After attending the Cleantech Open two weeks ago and seeing the company’s pitch to a panel of judges, I was anxious to find out more about GridMobility. The company has a new demand response (DR) service offering that could be key to integrating renewable resources on a smarter grid. This morning, I chatted on phone with Jim Holbery, the company’s President.

Israel was flooded with water activity this week with Mekorot partnering with GE and Desalitech to build a membrane-based municipal wastewater treatment system, Amiad launching 8 new products, and Atlantium working with the government to develop a new way to sustain reverse osmosis membrane performance at desalination plants.  These and other stories can be found below:

M&A/ Partnerships

• APTwater and Rochem merged their companies, bringing together “an exciting combination of proven solutions, innovations ready for market, and ideas under development,” according to the CEO.  The company will now be able to offer full service solutions in both Europe and North America.
  http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aptwater-and-rochem-merge-their-companies-133552203.html
• Consolidated Water is considering pulling out of its Mexican joint venture, through which it had planned to develop a 378,500m³/d desalination plant in northern Baja California.  The company has warned investors that it expects to receive substantially less than the $4 million it initially put into the venture, and may have to write down approximately $606,000 of NSC-related assets.
  http://www.globalwaterintel.com/news/2011/45/consolidated-water-considers-its-future-mexico.html?source=email
• Manila Water signed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire Clark Water Corporation.  The Philippines-based company will purchase 100% of outstanding capital stock of Clark Water and the receivables of Veolia Water Philippines and Philippine Water Holding

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This morning, Cleantech Group’s CEO, Sheeraz Haji, participated in the opening keynote at Opportunity Green in Los Angeles. In an interview with NRG Energy’s CEO, David Crane, Sheeraz focused on the power that partnerships have in driving the sector forward. Sheeraz and David made sure to give attendees clear take always on what it means to partner, what to look for in these collaborations, and provided examples of successful partnerships between private cleantech companies and large corporations.

This important topic is one we at Cleantech Group have been thinking a lot about lately. In fact, our upcoming Cleantech Forum San Francisco in March is focused on this very theme and will explore how strategic relationships are playing an ever more important role in the future of clean technology.

“At Cleantech Forum San Francisco, we will bring the CEOs of select leading cleantech companies and their corporate counterparts together on stage to discuss the significance of their relationship,” says Sheeraz.  “Through these discussions, we intend to highlight the power of partnerships and how the collaboration of ideas, research and funding can propel innovation forward much further and faster than cleantech startups or corporations could ever hope to alone.”

Registration is now …

Cleantech venture investments in the last few quarters have not been very friendly to early stage companies. While over 70 early-stage companies received investments in 3Q11, this was the first time that happened since 4Q10:

This trend can certainly be discouraging to cleantech companies looking for their first institutional round of funding, but events like this week’s NREL’s Investor Growth Forum and next week’s Cleantech Open Global Forum can be valuable tools for young companies to get in front of investors inclined toward early-stage deals. I spent the last few days in Denver with NREL, watching a handful of early-stage company pitches. Below are highlights of two of the companies that most impressed me. Visit i3 (subscription required) for more information on these and the 28 other companies that presented in Denver, and stay tuned next week for coverage on the Cleantech Open’s finalists.

And if you’re a later-stage company wondering where your opportunity is to reach hundreds of cleantech investors and partners with a single pitch, look no further than Cleantech Group’s own Cleantech Forums. Our next one is the flagship Cleantech Forum San Francisco, and we are currently accepting applications for the Entrepreneur Showcase – a …