Greenhoof

The two companies were going to build the solar thermal power plant to sell electricity to Arizona Public Service. Lockheed

The two companies were going to build the solar thermal power plant to sell electricity to Arizona Public Service. Lockheed

We reported earlier this week on the resurgence of venture capital investment in greentech.  We broke it out sector-by-sector in this post.  The graph above breaks it down year-by-year and looks at the recovery quarter by quarter
The chart below is another example of some of the work done in the Greentech Innovations Report – where we carefully track every VC deal in greentech as well as report on a different renewable energy topic every issue.
Investors channeled $575 million into 29 solar VC deals in the third quarter.  The investments spanned the solar sector and ranged from the fanciful (solar in space from SolarEn) to the sublime.  Notable in this data is the number of small investments – early stage VC investing is not dead.  Also notable are the 11 European and Asian investments, a larger than typical proportion.  European VC is alive and well.  The largest deal, Solyndra’s $198 million, was a requisite piece of funding for Solyndra in order to garner their $535 million federal loan guarantee. 
Does the VC model still work in big solar? Can massively-funded VC start-ups like Nanosolar ($500M in VC) and Solyndra ($800M+ in VC) provide a reasonable multiple for their investors?  Or are the less capital intensive solar plays like SunRun or Enphase more suitable to the VC investor?  The next few quarters should give us some answers.
 

Q3 VC Investment in Solar

Solyndra

$198M

Argonaut Private Equity, USVP, CMEA, Rockport, Redpoint, et al.

Cylindrical solar module – the recipient of a $535M Treasury Department loan

Suniva

$75M
Round C

Warburg Pincus, Apex Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, HIG Ventures, Advanced Equities

High-efficiency monocrystalline silicon solar cell manufacturer.  Customers include Titan Energy and Solon, according to the CEO.

SolFocus

Closed the
C Round with an additional $30M

Apex Venture Partners, NEA, NGEN, Yellowstone Capital, Demeter Partners, Advanced Equities, et al.

 HCPV

Cobol Technologies (India)

$30M

Pangea Capital

Solar developer

Borrego Solar

$30M

Taiwan’s Walsin Lihwa

PPAs for schools, companies and government organizations – Borrego ended 2008 with $58M in revenue and more than $90M in contracts.

Energy21 (Czech Rep)

$21.5M

Darby Overseas Investments

Solar developer plans 40MW of installed capacity in Central and Eastern Europe

Kovio

$20M
Round E

Bessemer, DAG Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Harris & Harris, JVP, KPCB, Mitsui Ventures, Northgate Capital, Panasonic, Pangaea, Pinnacle Ventures, Yasuda

Printed silicon electronics and thin film technology.  Heard to be considering a move into thin-film PV.
Vinod Khosla on BoD.

Danen (Taiwan)

 $19.1M

Israel’s Giza Venture Capital, et al.

Solar ingot and wafers, wafer slicing

SunRun

$18M
Round B

Foundation Capital, Accel Partners

SunRun provides turnkey residential solar systems with low start-up costs – customers do not own the systems, but buy the power at a fixed rate from SunRun.  Solar as a service

Arava Power

$15M

Siemens

Develops, builds and operates PV plants in Israel

Energos (Italy)

$14.6M

Climate Change Capital Private Equity

Large-scale solar farms – EPC, O&M, system integration

SPG Holdings

$13M

Global Environmental Fund, Robeco

Design and installationof solar systems

Plextronics

$12M

The Solvay Group

Organic solar cells

Solar Power Inc.

$12M PIPE

WI Harper

Vertically integrated solar energy provider

eIQ Energy

$10M

NGEN, Robert Bosch VC

Distributed electronics for PV installations

Voltaix

 $9M

Novus Energy Partners

Chemical precursors for creating semiconductor layers in solar cells. Voltaix competitors include Linde, Air Products, Sixtron

Innotech Solar (Norway)

$8.4M

Sustainable Technologies Funds, Northzone Ventures

Production process for solar cells to be made from non-prime cells from other solar cell producers

Liquidia Technologies

$7M

Canaan Partners, Pappas Ventures, NEA, Wakefield Group, Firelake Capital

Nano-scale patterns on polymer films to improve the light management and efficiency of PV cells

Sungevity

$6M   Round B

Greener Capital

Online sales for residential solar services

eSolar

$5M add-on

ACME Group

Solar thermal power developer
eSolar and ACME Group are in a deal to build 1GW of solar power plants over the next 10 years in India

Solar Mimizan (France)

$3.6M

Frey Nouvelles Energies, 123Venture

Developer of solar power and building-integrated solar projects

Crystalsol (Estonia)

 $3.5M

Conor Venture Partners, Energy Future Invest, et al.
 

Copper zinc tin sulfoselenide (CZTS) based PV

Circadian Solar (UK)

$3.3M

Seven Spires Investments

High concentration PV via fresnel lens on GaAs multi-junction solar cells and precision tracking

Tecnisun (France)

$2.2M

123Venture

Solar thermal collectors – vacuum tubes and heat pipes

QuantaSol (UK)

 $2M

LCA, Imperial Innovations, Numis Securities, Sheffield University

Quantum-well solar cells for CPV

GreenRay

$2M
Round A

 
Quercus Trust, 21Ventures
 

 Solar modules integrated with microinverters

Tuusso Energy

$2M

Pivotal Investments, Akula Energy

Developer of utility-scale solar projects in the Western U.S

Metallkraft (Norway)

$1M

Capricorn Venture Partners

Technology that recycles the slurry created from producing solar panels

Solaren

$600K

Undisclosed

Space-based solar panels. 

To increase awareness of nuclear energy’s role in clean-air electricity generation, the Nuclear Energy Institute has entered into its first- ever partnership with the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League. As an official energy partner of the Capitals, NEI is teaming up with the team to promote the clean-air benefits of nuclear energy to sports fans via multiple media, including signage at the Capitals’ home arena, the Verizon Center, in print and radio ads, and on the Caps’ and NEI’s…

Article by Nicholas Stern

This week’s summit on climate change offered cause for confidence. But all nations now need to redouble their efforts”

This week’s summit on climate change at the United Nations in New York has given a strong boost to the negotiations over a major international treaty, but there remain a number of major obstacles that must be overcome before the crucial meeting in Copenhagen in December.

China, India and Japan, along with the private sector, all made positive and significant contributions at the summit.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, made specific commitments on curbing the growth in greenhouse gas emissions as China continues its extraordinary economic growth. While the president promised a reduction by a “notable margin” rather than a specific figure, there is no doubt that the cut will be significant. And the environment ministers of both China and India made important and constructive proposals for how their countries will reverse deforestation.

This was the kind of leadership I had hoped to see at the summit – organised by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general – with developing and emerging countries showing that they can tackle climate change while continuing their efforts to reduce poverty. But we still have a long way to go before we can be sure that a strong agreement is in place for Copenhagen.

In the next couple of years, annual emissions of greenhouse gases are likely to reach a level of 50 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. If we are to have a reasonable chance of avoiding a rise in global average temperature by more than 2C, annual emissions have to be cut to no more than 20 gigatonnes by 2050.

That means that the 9 billion people who will be living on the planet in 2050 must be producing, on average, no more than about two tonnes of greenhouse gases per year each.

At the moment, the rich industrialised countries of the European Union average about 10-12 tonnes per head of population, while the figure for the United States is almost 24 tonnes. China, by contrast, emits about 6 tonnes per head at present. Thus rich industrialised countries in particular must substantially reduce their emissions.

The developed countries must now demonstrate that they have the political will to reach a strong agreement in Copenhagen. In New York, Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, outlined how his country will reduce its emissions by 25% by 2020, compared with 1990. This was a positive example that few others matched.

President Obama has already committed to a cut of 80% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, compared with 1990. But the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of Representatives sets an interim target for 2020 that is not considered ambitious enough by many other countries. And it is not clear when, or even if, the Senate will pass a comparable act to reduce emissions.

It is these interim targets that should now be addressed by all countries during the coming weeks. If we are to reach the goal of reducing emissions to 20 gigatonnes by 2050, we must be at about 35 gigatonnes by the halfway point of 2030.

That means global emissions have to peak within the next five years and be steadily falling by 2020. And while the commitments by the largest emitters already on the table for 2020 offer significant cuts relative to today’s emissions, they collectively fall 4 or 5 gigatonnes short of what is necessary if we are to be on a realistic trajectory to reach the 2030 and 2050 targets.

Developing countries should also sharply reduce their emissions – but they must be supported, financially and through technology sharing with the rich industrialised countries. Without commitments to such support, the negotiations ahead will prove very difficult.

Although the political leaders must devise and implement the right policies to guide national and global emissions trajectories, it is the private sector that will be the main engine in the transition to a low-carbon global economy.

In that respect it was very encouraging that 181 investors, collectively responsible for the management of more than $13 trillion in assets globally, launched a statement in New York last week to support a global agreement on climate change. The Leadership Forum for business leaders, which ran alongside the summit, also highlighted a tremendous variety of innovative ideas from within the private sector for the low-carbon transition.

So there are some reasons to be more optimistic about the prospects for securing a strong agreement in Copenhagen, following the New York summit. But the obstacles that remain are very big and will require an even stronger effort to overcome, starting at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh and continuing during the coming round of treaty negotiations in Bangkok next week.

There must be real vision, leadership and creativity, as well as a mutual understanding of the difficulties of making and implementing domestic policies. But if we can muster the effort, we can, as a world, forge a path towards a more prosperous and sustainable future – for us, our children, and generations to follow.

This article orignally appeared on The Guardian

Image credit: Alek von Felkerzam, Creative Commons

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in News and Views at 12:50 PM)