Canada’s Ausra connection
Monday, October 1st, 2007
My Clean Break column this week is a deeper profile of Dr. David Mills, founder and chairman of Palo Alto, Calif.-based solar thermal company Ausra Inc.
There’s been much written lately about Ausra and its Kleiner/Khosla connection, but this piece looks at the man behind the company and provides a little background on Ausra’s move from Australia to Silicon Valley. It’s ironic that a Canadian (an Etobicoke boy, to be precise), coming from a geography where the economics of solar thermal power don’t work well, ends up developing a technology and founding a company that has attracted so much attention and financing in the United States. Mind you, Mills spent 30 years of his life in Australia before heading to Silicon Valley, so while his family and roots are in Canada, his experience and influences come from Down Under.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about Ausra and what it’s up to, have read.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
