Is the US Government turning into a venture capitalist, and again trying to pick the winners? Yes and No...

 Through the US Small Business Administration (SBA), the government has supplemented the flow of private equity capital and long-term loan funds to small businesses. In FY 2011, the SBA's Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program provided $2.8 billion of financing to 1,339 U.S. small businesses.

However, the US Government is not picking the winners. The venture capital firms are, and most of them are very good at it.

SJF Ventures is one of them. "After working for 12 years with thousands of entrepreneurial firms and investing in 34 portfolio firms, SJF has built a deep network of experts able to share highly valuable expertise and insight in the firm’s focus areas" says the company's website.

SJF Ventures is now raising $75 million for their third fund, SJF Ventures III, and has just obtained the SBA "Impact Investment Fund" license.

The "Impact Investment Initiative" is part of Startup America, a White House initiative to bring together public and private organizations to accelerate the growth of America’s entrepreneurs. The goal of the program is to collaborate with private, institutional investors to identify impact investments and provide expedited licensing and capital to fund managers who qualify to organize and operate an Impact Investment SBIC.

SBA will provide $1.5 billion and match up to 2:1 the private capital raised by these funds, in the form of debt. So, for every $1 of capital invested by the venture funds in a startup company, the SBA would provide a $2 loan to the company.

However, SJF Ventures said it will not use the 2:1 government matching debt for its fund. "It's all private capital," said David Kirkpatrick, managing director and co-founder of SJF Ventures.

SJF Ventures has already received commitments for a "substantial amount" of the $75 million fund, according to Kirkpatrick. Citi's Community Capital, the community development lending and investing group of Citigroup is planning to invest $15 million in the fund. Other in the fund include Deutsche Bank, Calvert Equity Portfolio, Armonia, Abacus Sustainable Fund, Trillium Asset Management LLC, The CAPROCK Group, OpenBox, ImpactAssets and multiple family and individual investors.

The SBA "Impact Investment Fund" license obligates the SJF Ventures III fund to invest in clean-tech and education, or to make investments that boost the economy in low-to-moderate-income areas. That should lead to the creation of many green jobs.

SJF Ventures has extensive expertise in the clean-tech industry, having invested in many green companies, including CleanScapes, eRecyclingCorps (that just got a $35 million investment from Kleiner-Perkins), groSolar and Sun & Earth.

What do we mean when casually referring to sustainability during environmental conversation? Many people- news organizations, teachers, students governmental officials and the general public- often refer to sustainability as the Golden Mean, meant to solve all of Earth’s pollution woes. But is this idealism pure fancy, or is there some salvageable content to be found in the hubbub over solar cells, wind turbines and alternative fuels?

If sustainability entails reducing one’s environmental impact, yes- the ominous footprint, then just what is going through the minds of people who purchase hybrid cars and solar panels in order to reach a goal of sustainability? After all, won’t solar cells reduce dependence upon coal? Won’t hybrids use less gas during their lifetime? Yes, these realities may be true in the fight against the pollution boogieman, however there is an added, more sinister, element which deserves due consideration. Production and Lifetime Value.

Buying a hybrid may seem immediately “sustainable” as we’ve said. Using less gas saves gas. This equation of savings automatically gets tangled in a mire of sustainable talk since minimalism seems to be at the core of most sustainable arguments and thought processes. This hybrid sense of security simply gives, in part at least, a false sense of sustainability. Better gas mileage, at the cost of what? It takes the same amount of industrial metal, rubber and electronic gear to make hybrids as it does any gas-guzzler. So, what?

We, the general public, politicians, marketers and manufacturers, tend to equate sustainability with the new and improved. But here’s some contrastive food for thought? Apply sustainability to a 1970 Mercedes compared to any 2008 hybrid. Which is more sustainable if both have been in running condition up to the present date? The shocker is that the Mercedes beats out the hybrid. This isn’t brand favoritism, no. Rather it’s a critique of consumerism, i.e. the most environmentally unsustainable behavior in the whole greenie movement.

Observing the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of sustainability, one can see that sustainability means totally different things within particular contexts. Concerning the environment, sustainability strives to maintain practices that reduce the adverse environmental impact that humans and animals place on a particular environment. Oppositely, from a commercial stance, economic sustainability is synonymous with encouraging the consumption of products to sustain monetary markets. Both applications of the “S” Bomb are apropos, given their particular contexts. However, let’s consider the Mercedes vs. hybrid example.

Until recently, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world's forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.

Their results suggest that forests account for almost all of the world's land-based carbon uptake. Boreal forests are estimated to be responsible for 22 percent of the carbon stored in the forests. A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.

"Our results imply that clearly, forests play a critical role in Earth's terrestrial carbon balance, and exert considerable control over the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide," said A. David McGuire, co-author and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and co-leader of the USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.