WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore
thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm
sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,
one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75
million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install
millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.
Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants.
Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which
Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners,
including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in
coming years.
Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the
global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have
been as vocal about the urgency of global warming
and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes
energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr.
Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green
transformation, if and when it comes.
Critics, mostly on the
political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is
poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering
from government policies he supports that would direct billions of
dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.
Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.
“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in
this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”
In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades.
“I
have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate
reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all of
the time I was in public service,” Mr. Gore wrote. “As a private
citizen, I have continued to advocate the same policies. Even though
the vast majority of my business career has been in areas that do not
involve renewable energy or global warming pollution reductions, I
absolutely believe in investing in ways that are consistent with my
values and beliefs. I encourage others to invest in the same way.”
Mr.
Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of
dollars he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array
of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures,
like carbon trading markets, solar cells and waterless urinals.
He has also given away millions more to finance the nonprofit he founded, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and to another group, the Climate Project, which trains people to present the slide show that was the basis of his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Royalties from his new book on climate change, “Our Choice,” printed on 100 percent recycled paper, will go to the alliance, an aide said.
Other public figures, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
who have vocally supported government financing of energy-saving
technologies, have investments in alternative energy ventures. Some
scientists and policy advocates also promote energy policies that
personally enrich them.
As a private citizen, Mr. Gore does not
have to disclose his income or assets, as he did in his years in
Congress and the White House. When he left government in early 2001, he
listed assets of less than $2 million, including homes in suburban Washington and in Tennessee.
Since
then, his net worth has skyrocketed, helped by timely investments in
Apple and Google, profits from books and his movie, and scores of
speeches for which he can be paid more than $100,000, although he often
speaks at no charge.
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.
Mr. Gore is not a lobbyist, and he has
never asked Congress or the administration for an earmark or policy
decision that would directly benefit one of his investments. But he has
been a tireless advocate for policies that would move the country away
from the use of coal and oil, and he has begun a $300 million campaign
to end the use of fossil fuels in electricity production in 10 years.
But Marc Morano, a climate change skeptic who until recently was a top aide to Senator James M. Inhofe,
Republican of Oklahoma, said that what he saw as Mr. Gore’s alarmism
and occasional exaggerations distorted the debate and also served his
personal financial interests.
Mr. Gore has testified numerous
times in support of legislation to address climate change and to revamp
the nation’s energy policies.
He appeared before the House
Energy and Commerce Committee in April to support an energy and climate
change bill that was intended to reduce global warming emissions
through a cap-and-trade program for major polluting industries.
Mr.
Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate advocacy,
is generally received on Capitol Hill as something of an oracle, at
least by Democrats.
But at the hearing in April, he was
challenged by Ms. Blackburn, who echoed some of the criticism of Mr.
Gore that has swirled in conservative blogs and radio talk shows. She
noted that Mr. Gore is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, which has hundreds
of millions of dollars invested in firms that could benefit from any
legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions.
“I believe that
the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for
all of us, and I have invested in it,” Mr. Gore said, adding that he
had put “every penny” he has made from his investments into the
Alliance for Climate Protection.
“And, Congresswoman,” he added,
“if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for
30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.” SOURCE: