The Week In Green Energy: ‘Plug The Damn hole!’

Week of May 24 – to – May 28, 2010 President Obama tours the beach at Port Fourchon with Parish President Charlotte Randolph. The oil spill resulting from the Deepwater Horizon disaster now officially ranks as the worst in U.S. history. Eager to place a containment dome over a media cycle, that more and more was [...]

Google Buys Mountains of Carbon Offsets

That's clean energy… Earlier this week Google announced the purchase of carbon offsets, for an undisclosed amount, that will support the deployment of a biogas power generation facility in South Carolina. Google spokeswoman Emily Wood emails G.E.R. that it has committed to “pay millions of dollars… for the offsets,” through 2013, but she declined to [...]

Exclusive: Canadian Energy Management Co. Ponders $14M Series C Raise

Energate, a Canadian developer of home energy management solutions, is looking to raise as much as  $14 million from current and new investors as  part of a Series C that could happen in the next 12 months, Marketing Director Karen McNaughton, tells G.E.R. The Ottawa. Ont.,-based company announced today that  it had secured $7.2 million [...]

Exclusive: Canadian Energy Management Co. Ponders $14M Series C Raise

Energate, a Canadian developer of home energy management solutions, is looking to raise as much as  $14 million from current and new investors as  part of a Series C that could happen in the next 12 months, Marketing Director Karen McNaughton, tells G.E.R. The Ottawa. Ont.,-based company announced today that  it had secured $7.2 million [...]

Exclusive: Innova Dynamics Eyes Series B

Innova Dynamics, the advanced materials spinout from the University of Pennsylvania, will likely tap investors for a Series B sometimes in coming year, company CEO and co-founder Alexander Mittal tells G.E.R. Mittal said the amount is still not settled but would likely be more than the $5.5 million raised as par of the Series A financing [...]

New Wind Farm Installs Set To Dip In 2010, Study Says

Expected new wind power capacity for the 2010 – 2025 period 2009 was great, 2010 won’t be as good, that’s the key take away of a study (U.S. Wind Power Markets and Strategies: 2010-2025) released today by IHS Emerging Energy Research, a Boston-based market research firm. IHS forecasts between 6.3 and 7.1 gigawatts of new [...]

Innova Dynamics Raises $5.5 Million Series A Financing

Innova Dynamics, a developer of advanced materials that can be used in the cleantech industry, has raised $5.5 million as part of an inaugural financing led by Rho Ventures. MentorTech Ventures also participated in this Series A round. Innova, a spinout of the University of Pennsylvania, says it will use the cash to scale and [...]

BPGlobalPR Calls The Shots

BP and its armada of flacks are being outdone by a lone Twitter account: BPGlobalPR, launched shortly after the start of the massive BP oil spill. The Twitter account has garnered about six times more followers than BP America’s real twitter account. When a lone Twitter account  outflanks your in-house flacks and armada of highly [...]

SunEdison Secures Long-Term Project Financing With $1.5bn PE Venture

Solar power plant developer SunEdison and energy-focused private equity fund First Reserve have formed a venture that will finance solar projects developed by SunEdison. The two companies will  first invest an initial $165 million in the venture. However, eventually the fund could hold up to $1.5 billion in investment capital. As part of the venture [...]

BofA’s Lu Yeung Top Analyst For Alternative Energy In WSJ Ranking

Lu Yeung, a Hong Kong-based analyst covering solar power companies at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, made two crucial calls last year that helped land him the top spot  as the best equity analyst covering alternative energy stocks in the Wall Street Journal’s latest ranking, out today. At the depth of the financial crisis, when [...]

U.S. Patent Office Streamlines IP Protection For Renewable Energy

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has made it easier for green inventors to protect their intellectual property. On Friday the government agency announced that it had changed the application process for its Green Technology Pilot program in a bid to boost the number of green technologies filing for IP protection. The program was launched [...]

MEMC Ready To Pay $76M for Silicon Wafer Maker Solaicx

MEMC Electronic Materials has agreed to buy Solaicx, a  Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of silicon wafers for photovoltaic panels for $66 million. MEMC could pay an aditional $10 million if Solaicx gets additional investments from current shareholders. MEMC owns solar power plant developer SunEdison. Solaicx has raised over $50 million in VC funding from D.E. Shaw, Applied [...]

Tony Blair Goes Gore, Joins Khosla Ventures as Senior Adviser

Following in Al Gore’s footsteps, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is looking to cash-in on cleantech opportunities and as has signed-on as a senior adviser with Khosla Ventures, one of silicon Valley’s most ambitious green venture capital fund. On his appointment the former British Prime Minister said: I’m neither a tech expert nor a [...]

Reblog: Kerry-Lieberman: Short on Innovation

This post by Mark Muro, fellow and policy director, Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, was first published on the Brookings’s Up Front Blog. As the spin cycles speculate on whether the Kerry-Lieberman Senate climate bill has a chance to pass this year, I’ve been looking at its clean energy innovation provisions and am [...]

The Week In Green Energy: Storms in the Horizon?

Week of May 17 – to – May 21, 2010 Jonathan Nelson, CEO Providence Equity Partners on Charlie Rose this week defending his industry as Congress debate a plan to place higher taxes on partnerships involved in private equity, venture capital and real estate. Could the House help siphon off the venture capital dollars, which [...]

Cleantech Banker Exits HSH Nordbank

We learn that a New York-based project finance banker has exited the energy financing group at German bank HSH Nordbank. He’s joining anoter European project finance bank. Gregory Hutton, a v.p. with HSH Nordbank’s energy project finance group, is leaving the bank to join the another Euopean bank, an industry source tells us, who declined [...]

Toyota Acquires $50M Stake in Tesla Motors

Japanese auto maker  Toyota announced today that it’s investing $50 million in electric-car maker Tesla Motors. As part of the deal Tesla  gets its hands on a factory in California, where it will build its Model S car and other vehicles. With Tesla, Toyota gets a platform that will allow it to compete head on [...]

Cleantech Is Where Most of The VC Dollars Are Heading These Days

PeHUB, today released a Top 10 ranking of this year’s largest venture capital deals, so far. And, not surprisingly, half of the 10 deals listed involved cleantech companies. Better Place, the battery service provider, leads the ranking with $150 million raised. Electric automobile maker Codax Automotive takes third place with $158 million raised in equity [...]

PE Firm Mid Europa Set To Grow Cleantech Portfolio

Mid Europa Partners is considering other investments in east European solar and wind companies, Stefan Tzvetkov, a  London-based director with the private equity fund, tells G.E.R. With the European Union seeking to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent over the next decade from 1990 levels, (there’s even talk to cut emissions by 30 percent), [...]

NTE Energy Staffs Up, Hires Calpine Veterans For Business & Project Development

NTE Energy, which last month entered into a joint venture last month with Energy Investors Funds (EIF) to develop hybrid gas/solar power plants, has hired Mark Daley, director of strategic origination at Independent Power Producer Calpine, as executive vice president, power marketing. Prior to Calpine Daley worked for Florida Power Corporation, which is now known [...]

Siemens Grows Equity Stake in Italian CSP Developer

Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, said earlier this week that it was increasing its equity stake in Archimede Solar to 45 percent from 28 percent. Archimede is a joint venture with Angelantoni Industries that develops receivers for Italian CSP solar power plants. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed. The J.V. plans to use [...]

Carbon-Cutting Solutions Provider Paragon Airheater Completes Recap

Cleantech-focused PE firm Arborview Capital has completed a recapitalization of Paragon Airheater Technologies, a provider of solutions that reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions of fossil fuel-fired power plants. No financial terms were disclosed. Other investors included SAIL Venture Partners and Huntington Capital, which also provided mezzanine financing for the transaction. Paragon’s technologies are poised [...]

Wind Developer Pattern Energy Secures $800M To Finance Acquisitions, For Project Development

San Francisco-based Pattern Energy Group has secured more than $800 million in equity funding and could use some of that cash to fund acquisitions of wind projects, both operating or under development. Of the $800 million, about $400 million come from investment funds controlled by New York-based  private equity firm Riverstone Holdings. Pattern is a [...]

Veteran Costa Rican Climate Change Negotiator To Head UN Climate Change Body

Christiana Figueres, a veteran climate change negotiator from Costa Rica, has been appointed as the United Nation’s head climate change negotiator. She replaces Yvo de Boer, who is leaving after four years as head of the United Nations’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for a job at KPMG. Figueres is a surprise choice. Observers [...]

Mid Europa Partners Invests in Czech Solar Power Operator

Mid Europa Partners, a London-based private equity and buyout firm focused on Central and Eastern Europe, has agreed to invest €60 million ($76.19 million) for an undisclosed stake in Energy 21 a Czech developer and operator of PV-solar power plants, it’s first investment in the clean energy space. Mid-Europa has indicated that it plans to [...]

Chinese Partner In Controversial U.S. Wind Project In Search of Good Will

A-Power Systems, the Chinese wind turbine supplier that is partnering with other Chinese and U.S. companies to build a 600 megawatts wind farm in West Texas, is traveling to Dallas next week for the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual conference. A-Power Systems and its project partners, which include the Shenyang Power Group and U.S. [...]

Cleantech Earnings Roundup

First Solar, the thin-film PV company, first-quarter profit rose 4.7 percent to $172.3 million from $164.6 million. First Solar expects  sales this year will be between  $2.7 billion to $2.9 billion. Because of tightening government subsidies in Europe,  to grow sales First Solar is acquiring project developers in the U.S. This week the company paid [...]

Climate Change Legislation Is Just A Deal Away

First, the good news,  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is not completely turning his back on the energy and climate change bill he co-authored and then walked away from just hours before it was set to be officially rolled out. Now for the bad news,  Democrats were set to release  later today, a very preliminary draft [...]

Exclusive: NewWorld Capital Set To Announce First Investments

We learn that cleantech-focused private equity fund, NewWorld Capital Group, launched last fall by former Mckinsey and Company Director Carter Bales, is close to announcing a series of inaugural investments. The investments are club deals directly supported by the firm’s founding partners as well as a couple of outside investors and would support at least [...]

Solar Power Partners Raises $115M In New Financing

Solar Power Partners (SPP), a developer and operator of solar-powered facilities, has raised $115 million in new financing. The new funding is a combination of tax equity, debt and term debt and was structured by Minneapolis-based   U.S. Bank and WestLB AG, the German bank. PeHUB reports that Solar Power previously raised $150 million in [...]

Salazar Approves Landmark Offshore Wind Project

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has awarded Boston-based developer Cape Wind a crucial federal permit supporting the development of a landmark, 420 megawatts offshore wind farm off Cape Cod. The federal permit in effect closes a nine-year  approval process for Cape Wind, which first announced the project in 2001 but quickly faced intense opposition from a [...]

Did Cape Wind Get A Federal Green Light?

Is today the day Boston developer Cape Wind announces it’s clinched a crucial permit from the Department of Interior giving it the right to develop its contentious, 420 megawatts offshore wind farm off Cape Cod? Secretary Ken Salazar is in Boston today, where he’s expected to award a federal permit to Cape Wind in a [...]

First Solar Buys Solar Developer NextLight Renewable Power

Thin-film PV maker First Solar has acquired NextLight Renewable Power, a developer of utility-scale power project for $285 million.  This latest acquisition  significantly bolsters First Solar’s project pipeline, adding some 1,100 megawatts of  solar projects that are at various stages of development. NextLight is backed by Energy Capital Partners, a clean energy-focused private equity fund [...]

Graham Likely To Return To The Fold, Says Media Report

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could return to the fold and back the energy and climate change bill he abruptly walked away from on Friday evening, reports trade publication The Energy Daily. Yesterday’s meeting between Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senator Graham was not fruitful. Senators Kerry and Graham are starting to [...]

Joule Secures $30M From New and Returning Investors

Joule Biotechnologies, a Cambridge, Mass.-based ethanol developer, has closed $30 million in a  second round of funding from a group of undisclosed institutional and private investors. Joule plans to use the cash to expand  a pilot plant in Leander, Texas. That plant is 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year and 15,000 gallons of diesel [...]

Total Invests In Ethanol Maker Coskata

Total, the French oil and gas major, has invested an undisclosed sum in ethanol maker Coskata, which has developed a refining process that can turn garbage, old tires and other waste materials into ethanol. Warrenville, Ill.,-based Coskata plans to use proceeds from the Total equity investment to scale production and commercialize its production. Returning investors [...]

Reblog: Clean Tech IPOs Have Much To Prove, Says Top VC

By Mark Boslet, co-editor, TechPulse360 Clean-tech IPOs have yet to prove themselves. Sure, investor excitement is on the rise with Tesla Motors, Solyndra, Amyris and Ameresco preparing to sell shares to the public. Another potential blockbuster, Silver Spring Networks, is said to have chosen its investment bankers. But the track record of recent green IPOs [...]

SolarBridge Raises $15M In Second Round

SolarBridge Technologies, the Austin, Texas-based microinverter developer has raised $15 million in a series B funding led by new investor Rho Ventures. Returning investor included Battery Ventures, which led the company’s Series A financing. With this latest financing the company has raised $27 million. SolarBridge will use the funding to finalize testing and certification and [...]

Climate Change Bill In Limbo Following White House Push For Immigration Reform

The bill is not dead but it’s in E.R., and on life-support. Today Senators John Kerry (D- Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and lone Republican Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), were set to release their energy and climate change bill. A legislation that enjoys support from key industry leaders, environmental groups, and unlike other key Obama legislation had some [...]

The Week In Green Energy: Calling For All Available Investors!

Week of April 19 – to – April 23, 2010 This week, biofuel developer Codexis sold shares as part of its much anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO). The company sold shares for $13, which was on the low-end of the $13 – to – $15 per share range, raising a total of $78 million. The [...]

Panda Energy And ConEd Enter Solar Venture

Panda Energy, is not giving up.  A little more than a year after walking away from its bankrupt ethanol business, the Dallas energy developer’s solar unit, Panda Solar Ventures, has teamed-up with ConEdison Development, a unit of the New York City electric utility,  to develop up to 20 megawatts of solar PV projects on the [...]

DOE Releases $200M For Cleantech Manufacturing

The Obama administration is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to build the country into a greentech power. Today Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced (Happy Earth Day!) a five year, $200 million financing to support “manufacturing-focused research projects that will have near and mid-term impact on the U.S. solar industry.” After supporting manufacturers of [...]

EverGreen Considers Funding Options For China Plant Expansion

EverGreen Solar, the Marlboro, Mass.-based maker of silicon wafers for solar panels, raised $165 million in convertible secured senior notes this week. The company says it plans to use some of the cash to finance the expansion of its new manufacturing plant in Wuhan, China. Plans are to expand capacity over the next two years to [...]

Codexis (Nasdaq: CDXS) Raises $78M

As expected this morning  biofuel  maker Codexis sold six million shares priced at $13 as part of its Initial Public Offering (IPO), raising $78 million. Shares sold on the low-end of the company’s $13 – to – $15 per share range.  The company has an initial market cap of $441 million. Credit Suisse led the [...]

Solar CPV Developer Announces 9-Digit Funding Round

Another day another huge cleantech venture capital funding round, today Amonix, a Seal Beach, Calif.-based maker of concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar power systems, has closed a $129.4 million Series B funding. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers led the round. Other participants included Adams Street Partners, Angeleno Group, PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, Vedanta Capital, New [...]

SolarReserve To Wrapup Permitting For 100 MW Nevada Power Plant

SolarReserve, the Santa Monica, Calif., utility-scale solar thermal power developer, says it expects its $550 million, 100-megawatts Tonopah Solar Energy project to be fully permitted by the end of the year. The project is being developed on federal land in Nevada. CEO Kevin Smith says it’s talking to project finance banks, which he declined to [...]

Is Soros Still planing to Invest in Cleantech?

Yes, George Soros the activist billionaire is still panning to invest in cleantech, a spokesman tells G.E.R. declining to provide more details as to how and when that could happen. “Plans haven’t changed,” spokesman Michael Vachon tells us. Back in October Soros announced that over the next decade he would invest up to $1 billion [...]

Kleiner Perkins Hires Partner To Run Cleantech Portfolio

Jan Van Dokkum, the former president of UTC Power has joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers as an operating partner to oversee the VC fund’s growing cleantech portfolio (h/t PeHUB for the info). Van Dokkum will work closely with Kleiner Perkin’s portfolio companies to help them commercialize their technology.  Energy storage developer Bloom Energy, biofuel [...]

Codexis’s $84M IPO Expected Thursday

Codexis, the biotech company backed by Royal Dutch Shell and Pequot Capital, is on the starting blocks, set to issue shares this week as part of a much anticipated $84 million Initial Public Offering (IPO). According to some reports the share sale could happen Thursday. The Redwood City, Calif., company does not produce biofuel but [...]

A Closer Look Into Amyris’s S-1

On Friday second-generation biofuel developer Amyris filed an S-1 Initial Public Offering registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The document provides a first, ruff glimpse of the company’s overall strategy and what it believes are hurdles that could derail the execution of that strategy. Amyris seeks to raise about $100 million and [...]

The Week In Green Energy: Tracking The Green Dollar

This week industry groups released a slew of optimistic reports that highlighted the robust health of the U.S. clean energy sector. In 2009 U.S. solar capacity grew by 29 percent, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Wind according to the American Wind Energy Association was up by 40 percent. Geothermal capacity increased by a more [...]

Reblog: The Case For Extending The Clean Energy Tax Manufacturing Credit

Joseph Romm (#8 in our December Top Ten Ranking and #7 in the November ranking)  was on Capitol Hill Tuesday testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee on how to use energy tax incentives to establish a U.S. green job economy. His comprehensive testimony calls for an extension of ongoing stimulus-funded measures, including the [...]

House Ways And Means Committee Looking To Expand Cleantech Tax Credits

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) has launched a series of hearings in view of making more permanent key renewable energy subsidies and tax incentives implemented as part of the stimulus law. The hearings come as Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R – S.C.) plan to unveil [...]

March Top Ten Players In Green Energy

Welcome to the March edition of G.E.R.’s Top Ten Players in Green Energy. This month Chevron and its pragmatic green strategy takes the lead. Our ranking takes into account a player’s ability to influence the cleantech industry, whether it be because of a forceful policy position, access to funding or a combination of the two. [...]

Greentech Capital Financial Advisors Advises Eka Systems In Its Buyout by Cooper Industries

Smart grid startup Eka Systems hired Greentech Capital Advisors as its financial adviser in its acquisition yesterday by Cooper Industries for an undisclosed amount. We caught up with Greentech Capital’s Craig Wellen, who worked on the Eka deal. He expects a healthy M&A deal flow this year in the cleantech sector as large industrial companies [...]

Cleantech PE Fund Hires New Managing Director

Element Partners has hired named Sujit Banerjee as a managing director at the firm’s Philadelphia headquarter. Banerjee had been a part-time operating partner last year. At Element Banerjee will oversee the firm’s investments in power storage, semiconductors, and power electronics, and will expand Element’s efforts in photovoltaic. Since joining on a part-time basis he’s co-sponsored [...]

Reblog: Big Misunderstandings about ARRA Stimulus for Clean Energy

By Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy A few weeks ago I flagged a story in the Christian Science Monitor titled “Stimulus Funds for Clean Energy Largely Unspent” because I thought it deserved a clarifying ‘blog post. The story repeats several big misunderstandings about the status of renewable energy programs included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [...]

Smart Grid Fuels M&A Activity: Cooper Industries Buys Startup Eka Systems; Maxim Integrated Pays $315M for Teridian

This morning Cooper Industries announced the purchase, for an undisclosed amount, of wireless smart grid developer Eka Systems. On Monday Sunnyvale, Calif., Maxim Integrated Products said it would pay $315 million for Teridian Semiconductor, a developer of power monitoring device based in Irvine, Calif. On Eka, Cooper Industries says the company’s technology is at an early [...]

Cleantech Companies Attract More VC Funding, For Now…

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s latest figures, combined, during the first quarter venture capital and private equity funds invested $2.9 billion in renewable energy companies, compared to $1.7 billion in the last quarter and $1.6 billion in the first quarter of 2009. Notable deals included — not surprisingly — an electric car transaction, the [...]

IFC Invests $1.5M In Producer of Rice-Powered Electricity

Husk Power Systems is close to securing a $1.5 million financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private investment arm. The funding is expected to be finalized at a meeting in May and follows last month’s $375,000 investment by the Acumen Fund. We first learned of Husk Power from Lynn Tabernacki of [...]

UK CPV Developer Appoints Johanna Solar Founder As New CEO

UK-based CPV developer Circadian Solar has appointed the founder of German thin-film photovoltaic company Johanna Solar Technology, Jeroen Haberland, as its new CEO. He replaces acting CEO Dr Robin Godfrey, who plans to remain at the Company in a business development role. Robert Bosch GmbH acquired Johanna Solar earlier this year.  Prior to launching Johanna, [...]

Guestblog: 10 Proposals For a Comprehensive Clean Energy Policy

Michael J. Zimmer is Of Counsel with Thompson Hine LLP in Washington DC. He serves on the American Bar Association’s Renewable Energy and Carbon Trading Committee and the Environmental Finance Committee. He is  also vice chair of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) biomass coordinating council and also serves as executive in Residence at [...]

This Week In Green Energy: Ontario Green

Week of April 5 – to – April 9, 2010 Ontario is reaping the benefits of its innovative cleantech regulation. This week, Ontario issued some $8 billion in new renewable energy contracts as part of the province’s year-old feed-in tariff program. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, has pioneered the use of cleantech as a catalyst [...]

Investors Flock To SunPower Debenture Offering

SunPower, the California solar panel maker, announced today that it’s issued another $30 million in debenture notes, an indication of  investor confidence in the medium – to – long-term prospects of  solar companies. SunPower  initially issued $220 million in debenture notes but had allocated an aditionnal $30 million to meet additional investor demand. The notes [...]

Cantor Fitzgerald To Lead Raser Technologies $25M Share Offering

New York investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald is the lead agent for the $25 million share offering of geothermal developer Raser Technologies.  An official at the Provo, Utah-based company tells G.E.R. that it’s never worked with Cantor before. Cantor’s pricing was competitive, the executive says. Although, the clincher for Raser might have been the bank’s experience [...]

Is a Casino Deal In The Works For Cape Wind? That’s one rumor floating around

A "casino for wind power" deal might be in the works for Cape Wind. One of the obstacles standing in the way of Cape Wind’s 420-megawatt wind farm off Cape Cod is the Mashpee Wampanoag, whose tribal leaders say the $1 billion offshore facility and its 130 turbines would desecrate tribal burial sites. But is [...]

AES Adds 700 MW To Wind Project Pipeline

Power developer AES acquisition of a  UK and Polish wind developer will add 700 megawatts to its European project portfolio. The company’s wind unit, AES Wind Generation, acquired British developer Your Energy Ltd as well as  a 51 percent stake in a wind portfolio from 3E, a Polish wind developer. AES is expected to invest [...]

Solar “Chilin”: Chromasun Raises $3M for Solar-Powered AC

San Jose, Calif.,  Chromasun has raised $3 million in a Series A Round of funding. Danish investor VKR Holding led the round. GoGreen Capital and two unnamed U.S. investors also participated. Chromasun develops a solar thermal collectors that use the heat to run air conditioners and the electricity generated by its PV  to offset grid [...]

Weathercaster vs. Climate Scientists, The Colbert Debate [VIDEO]

Yesterday, Stephen Colbert hosted a debate between climate change scientist Brenda Ekwurzel and Weatherman Joe Bastardi. The two came on the Colbert Report set, to debate the recent findings of a recent poll that showed that 25 percent of television weatherman believe climate change is a hoax (Bastardi’s position). Watch: The Colbert Report Mon – [...]

Former Yahoo! Exec. Joins Branson’s Cleantech PE Fund

Yahoo! Europe former Managing Director Toby Coppel is joining Richard Branson’s cleantech-focused private equity fund Virgin Green Fund as a partner in London. The move is yet another indication of how straight technologists are going green and heading to cleantech ventures. As chief strategy officer of Yahoo’s European unit Coppel oversaw $5 billion of acquisitions, including the [...]

Khosla Re-Invests in Battery Startup Sakti3

Khosla Ventures is putting more money into Sakti3, the discrete battery developer based in Ann Arbor, Mich, as a returning investor in a $7 million Series B funding round, led by Beringea. Sakti3 was founded in 2007 as a spin out from the University of Michigan by mechanical engineer professor Ann Marie Sastry. Two years ago the [...]

Solar Industry Veteran Joins SolarEdge To Oversee North American Sales

John Berdner, vice president, technology at GroSolar, the solar panel distributor and installer, has joined PV monitoring solutions company SolarEdge Technologies as general manager for North America. Prior to GroSolar, Berdner launched the North American subsidiary of SMA, the German manufacturer of solar inverter technology. Commenting on his appointment, Berdner said: I am thrilled to join an [...]

The Light Green Option: Energy Investor Funds To Build Gas/Solar Hybrid Power Plants

Energy Investors Funds has formed a joint venture with Saint Augustine, Fla., -based NTE Energy to build and operate hybrid power generation facilities in the U.S. The plants will use a combination of natural gas-fired a facility and renewable sources like solar or biomass. According to the joint release, the two companies will announce projects [...]

This Week In Green Energy: Obama’s New Drill

Week of March 29 – to – April 2, 2010 The drill flip Why did he do it? That was the question many people asked this week after President Obama endorsed offshore oil and gas drilling along the Atlantic Coast, from Delaware to central Florida, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s north coast. The [...]

Details Emerge On SunPower $220M Debt Financing

Deutsche Bank Securities,  Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi and Credit Suisse are the initial purchasers of $220 million in debenture notes — due 2015, issued this week by SunPower, the California solar panel maker. The company plans to use the proceeds to shore up its liquidity and support the buyout of SunRay Renewable Energy,  [...]

Reblog: Clean Tech Investing Bounces Back With Electric Car Deals Leading The Way

By Mark Boslet, co-editor, TechPulse360 Venture capitalists returned enthusiastically to clean-tech investing in the first quarter, increasing their spending. But they shun solar companies for electric cars and backed away from the smart grid. To hedge their bets, they spread their money more broadly than in the past, putting smaller sums in more companies. Clean-tech [...]

Shell-Backed Codexis Valued At $509M

Codexis is prepping its second try at an Initial Public Offering (IPO). This time around the Redwood, Calif., company will try to sell six million shares, priced between $13 and $15 per share, giving the company a potential market valuation of nearly $509 million. Codexis does not manufacture biofuel but has engineered enzymes to convert organic [...]

Offshore Is In The Air, Cape Wind Announces Wind Turbine Deal With Siemens

Cape Wind knows a good news hook. With offshore dominating the news-cycle  (and the Google search terms), the persistent Boston-based offshore wind developer chose today to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Siemens of Germany to purchase up to 130, 3.6-megawatt wind turbines for the  420-megawatt wind farm it wants to build off [...]

Obama To Expand Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling, Next Stop: A Climate Change Law [Update]

President Obama is set to announce an unprecedented expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling on the Atlantic Coast (as far north as Delaware) as well as the Florida Gulf Coast and parts of Alaska. This is a big shift to the right for the Obama administration and major reversal of the country’s energy policy. [...]

VC Update

Petaluma, Calif.-based Enphase Energy, a maker of microinverter builder, has raised $40 million in a private financing led by Bay Partners. New investors also included Horizon Technology Finance, Bridge Bank as well as returning investors Third Point Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners, Madrone Capital Partners and Applied Ventures. Including this latest financing Petaluma has raised $65 [...]

California Electric Car Maker Coda Automotive Looks To China For Financing

Coda Automotive, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based electric car company, has secured $394 million in long-term financing, including a $294 million line of credit from China’s Bank of Tianjin Joint-Stock Co. The company also secured a $100 million in equity financing, company CEO Kevin Czinger anounced in a blog entry published this morning. Coda secured the [...]

Exclusive: SunEdison, SkyPower Set To Appoint Bank For Ontario Solar Deal

SunEdison and SkyPower are in discussion with banks to finance part of  their $80 million, 18 megawatts Norfolk I and II solar PV projects in Norfolk County, Ontario. Construction on the two solar farms, which are jointly developed by SunEdison’s Canadian unit and Toronto-based  SkyPower, began last week. The plants are scheduled to begin operating [...]

NRG Energy Hires New CFO

Christian Schade, chief financial officer of Medarex, a biotech company acquired by  Bristol-Myers Squibb last year, was appointed CFO of NRG Energy. Schade will oversee the integration of the power utility’s growing renewable energy portfolio. Over the past year the company has purchased wind and solar farms in Texas and across the Western U.S. It [...]

BP Closes U.S. Solar Panel Plant, Relocates Green Collar Jobs To China and India [UPDATE]

BP is closing a 40-megawatt photovoltaic manufacturing plant in Frederick, Md., which opened just three years ago amidst fanfare that it would herald a new breed of green collar jobs. Instead, about 320 workers are expected to loose their jobs — see full press release. With the price of silicon PV panels having fallen by more than [...]

Cornerstone Conversation: Andrew de Pass, Senior Advisor Greentech Capital Advisors

Greentech Capital Advisors senior adviser R. Andrew de Pass We recently spoke to R. Andrew de Pass, a senior adviser with Greentech Capital Advisors, the first investment bank focused solely on the alternative energy and clean technology market. Before joining Greentech, de Pass spent 14 years at Citi, where starting in 2005, he headed the [...]

UK Set To Land Siemens Wind Turbine Plant

Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, is reportedly looking to build a wind-turbine manufacturing plant in the United Kingdom. The £75 million ($112 million) facility could create 700 direct jobs. This is the second such announcement in less than a week.  A few days ago General Electric, Siemens main competitor, said it would invest €340 million ($453 million) [...]

This Week In Green Energy: The Solar Shuffle

Week of:  March 22, 2010 – March 26, 2010 Solar Millennium is not in trouble, its finances are solid and it only hired an auditing firm to dispel ongoing negative market rumors surrounding the German solar company. In essence, that’s what the company’s flacks told G.E.R. in an email response to questions we sent them several [...]

Exclusive: Solar Millennium Says Deloitte Audit, CEO Abrupt Departure Not Related

German solar thermal developer Solar Millennium says the hiring of Deloitte this week and the abrupt resignation of its newly appointed CEO the week before are not “directly” related. In an email response to questions sent by G.E.R. earlier this week, spokesman Alexander Jacobsen writes that “there are no direct relations” between former CEO Utz Claassen’s [...]

Governors Urge President Obama To Expand Cleantech Tax Credit

Governors are pressing President Obama to extend the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit, the fiscal incentive funded by the stimulus to boost cleantech jobs in the U.S., and which is set to expire at the end of the year. In a letter, 19 state governors — Republicans and Democrats — propose that the tax credits [...]

Q-Cells Sells Asset And Gets Repaid

German photovoltaic panel maker Q-Cells and partners EverGreen Solar of the U.S. and Norway’s Renewable Energy Corp., have agreed to sell their shares in Sovello, a solar panel maker, to Ventizz Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Düsseldorf. The parties did not disclose the terms of the deal — see full press release. [...]

Gamesa North American Unit Hires New Chief Development Officer

Jiddu Tapia, vice president of development at Eurus Energy America, has joined Gamesa Energy as chief development officer of the Spanish company’s North American unit. Tapia oversaw the development of Eurus’s  60-megawatt Combine Hills 2 wind project in Oregon, which came online last year. At Gamesa Tapia will oversee the deployment of the company’s new [...]

Green Chemical Maker Genomatica Secures $15M For Demonstration Plant

Genomatica, a San Diego-based maker of green chemicals, has raised $15 million in a Series C financing led by TPG Biotech, a unit of Texas Pacific Group. Returning investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Alloy Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson – see full press release. Part of the proceeds will support the construction of a demonstration [...]

Don’t Be Fooled It’s Getting Hot! [VIDEO]

The back – to – back blizzards that hit the U.S. this past winter led some, mostly at Fox News, to again question the validity of human-made climate change. “It’s just too cold,” they said. In a recent presentation in Australia, Michael Oppenheimer, a leading climate change scientist and co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on [...]

France Shelves Carbon Tax

Sarkozy is walking away from his campaign promise to tax carbon France has abandoned its carbon tax, fearful that it would hurt the competitiveness of French businesses. The decision underscores how difficult pricing carbon is not just in France but in the U.S. and across the globe. The law was actually one of French President Nicolas [...]

Bill Gates-Backed TerraPower And Toshiba Are Talking

TerraPower, a company that develops reactors powered by depleted uranium, is in talks with Toshiba in view of developing a small nuclear reactor. TerraPower is a unit of Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding investment firm partially backed by Bill Gates and run out of Bellevue, Wash., by former Microsoft executive, Nathan Myhrvold. Japan’s Nihon Keizai [...]

VC Update

Calera, a developer of technology that turns CO2 into building materials, has received a $15 million private equity investment from coal producer Peabody Energy. The proprietary technology developed by Los Gatos, Calif.-based Calera converts CO2 released from power facilities, cement plants or refineries into carbon negative building materials. The Calera process also acts as a [...]

Blackstone Makes Political Friends By Dropping Nevada Coal-Fired Power Project

The Blackstone Group, the New York-based buyout shop,  will not develop a coal-fired power plant in Nevada, weighing that the political fallout, at a time when Congress is considering legislation that could significantly alter its business model, was not worth it. For nearly seven years Blackstone’s portfolio company, Sithe Global, has been trying to develop [...]

Chevron’s Green Energy Playbook

Chevron throws a quick slant to green energy. HUT, HUT!!! Is Chevron, which announced yesterday that it has begun testing solar panels at an old California refinery site, positioning itself to become a “pan-energy” company like its competitor BP? Not quite, Chevron’s Vice President of Emerging Energy Jerry Lomax tells G.E.R., but “Project Brightfield” does signal [...]

Morgan Stanley’s Tech Group Loses Banker To Virgo Capital

Nathaniel Robinson, a merger and acquisition banker at Morgan Stanley, has joined Virgo Capital as a vice president in the Austin office of this tech-focused private equity fund. Morgan Stanley is understood to be in talks with potential replacements, an industry source tells G.E.R. Robinson was  in Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology M&A group in Menlo [...]

What’s Happening At Solar Millennium?

First, last week, Solar Millennium’s newly appointed CEO, Utz Claassen, abruptly resigns without any explanations. He had joined the company last December from German power utility Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) and was expected, among other things, to secure a substantial amount of financing to deploy the company’s solar thermal power plants in Europe and the Western [...]