[Editor's note: This post was co-authored by Peter Rothstein, President of the New England Clean Energy Council.]

Over the next 10 years, over $1.7 trillion will be invested in clean power projects across the globe, according to recent projections from the Pew Charitable Trusts. That estimate is if nothing changes to strengthen our clean energy policies. Under a more aggressive policy scenario, Pew projects global investment of $2.3 trillion in this decade. Clearly, the clean energy industry is poised for tremendous growth.

New England has emerged as an early mover and hotbed of clean energy innovation, and is well positioned to grow into a global leader in this industry. This success is owed in large part to the strength of our universities, which serve as an incubator for tomorrow’s technologies. For the technologies of the future to become the technologies of the present, they must be shepherded into the market by experienced entrepreneurs and executives as innovative as the technologies themselves. There is often a gap, however, between innovative and early-stage clean energy companies and the executives who have both knowledge of the industry and seasoned experience to raise financing, scale the product, and take it to market. Even established clean energy companies and investors cite top-level recruitment for executive positions as an on-going issue.

Our region—and the greater Boston area in particular—is the home for world-leading research institutions and has no shortage of talented, experienced entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. The trick is helping these successful innovators transition from sectors like IT or biotech into clean energy.

To that end, the New England Clean Energy Council (of which one of us is President) has partnered with the Boston University School of Management (of which one of us is Faculty) to offer a certificate program entitled Leading Clean Energy Ventures which offers a deep dive into the technologies and business of clean energy, and which begins this month. To address the lack of repeat entrepreneurs and seasoned executives in the clean energy sector, this program targets successful individuals who are eager to transition into the clean energy sector. We based Leading Clean Energy Ventures on the Clean Energy Council’s signature Fellowship program. Combining the Clean Energy Council’s knowledge of the sector with the world-class faculty and resources of Boston University, we have evolved that novel education model into an effective and timely program.

Clean energy is our future. If our region and our nation hope to capitalize on the massive opportunity represented by clean energy—and to do so in time to save our climate—we must embrace new means of attracting and developing truly innovative clean energy executives and entrepreneurs. In the face of accelerating climate change we simply do not have the luxury of doing it any other way. To fuel a robust New England clean energy economy that can compete with global leaders like China and Europe, we must build a skilled workforce well versed in clean energy. Our aim is to offer a new generation of clean energy capitalists the knowledge and the tools they need to capture a $2.3 trillion opportunity.

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A proverbial giant has left the cleantech stage here in Boston—though he probably wouldn’t admit any part of that statement.

Hemant Taneja, a managing director at General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge, MA, has moved to the San Francisco Bay Area this week. Taneja is one of the top venture capitalists in the energy sector. Beyond investing, he has been a champion of the local cleantech industry as a founder of the New England Clean Energy Council. He also helped write the Massachusetts Green Jobs Act of 2008 and serves on the board of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Reached by phone yesterday, Taneja said he has moved his family to the West Coast but is keeping a home in the Boston area as well. He joins fellow managing director Neil Sequeira (another recent Boston transplant) and a small team of associates at General Catalyst’s Palo Alto, CA, office, which opened in the past half-year. (You can read more about these VC moves here and here; in addition, Silicon Valley VC Jonathan Teo, formerly at Benchmark Capital, recently joined General Catalyst in New York.)

So, is Taneja’s departure a blow to the New England cleantech industry? “I hope not,” he says. “A, I’m not that big a deal. And B, we’re continuing to remain active on the East Coast. We’ll tag team.” Taneja says he’ll split his time between Boston and the Bay Area, as roughly half his investments are on each coast.

Some more background: Taneja is a recovering mobile software veteran who converted to cleantech about five years ago. Before joining General Catalyst in 2002, he was the founder and CEO of Boston mobile startup Isovia (acquired by JP Mobile). He co-founded JumpTap and also previously sat on the board of m-Qube. In the past few years, he has focused mostly on building energy companies, serving on the boards of ARC Energy, Mascoma, Modular Wind, Stion, and SunBorne Energy, among other firms.

I asked about his original move from software to cleantech, and about a more recent trend I’ve been hearing about—that software investors who dabbled in energy are now flocking back to software. “We saw a lot of entrepreneurs and academics moving into the [energy] sector, and our job is to follow the smartest people,” Taneja says. “A ton of people jumped into the sector, and some investors got burned because they were looking at technologies that were way too risky for venture capital. Some of those … Next Page »

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This month a group of 50 clean energy CEOs, investors and executives from New England traveled to Washington D.C. to deliver a common message to our leaders in the nation’s capitol: comprehensive energy and climate legislation is critical for building the clean energy economy here in New England and across the United States. The Kerry-Lieberman ‘American Power Act’ has the potential to kick-start our shared vision for the nation’s future. It draws upon many elements of the House’s Waxman-Markey legislation and Senate’s Cantwell-Collins proposal to deliver the market signals that will accelerate private sector investment, speed the transition to a clean, sustainable energy future, and create millions of quality jobs in the U.S. And, as we watch the situation unfold in the Gulf of Mexico and are reminded of our dependency on oil, it couldn’t have come at a more critical juncture.

New England and its business leaders have the ability to effect change. The clean energy sector already includes more than 2,000 Massachusetts companies and 26,000 jobs. It is the fastest growing industry in the region. Clean energy may be the largest opportunity we have ever had to grow new companies, create new jobs and build thriving regional and national economies. However, the clean energy industry in New England is different from its predecessors—textiles, computer hardware and software, Internet business – in scale, timeframes and the amount of investment required.

By now, many of us have heard the numbers. Energy is a $6 trillion global industry that will grow by tens of trillions of dollars during the next 30 years. But clean energy involves capital-intensive manufacturing or projects that produce commodities such as fuel, electricity or clean materials. This combination requires an alignment of policy and public-sector investment with private capital and entrepreneurial activity. The market dictates that company growth and jobs will disproportionally be placed in regions with clear, long-term policies, pricing signals, and a willingness to adopt early.

New England already has some of ingredients to drive private investment. Regional policies such as RGGI (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), state Renewable Portfolio Standards, advanced building codes, utility energy efficiency programs, and other initiatives have contributed to the growth of the sector. Massachusetts clean energy companies have brought in $1.1 billion in venture capital and private investment deals from 2007-2009, trailing only California, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data and a recent Clean Edge report.

Despite our progress, a recent Pew Charitable Trusts study concluded that in 2009, China invested twice as much as the U.S. in clean energy—$34.6 billion versus $18.6 billion. In addition, in relative terms, the UK invested three times more than … Next Page »

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[Updated 2:00 p.m. 4/28/10] There’s an unexpected transition underway at Boston-based energy management company EnerNOC (NASDAQ:ENOC) and the Cambridge, MA-based New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC). In a pair of announcements today, the organizations said that Nick d’Arbeloff, founding president of NECEC, has joined EnerNOC as vice president of enterprise energy management. Peter Rothstein, former senior vice president of the three-year old council and director of its Clean Energy Fellowship program, has been appointed as the council’s new president.

d’Arbeloff’s role at EnerNOC will be to help customers with multiple sites, such as state governments, understand how to make the most of EnerNOC’s energy management systems. (Just this month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced the state will put $10 million over three years into a project using EnerNOC’s software to monitor 17 million square feet of state-owned facilities, and the company has similar contracts with Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.)

In a statement, d’Arbeloff called EnerNOC “a leading player in the clean energy sector” and said “I very much look forward to bringing the power of these applications to state governments, which are constantly under pressure to derive greater efficiencies and savings from their operations.” [Update: Xconomy reached d'Arbeloff by phone after this story was published; our interview is transcribed on the next page.]

In the same release, EnerNOC chairman and CEO Tim Healy said the company had come to know d’Arbeloff well through his work on the Clean Energy Council. “His relentless dedication to building New England into a cornerstone of our country’s clean energy economy, coupled with his broad awareness of the energy management opportunity within a range of organizations, make him uniquely suited to this new role,” Healy said. “Nick is a great addition to our team, whose accomplishments and knowledge of the sector-combined with his passion for bringing clean energy solutions to market-will help EnerNOC continue to grow its market-leading position.”

d’Arbeloff, who will remain as co-chair of NECEC’s board, is no stranger to the private sector. Before founding NECEC, which was originally known as the Massachusetts Clean Energy Council, he was CEO and founder of sales productivity software startup Conjoin, which was acquired by Intranets in 2005. He was also vice president of marketing for Wildfire Communications, which was founded by Avid Technology founder Bill Warner and Android founder Rich Miner and acquired by Orange in 2000.

Meanwhile, Rothstein tells Xconomy that he is looking forward to leading “the next stage of growth” for NECEC. “I think Nick has done a phenomenal job as the founding president of the council,” growing its membership from an original 20 organizations to over 175 today, Rothstein says.

d’Arbeloff’s switch from a non-profit clean energy policy and advocacy group into the private sphere is not a terribly surprising one, Rothstein argues, because “We are all entrepreneurs here. I would say Nick and almost everyone who is part of the council community driven by … Next Page »

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Energy is a $6 trillion global industry, and will likely grow to more than $10 trillion by mid-century. As clean energy replaces carbon-based energy sources around the world, new markets employing millions of people will emerge.  Countries like China recognize this opportunity, and are racing decisively ahead. Meanwhile, the United States’ inaction is relegating our country to the back of the pack.

Passing a climate bill this session that establishes a price on carbon will send a critical price signal to the private sector. It will unleash a torrent of investment in new technologies, create countless new ventures, and catalyze the innovation required for the U.S. to gain a leadership position. Massachusetts is well positioned to be a “disproportionate beneficiary,” enjoying more job creation and economic prosperity from this revolution than any state save California. The Commonwealth received over $350 million in cleantech venture investment in 2009 (second only to California), and will receive a great deal more in the years to come if investors are provided with the market certainty that a price on carbon provides.

The benefits of passing strong energy & climate legislation this session are substantive:

• A climate & energy bill will create thousands of jobs in Massachusetts. Clean energy is already the state’s fastest growing industrial sector with nearly 2000 companies and over 26,000 jobs. Separate studies by UMass Amherst and UC Berkeley show that a federal low-carbon policy could create up to 40 thousand jobs in Massachusetts and increase the State’s real Gross Domestic Product by up to $2.8 billion between now and 2020.
• Clean energy investments create 16.7 jobs for every $1 million in spending. Fossil fuels, by contrast, generate only 5.3 jobs per $1 million in spending. Clean-energy investments create 2.6 times more jobs for people with college degrees or above, 3 times more jobs for people with some college, and 3.6 times more jobs for people with high school degrees or less.
• A climate & energy bill will give investors the market signals and long-term certainty they need to commit additional dollars to the sector. Under a federal low-carbon policy, Massachusetts could see a net increase of about $3.5 billion in investment revenue.
• Comprehensive climate and energy legislation will save money for consumers. Massachusetts’ experience under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) shows that Massachusetts electricity prices declined from 18¢/kWh at the start of the program in January 2009 to 16¢/kWh in November 2009.
• Strict limits on carbon emissions will improve our competitive standing with respect to the rest of the world.  A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trust finds that  China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain—all with strong, national policies aimed at reducing global warming pollution and incentivizing the use of renewable energy—are establishing strong, defensible positions in the clean energy economy. Unless our country makes a significant, long-term commitment to this sector, we may find ourselves out of the running.

What’s at stake here is no less than America’s global competitiveness, and we are already being lapped. Today, the U.S. is home to only one of the top five wind turbine manufacturers, one of the ten largest solar panel producers, and two of the top ten advanced battery manufacturers. China is now the largest wind turbine manufacturer, the largest solar panel manufacturer, and a dominant market player in advanced vehicle and battery technology.

Each day we wait, we fall further behind, sacrificing economic growth and badly needed jobs here at home. And that will not change until Congress passes a strong energy/climate bill.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is working with Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to craft compromise energy and climate legislation in the Senate, recently noted: “Six months ago my biggest worry was that an emissions deal would make American business less competitive compared to China. Now my concern is that every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.”

The 1900s were labeled “The American Century.” Unless we act now to enter our bid for market leadership in the world’s largest industry, we run the very real risk that the twenty-first century will have China’s name written all over it.

It’s time for the Senate to get our country out of the starting blocks and into the clean energy race.

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Everyone knows that traditional incandescent lamps are inefficient and energy-wasting. But LEDs, one of the technologies vying to take their place, produce light that feels harsh and cold by comparison, leading many customers to shy away from them.

Watertown, MA-based QD Vision thinks it can use its “quantum dot” technology to solve both problems—energy waste and LEDs’ unpleasant color—and it’s about to get a chance to test that belief in the marketplace.

Quantum dots are tiny crystals of semiconductor material that emit light when excited by light or electricity. QD Vision, a six-year-old MIT spinoff, has come up with a way to apply thin films containing the quantum dots to the external faces of conventional LEDs. That converts the harsh LED light into something warmer and more pleasing, similar to the light produced by incandescent bulbs, without sacrificing the high energy efficiency typical of LEDs.

According to QD Vision, LEDs processed with quantum dots are roughly six times more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, and over three times more efficient than halogen lamps with comparable color quality. Converting all incandescent lighting in the U.S. to LED lighting could reduce the nation’s total electrical usage for lighting by a third, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

A sign that QD Vision’s technology is gaining traction appeared this month when Charlotte, NC-based LED manufacturer Nexxus Lighting (NASDAQ: NEXS) announced initial production and shipment of its new replacement light bulbs, which use QD Vision’s quantum dot films. Nexxus says its so-called Array Quantum LED bulb fits directly into 400 million lighting fixtures already in place in the U.S. It’s the first time QD Vision’s quantum dots have turned up in a commercial product.

“Our Quantum Light optic is the first product that lets manufacturers make warmer-colored, high-efficiency LED lamps,” QD Vision president and CEO Dan Button said in a statement. “These features are vital to their widespread adoption.”

Xconomy first profiled QD Vision in April 2008. While there are a number of companies around the globe developing quantum dot technology, the Watertown startup is the first to apply them commercially, according to Button.

The Nexxus Lighting deal dates back to December 2008, when … Next Page »

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In a state that prides itself on leadership in tomorrow’s energy technologies, Ian Bowles is the point man. He’s Secretary of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, a new position created under Gov. Deval Patrick to oversee a hodgepodge of state agencies controlling everything from utility regulation to agriculture to the state’s parks and conservation lands. He’s a seemingly ubiquitous presence at energy-related events and forums around the state, frequently speaking on regulatory reform, energy efficiency, and programs to expand the use of wind and solar power. Those are issues close to the hearts of our readers in the cleantech sector—so when Bowles invited me to his office for an interview earlier this month, I jumped at the chance.

Bowles has a long history in politics and environmentalism. The Harvard grad started out as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill, and ran (unsuccessfully) for the Democratic nomination in Massachusetts’ 10th Congressional District in 1996. During the final three years of the Clinton Administration, he was senior director of environmental affairs for the National Security Council, and went on to direct policy research at Conservation International, a non-profit dedicated to biodiversity protection. His last gig before becoming Massachusetts’ top energy and environmental official was as president and CEO of MassINC, a Boston-based think tank dedicated to advancing middle-class prosperity and civic life, and publisher of CommonWealth, MassINC’s house magazine.

Most of my questions for Bowles focused on a different kind of environment—the environment for clean-energy entrepreneurs in Massachusetts. While there’s obviously plenty of energy innovation in the Bay State, it’s not necessarily the easiest place to translate that innovation into real change, given the mish-mash of regulatory and legal hurdles facing startups with dreams of building pilot facilities. As Bowles himself pointed out during our interview, for example, three of the largest wind-farm facilities proposed for the state have all been snarled in litigation for years.

So I wanted to know what the Patrick Administration and the state legislature have been doing to try to smooth the way for innovators. (Quite a bit, actually, beginning with basic changes in utility regulations affecting the way the state’s electric and gas companies earn revenue and the incentives they have to invest in new technologies.) I also asked him about the heat the administration has been taking lately over perceptions that the state is losing solar manufacturing jobs to China and biofuels and battery manufacturing jobs to facilities in Michigan.

Speaking of batteries, my laptop battery died moments before my interview with Bowles ended, so I wasn’t able to record his response to my last question, which was about why budding energy entrepreneurs should consider building their companies in Massachusetts. But his answer was a distillation of the themes that ran through the interview: No matter what its downsides (e.g. litigiousness, zoning restrictions, foot-dragging utilities) the Boston area still has one of the world’s highest concentrations of great universities, especially MIT, churning out talented and ambitious young engineers; venture investors who understand the energy and cleantech industries; an innovation-friendly governor and state bureaucracy; and generally progressive regulatory policies when it comes to building markets for alternative energy sources.

Here’s an edited version of the parts of the interview that I was able to capture.

Xconomy: At a high level, how would you describe the biggest changes that you’ve been trying to push through in the way the energy business works in the state?

Ian Bowles: One of the big differences between energy and IT or life sciences is that energy is such a heavily regulated part of our economy. Much of the regulation is at the state level. Federal regulation is pretty limited, but you have 50 state public utility commissions and departments of environmental protection. What we’ve been trying to do is clear away some of the barriers and make the entire system work better, with the goals of bringing new clean energy technologies to market, creating bigger markets for existing technologies, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and … Next Page »

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It must be Clean Energy Week in Boston, judging from all of the trophies, plaques, and award checks being handed out to the region’s energy and cleantech innovation leaders. We wanted to tell you about the winners in two of this week’s biggest events: the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Ignite Clean Energy Prize business plan competition finals, held at the State House on November 10, and the New England Clean Energy Council‘s Green Tie Gala, held at the John F. Kennedy Library last night.

The big winners in the Ignite Clean Energy Prize competition—the fifth annual iteration of the event, sponsored this year by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center—were the following:

Grand Prize: IntAct Labs of Cambridge, MA, which is developing microbial fuel cells and protein-based biosensors and photovoltaic devices. IntAct walked away with $150,000 in cash and in-kind prizes from Mintz Levin, CHT Group, the UMass Dartmouth Applied Technology and Manufacturing Center, and T3 Advisors.

Second Place: InnoSepra Coal, which is developing lower-cost ways to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by coal combustion at power plants, and using the captured CO2 in oil and gas exploration.

Third Place: EGG Energy, which is building rental “solar stations” for recharging batteries in poor, rural regions of Africa.

“Each year, we see a variety of technologies and people participate in ICE – each team beginning the competition with brilliant ideas and completing the process with real market impact,” said Clark Waterfall, chair of the competition and managing director at Boston Based BSG Team Ventures, in a press statement about the awards. “This year is no different and I congratulate the IntAct team on their victory and I congratulate all of the teams for playing a role in strengthening the clean tech industry.”

I was all dressed up last night and ready to go to NECEC’s Green Tie Gala, but was stopped in my tracks by car trouble, of all things. Guess it’s time to get a Prius! Here’s a rundown of the awards that I didn’t get to see handed out:

Breakout Company of the Year: EnerNOC, for “achieving an inflection point in revenue growth and establishing itself as both an industry leader and a market-maker.” (2008 winner: A123Systems)

Emerging Company of the Year: QD Vision, for “exiting its development phase with tremendous momentum.” (2008 winner: Aspen Aerogels)

Employer of the Year: American Superconductor, for “growing its workforce by a substantial margin, and providing good, high-paying jobs to its community.” (2008 winner: GT Solar)

Corporate Citizen of the Year: Millipore, for “its adoption of clean energy technology and energy efficiency measures in order to reduce its carbon footprint.” (2008 winner: Staples)

Clean Energy Hall of Fame Inductee: Steve Cowell, CEO of Conservation Services Group, for “his dedication to clean energy, and truly setting an example for others to follow.” (2008 winner: Mark Farber)

Council Leadership Awards: Kevin Doyle from GreenEconomy and Wanda Reindorf from Conservation Services Group—the co-chairs of NECEC’s Workforce Development Group—for “their outstanding leadership in the support of Council activities.”

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We’ve noticed a slowing of venture investment in cleantech and other aspects of energy here in New England. But put any green investment pessimism on hold this week—as today marks the start off what’s being touted as the third annual Clean Energy Week here in Massachusetts. In a week of charged-up presentations from Springfield to Boston, we’ve got networking, investor pitches, a “green tie” gala, and LOTS of startups. In fact, I’ve counted 52 startup pitches across the week, and that’s not counting the 10 finalists in the Ignite Clean Energy Competition, who will be at the State House in Boston on Tuesday, and any others I have missed.

It would be hard for anyone to make all these events. But below are some highlights, and you can find a more complete overview here.

Monday (today)

—A short walk from Xconomy’s offices at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge, MA, is the sole event of the day, the Clean Energy Applied Research Discovery Workshop put on by SETsquared’s Clean Energy Mission to Boston. SETsquared is a research collaboration between four British universities: Bath, Bristol, Southampton, and Surrey. (I can’t figure out from the website if the event is open to the public, so I’m guessing it isn’t. But Xconomy staffers and friends can often be seen after work in the Bambara restaurant bar in the Marlowe.)

Tuesday

The pace of events really picks up on Tuesday.

—Clean Energy Connections, an all-day career and business development conference in Springfield, MA.

—Boston Cleantech Venture Day. This event, which takes place at the Boston offices of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, is put on by a coalition of various international chambers of commerce and business groups “to assist European Cleantech companies in exploring and taking advantage of opportunities in the US.” All told, some 17 European companies have come over to present at the conference, and the closing keynote speaker is Howard Berke, founder of Konarka Technologies.

—The highlight of the day will likely be the finals of the Ignite Clean Energy business plan competition put on by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge at the Massachusetts State House. You can find the business plan summaries of the 10 finalists who are vying for the $35,000 grand prize here. This event looks great, but it is sold out. Here’s what the website says about walk-ins: “If you choose to Walk-In we do not guarantee entrance into the event, will be based upon capacity of the room. Pre-Registered seats will be released at 12:50pm (20 minutes after presentations begin)…”

Wednesday

—University Research Briefing Day. This Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center event, held at MIT’s Tang Center, will feature faculty from Massachusetts institutions who will present their clean energy research. This is always a great event—and I hope to be able to make it.

—Green Tie Gala. This is the second year the New England Clean Energy Council has organized this event at the JFK Library & Museum. I don’t have a tux, but Wade does—and plans to be there. The keynoter is Congressman Ed Markey. The event is sold out, according to the registration page, even the $3,250 tables.

Thursday and Friday

—The week’s piece de resistance is the two-day Conference on Clean Energy organized by the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition at the Hynes Convention Center. Keynoters include Steve Koonin, under secretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, Governor Deval Patrick, and Ian Bowles, the state’s energy czar. MTTC director Abi Barrow says 35 companies from a variety of energy sectors will present at the conference, including four foreign firms—one from Norway and four from Britain.  The Sunday Times of London was very excited about the four from Britain and wrote this piece. And you can find the speaker list and bios here.

Wade hosted a podcast in advance of this conference—as he puts it, “previewing some of the themes that will be featured prominently at the event, ranging from the state of energy investing to the role of stimulus funding for energy startups.” You can find the podcast here.

—Also starting on Thursday and concluding Friday is the 17th Annual U.S.-Canada Energy Conference at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. The theme of this year’s event is “North American Energy: Forging ahead in the current economic and environmental climate.”

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Peter Rothstein, a former entrepreneur in residence at Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, MA, has joined the New England Clean Energy Council as full-time senior vice president, the Cambridge-based organization announced today. At the council, Rothstein will focus on the Clean Energy Innovation Consortia, a project he launched to push for the creation of the “clean energy clusters”—tighter collaboration between universities, entrepreneurs, venture funders, and government agencies—proposed by Congressmen Edward Markey and Henry Waxman in an energy bill passed this year by the U.S. House of Representatives. “Having Peter formerly join the Council in this senior role greatly deepens our ability to impact clean energy research and commercialization at a national level, and accelerate the growth of the New England clean energy cluster,” council president Nick d’Arbeloff said in a statement.

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Jeff Carbeck, a co-founder of Boston-area startups Arsenal Medical and Nano-Terra, has recently begun working with Flagship Ventures as a consultant on a confidential startup project, firm spokeswoman Kelly Friendly tells Xconomy.

Friendly says she’s unable to provide details about the startup project on which the former Princeton professor is working. Carbeck also declined to specify the nature of the startup project, yet he did note in an e-mail that he still has active roles at both Arsenal and Nano-Terra, and he does not have a permanent position at Flagship. He told me in May that he was interested in applying his expertise in materials science and chemical engineering to the venture capital game or another startup. It looks like he’s landed at the right place to do that.

“I began having conversations with Flagship recently because I was attracted by their unwavering commitment to big ideas, commercializing the most innovative technologies, and true entrepreneurial initiatives, which I think is unique, especially in the current environment,” Carbeck said, in an e-mail last week.

Given the broad utility of his technical expertise and startup experience, Carbeck could be working on a startup focused on any of several sectors at Flagship, which manages $600 million and invests in early-stage companies in the life sciences and clean technology sectors. Last month Carbeck told me that he was particularly interested in cleantech, having recently pursued and won a fellowship for aspiring cleantech executives from the New England Clean Energy Council. “I’m going to be doing something where material science and chemical engineering really play the lead role, but what specific area it’s going to be in is hard to say now,” he said when I interviewed him for that story. “But I tell you that the things I’m learning in the clean energy space are really exciting.”

When we spoke, Carbeck was splitting his time between Watertown-based medical devices startup Arsenal and Nano-Terra, a Cambridge firm that applies its proprietary nanotechnology inventions to tackle R&D problems in multiple industries except for life sciences. At the time, Carbeck was chief technology officer at Arsenal and chief scientist at Nano-Terra.

What is clear is that Carbeck has some great expertise and connections that will help him at Flagship. His local roots can be traced back to acclaimed Harvard chemist George Whitesides’ lab, where Carbeck did his post-doctoral research. After spending seven years at Princeton, he passed on tenure-track offer from Tufts to start Arsenal (formerly WMR Biomedical) in 2005 with a group of luminaries that included Whitesides, MIT inventor Bob Langer, and Carmichael Roberts, a partner at Northbridge Venture Partners in Waltham, MA.

Hopefully, I’ll have an update soon on Carbeck’s startup project at Flagship. For now, he says the project is confidential.

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New CEOs, new financings, new approvals, and new data—it was an interesting week for New England’s life sciences companies.

—Cambridge, MA-based Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MIPI) named a new president and CEO, Daniel Peters, just months after giving that post to co-founder John Babich. Babich will stay on as chief scientific officer of Molecular, which is developing a cardiac imaging agent called Zemiva.

—Artisan Pharma of Waltham, MA, indicated in an SEC filing that it has raised $9.4 million of an $11.8 million round of debt financing from undisclosed sources. Artisan is developing a treatment for a blood-clotting condition in patients with sepsis.

—Ryan chatted with Jeff Carbeck, co-founder of Watertown, MA-based Arsenal Medical, chief scientist at Cambridge, MA-based Nano-Terra, and newly named New England Clean Energy Council fellow. One of the top chemical engineers to come out of the lab of Harvard’s George Whitesides, Carbeck is bringing material science discoveries to bear not only in medical products but also in clean technology and a host of other industries.

—Cambridge, MA-based OmniGuide raised $1.8 million in an equity financing, according to an SEC filing that did not disclose investors in the deal. OmniGuide is developing fiber-optic laser scalpels for minimally invasive surgery.

—Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) launched a one-two punch at Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor campaigning to take over the board of the Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant. In a first regulatory filing, Biogen disputed Icahn’s criticism of its leadership, pipeline, dealmaking, and stock price—and argued that Icahn’s nominees for the Biogen board would … Next Page »

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It’s pouring venture deals in Boston today. So rather than flood our dear readers with multiple posts, we’ve compiled the news on deals recently completed by Arsenal Medical, Azuki Systems, Synageva BioPharma, and Viximo into a single story. Given the unsavory climate for raising venture dollars, we’ll call these companies the “Fortunate Four.”

Watertown, MA-based medical devices firm Arsenal Medical (formerly WMR Biomedical) has reeled in $8.2 million in a third round of venture financing, tech newspaper Mass High Tech reports. Arsenal (so named, I’m told, after the firm’s office address on Watertown’s Arsenal Street) is developing medical devices with advanced biomaterials for the cardiovascular and ophthalmology markets, company president and CEO Scott Rader tells MHT. The company has been quiet about its specific products under development, but it boasts an All-Star team of founders that includes Harvard chemical engineering professor and Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) co-founder George Whitesides, prolific MIT inventor Bob Langer, and long-time Whitesides collaborator Carmichael Roberts, a general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners in Waltham, MA. We caught up with Roberts in March to talk about how he’s spending his time at North Bridge and startups such as Arsenal. Interestingly, Arsenal co-founder and chief technology officer Jeffrey Carbeck was named this week as one of the New England Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Fellows. The fellowships are designed to retrain tech execs for the clean energy industry.

On the Web front, Acton, MA-based Azuki Systems, formerly called PeerMeta, says today that it has raised $6 million in equity financing from previous backers Kepha Partners and Sigma Partners as well as company executives. (We reported nearly a year ago that Kepha and Sigma pumped $6.1 million into Azuki’s Series A round of financing.) The two-year-old firm has rolled out a cloud-based platform that allows publishers of video and other rich media to reach audiences through mobile websites, mobile applications, and desktop widgets.

In life sciences deal news, Synageva BioPharma, based in Waltham, has revealed that two new investors—Hunt BioVentures, of Dallas, and Tokyo-based venture group Yasuda Enterprise Development—have added $3 million to the company’s recently announced private equity round, bringing the total to $33 million. Synageva says it is developing both novel protein drugs and copies of approved biotech drugs, known as follow-on biologics or biosimilars. With U.S. patents on major biotech drugs like industry giant Amgen’s (NASDAQ:AMGN) Epogen due to expire over the next several years, firm’s like Synageva and drug behemoth Merck (NYSE:MRK) are working to develop lower-cost copies of the drugs.

Separately, online services startup Viximo has nabbed $5 million in a round of venture capital from North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners, according to this report on Virtual Goods News. The startup—which, according to its website, provides online services that helps artists to create and sell virtual content—has also replaced its former CEO, Rob Frasca, with acting chief executive Dayna Grayson, a member of the investment team at North Bridge.

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At the Nantucket Conference, an invitation-only gathering of New England-area CEOs, entrepreneurs, venture partners, and select others, first-time attendees get a single blue dot on their nametags. Alumni get another dot for every year they’ve attended, and veterans of five or more conferences get a gold starfish pin.

About a third of the participants at the tenth annual conference, held April 30 to May 2 on Nantucket Island, MA, had one blue dot, including myself (I was one of a handful of journalists invited by the conference organizer, Shayne Gilbert of Future Forward Events). But strikingly—despite the obsession among attendees with the economy’s drastic downturn and its effects on entrepreneurship—several of the starfish people said afterward that it was the best, most energetic edition of the conference they’d been to. It seems that the crisis has inflamed the classic innovator’s itch to get on with business—and to invent new ones.

In past years, the proceedings of the Nantucket Conference were off the record to journalists unless a source explicitly agreed to be quoted. This year, the organizers reversed the policy, so everything was on the record, unless a speaker indicated otherwise—which only happened once the entire weekend, to my knowledge. That meant attendees were free to indulge their social media passions, blogging and tweeting freely (you can see the whole conference Twitter stream here).

It also means I’m able to bring you a few of the main themes from the conference. Though the program included panels on topics as diverse as getting venture funding, robotics, gaming, energy, and the roots of the economic crisis, a few ideas seemed to frame the mood of the conference (and perhaps of the entrepreneurial set in general these days), a mindset I’d call pragmatic optimism. Some of the main elements:

Fundraising is getting harder—especially for new companies, but even for established ones. Michael Greeley, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, pointed to estimates that only 600 new startups will win venture funding nationwide this year, down from 1,171 in 2008. VC firms have become exceedingly cautious, keeping $5 in reserve for every $1 they invest, rather than the more traditional 2-to-1 ratio, Greeley said. Jana Eggers, CEO of Leipzig, Germany-based Spreadshirt, a T-shirt customization company whose North American headquarters are in Boston, said that even though her company is cash-flow-positive, it had a very difficult time raising its most recent round of growth capital. The terms offered by potential funders were “shocking” and were “clearly based on the economy, not on our fundamentals,” Eggers said.

In areas such as robotics where New England has clear strengths, venture capital is largely absent, pointed out MIT roboticist Rod Brooks, a co-founder of iRobot who now leads stealth-mode startup Heartland Robotics. In the energy and cleantech space, according to General Catalyst‘s Hemant Tenaja, money from hedge funds and strategic investors has largely dried up, and the spigots will stay off until Congress and the Obama Administration work out energy and climate bills. And heaven help the startups that need cash quick: Each of Boston-Power‘s three funding rounds took a year to negotiate, according to CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud. “The best time to raise capital is when you don’t need it,” said Andy Palmer, co-founder of Vertica Systems, former CIO at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, a veteran of Bowstreet (acquired by IBM).

On the other hand, companies need less money—and should probably be lowering their sights anyway. John Landry, a software industry veteran who is managing director at Wayland, MA-based Lead Dog Ventures, used his pulpit as moderator of a panel on “Getting and Staying Funded” to argue that infotech startups “don’t really need a lot of money” these days thanks to technologies like … Next Page »

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As we reported in February, the New England Clean Energy Council extensively revised its executive retraining fellowship program in preparation for its second year. Most notably, the council decided to recruit twice as many people as last year. But it also said it would expand its focus beyond former CEOs to people from other levels of business, and that it would recruit not just New Englanders but also a few executives from outside the region.

Today the official list of selectees for the 2009 fellowships leaked out—so we’re getting a look at the people the Council sees as the potential next generation of energy entrepreneurs.

The 12-week fellowship is designed to introduce executives with experience in other industries, especially information technology, to the special factors that make building energy startups tricky—from technological hurdles to the regulatory environment to community siting issues.

Notable names on this year’s list include former Atlas Venture partner Ahmet Ozalp, Athenahealth founding CTO Bob Gatewood, former Macromedia and Adobe executive David Mendels, former Black Duck CEO Doug Levin, and Bill O’Farrell, who co-founded and led both SpeechWorks and OpenAir.com.

Here’s the full list:

Michael Bayer—co-founder, RPM Communications, Maynard, MA

Jeffrey Carbeck—chief scientist, Nano-Terra, co-founder, Arsenal Medical, Boston

Brian Cohen—former CEO, SPI Dynamics, Atlanta, GA (acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007)

Maureen Ellenberger—founder and former CEO, auctionPAL, Waltham, MA

Brian Fitzsimons—founder and co-CEO, DeskNet, Jersey City, NJ

Bob Gatewood—founding CTO, Athenahealth, Watertown, MA

Elena Grinev—former vice president of service delivery, Akamai, Cambridge, MA

Brad Hafer—managing director, Minuteman Advisory Partners, Bedford, MA

John Hanratty—founder, Ampient, Cambridge, MA

Todd Hasselbeck—CEO, Common Voices, Boston

Marni Hoyle—former vice president of marketing, ProfitLogic, Cambridge, MA (acquired by Oracle in 2005)

Ken Jones—co-founder and former CEO, WaveRx, Waltham, MA

Douglas Levin—former CEO, Black Duck Software, Waltham, MA

Patricia Meisner—co-founder, Redtail Solutions, Westborough, MA

David Mendels—former senior vice president and general manager of the Business Productivity Business Unit, Adobe Systems, San Jose, CA

Stuart Nixdorff—vice president of business development, OutSmart Power Systems, Needham, MA

William O’Farrell—co-founder and former CEO, SpeechWorks, Boston, (acquired by Nuance in 2003); co-founder and CEO, OpenAir (acquired by NetSuite in 2008); former CEO, Public Display, Providence, RI

Mike O’Neill—former vice president of Military/Aerospace & Communications Products, ON Semiconductor, Phoenix, AZ; former general partner, Kodiak Venture Partners, Boston.

Ahmet Ozalp—former partner, Atlas Venture, Waltham, MA

Tandhoni Rao—founder and former CEO, Radiospire Networks

Paul Sereiko—president and CEO, Airsprite Technologies, Marlborough, MA

Peter Vandermeulen—founder, BlueShift Technologies, Andover, MA

Peter Vicars—CEO, NewStep Networks, Toronto, Ontario

Jeffrey Weiss—venture partner, Point Judith Capital, Providence, RI

Lorraine Wheeler—co-founder and CEO, Actual Software, Andover, MA (acquired by Palm in 2000), co-founder, Zeemote, Chelmsford, MA

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April 2—(I am back aboard Delta Airlines, this time in Seat 7B, slowly moving up in life…much smoother, too).

As expected, the two-day junket went quickly. Today was mainly a series of briefs from the Department of Energy’s Program Managers (the professional/career DOE staffers that manage the various technology verticals). In many ways, it was much less titillating than wandering around Capitol Hill, but these PMs are the folks who disperse significant money (with more coming from the Stimulus package) and influence grants, program direction, and technology priorities. Programs briefed included Solar, Biomass, Hydrogen/Fuel Cells, Federal Energy Management (efficiency programs), and Industrial Technologies.

A few things to keep in mind when one thinks of DOE. First, it was originally and remains in large part a nuclear agency, with the renewable (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) dimension being just a portion of the overall agency mandate. Second, the dollars flow in support of legislative mandate and are not always as broadly deployed as the technology/start-up community would like, or perhaps it should be.

Take biomass for example (of note, I am on the DOE/USDA Biomass Advisory Council), which is really about leveraging biomass for creating liquid transportation fuels, not for electricity or thermal generation. The biomass team certainly understands the broader play, but their mandate is to make the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) numbers of 16 billion-plus gallons of alternative biofuels by 2022. The solar program seems to be making good progress with the goal of grid parity (with incentives) by 2015. Currently that number is ~$3 per installed watt (total system cost), with the current average sitting at ~$5/watt for commercial and ~$6.5/watt for residential. A bit of a ways to go but getting there; as a data point, Bill Davis of Ze-gen (who is sitting next to me on the flight) is installing 10kW of solar panels at his home in Winchester at a cost of $78K, which less an $11K state rebate and a 30 percent tax credit brings the installed cost down to about $5/W. This provides a 7-year payback and does not yet factor in RECs, carbon credits, or the ability to sell excess capacity back to the grid. Pretty cool, thanks Bill…

Two other briefings are worth noting; first is the hydrogen/fuel cell program, which seems to be languishing as compared to the others—largely due to the immense technical hurdles associated with those technologies and difficult commercial deployment obstacles, although there are pockets of success emerging from the space. It will be interesting to see how hydrogen fares in the new Administration as it was moved to the fore again recently as a result of the Bush administration, the reasons for which could be a whole ‘nother discussion it seems. The other is the industrial technologies group, which … Next Page »

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~5pm, April 1—Outside the Library of Congress (it’s raining lightly, and hordes of students are milling about).

A full day of running around Capitol Hill began yesterday with the New England Clean Energy Council masses arriving at the Capitol Building just as it was having a security alert—again, April Fool’s or not? Turned out to be real, but we circumnavigated our way to a cramped briefing room inside the Capitol, where NECEC president Nick D’Arbeloff provided an overview of the Council’s priorities and talking points, which are headlined by the need for a viable “Cap & Invest” Program for Carbon. This item turns out to be very timely; it is the main hot button topic on the Hill right now (in addition to the budget), as the Waxman/Markey Climate Change Bill was introduced yesterday.

The Council priorities and programs also include a push for a Renewable Energy Standard and a set of Energy Innovation Accelerator Programs from early R&D support to commercial deployment and everything in between, both on the funding and policy/permitting sides. There is also a call out for the Invest part of the Cap & Invest program to be focused on efficiency investments and initiatives. The Council Policy Committee has done a nice job of coalescing a broad set of ideas into a cogent set of initiatives and preparing Council members to brief various members of Congress that we all were to meet with this afternoon.

We then spent an hour on the receiving end of several rapid fire briefs from various New England staffers on their core issues, the budgeting process, the climate change bill, and myriad other topics. Each briefing ended abruptly as the particular staffer hurried off, obviously late for his or her next 10-minute meeting, which seems to be the clock cycle of DC, which I actually quite liked—quick formalities, get to business, highlight action items, and then move on to the next meeting. It’s clear that the budget process, especially appropriations (i.e. earmarks), is the top priority as the deadline is this Friday, so perhaps the mostly mid-20 staffers are more harried than normal, but each was insightful, articulate, and obviously engaged. Key takeaways mirrored my earlier comments, with the added emphasis that it is a long process (start soon for FY 11), and one only needs to walk the halls of the Capital Office Buildings for a few hours to realize that there are many and varied parties vying for the ears of our lawmakers, often with very different agendas.

Next up was Congressman Ed Markey, who was very generous in spending nearly an hour with us, briefing us on his Climate Change Bill and the battle that will ensue over the next several months to make it a reality. The President and Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi have been specific on calling for a Cap & Trade structure, but it seems that there are pockets of Carbon Tax folks who are vocal as well. The Waxman/Markey bill is Cap & Trade and will be flushed out very heavily over the next 4-6 weeks with some fundamental questions and structural issues yet to be worked out. The takeaway is … Next Page »

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Spring has sprung in DC—the Cherry Blossoms are out, and the buses full of students are everywhere.

First stop for the day was Congressman Barney Frank’s office to discuss an initiative to develop a clean energy accelerator park in New Bedford, MA. More on this later, but a few immediate takeaways:

—The prep work for the FY 10 budget is essentially done, the real work now begins behind committee doors to sort out specifics and priorities. FY 11 efforts begin soon…

—Legislators have limited control over flow of stimulus dollars; they can endorse (and you should engage on this), but ARA (stimulus) money will flow through mostly pre-existing channels, which is both good and bad.

—Earmarks may or may not be dead, but it’s clear that they have changed with the notion of competitive bids for any earmark that does make it into a budget. How that will work? Anyone’s guess at this point.

—The Staffers are good, smart, and extremely busy; be prepared, respectful, and get to the point—and, as always, relationships matter.

Extra credit trivia question: How many monuments are there in DC? I don’t know the answer but it’s a big number.

Jim

[Editor's note: This is the second installment of a travelogue written by venture capitalist Jim Matheson, who is in the nation's capitol as part of a DC Fly In organized by the New England Clean Energy Council. You can read his first post here.]

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As I sit here in seat 8B on the 6:40am Delta Shuttle to DC, I am hoping the extraordinarily bumpy ride is not a harbinger of the prospects we face over the next two days as a large group of clean tech industry leaders converge on Washington as part of the DC Fly In organized by the New England Clean Energy Council.

Looking around the partially full plane, there are a number of familiar faces rallying to bring the message of New England’s cleantech leadership to the nation’s capitol—and to forward our collective vision for the best regulatory frameworks to accelerate the US cleantech industry and explore how to bring more federal funding home to MA and to each of our specific concerns.

This trip follows an event we held at Flagship Ventures last evening for our portfolio companies on exploring alternative sources of financing—including stimulus package funds, state and local grants, SBIR grants, and myriad other familiar and esoteric sources of capital that may be available depending on a company’s specific focus, stage, and creativeness. Thinking differently about obtaining financing is certainly in vogue right now, but we believe that given the disruption in the traditional capital markets (private and public), the uncertain future of capital flows, and the highly certain increased role of government in the commercial landscape that understanding, exploring, and leveraging these various avenues is mission critical.

Last night’s discussions included a variety of external panelists (lobbyists, grantors, tax experts, and state officials) and internal panelists (portfolio company leaders who have successfully and creatively obtained alternative sources of financing), along with nearly 50 of Flagship’s portfolio company representatives and Team. A few of the main takeaways for successfully pursuing new sources of funding were:

• Committing resources over a period of time (average minimum exertion was one person year to get real traction) is necessary

• Treating these various parties like a partner and understanding their needs (in many cases, jobs)

• Fomenting a relationship before you really need anything (Sales 101)

• Realizing that some of the outcomes of these efforts are binary and thus to go down the path with your eyes wide open

• Recognizing that startup executives do not have experience with these funding sources, so finding a guide (read lobbyist) is worth examining

• Networking: There are many folks in our portfolio and across the local Boston scene who have been down these paths and are open to sharing their learnings, so it is worth trying to network to get smarter, quickly.

• Think Broadly: Most of these funding sources go far beyond just the stimulus package, which is the most immediate and visible pool of money, but which will be temporary. Many of these programs have existed and will continue to exist long after the current deluge of federal funding.

The agenda for the next two days is jam packed with a variety of meetings across DC, including sessions with a variety of New England-based legislators and their staffs, time with Carol Browner (President Obama’s Assistant for Energy/Climate Change), and briefings from a swath of Department of Energy Program Managers. Also embedded in the agenda is time for the NECEC contingent to compare ideas and experiences, discuss and debate the path forward for New England and the US in cleantech leadership, and hopefully a drink or two.

Looks like we are descending. Hopefully the pilot does not think that hitting more bumps is a good April Fools Day prank. More from the Capitol later today…

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Breaking into the cleantech business brings lots of unique challenges—and to equip more entrepreneurs to handle them, the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC) launched a fellowship program last April aimed at retraining CEOs from the information technology, life sciences, and telecom worlds. A dozen former CEOs spent the summer of 2008 learning the energy-industry landscape through intensive classroom sessions, visits to local companies and national energy research labs, and “capstone” entrepreneurial projects. Already, according to Peter Rothstein, a coordinator of the fellowships and an executive in residence at Cambridge, MA-based Flagship Ventures, 11 of the first 12 fellows (whom Greg listed here) are working in the cleantech sector, and four have launched their own new ventures.

The program was such a success, in fact, that NECEC has decided to repeat and expand it this summer. Applications are now open for the summer 2009 season (they’re due March 2; you can find all the details here). And according to an announcement today, the council will increase the number of fellows it selects this year to 25. It will also increase the scope of the fellowships to include non-CEOs, and will even select a few entrepreneurs based outside New England.

“The Council’s 2008 Fellowship program was extremely successful in helping to transition senior entrepreneurial talent into the clean energy sector,” NECEC president Nick d’Arbeloff said in a statement. “Based on that success, we will be more than doubling the size of the Fellowship class in 2009, and broadening the program to include individuals with a wider range of executive experience.”

Fellows will meet 10 hours a day, two days a week through May, June, and July. To support a larger program, NECEC is raising money from new sources such as the Kauffman Foundation, according to Rothstein. But the group is also in funding discussions with the program’s original sponsor, the John Adams Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

At the CEO level, the council is looking for fellowship applicants who have raised $3 million to $10 million dollars in capital for previous ventures, have 5 to 10 years of executive leadership experience, and have been through at least one successful IPO or sale. If applicants haven’t worked as CEOs in their industries, they need to have a solid background in science, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, or development, as well as experience with strategic and financial planning issues, including mergers and acquisitions.

There were at least a couple of reasons for the council to open up the fellowships to a broader group of applicants, Rothstein says. “One is that there are a lot of very interested and qualified people out there, in terms of what they could bring to cleantech companies, who simply may not have been CEOs, but might bring lots of marketing, operations, or business development experience,” he says. “And as we thought about the capstone business projects, we thought some of them could make greater progress if they included not just individuals but teams.” The fellows will be encouraged, though not assigned, to join groups around business projects during the final month of the fellowship, Rothstein says.

While Rothstein says he expects that the majority of 2009 fellows will be from Massachusetts, as they were last year, though the NECEC has made some changes to open up the program to entrepreneurs from other areas. For one thing, it’s holding its sessions on consecutive days of the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) rather than repeating last summer’s Tuesday-Thursday schedule; that’s intended to make it easier for fellows living far outside Boston to commute.

The Kauffman Foundation has also agreed to underwrite travel expenses for fellows based in distant parts of the Northeast, Rothstein says. “This program is in some ways expanding into a regional effort, and will likely include some people form New York,” he says. “We think that’s still well aligned with NECEC’s mission to build a cluster across the broader Northeast.”

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