Big VC $$$ Available for Clean Tech

From Business 2.0. Now, how about some Sacramento-area companies step up and use some of this money here!

Clean Cash: Technology Partners Raises $300 Million Fund

The green tech investment boom continues, with Silicon Valley venure capital firm Technology Partners announcing this morning that it has raised $300 million for its latest fund. The cash will be invested in clean tech and life sciences startups.

"We think the convergence between life sciences and clean tech represents the next wave of opportunity," Ira Ehrenpreis, a general partner at Technology Partners, told Green Wombat. To Ehrenpreis, a leading green tech guru (or "cleantech" in the nomenclature preferred by some valley VCs), that means everything from bioengineering new biofuels to deploying advanced material sciences to develop new drug delivery systems.

The new fund has already invested in electric car company Tesla Motors, NFocus Neuromedical, which is developing technology to treat brain aneurysms, and laser hair-removal startup SpectraGenics.

The Palo Alto firm's lastest fund has also invested in a "stealth solar company" that Ehrenpreis declined to identify in any way. It's de rigeur these days to ask whether the big bucks being poured into such ventures herald a green tech bubble a la the dot-com bubble of yesteryear. Sure, some people will inevitably lose their shirts but the global warming-driven political and regulatory changes spurring such investments are unlikely to subside anytime soon. "I think this is just the beginning of another industrial revolution," says Ehrenpreis.

They like us! They really like us!

Sacramento earns high marks as 'green' leader

Sacramento Business Journal - July 2, 2007

The winners are Chicago, especially with its 2.5 million square feet of heat-reducing rooftop gardens and the planting of 500,000 trees; Stockholm, Sweden, which has 2,500 green-sector companies and is considered the least-polluted major city in Europe; Portland, Ore., with 125 U.S. Green Building Council-approved buildings, the most in the nation; and Vancouver, Canada, which wants higher-density living in the urban core to ease pollution and encourage walking while preserving the nearby forest.

The cities were chosen for their forward-looking green energy products -- including patents and growth in the high-tech sector -- communities that invest in green energy-related infrastructure, and fresh-thinking ideas that also lure talented workers.

"Fast Cities are considered to be worldwide centers of creativity where the most important ideas and organizations of the future are located," Fast Company editor and managing director Bob Safian said in a news release. "Our editors scoured the globe in search of places that best embody economic innovation and opportunity. These cities attract the best and the brightest, and are great places to work and live."

The edition of the magazine featuring these green-friendly cities will be available at newsstands until Aug. 24.

Siemens Identifies Business Opportunity When Going Green - SacBee

"Ask any superhero: It's not easy to stop a speeding train."

How can you not love an article that starts with that! Follow it up with some great quotes from Matt Mahood of the Sacramento Metro Chamber, Bill Boyce of SMUD, and Oliver Hauck of Siemens and you have some good reading.

Light rail on green track

Energy system up for test could save money and cut pollution.

By Merek Siu - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, July 23, 2007
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D2

Ask any superhero: It's not easy to stop a speeding train.

But when it does grind to a halt, energy resulting from normal braking is lost as heat, dispersed into the air around the city.

Regional Transit and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District plan to put this energy to use. They are planning to test soon a regenerative braking system for light rail's Folsom line.

Similar to the system in popular gas-electric hybrid vehicles, braking energy from the electric-powered trains will be captured and sent back into power lines to boost the acceleration of trains as they leave the station. The technology was developed by Sacramento-based Siemens Transportation Systems.

While modest savings of $25,000 a year are expected, this move toward green technology is in line with a vision for the region held by some politicians and businesses.

That vision was highlighted at a clean-energy forum in Sacramento last week.

"Our region can use clean energy technology to become what Silicon Valley became during the dot-com explosion but with a more sustainable outcome," said Matthew Mahood, president and CEO of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

At the forum, Mahood announced the goal of creating 20,000 jobs directly or indirectly associated with clean-energy technologies by 2015. With more than 60 such companies in the region, the chamber of commerce has set its sights on turning the state capital into the world capital for clean energy technology.

Efforts to date have been noticed. The current issue of Fast Company magazine highlighted Sacramento as a "city on the verge" of becoming a green leader.

With clean energy gaining momentum, Bill Boyce, supervisor of the electric transportation group at SMUD foresees a big increase in the number of vehicles on U.S. roads running on biofuels or powered by a combination of gasoline, ethanol and electricity.

Hybrid cars like Toyota's Prius use regenerative braking technology. But where the Prius channels energy to batteries, the system to be tested at RT uses special capacitors.

Banks of these devices, each about the size of three "D" batteries stacked on top of each other, store energy. However, they release energy much more quickly than batteries. This surge of energy can be tapped in the 30 seconds it takes a train to get up to its cruising speed of 55 mph. Forty percent of the energy from braking can be recovered and sent back to accelerating trains.

Oliver Hauck, CEO of Siemens Transportation Systems, said the energy storage system allows trains to share power, let current infrastructure support more trains with fewer substations and shave expensive peak power demands. RT expects a 7 percent reduction in energy use and an 8 percent drop in peak demand. This translates into 175 tons of prevented carbon dioxide emissions, Hauck said.

Reliable service, however, is the most important benefit of the technology, according to Mike Wiley, deputy general manager at Regional Transit.

Last summer, long stretches of days with temperatures above 100 degrees led to soaring electricity demands. Huge spikes in power caused RT substations to go off-line, stranding trains without power about a half-dozen times.

Regional Transit hopes this system will help prevent such service disruptions.

Other than increased reliability, riders probably won't notice much after the energy system is installed. The energy storage device will be housed in an inconspicuous 10-foot cubicle close to existing stations.

Besides hooking the system up to overhead wires, no further retrofitting of trains, tracks or stations is expected. Maintenance costs should be low since there are no moving parts.

Similar systems running in Cologne, Germany and Madrid, Spain, gave the California Energy Commission and SMUD confidence to move forward with a $400,000 grant that should make Sacramento the nation's first mass transit system to implement the Siemens' energy storage technology.

"Sacramento, for us, is a perfect test site," said Hauck. "We found a good set of partners, in SMUD, Regional Transit and local political support. Everything came together just perfectly."

About the writer:

• The Bee's Merek Siu can be reached at (916) 321-1041 or msiu@sacbee.com.

Can plastic be 'green?'

GE thinks plastic can be green with their new EarthRewards credit card. The new card falls under GE's huge EcoMagination effort.

Marc Gunther pours cold water on the concept that "consumers will be able to dedicate one percent of their purchases to fund projects that offset carbon dioxide emissions. (They can also opt to get 1/2 of one percent cash back, in which case the other 1/2 of one percent will go to carbon offsets.) GE will then pool those monies and once a year -- on Earth Day, natch -- invest them in verified, transparent carbon offset projects."

As Lorraine Bolsinger, the GE executive who oversees its Ecomagination campaign, put it: "What's good for the environment can be good for business, and what's good for business can be good for the environment."

I personally don't buy Gunther's idea that "It's a small example of a bigger problem: the belief that there are painless solutions to fixing global warming and that it can be a win-win for business, consumers and the planet. In fact, the solutions will be painful for some, they will involve sacrifice for others and they will be developed in Congress and state capitols, not at the mall."

Why can't it start at the mall? Does change have to be legislated? Maybe the best way to make change happen is to make it pay.

Prosper Magazine - Thrive: Fuel Wars

Prosper Magazine - Thrive: Fuel Wars:

Great article in the new Prosper Magazine that touches on several companies with a presence in the Sacramento area. The lead paragraph is below. Check it out!

"Thrive: Fuel Wars
When Silicon Valley meets Big Oil, there are more twistst than a Bond Flick

By Michael Bowker

Hollywood should pay attention to what’s going on deep in the Georgia pines this summer. On the surface, the plot may not seem like much — a virtual company called Range Fuels with offices and operations in Northern California and Colorado. Armed with a $76 million government grant and $150 million in private venture capital, it is developing a new cellulosic ethanol plant in the Georgia hills."

U.N. taps Schwarzenegger for greenhouse message - Sacramento Business Journal:

U.N. taps Schwarzenegger for greenhouse message - Sacramento Business Journal::

"'Detroit has been slow,' Schwarzenegger said. 'They need to get off their butts.'"

That's not my commentary above. That's our Governor. It's blunt language but it shows why Sacramento and California are players internationally in moving forward for new green sources of energy and better ways of building a safe place to live for our generation and the next.

I'll take a large coke and portable hydrogen generator to go please!

This is serious green geek cool!

The below is by Michael Kanellos at CNET. He has a very touchy BS meter so it's always a pleasure to read his articles. Here's a link to the original:

Hydrogen power on the go

Trulite develops a portable hydrogen-powered generator. It's not enough to power your house, but it can recharge power tools or run a laptop.

By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: July 27, 2007, 10:18 AM PDT

Think of it as a briefcase for electricity.

Houston-based Trulite is developing a portable hydrogen-powered generator, the KH4. Pour water into the unit, and it will crank out 150 watts of power, and 200 watts at its peak. While that won't run your house, it's enough to recharge power tools or a laptop or run a small appliance, according to company CEO John Goodshall.

A target audience for the device will be contractors, particularly ones who work on downtown skyscrapers. Power tools regularly sap their batteries. (That's why Powergenix and other start-ups are trying to market new types of batteries for them.)

To get around the problem, contractors either carry spare batteries, which can be expensive, or recharge them with gas generators. The fumes and noise of the gas generators, however, are often incompatible with downtown building requirements. Thus, Trulite hopes that contractors will opt to carry its unit instead.

And for those people who bring a generator to a campsite to watch TV? A portable hydrogen generator will eliminate the noise.

The active ingredient in the fuel cell is sodium hydride. The material splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then pushed through a membrane that extracts electrons. The sodium hydride also stores hydrogen safely. Others are also working on similar solid storage systems for hydrogen.

"We control the flow of hydrogen," Goodshall said.

Once the fuel of the future, hydrogen now gets regularly panned by critics as being expensive and impractical. Advocates, however, say it could become an important green fuel when batteries or solar electricity aren't practical.

Hydrogen may be a niche, but its advocates aren't giving up. Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, for instance, is promoting hydrogen fuel cells as a way to power boats on Swiss lakes.

Others have speculated that offshore platforms--decades from now--could harvest wave and tidal energy, turn it into hydrogen, and then ship it to shore. Offshore hydrogen would be used in those situations where it is impractical to connect a distant ocean platform to the grid. Toyota and Daimler-Chrysler continue to research hydrogen cars.

Trulite will release beta units soon, and the company hopes to start selling the KH4 in the second quarter of next year. The unit will cost about $2,000, which is far more expensive than a gas generator. A more powerful gas generator can be bought for $300.

Trulite's chairman is John Berger, a former Enron executive who is also behind Standard Renewable Energy, which sells energy-efficiency services and biodiesel.

Sacramento Clean Energy Showcase - October 11, 2007

If you care about how to create change in regards to encouraging companies and government to go green, recommend attending this event at UC Davis on October 11th. It's not expensive. It's a chance to hear people talk and find out what you can do.

GigaOm Reports on Rise in Cleantech Funding

The article below is from GigaOm.

Cleantech funding on an upswing

Monday, July 23, 2007 at 11:49 AM PT | No comments

The 5th annual Dow Jones VentureOne report and we thought it was interesting to see that it attributes emerging sectors like cleantech as one of the factors that made venture investment in 2006 the highest level since 2001. OK, so it’s still a small portion of total investment, but in 2006 the report says that there were 140 financing rounds for cleantech companies worth $1.28 billion — nearly double the size invested in 2005.