The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more. 

About the talk

Disruptive forces of change such as urgent electricity demand, onshoring supply chains, and increased weather volatility are combining to create the biggest innovation wave in a generation: Cleantech 2.0. In the US, early-stage cleantech companies are emerging to address some of the biggest challenges facing businesses today. They use unprecedented tools and offer a leap of value, leading to increased profits, reduced risk and improved resilience.

Yet US early-stage cleantech is too often overlooked by investors. It is a complex, dynamic, and technical space. Assessing early-stage cleantech presents a challenge, and investors have limited access pathways that usually rely on picking individual funds and companies when predicting winners is daunting.

In this talk, Jane Woodward aims to demystify Cleantech 2.0—what drives it, what makes it enduring, and what these companies look like. This talk will also make the case for a strategic approach to bring investors into this space, using a hybrid portfolio structure designed to capture upside, mitigate downside, and provide early access to disruptive innovation.

For more educational resources about Cleantech 2.0, please visit wovenearth.ventures/resources.

Jane Woodward is an Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, where she has spent over three decades teaching energy and cleantech innovation classes. She is on the teaching teams for Understand Energy and Stanford Climate Ventures, and she serves on Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy Advisory Council.

Jane is Managing Partner at WovenEarth Ventures, an investment platform that curates access to Cleantech 2.0. In 1986, she co-founded MAP Energy, which successfully invested $2.5B in four energy innovation waves (natural gas, wind, solar, storage) with an exit to GIP in 2020.
Jane created The Foster Museum in Palo Alto, CA to inspire connection to the natural world through artist Tony Foster’s powerful watercolour wilderness journeys. Jane has a BS in Geology from UC Santa Barbara, an MS in Engineering and Petroleum Geology, and an MBA, both from Stanford University.

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

• Attend live. The auditorium may change quarter by quarter, so check each seminar event to confirm the location. Explore the current quarter's schedule.
• Watch live in a browser livestream if available. Check each seminar event for its unique livestream URL.
• Watch recordings of past seminars 
  • Available on the Past Energy Seminars page and the Energy Seminars playlist of the Stanford Energy YouTube channel
• (For students) Take the seminar as a 1-unit class (CEE 301/ENERGY 301/MS&E 494)

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