Looking at ways to get venture capital funding is an interesting exercise because to get funders you have to convince them that investing in focus fusion and LPP is a worthwhile “bet” to make with some of their money (just like the people thought that owning 1% or 6% of a person’s future earnings was a good “bet”). Basically, regardless of the gains for society as a whole from cheap clean energy (ie, stopping global warming, reducing the damage of coal mining and nuclear fission waste, facilitating cheaper desalination, etc), you have to convince people with money that despite the risky nature of what LPP is trying to do, the possible monetary rewards are worth the risks– ie, if LPP is successful, investors could stand to make a lot of money within five or ten years. Eric Lerner’s strategy of selling “licenses” to build Focus Fusion devices sounds like a good one because that would enable LPP to take a substantial cut of the profits anyone makes from building focus fusion devices without having to deal with the production and servicing issues themselves.

Its also interesting because in the Google presentation, Eric discussed how Focus Fusion could produce clean energy cheaply, but he didn’t discuss the ways in which the cheap energy that Focus Fusion might produce would be cheaper than the market rate, so that for the first ten years or so, whoever was selling electricity onto the grid from the focus fusion devices could be walking away from those transactions with a lot of money, because their costs of production would be so much lower than the sale price. If this were the case, (and if LPP drives some hard bargains along the way) LPP could end up as the next Ford Motor Co. for renewable energy, because Focus Fusion devices could be gradually replacing coal power plants and gas power plants . . . of course, LPP could be beat out by a competitor, but they have their technology patented, and LPP already has a jump on the competition in terms of research and background knowledge. . . Personally I feel that if LPP is successful, it would be cool if some of its profits could be used to fund other environmental and anti-poverty efforts, similar to what the Gates foundation is trying to do right now.

Of course, this is all counting chickens before they hatch, and we don’t even know if LPP can achieve net energy generation with pB11 fusion in a focus fusion device, but its really interesting to imagine what LPP might face if they are successful in achieving net energy generation.