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In collaboration with the Milken Institute, Sandia recently conducted a workshop in New York City designed to provide attendees insight into technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy security. Some 50 attendees, representing Wall Street's largest and most prestigious investment firms, participated.
"Wall Street often doesn't get the complete picture," says Ron Stoltz, head of Sandia’s California Energy Liaison Office. Stoltz helped develop the workshop to provide answers about energy technologies to key capital market leaders. Workshop attendees included representatives from Goldman Sachs & Co., Allstate, GM, and Lehman Brothers, among others.
"Sandia's energy programs often focus on startup companies and traditional venture capitalists," says Les Shephard, Sandia VP for Energy, Security, and Defense Technologies. "The event attracted top-level financiers and long-term investors whose future decisions may very well mobilize capital and markets at a sufficient scale for real changes in energy security and emissions reductions."
Once known as the "junk bond king" for his role in developing the junk bond market, financier and philanthropist Michael Milken today devotes his time to a number of philanthropic ventures designed to achieve positive societal outcomes.
Joel Kurtzman, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, says he was overjoyed yet not surprised at the positive response from the workshop's attendees, whose organizations were collectively worth upwards of $200 billion in assets.
"They were impressed," he says. "Market leaders usually get a lot of biased information from organizations that are seeking funding. Sandia delivered speakers who were able to cut through all the hype, which cemented its already stellar reputation among the attendees."
A follow-up workshop, says Stoltz, is planned on nuclear energy and the issue of water in the energy sector.