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As Goes LanzaTech, so Goes Cleantech

Greg Neichin
by | January 27th 2012
Posted in Asia, Bio-energy, Cleantech Investment Insight, Companies, Companies in the Spotlight, Company Insight, Europe and Israel, Geographical Insights, North America, Waste

If you are in the cleantech sector and had not previously heard about Lanzatech, you likely have now.  The company raised a big, $55.8M round last week that has been widely applauded and covered.  Students of the company had seen this coming for awhile.  Lanzatech was the highest ranking company in the Asia Pacific region in our Cleantech 100 survey earning it “APAC Company of the Year” at our gala banquet last year.  It was featured as part of GTM’s Trendspotting post on the Top 12 Greentech Startups to Watch in 2012.   We’ve made Lanzatech our featured “Company of the Week” in i3 this week, but it may just turn out to be cleantech’s company of the year (and its only January!).  Here are the top reasons that I think Lanzatech exemplifies a number of key themes happening in cleantech:

1.) Cross-Border Financings – I have previously written about Chinese and Korean investors taking large stakes in Western cleantech companies.  Now we can add the Malaysians to that list.  The round was led by the Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund and included participation from Malaysian state oil company,…

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Water: Week in Review

artipatel
by | January 26th 2012
Posted in Cleantech & IT, Water
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Abu Dhabi showed heavy involvement in water this week, with the announced completion of 22 solar desalination projects and the hosting of a delegation of water and wastewater industry experts from the UK.  These events come on the heels of the World Future Energy Summit held in Abu Dhabi, where the emirate explained its plan to take a “comprehensive and holistic approach” to water security over the next 1-2 years.  Details on these events and more can be found below.

M&A/ Partnerships

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Why I believe 2012 will be a record year for cleantech innovation financing

Sheeraz Haji
by | January 24th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Corporates in Cleantech, IPO, Venture Capital

The death of cleantech venture capital has been greatly exaggerated. Yes, there were a few massive failures in 2011, and of course it’s been difficult for a number of cleantech venture capitalists to raise funds. However, cleantech did not implode, and neither did venture capital.

On our recent Quarterly Investment Monitor webinar I predicted 2012 will be a record year not realizing this was a particularly bold claim. However, judging by the number of comments I have received from clients and colleagues, I am realizing this may be a contrarian view. Here’s my rationale:

1) Math – We tabulated just under $9 billion in global cleantech venture investments in 2011. Since 2005, cleantech venture investment has increased each year excepts for 2008 to 2009 when we experienced the mother of all economic crises. On average, cleantech venture investments have grown 26% per year since 2005. If we use this average rate to extrapolate, we will see $11.3 billion in 2012. That’s a pretty big step up from the current record year – 2008 which saw $9.5 billion.

2) I believe we will see a couple of rock-star IPO’s in 2012 and this will drive renewed enthusiasm in…

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Cleanweb NYC Hackathon: Top 3 Unsung Winners

Greg Neichin
by | January 23rd 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Energy Efficiency, Geographical Insights, Lighting, North America, Smart Grid

On the same weekend that the Giants broke the 49ers hearts, Sunil Paul playfully added some insult to injury in the bicoastal rivalry by declaring, “New York has stepped up with an event [cleanweb hackathon] that is, dare I say, bigger than San Francisco.”  And while, as a true bicoastal executive, I have no interest in stoking the cliché Silicon Valley v. Silicon Alley fire, we can safely say that New York represented this past weekend.

The New York cleanweb hackathon organizers, which included Sunil, Blake Burris of Dynamo Labs, Micah Kotch from NYC ACRE, Nicholas Eisenberger of Pure Energy Partners, Matt Solt of Civvic, and a number of others, put on a great show and took a big step forward in evangelizing the cleanweb movement.  Judging by the turnout, the “cleanweb”, the increasingly popular term for applying IT solutions to global resource constraint problems, is a hit amongst the East Coast digerati (even meriting an appearance by NYC’s trendminting venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who had previously cast off cleantech as an entirely separate form of VC).

There were a number of awards presented at the end of…

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After the World Future Energy Summit – where will finance and policy go now?

JPSirois
by | January 23rd 2012
Posted in Cleantech Events, Cleantech Funds and Investors, Cleantech Investment Insight, Policy, Venture & Private Equity Watch
Tags: ,

The 2012 World Future Energy Summit has officially come to an end, and with over 26,000 participants attending from all over the world, it has been considered a great success. But much like the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, all the Summit representatives must now think carefully about how to transfer the energy and ideas expressed at this mass pilgrimage into real changes in the development of clean economies back at home in their communities.

The short-term is fraught with uncertainty and has led to investors talking of adaptation methods. For example, in light of stock and bond market uncertainties, investors are talking about increasing their participation in cleantech private equity markets. However longer-term, there is a broader consensus of the direction the industry needs to go. For example, during the Summit, the World Bank’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Andrew Steer, expressed his opinion that investments in green technologies should increase three fold.  Similarly the UN has spread talk of its plan to invest $100B annually in green tech.

Another clear result of the Summit is that there is now more global attention on AbuDhabi as an area that is increasingly focused on creating a…

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Google this.

artipatel
by | January 20th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Companies, Companies in the Spotlight, Company Insight, Water
Tags:

Latitude SolutionsI googled “electro-precipitation” the other day, and here is what I found:  one link to a dictionary, two wikipedia entries, three research articles, and four links or news stories related to Latitude Solutions.  That’s right – four!  Not only did Latitude Solutions account for 40% of the top ten google results, but it was the only electro-precipitation company mentioned.  Naturally, I spoke to someone at the company to find out more…

Latitude Solutions provides products, processes and solutions for contaminated water remediation in industrial applications.  Made up of three different divisions, the company manages to target multiple industries in multiple geographic markets.

The first business unit I learned about was Latitude Solutions Energy Services, which is dedicated solely to the oil and gas industry.  The company’s technology uses electro-precipitation to flocculate Total Suspended Solids (TSS) at up to 98% efficacy, according to the company.  What separates this method from traditional coagulation methods is that currents from the electro-precipitation process remain in the treated water, thereby continuing to treat the water in the event it is transported to another location for discharge or reuse.

Latitude Industrial Water Solutions, a second subsidiary, targets industries outside of oil and gas. …

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What does the WFES conference mean for cleantech investors and companies?

JPSirois
by | January 19th 2012
Posted in Asia, Cleantech Investment Insight, Europe and Israel, Geographical Insights, North America, Policy

Today, the halls and corridors of the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) were filled with controversy, questions, concerns and opportunities after the UN Secretary General hinted at the role he sees for the UN’s International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in the post Kyoto world. His comments were closely related to his new “Energy For All” initiative which seeks to end energy poverty for some 3 billion people by the accelerated deployment of renewable energy. To help fulfill this initiative, he has formed what was called a “high level working group of governments, investors and technologists” who will develop a road map in the months leading up to the UN Rio +20 Summit this June.

The other message that rang home from the Summit was that the world should triple present levels of financing available for renewable companies and that governments need to work more closely with the private sector to allow this to happen. It is comments like these that have had investors and technologist at the conference beginning to ask questions about the future of their industry: Will the group favour one renewable over another? What will be the biggest growth renewable sector over the next 5-10 years? The…

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Water: Week in Review

artipatel
by | January 18th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight, Sector Insights, Water
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In addition to the normal flow of M&A, investment activity, projects, and technology introductions, the last two weeks have put water scarcity concerns in the limelight.  Not only is water scarcity expected to be one of the main barriers to growth for India in the upcoming years, but Trillium Asset Management is calling out companies that don’t yet focus on factoring water risk into their bottom line.  It’s a good thing we also saw a new report on water reuse and how it may even be healthier for us than drinking water – it’s a sustainable water source that we can’t (and shouldn’t!) run away from.  Read below for details on these stories and more:

M&A/ Partnerships

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Abu Dhabi’s quest to lead sustainability and renewable energy

JPSirois
by | January 17th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight

Yesterday, at the launch of the 5th annual World Future Energy Summit, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi proclaimed: “my government is committed to ensuring the region continues to lead in the area of sustainability and renewable energy”. His Highness informed the thousands assembled from around the globe that “it is our responsibility to take advantage of the various renewable natural sources of energy to achieve sustainable development.”

His Highness added: “over five years ago, we began our work in building capacity in the renewable energy sector. Today, we realize that this approach has gained increasing regional and global attention — We are continuously hearing of new solar or other renewable energy projects being launched — This is exactly what is required — a collaborative effort and the multiplying of efforts to achieve energy security. We are staying the course in our objective and we are working in parallel streams towards developing local and international projects — and as such transferring knowledge and building bridges with the international community.”

As an example, it was noted that as of 2009, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) consumed zero ethanol. Then, as of 2010, the UAE became the…

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Want 10 minutes on stage at Cleantech Forum San Francisco? Apply by Friday the 13th!

Kate McArdle
by | January 12th 2012
Posted in Cleantech Investment Insight

By now you’ve probably heard about the hundreds of investors and corporate executives that will be at Cleantech Forum San Francisco. And you’ve probably read about how Avantium met its lead investor on a subsequent EUR 30M Series B funding round, after presenting in the Entrepreneur Showcase at Cleantech Forum Paris. And you probably know that there’s no cost to apply to the (short and sweet) Entrepreneur Showcase application.

So I’ll get right to the point: tomorrow, Friday, January 13 is the deadline for applications for this year’s Entrepreneur Showcase at Cleantech Forum San Francisco. The application (and more details, in case you’ve missed them) is available here: http://www.cleantech.com/for-entrepreneurs/entrepreneur-showcase/.

Whether your company is seeking a Series A or Series D funding round, whether it is based in Boston or Madrid, whether it has a SaaS-based energy efficiency platform or a process to reuse wastewater, there’s no better place for exposure to top cleantech investors than at Cleantech Forum San Francisco.

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