquidity providers in North America. To foster international emissions trading, offset providers in Brazil can also participate. The development of CCX resulted from feasibility and design studies that were funded by grants from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation and administered by Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Environmental Financial Products, LLC conducted the research and development effort.
Excerpt of second source:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/barack-obama/
The Joyce Foundation’s Annual Reports list Barack Obama as one of the 12 members of the Board of Directors from 1998 until 2001.
Barack Hussein Obama Biography Excerpt:
Experience Businesses Owned, Past Careers, Board Memberships, Etc.:
Center for Neighborhood and Technology
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Cook County Bar
Cook County Bar Association Community Law Project
Board Member, Joyce Foundation
Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law
Leadership for Quality Education
Member, Trinity United Church of Christ
Board Member, Woods Fund of Chicago
...
NJ Gov. Jon Corzine, Hot Air, Obama and You
NJ Gov. Jon Corzine is working Barack Hussein Obama’s campaign. Word is Corzine is promised a high level position in the Treasury in an Obama Presidency. Corzine was former CEO of Goldman Sachs. A NJ local News Source said that Corzine told Merrill Lynch and his Wall Street buddies that this financial crash will be fixed in an Obama admnistration. No details on how though. Merrill Lynch has offices in NJ and it seems they are very worried.
Maurice Strong is involved with Chicago’s Climate Exchange. Al Gore is chairman of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management. That firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. Generation Investment Management purchases carbon dioxide offsets. The co-founder of Generation Investment Management is former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, who is currently the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Goldman Sachs bought 10% of Chicago’s Climate Exchange shares for $23 million. Chicago’s Climate Exchange owns half of the European Climate Exchange, Europe’s largest carbon trading company.
Maurice Strong: Chicago Climate Exchange’s board member. Canadian Maurice Strong has made a career and a fortune out of financial rip-offs. Strong served on the board of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (World Conservation Union) and was an advisor to the UN’s Kofi Annan. Among many other things, he was the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program in the 1970’s and Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit.
Goldman Sachs: The largest shareholder of the Chicago Climate Exchange and the second largest shareholder of the InterContinental Exchange. In fact, Goldman Sachs put Al Gore into the carbon offset hedge fund business in 2003 when David Blood, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs Assets Management, along with two other former Goldman Sachs officers, helped Gore establish his firm, General Investment Management, which focuses on “Sustainable Investing” by peddling carbon offsets.
Jon Corzine: He is now the Governor of NJ. He retired from Goldman Sachs in 1999 after taking the firm public and receiving at least $320 million worth of its stock. He ran for the Senate in New Jersey in 2000, spending more than $60 million of his fortune to win the seat. The bubble of high-priced technology stocks began to burst in March 2000. In August 2000, the SEC issued a warning against aftermarket sales, also known as “laddering.” “I’ve never even heard the term ‘laddering’ before,” Corzine said.
However, Nicholas Maier of Cramer & Co. said it happened on Corzine’s watch. “For Corzine not to know of a common practice being utilized to generate and manipulate stock prices would be surprising,” Mr. Maier said. “He was obviously there during this time. I definitively saw his company engaged in illegal activity. They (the SEC) expressed to me that laddering is a trickier thing [to prove],” Maier said. “I will say it. They did it. They laddered. Whether the SEC can construct a case is a different story.”
Al Gore: Owns a carbon trading business, Generation Investment Management. They were banked with the Lehman Bros. The Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist.
Merrill Lynch: Deeply involved in the Carbon trading business. They are a founding member and primary sponsor of the U.K.-based Carbon Disclosure Project. Merrill Lynch is headed by John A Thain who is a Goldman Sachs alumni.
Lehman Brothers: Created a propaganda piece last year about climate change to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.
A year ago they couldn’t predict their bankruptcy but were predicting the climate 100 years ahead. Thousands of green militants have been using the Lehman report as a proof of global warming and impending chaos. The report is the basis for policies on climate change in Spain, Argentina and several other countries playing the progress game.
Chicago Climate Exchange: The Exchange owes it existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation philanthropy that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who since the 1970s has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement.
Joyce Foundation: Provided grant support to test the market in carbon credits. Barack Hussein Obama sat on their Board from 1998 until 2001.