Financing your innovative cleantech company amidst an economic crisis, navigating a new and uncertain policy environment, and finding the early markets needed to take it all to scale. Not an easy task, but those are just some of the many challenges facing the nascent cleantech industry on display at this year's San Francisco Cleantech Forum XXVI. Held February 24th-26th, the summit was organized by the Cleantech Group and brought together cleantech entrepreneurs, energy companies, venture capitalists and many others to focus on the challenges of "Taking Cleantech to Scale."

Listen to the podcast:



David Roberts of Grist.org and Bryan Walsh of TIME magazine and their Going Green blog were both on hand for the summit and agreed to join theEnergyCollective.com's Jesse Jenkins for this podcast discussion on the SF Cleantech Forum.

Listen to the exclusive theEnergyCollective.com podcast above and join the conversation in the comments section by chiming in on the themes discussed by Roberts, Walsh, and Jenkins:

  • What are the key challenges to taking cleantech to scale?
  • Did the government-funded stimulus program save or sully the cleantech sector?
  • Will the entrance of big corporate players into the cleantech space bring critical new funding opportunities for nascent startups or just empty hopes of deep pockets?
  • How do the challenges facing cleantech entrepreneurs differ from those IT startups had to navigate?
  • Is smaller really better for new clean technologies looking for financing and an early market home?
  • And what's the next big thing in cleantech that'll shake up energy and investor circles in 2010?

Listen.  Discuss.  At theEnergyCollective.com