At SF Climate Week, local companies seek path through the Trump era
SF Climate Week — one of the largest climate conferences in the country — kicked off Monday with a land acknowledgement followed by a fiery speech from former Vice President Al Gore, urging climate activists and startup founders in the Bay Area to confront fossil fuel companies and the Trump administration head on in the fight to stop climate change.
"The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality," Gore said at an event Monday at the Exploratorium. "Their allies in the oligarchic backlash to climate action argue that those who want to stop using the skies as an open sewer for God's sake need to be more realistic and acquiesce to the huge increases in the burning of more and more fossil fuels."
However in other corners of SF Climate Week, an annual series of events with an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 participants, a more conciliatory tone was formulating, one that seeks to find a path through the Trump era that doesn't directly butt up against it.
One climate-focused VC in the audience said he is optimistic about the next four years and that companies in the climate space can learn to speak with more Trumpian overtones, like focusing on bringing American manufacturing jobs home and dominating emerging industries.
As federal grants for batteries and EV chargers are likely to be completely cut off during the Donald Trump's presidency, climate investors will have to give up on batteries and other areas dominated by China, and focus on new technologies where U.S. companies can cement an edge, said the VC who asked not to be named.
Climate startups, which make up a broad array of sectors from batteries to carbon capture technology, have much to be worried about over the next four years. Along with cut-off access to grants that buoyed many startups developing risky technologies, many larger renewable energy projects have been stalled or cancelled after federal funding was pulled. Trump has even threatened to remove the nonprofit status from organizations fighting climate change.
A concurrent Climate Week event held by the VC firm Climactic and co-working space 9zero, sought to provide solutions to the climate industry on how to survive and thrive over the next four years.
CNN host and former Obama White House advisor Van Jones, speaking at the event, even went as far as giving advice to the audience of climate tech founders and funders on how to speak to Trump and his supporters about renewable energy to find common ground.
"(Trump) says he wants America to be energy dominant," Jones said. "How are we going to be energy dominant? We should be dominant in every form of energy possible and use it. Yep, I agree with that, and that's all you need. Is just a nod from him, and he just go tell his people, it's now we're going to be dominant in solar, dominant in the wind, dominant battery, dominant geothermal, dominant nuclear, dominant."
Jones worked with the Trump administration, particularly Trump's son-in-law, in 2018 to get a criminal justice reform bill passed in Congress. He says a similar strategy can be taken to curry favor for green technologies in the eyes of Trump and his allies, especially as the country will have to lean on a variety of forms of energy to meet increased grid demand posed by AI.
"Only Trump can save the solar industry, and only the solar industry can save Donald Trump," Jones said. "What am I talking about? I'm talking about basic math. The AI companies are going to need a massive amount of industry of energy to beat China in this AI race that we're in ... and they're going to need 20% to 30% more energy."
Here are the 60 largest manufacturers in the Greater Bay Area
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Tesla Inc.
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Genentech Inc.
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