If you want something done right, the old saying goes, do it yourself. That’s exactly what XL Hybrids, a Boston-based transportation tech startup, is up to these days.

Despite a thin layer of gloom that pervades much of the cleantech industry, XL Hybrids is advancing in its quest to make commercial vans and trucks greener and more fuel-efficient. The two-and-a-half-year-old company is announcing today it has appointed Richard Canny, a longtime Ford Motor exec and electric vehicle expert (former CEO of Think Global), to its board of directors. Canny is based in the Detroit area and gives XL Hybrids some more gravitas and deeper connections in the auto industry. But there are a lot of other things going on under the hood at this ambitious startup.

“We’ve been hard at work not only in technology development but also in re-examining our market,” says Justin Ashton, the company’s co-founder and vice president of business development.

Part of that re-examination includes ending a partnership that XL Hybrids had formed about a year ago with U.K.-based Ashwoods Automotive, which makes a vehicle retrofitting kit. The plan had been for XL to adapt the kit for the U.S. market. But XL found the process was taking too long, in part because European vehicles are so different from American ones. “It made sense to work on our own,” Ashton says.

So, XL Hybrids is handling the technology for commercial fleets by itself now. “Our strategy has shifted to doing all systems development [ourselves] but working with tier-one suppliers for components,” Ashton says. That means employing large battery makers and established electric motor manufacturers, he says. “Our role is to build the hybrid architecture from the ground up.”

The architecture consists of a hybrid electric powertrain (for which XL has patents pending) that can be installed on either existing vehicles or new ones. It includes a lithium ion battery, electric motor, and control software. The computer-aided design drawing of the system (see left) resembles a space-age tuba, or maybe a Star Wars pod-racing engine, but the point of the powertrain is to store energy wasted in braking and reapply it during acceleration. XL says this results in about 20 percent lower fuel consumption and emissions for high-mileage city driving, in standard cargo vans (typically made by GMC or Chevy).

Starting in January, XL Hybrids is working with commercial fleet companies to start pilot tests of retrofit cargo vans in the Boston area. If all goes well, there will be a couple dozen vehicles on the road around New England by June, Ashton says.

But he emphasizes that there is a bigger opportunity. “This business is not about retrofit. Long term, it’s about creating a unique hybrid powertrain for a large market,” Ashton says. “We can do retrofits where they make economic sense for our customers. But we have a lot of interest from customers in what’s called ‘upfitting’”—putting the technology into new vehicles.

Of course, this could be a difficult journey for a small startup—but XL is focusing on a market it thinks it can handle. “The real challenge in transportation is finding your path to get your product to market. And dealing with some of the largest companies in the world with long product cycles,” Ashton says. “We don’t want to wait. You have to find a business model that is relatively capital efficient, that leverages existing infrastructure.” He adds, “Right now we’re focused on a niche within a niche. The commercial vehicle side is dwarfed by the consumer segment. Our strategy is to position ourselves.”

XL Hybrids was founded by a team of MIT grads in 2009 and has about 10 employees. The company has raised roughly $4 million from angel investors and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. It says it plans to raise more money next year.

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It’s getting tiring to hear that the United States can’t. Can’t innovate anymore. Can’t create jobs. But if you look around Massachusetts I think you’ll come to the conclusion that if anyone can, it’s probably people under 30 (plus or minus).

I’m sitting in an old mill building in Holyoke. There are almost 100,000 students centered up and down the Connecticut River Valley. There’s a conference going on called Idea Mill on entrepreneurship and innovation. Brendan Ciecko, Ben Einstein, and his friends who created this event believe they can catalyze a reinvention of this place. They’re under 30. They probably can.

On October 24 MassChallenge, the globally encompassing, Massachusetts-centric $1 million startup competition and accelerator will have its final event. If you look around the room that night you’ll see hundreds of young entrepreneurs who believe they can do a startup in Massachusetts and create jobs and innovation.

My organization, the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, is thrilled that three of the MassChallenge finalists are ventures started with our grants.

Therapeutic Systems is working to shift the daily experience of people with autism with its sophisticated but discrete pressure vest that provides a “hug-like” sensation to the wearer. Brian Mullen believes he can not only make a cash positive business but get through the medical reimbursement process as a young entrepreneur and manufacture the product in Massachusetts. He’s under 30. He probably can.

SmarterShade is developing a product to electronically darken a window with the flip of a switch. Will McLeod has never moved an innovative product from prototype to manufacturing to product. But he’s under 30. He probably can.

Finally, Sanergy thinks they can transform the sanitation system in extremely poor neighborhoods in Kenya and throughout the world. They’ve got one of their pay toilets in operation. In a week or so they’ll have 10 times that. By early next year hopefully 10 times that. Can David Auerbach and his young team create a profitable global business based on people paying a few cents per use? They probably can.

Those of us who can no longer even fake that we’re young have increasingly despaired for the trajectory of this country in recent years. Who’s going to create the jobs and the Next Big Thing? Show up at an event like Idea Mill or MassChallenge and you’ll quickly run into the people who can.

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[Updated 10/14/11. See below] And then there were 26. Startup teams competing for $1 million in cash prizes, that is. Welcome to the final stage of MassChallenge 2011.

MassChallenge, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a Boston-based startup accelerator program now in its second year. It may very well be the world’s largest incubator of its kind. The nonprofit program and business competition kicked off in May with an announcement of the 125 finalist teams (out of 700-plus entrants). After a three-month mentorship program, it is now down to 26 teams who are giving their final pitches this week. The whole competition culminates in an awards ceremony on October 24.

The goal of MassChallenge is to spur Boston-area innovation by attracting entrepreneurs and connecting them with peers, mentors, funding, and other resources. It’s one of several big efforts to rally the local startup community and make it more competitive as an innovation hub. “We are on the verge of a renaissance,” MassChallenge CEO John Harthorne told me earlier this year.

If this year’s crop of finalists is any indication, the program has become more effective at engaging founders, connecting them with mentors, structuring their mentorship, and generally managing and communicating the logistics of such a huge (and hugely ambitious) program. Startup founders I talked to in recent weeks said the program was “really well organized” and that there was “nice camaraderie” amongst the teams. That seems to have helped them with the difficult work of early-stage company building.

“Technically I’m pretty strong, but I’ve never run a startup before,” says Bruce Robie, the founder and CEO of ARO Medical, one of the final 26 teams, based in North Andover, MA. ARO has developed an implantable device to help stabilize the spine of back-surgery patients.

Robie credits MassChallenge with improving his pitching skills and introducing him to key advisors. “Working with our mentors was a really positive thing,” he says, and “each brought a different perspective”—whether it was how to talk with potential partners or how to brand the product. “I’m an engineer by training, so my ability to name stuff is not going to set the world on fire,” he says.

Roy Rodenstein, the co-founder of Cambridge, MA-based SocMetrics, another finalist, says, “I’ve been very impressed this year. Last year was pretty good, but it was the first year. It’s progressing well as far as the level of support.” Rodenstein, who served as a mentor in the 2010 program, adds that “the quality of companies is up a bit,” similar to the recent trend for other incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars.

Several other finalist teams say the program helped provide the foundation and … Next Page »

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It was high society meets tech entrepreneurship last night. The setting: Bob Metcalfe’s townhouse in the Back Bay. The occasion: an annual reception and dinner before the finale of the MIT $100K Business Plan Contest, which takes place tonight at Kresge Auditorium. The players: all the finalists and event organizers, plus a few venture capitalists from Polaris Venture Partners, and other guests.

This year’s gathering marked the end of an era. That’s because, as you probably know, Metcalfe the VC and inventor—that’s Professor Metcalfe now—has moved to Texas as a faculty member at UT Austin and will probably sell his Beacon Street home. Which raises the question of where this stellar event will take place in future years. But let’s not worry about that just yet.

Metcalfe, dressed fashionably in a jacket, tie, and sneakers, greeted each guest at the door, and posed for pictures with $100K finalists and organizers (including Kourosh Kaghazian) throughout the evening. As an aside, one finalist said to me, “How do you ‘invent’ the Ethernet? Do you just decide one day you’re going to do it?” (I had to admit it was a good question.)

Each of the six teams gave a quick pitch from the staircase above the first-floor landing. As usual, it was an impressive array of businesses spanning high-tech, social tech, life sciences, cleantech, and energy.

William Sanchez from CoolChip Technologies (which won the $200K MIT Clean Energy Prize earlier this week) talked about developing more efficient heat sinks to save energy in data centers. David Jia from Upkast described his company’s virtual file system for managing your data from Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, work drives, laptop, and personal devices, all on a unified Web interface. Lindsay Stradley and David Auerbach told the story of Sanergy, which is building low-cost toilets and sanitation systems, starting in Kenya, to collect waste and convert it to fertilizer and electricity.

Auerbach had the sound bite of the night: “Join us as we turn shit into gold.”

Next up, Anand Dass talked about Green Logistics (winner of the MIT Elevator Pitch Contest last fall), which plans to make special air-shipping containers that are lighter than conventional containers and collapsible, so as to save a bundle on jet fuel. Matt Hirsch and Vikram Anreddy introduced Sensactive, which is designing a 3-D gesture interface for mobile devices. (Best application: pulling the slingshot out of the screen in Angry Birds.) And Heather Kline from Zinaura Pharmaceuticals talked about her company’s drug candidate for epilepsy and pain treatment, which she says targets new seizure pathways without causing toxicity, addiction, sedation, or cognitive impairment.

Whew, that’s a very wide-ranging set of ideas. But over drinks and dinner, I got to know … Next Page »

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Boston-based Practically Green, an Internet startup that has been called “Foursquare for green living,” has raised $750,000 in its first round of financing.

Lexington, MA-based CommonAngels led the seed round, and about 25 individual investors participated, including John Landry of Lead Dog Ventures, Stephen McDonnell of Applegate Farms, Tom Matlack of The Good Men Project, Gail Greenwald of the Clean Energy Venture Group, Maia Heymann from CommonAngels, Jean Hammond from Golden Seeds, and Jim and Julie Matheson (Jim is from Flagship Ventures). The news was reported earlier today by Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe.

Practically Green is the brainchild of founder and CEO Susan Hunt Stevens and co-founder Jason Butler. Stevens is a veteran of online media and consumer marketing, having held senior executive positions at the New York Times and Boston Globe (where she ran Boston.com). Butler is a product and technology guru from Boston.com, Abuzz, and Amazon.com. The executive team also includes Sarah Finnie Robinson, formerly of iVillage. As part of the financing deal, investors Chris Sheehan and John Landry from CommonAngels have joined Practically Green’s board of directors. [Disclosure: Stevens and Sheehan are members of Xconomy’s board of directors, and CommonAngels is an investor in Xconomy.]

The idea behind Stevens’s startup is to help consumers make decisions that help them live greener lifestyles—things like which energy-efficient appliances to buy, what organic food to prepare, or which green landscaping service to use. The company currently has six full-time employees and three part-timers. It launched an open beta website at the end of June, and has learned a lot about the market since then, Stevens says.

“People are excited personally about it,” she says. “A lot of companies are interested in what we’re doing. Companies are also interested in partnering with us from a sponsor standpoint.” Back in July, Stevens told me the site would make money through lead generation and affiliate marketing—basically, consumers buying green products (everything from skin care to food to paper products) that are listed on the site and recommended by others.

In September, the website had about 8,000 unique visitors from all over the U.S. That number could increase dramatically very soon, as Stevens says the startup will announce its first major media partnership tomorrow—and it’s a big one.

I asked about lessons learned so far. “Like everyone with a Web product, you always go back and say, we wish we’d built it and gotten it out sooner and gotten customer feedback earlier,” Stevens says. “Half of what we built, people liked it but they didn’t need it.” As an example, she says the website used to let people rate actions (like adding insulation to your roof or installing an energy-saving dishwasher) as well as products and services. But that led to having too many ratings on a page. So the site now focuses on recommending services. “People are looking to us to tell if services [such as landscaping] are really green,” she says.

The startup’s financing is the latest example of CommonAngels’ new seed-stage approach, whereby it is focusing on making smaller, faster investments in earlier-stage startups. In the past few weeks, CommonAngels has announced similar-sized investments in Ayeah Games and Blaze Software, and it has more in the pipeline. The angel group is also an investor in home energy management firm Powerhouse Dynamics, based in Newton, MA.

Practically Green’s advisory board is an interesting mix of green thinkers and product makers. It includes McDonnell, Eric Hudson of Preserve Products, Jeffrey and Sheila Hollender from Seventh Generation, and authors Andrew Winston and Dominique Browning.

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A little less than two years ago I made the decision to enroll at MIT Sloan for an MBA. Shortly after getting to the campus, I made the decision to look at careers in the energy sector. Despite being armed with a technical degree and spending some time in the energy sector prior to enrolling at Sloan, I was green—no pun intended. A sequence of lucky associations and learning experiences exposed me to different aspects of the energy sector.

After 16 months and an MBA degree, I can safely say that it was a great learning experience trying to understand the business side of innovation in the energy sector. While it is unfair to characterize a sector into generic “boxes” to better understand it, I have attempted to do so regardless. I’ve read multiple documents and have heard investors and entrepreneurs talk about the risks involved in new ventures. I am not going to repeat them here. Instead I want to write about three crucial factors that one needs to appreciate when starting or investing in a new venture in energy: policy, people, and scale.

Policy

Everyone in the energy sector knows this: regulation and policy drive the adoption of a majority of energy technologies/services in the world today. Feed-in tariffs in Germany and the rest of Western Europe were (and are) responsible for the rise of solar and wind energy. Product and investment tax credits drove wind and solar manufacturing and installation, biomass, as well as geothermal project development in the U.S. in the last three years. Numerous states in the U.S. have extended multiple tax credits for energy-efficient appliances, homes, and offices.

China, India, and Japan have also joined the party and have aggressively included regulations to favor the adoption of new energy technologies. A day does not go by these days without a politician/activist/industrialist calling for the adoption of a renewable energy standard (RES) in the U.S.—some of the European nations have already either approved an RES or are in the process of approving one.

So what does this mean for you and me? Well, if you are thinking of starting a new venture or want a job in investing, you should keep in mind that success to a large extent currently depends on policy and regulations helping you out. Or if you don’t want to depend on regulations, try to work or invest in a business that does not use them as a crutch—there are a few of these if you look hard.

People

Quite a few intelligent people have already written about how the energy “renaissance” of the 21st century is very different from that of the Internet/high-tech boom of the 1990s. I will spare you the side-by-side comparisons here, but it is safe to say they are indeed sufficiently different. One important distinction is the background of the founders. You did not need an advanced degree, or to spend hours in a research lab, to come up with the business idea for Facebook, PayPal, eBay, or Amazon.com (Google is an exception). A majority of innovation in energy that will be successfully commercialized will originate … Next Page »

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Everyone has their own green environmental “a-ha” moment. Maybe it’s seeing birds drowning in oil, or paying $4 a gallon for gas, or reading about the plastic trash heap the size of Texas swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. For Susan Hunt Stevens, it was discovering her young son had serious food and environmental allergies, which prompted her to examine which ingredients and toxins were causing the health problems.

Her discovery came back in 2007, and it roughly coincided with Stevens and her family moving into a 19th-century Victorian home outside of Boston. So, in part to create a better living environment for her family, she decided to do a major “green renovation.” This effort has included generating electricity from waste energy (boiled water), using light-emitting diodes and compact fluorescent lamps for lighting, buying energy-saving appliances and plywood cabinetry made without formaldehyde glues, insulating the roof with healthy spray foam, installing bamboo shades and cork floors, using low-flow faucets and toilets, composting kitchen waste, and so on.

Along the way, Stevens decided to blog about the experience. She knows a thing or two about online media and consumer marketing, having been a longtime senior executive with The New York Times and Boston Globe, where she oversaw the news site Boston.com, among other things. [Disclosure: Stevens joined Xconomy’s board of directors last month---Eds.]

But when she originally started blogging about green issues, she got questions from readers about the industry that she couldn’t answer. That started her on the road to taking classes at the Boston Architectural College, where she learned cutting-edge green design.

Stevens is now the founder and CEO of Practically Green, a stealthy Web startup based in Boston that combines many of the things she has done in her career. I sat down with her last week to talk about the company and its significance to green sustainability issues, online business models, and technology trends like social networking and videogame mechanics.

The first thing to know about Practically Green is that it’s not just another “green content” site, or how-to blog about sustainability and the environment. Instead, think of it as being like Foursquare or FarmVille for the green lifestyle, mixed with WeightWatchers.com in terms of accessibility and support networks. And throw in a little Amazon.com and TripAdvisor for consumer reviews and e-commerce. The site uses social networks, gaming mechanics, and expert content to help consumers figure out “how green” they are, find reputable green products and services, and connect with other like-minded people so as to stay motivated to live a greener lifestyle. The big idea is to help consumers lead healthier lives, while also aiding the environment—and saving on their electric bill.

It’s also an intriguing example of the “gamification” trend we’ve been reporting on lately, whereby consumer websites and companies are trying to boost traffic, engagement, and customer loyalty … Next Page »

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The Cleantech Open, a national business plan competition for energy and clean technology startups, announced yesterday its 16 semifinalists for the Pacific Northwest region (as well as teams from other parts of the country). The Northwest companies are Aquapulser, Arcimoto, Clarian Power, Columbia Power Technologies, CyVolt Energy Systems, EnVitrum, Greenstone International, Hydrovolts, Innovatus Energy, LaserMotive, Mercurius Biofuels, Nanocel, Puralytics, and Zebigo. Also competing in this group are Current Motor Company (from Michigan) and viaCycle (from Georgia). The teams will compete for three regional prizes worth up to $30,000 each, plus a shot at a national grand prize worth $250,000.

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It has been a busy week for little bits of technology news, amidst some more prominent deals. Here are three items in particular that caught my eye. The common theme among them, I would say, is the importance of relationship building in business.

—Microsoft’s Bing search engine, one year old this month, has been in the news a lot. Besides the strange Google experiment of adding dramatic background images, which drew obvious comparisons to Bing’s visual interface, there were other parallels made between the sites. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz posted a detailed analysis of search engine optimization and ranking elements between the two search giants and concluded that “Google and Bing are remarkably similar,” so that building separate sites to target the two engines separately is “a waste of energy.”

Bing also distinguished itself in terms of “social search” this week, rolling out a new search page that grabs public and shared updates directly from Facebook and Twitter. Social and real-time search has been a consistent point of effort for Bing, which first included some tweets in its search results last July, and formed early strategic partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to include real-time status updates last October. Google has similar efforts in the works, of course.

—Facebook, the Palo Alto, CA-based social networking giant, announced it has settled on office space for its Seattle engineering outpost. There had been much speculation about which neighborhood the office would be located in, ever since the company announced it was coming to town last month. Facebook’s office will be at 101 Stewart Street in Seattle, near Pike Place Market. It is slated to open in late July and could eventually house around 30 workers. (Interesting post here on the personal story behind the Seattle office.)

—A Shanghai real estate mogul named Jiang Zhaobai is visiting Seattle next week to scout out promising companies who want to do business in China in green tech, clean energy, new media, mobile, and biotech, according to a feature in the Seattle Times. Jiang has a new venture, called the Shanghai American Enterprise Center, which aims to invest in small and medium-sized U.S. companies and incubate them in Shanghai, helping them grow into the Chinese market.

I first got wind of Jiang’s local efforts from Rogers Weed, the director of the Washington state Department of Commerce, at an MIT Enterprise Forum event back in January. “We’ll make sure that guy gets a bang-up tour of Washington when he starts looking for investments,” Weed said at the time. Sounds like it’s going well so far, despite rising economic tensions between the U.S. and China.

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Score one for materials science. Arlington, WA-based MicroGreen Polymers said today it has raised $6.9 million in Series B funding, including a new strategic investment from Waste Management (NYSE: WM), based in Houston, TX. Existing investors WRF Capital, Northwest Energy Angels, and other private investors also participated. MicroGreen says the money will be used to hire more engineering, sales, and marketing staff, and to expand the company’s commercial production capabilities for consumer products.

MicroGreen Polymers spun out of the University of Washington in 2002, the brainchild of graduate students Greg Branch and Krishna Nadella. The idea was to use high-pressure liquid carbon dioxide to generate tiny microbubbles in plastics to expand the material and allow manufacturers to maintain most properties of regular plastic, while using a lot less of it. The MicroGreen technique also creates an insulating layer of air inside the plastic, which can protect people from burning themselves while holding their morning coffee, among other applications.

The company raised $1.6 million last July. But the new money means MicroGreen can accelerate its entry into the consumer market. Later this year, the company says, it will begin selling sheets of its material for food-service applications like packaging. It will also sell a thermally insulated beverage cup that is recyclable and made from recycled material.

“We’re excited to accelerate our growth plans for the commercialization of our technology and products,” said Tom Malone, CEO of MicroGreen, in a statement. He cited the potential of MicroGreen’s technology to “dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of plastics, help our customers reduce raw material costs and transition to more post-consumer recycled materials, and generate value for our company.”

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Seattle-based Verdiem is announcing today a new partnership with San Jose, CA-based Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO). Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will market and sell Verdiem’s energy management software for PCs and networked devices under Cisco’s “EnergyWise Orchestrator” brand, through its worldwide distribution network. Financial details weren’t given, but it’s an original equipment manufacturing deal, so Verdiem’s software will be built into Cisco’s products—which could make it a very promising sales strategy for Verdiem.

Verdiem makes software to help big companies, government agencies, and universities control and manage energy usage by PCs on their network. The software includes features like automatically turning off computers when they’re not in use, and turning them back on when they need to install software updates. It also includes sophisticated dashboards for monitoring energy use. The partnership with Cisco extends Verdiem’s reach to other networked devices such as Cisco IP phones, wireless access points, and edge switches.

“Extending the capabilities of Verdiem’s enterprise platform for PC power management, Cisco and Verdiem are delivering to market the first energy management solution for PCs and networked devices,” said Jeremy Jaech, Verdiem’s CEO, in a statement. Jaech added that the agreement will give businesses and organizations “a trusted, holistic solution to measure, manage and monitor both their energy consumption and carbon footprint.”

Verdiem was founded in 2001 and is venture backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and NCD Investors, among others. Jaech, the co-founder of Aldus, Visio, and Trumba, joined the company in late 2008. Last summer, Verdiem said more than 300 corporations, government agencies, and universities had used its software, and had slashed their PC energy costs by 30 to 60 percent.

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Engineering has an image problem. Sure, it’s the technical backbone of many things people use every day, from airplanes, cars, and buildings to new medicines, mobile devices, and the Internet. But it doesn’t always attract the best and brightest young people interested in solving society’s biggest problems or changing the world. That’s because people often have a narrow view of what engineering entails, or think it’s too boring, geeky, or technically difficult to pursue.

Enter the “grand challenges summit” organized by the National Academy of Engineering, which is coming to Seattle next week on May 2-3. This is part of an ongoing series of six NAE events around the U.S. this year that are meant to inspire students and rally faculty, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors around some of society’s most important problems. The plan is to concentrate on big ideas like improving healthcare, producing clean energy, providing access to clean water, restoring urban infrastructure, preventing nuclear terror, and making computer systems secure.

The Seattle event features an all-star cast of speakers, including Bruce Montgomery from Gilead Sciences, Larry Smarr from Calit2 and UC San Diego, Ed Crawley from MIT, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin (now at the University of Alabama), and former NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar (now CEO of the Museum of Flight). They will be joined by engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and General Electric, as well as prominent scholars from the UW, including Matt O’Donnell, dean of engineering, Ed Lazowska from computer science & engineering, and Suzie Pun from bioengineering. The sessions will focus on how engineers can make better medicines, as well as better tools for scientific discovery in computing and aerospace.

O’Donnell, who helped bring the summit to Seattle, says the number of students interested in engineering has been declining for the past couple of decades—in particular, the percentage of U.S. students (compared with international students) enrolled in the nation’s graduate programs. “Engineering ain’t too sexy in society,” says O’Donnell, a biomedical engineer with expertise in ultrasound and other diagnostic imaging technologies. “A lot of folks in engineering are worried.”

He says the idea behind the grand challenges is, “Let’s excite people about what engineering can do for society. It’s not just about having your startup and making money—which is cool, and we all love that. But it’s not just the next PDA or iPhone app.” The goal, he says, is to “sexify” engineering and show that “it’s a way of thinking and analyzing systems, integrating quantitative [methods] with real-world concerns. You can build a bridge or PDA, but you can also think about sustainable systems, urban development, or how you put markets together.” (The NAE summits strike me as an adult complement to the FIRST Robotics competitions for middle-school and high-school kids, which are also about inspiring a new generation of engineers and changing the popular culture around engineering.)

The first grand challenges summit took place in early 2009 and was the brainchild of Tom Katsouleas, the dean of engineering at Duke University. O’Donnell was invited to moderate a panel on engineering new medicines. “It was absolutely a blast,” he says. “But then the kids and professionals in … Next Page »

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Microsoft and Ford announced today they have formed a partnership to deliver Web-based energy management software to electric vehicles. Ford says it will use Microsoft Hohm to help car owners decide when it is most efficient and affordable to charge their electric and hybrid vehicles, starting with the Focus Electric next year. Financial terms of the partnership weren’t given. Ford (NYSE: F) is the first automaker to announce the use of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Hohm software.

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Medford, OR-based UpWind Solutions, a provider of operations and maintenance services for utility-scale wind projects, has raised $10 million out of a $29 million round of Series B preferred stock, according to a regulatory filing. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the SEC form lists Michael Linse of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mark Lewis of MissionPoint Capital as directors of the firm. UpWind is led by president and founder Bo Thisted. The company works with wind energy project developers and owners over the lifetime of their turbines or wind farms.

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There has been a lot of talk in the past year (and the past month) about the need to build a critical mass of cleantech and alternative energy companies in the Northwest. Now one venture firm in Portland, OR, is doing something about it, by assembling a talent pool of people with the ability to run serious cleantech companies.

Pivotal Investments, an early-stage venture fund focused on cleantech and sustainability, is organizing what it’s calling Pivotal Leaders—a new network of community-nominated entrepreneurs and executives who will be voted the most promising candidates to lead new companies in this emerging sector. Nominations are open now, and Pivotal is looking to compile and vet a list of roughly 50 top cleantech business leaders who have ties to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or British Columbia, by mid-June. The plan will be to organize four or five networking events around these leaders, in different cities, in the second half of the year.

The proposed network strikes me as exactly the sort of dedicated effort the Northwest needs to get more cleantech investors in Vancouver, BC, for instance, to talk to entrepreneurs and big companies in Portland and Seattle, and vice versa. That, in turn, could help call more national attention to the region and spur its efforts to become a true leader in energy and sustainability—or at least better compete with companies in California and other parts of the country. “We’re interested in building the ecosystem here for green, cleantech jobs,” says Gregg Semler, co-founder and managing director of Pivotal Investments. “This is an enormous economic opportunity for the region.”

Semler says the Pivotal list will address “a problem that deals with the future.” That is, the community knows who’s running cleantech companies today, he says, but what about five years from now? “To attract capital, you need strong business leaders who can captain these companies. That builds confidence in the investors and sources of capital,” Semler says.

Pivotal Leaders will most likely be made up of a mix of early-stage entrepreneurs, executives from big companies focused on areas like software or green buildings, and others from traditional business backgrounds who have a strong interest in energy and green technologies. Semler didn’t name any names or offer up any specific examples yet, but he stressed that nominations will be open for the next few weeks, and that Pivotal wants to hear from the innovation community.

On the investment side, Semler says his venture firm is currently looking at potential deals in solar power, green buildings, agriculture, and energy efficiency. Although cleantech opportunities are still at an early stage, he says, the markets they address are big, global, and mature. And, of course, part of Pivotal’s plan with its new network is to build relationships with the best young talent the Northwest has to offer—and then consider investing in their startups.

“Our hope is that when these people decide to start a company, they’ll call us,” Semler says. “We want to get to know these people, so they feel confident that we’re a great source of capital and have a strong network to help them grow their company.”

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Seattle-based venture firm Voyager Capital has co-led a $14 million Series B investment in Coulomb Technologies, a Campbell, CA-based startup focused on electric vehicle infrastructure. Voyager and Rho Ventures co-led the financing for Coulomb, which makes technologies for vehicle charging stations. Daniel Ahn, a Voyager managing director based in Silicon Valley, is joining the Coulomb board. The deal may signify Voyager’s increasing interest in the “clean IT” sector; the West Coast firm is primarily known for its investments in software, wireless, and digital media.

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“The easy answer is, ‘Of course it will,’” said panel moderator Jesse Berst, the head of Redmond, WA-based research and consulting firm GlobalSmartEnergy. He was referring to the title of last night’s event in downtown Seattle organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum: “Will Green Return the Green?”

It’s a reasonable question, especially here in Washington state, where things have been fairly quiet on the cleantech and energy front as of late. Despite the presence of such companies as EnerG2, Verdiem, Optimum Energy, Powerit, Bio Architecture Lab, Areva T&D, Avista, and Imperium Renewables, much has been made of the region’s lack of competitiveness with other parts of the country like Silicon Valley and New England—not to mention global competitors like China. (I’m using a broad definition of “green” tech here to include both alternative energy and sustainability.)

To discuss business and policy leaders’ concerns around financing opportunities, regulations, resources, and hot areas in the green sector, the MIT Enterprise Forum (together with a team of volunteers led by Seattle law firm Graham & Dunn) convened a distinguished panel:

—Berst (the moderator), a global authority on smart grid technologies and economics, and an Xconomist.

—Patricia Irving, CEO and founder of Richland, WA-based InnovaTek, which develops technologies for sustainable energy and environmental safety.

—Rogers Weed, director of the Department of Commerce, Washington state (and a former Microsoft vice president).

—Roger Woodworth, vice president for sustainable energy solutions at Avista, the Spokane, WA-based energy and utilities company.

—Bradley Zenger, managing director at Pivotal Investments, an early-stage cleantech venture investing firm in Portland, OR.

(By the way, all of the panelists are involved with the Cleantech Open, which is gearing up for its 2010 business plan competition.)

Berst kicked things off by saying that dozens of smart grid companies around the world have been raising $50-100 million or more, and many will be going public in the next 12 to 18 months. In terms of Washington state, he said, “We’ve got some real challenges here around creating a real cleantech cluster. The one thing you can’t fake is proximity. We have a lot of islands of innovation scattered 150 miles apart.” He also talked about the entrepreneurial culture of the region: “We don’t have a lot of people with the urgent desire to crush” competitors in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and so forth, he said.

Irving, whose company makes fuel cells and other technologies for partners like Boeing, summed up the mindset of consumers in the Northwest. “We love to be green, but we’re not willing to take the risk that’s necessary to shift our paradigms,” she said. “Part of the challenge is we haven’t been willing to stand up. Sacrifices need to be made.”

Weed, who has been on the job for 10 months since being appointed by Gov. Christine Gregoire, said cleantech is one of Washington’s top three opportunities for growth. But the state faces two key challenges, he said. One is the budget situation. “The state is struggling to make … Next Page »

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[Updated 1/20/10, 10:10 am. See below.] Cleantech wireless networking firm Tantalus, based in Burnaby, BC, has raised about $13.5 million in new equity financing, according to a regulatory filing. The round was led by the Silicon Valley firm Redpoint Ventures, and other existing investors also participated, according to a press release issued by Tantalus after the initial publication of this story. The company says the new funding round is worth a total of $14 million. [Previous two sentences modified on 1/20/10 with new information from the company---Eds.]

Tantalus makes wireless communications and networking technology that helps electric, gas, and water utilities monitor consumption and manage their resources. The company’s wireless network is used in parts of North America, and is meant to help both utilities and consumers manage their electricity use more efficiently by connecting devices like smart meters and thermostats to utilities’ control systems.

Tantalus was founded in 1989 and originally focused on radio frequency engineering for industrial automation and process control. In 2000, the company shifted its strategy to develop a wireless communication network for utilities, according to a company analysis in GigaOm. In 2007, the report says, Tantalus raised more than $18 million from European investors.

In 2008, the company formed a partnership with Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI), the Liberty Lake, WA-based energy technology company that makes smart meters for electricity, gas, and water, and other data collection and communication systems. The partnership combines Itron’s meters with the Tantalus wireless network, to support smart-grid and energy-efficiency applications.

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Solar cell manufacturer SpectraWatt, a spinoff from Intel formerly based in Hillsboro, OR, has raised $12 million in equity, debt, and options (out of a $41.4 million offering), according to a regulatory filing. The investors were not disclosed. Last spring, SpectraWatt announced it was moving its headquarters to upstate New York, citing “green business incentives.” The company has since set up offices and manufacturing facilities in Hopewell Junction, NY. Back in June 2008, Intel Capital led an initial $50 million investment in SpectraWatt, and was joined by Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and Solon AG.

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Seattle knows green—green trees, green ideas, and green innovation. As businesses rush to become more environmentally friendly, organizations like New York and London-based 1E and Seattle-based Verdiem have emerged as leaders in green-IT management. They offer systems that allow companies to cut off power to their computers remotely, saving energy and IT costs, and make decreasing a company’s environmental footprint as painless as possible. But only Woodinville, WA-based Adaptiva has built a system that integrates directly with the biggest software company in the world: Microsoft.

Adaptiva’s centerpiece is a product called Companion, a software extension that allows companies to control power usage based on when an individual computer is being used. It is run directly through Microsoft’s existing System Center Configuration Manager, which is a software product for managing large groups of Windows-based computers.

“Because we plug deeply into Microsoft’s management infrastructure, we didn’t have to build a management framework into our product,” Adaptiva chief technology officer and co-founder Deepak Kumar said. That means the product is cheaper, and easier to maintain, because as long as the Microsoft System Center software is working, Adaptiva’s product will work.

Powering down a computer may not sound like the cure for climate change, but in a company with hundreds of thousands of desktops, it takes a huge slice out of the carbon footprint. The trick is how to manage the green master switch. “Turning off computers remotely is very easy. The challenge is to detect which computers are actually not doing anything useful and turn them off selectively,” Kumar said.

Many companies wait until after hours to perform their maintenance tasks, so as not to disrupt their employees. This creates a Catch-22 when machines have been powered down and are unable to be updated with the rest of the network—something Kumar sees as a fundamental flaw. “The goals of IT are somewhat contrary with green-IT,” he said. “The second missing piece is the ability to turn on computers when those maintenance tasks are required.”

Adaptiva’s software gives administrators the ability to set parameters for automatically powering up and down, as well as network-wide maintenance schedules, without interrupting anyone’s work and risking the loss of data. There is also an add-on, called Green Planet, which allows individual users to customize their computer to save energy around their personal schedule.

“Users see value in it because now when they come in, the machine is already powered up and they don’t have to wait. And when they go away, the machine turns off safely,” Kumar said. “If they [admins] want to deploy a patch to 1,000 machines, they go create a policy in System Center to do that. We’ll read it from there and we figure out which 1,000 machines are required at what time and we’ll turn on those machines automatically.”

Adaptiva’s plug-in abilities make the system cheaper than others, but also limits its … Next Page »

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