Selection Committee Profile: Michael Liebreich

Michael Liebreich is Chief Executive at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He is an experienced entrepreneur who has helped to build numerous companies and has long played an active role with the Forum’s Technology Pioneers and sits as a member of the Technology Pioneers Selection Committee.

Below Mr Liebreich discusses his technology solutions for the future, industry trends and current projects.  
 

What is your company currently doing to support innovation? What are you working on currently?

“Bloomberg New Energy Finance is just about to launch two completely new services – water and power markets – which will complement our existing information services in renewable energy, energy technology, nuclear, carbon capture and the carbon markets. Within each of our existing sectors, we are innovating every day – whether it’s developing new price indices for solar and wind technology, launching new analytics functions on the Bloomberg Terminal, or developing new models to understand the future of the bioenergy industry. I am very involved in discussions about energy and climate policy world-wide, which is sorely in need of innovation, and I am an investor – in a small way – in a couple of start-ups.  I act as a mentor to a number of entrepreneurs – as many as seem interested, in fact!”

 

Why is supporting the Technology Pioneers important to you?

“The Technology Pioneers are uniquely important and uniquely engaging people. It’s a privilege to meet them, and very satisfying to be even a small part of a programme which does so much to accelerate game-changing businesses from around the world.”

 
What are some of the major trends you're seeing within your industry?

“The clean energy sector has been growing up fast. In the past two years we have seen that top-down policy initiatives like Copenhagen are not the answer to climate change, and after the financial crisis it’s clear that governments don’t have the money to fund large-scale programmes. On the plus side, we have seen costs of all clean energy come down dramatically – with solar leading the charge with a 65% drop since 2008; clean energy is on track to become competitive without subsidies in some very markets in the next few years. It is going to be fascinating.”

 
What are the most important "wicked problems" that we should be tackling today?

“One big one would be energy efficiency. It should be so easy to halve our energy consumption, and yet it’s so hard to change behaviour.  Any technology which helps people do it effortlessly would be wicked successful. The other big one is energy access for the 3bn people without access to modern heating or cooking fuels, and 1.4bn without electricity.  Someone is going to make a lot of money solving that one.”

 
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs today?

“Focus on making sales. What are you selling? Who needs it? How much are you charging? Do they have the budget? What else can they do with the money? Can you deliver it? Can you make money doing it? The world today has no time for conceptual start-ups. If you are not focused on selling something then you should be a consultant, an academic, a futurologist, a teacher, a banjo-player, a car mechanic – anything, in fact, but not an entrepreneur.”