Green rich or rich green people? – 17/100 from China
I just read an article on the cleaner greener china blog stating that 17 out 100 of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs venturing in green technologies are from China.
The Green Rich List - a special survey of how the world’s wealthiest people are turning into eco-pioneers is published by the Times Online:
“The global rich are going green as never before. This first Sunday Times Green Rich List shows that the enthusiasm among the world’s wealthiest for investments in areas as diverse as electric cars, solar power and geothermal energy is unaffected by the recession.”
“The Chinese rich on our list are definitely about mass production of green technologies. The 17 Chinese tycoons in the Top 100 are concentrated at the bottom end of the list and they are almost exclusively involved in solar and electric-car technology. It is a ferociously competitive market with unremitting pressure to cut costs and gain market share.”
At the top of the list we find some of the richest people on the planet, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who have turned their attention to green technologies, investing large sums. Buffet for example invested $230m in the battery-maker BYD based in Hong Kong.
Questions like “what is a green person?” is or “what makes a person green?” could be very interesting … Is Warren Buffet mainly investing his capital now because he is hoping for a bigger financial return in the future? Can we assume that he (or his team of finincial managers) has thourougly appraised the investment, predicting cash flows, assessing risks and defining a desired rate of return before deciding to spend money? Did he deliberatly look for green technologies or do batteries just represent a lot of potential for future cash flows (being the bottleneck in many exisiting and future applications)?
…the topic is open for discussion…
