Al Gore set to profit from sustainable and 'green' technologies

Weeks before announcing a $300-million, three-year advertising campaign to raise awareness about global warming, Al Gore was conducting a slide show for a group of investors in Monterey, Calif., touting companies such as Bloom Energy, Amryis , Mascoma and other firms that are not household names -- yet.

These bio-fuel and green technology firms could be poised to take off, Gore told his audience.

"Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense," he said during the March 1 presentation. "I have a stake in these so I'll have a disclaimer there." (See Video)

Gore's admitted stake in those companies comes from his partnership in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). Gore joined the firm last November, forging a partnership between KPCB and the London-based Generation Investment Management, a firm Gore chairs, and which steers investments in green and "sustainable" companies.

This month, KPCB announced it has invested $500 million into start-up "green growth" companies, and another $700 million into more established greentech, information technology and life science ventures.

The seed money is intended to "grow" the companies so they can be publicly traded. Both funds are closed to further investment. Last week, Generation Investment Management reportedly closed a $683-million "Climate Solutions Fund" to further investment.

The firms, with similar goals, differ in that GIM focuses mostly on public equities, while KPCB focuses on startup or expanding companies that haven't gone public yet.

But without government action on climate change, some business analysts say green companies backed by KPCB are either unlikely to be profitable or that their growth will be slow.

To Gore's critics, his financial stake in businesses that could profit from government policies designed to fight global warming demonstrates a motivation other than a selfless desire to protect the planet.

Gore has lobbied Congress and state governments to enact bolder environmental regulations. Gore's defenders counter that he and his partners are simply looking at companies that will have long-term sustainability during the "climate crisis."

"There are a bunch of folks that stand to make real money, who have invested a lot in companies that are not worth real money until the agenda that this ad campaign is advocating is achieved," Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-enterprise think tank, said in an interview.

Companies in the KPCB portfolio, as start-up companies, might be in greater need of a helping hand from government policy changes, but the larger, more established firms in the GIM portfolio also could benefit if the government manipulates the current market by mandating alternative fuels or imposing a cap and trade system.

As a private citizen, Gore is not required to publicly disclose how much of his personal fortune is invested in the venture capital firm. KPCB spokeswoman Brianna Woon declined to say how much Gore had invested in the firms, and she said the firms couldn't comment at this time on whether the greentech companies can succeed without government action.