For months, we watched the renovations and wondered what the heck they were turning that building a few doors down from the Bronx bar into. A Whole Foods, someone said. A bike shop, the construction worker lounging outside the building two summers ago told me confidently. Finally, we divined a name from the sign posted on the door facing the newly landscaped alley telling UPS how to handle deliveries: the Green Garage. “Oh yeah,” my boyfriend told me. “I heard it’s gonna be, like, a hippie mechanic joint.”

It turns out the Green Garage is not a boutique grocery store, bike shop, or a counter-culture mechanic—it’s workshop and office space available for rental by those who are developing cleantech business ideas.

“We want to work with businesses on their true development,” says Peggy Brennan, who, with her husband Tom, purchased the space and led a group of 200 volunteers in its design and development. “We’re looking for the core of what makes a business unique, viable, and good for the environment and economy.”

Acknowledging that most young businesses suffer from a lack of resources, connections, and funding, the Green Garage hopes to serve as a starting point, providing guidance with business plans, funding sources, and community connections. Once the businesses are established, the idea is that they will move out of the garage and into the Detroit business environment. The Green Garage also has a library dedicated to urban sustainability that’s available to the public for check out, and Brennan says anyone interested in urban sustainability can walk in and ask for help.

“Above all, we’re looking for people who want to work with others rather than in isolation, and that have a willingness to do what it takes to work in a green environment,” Brennan adds.

And what an impressive environment Green Garage is. The first thing one notices upon walking in is the … Next Page »

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They grow up so quick! Zulily, which offers daily “flash sales” on moms-and-kids items, easily led the field for angel and venture financing deals in Washington in August. That’s according to monthly data compiled by our partners at CB Insights, which tallied $79 million in overall financings across tech, biotech and cleantech companies for the month.

The new infusion of cash should help Zulily keep pace with its fast growth—after its public debut earlier this year, CEO Darrell Cavens told me, the startup rocketed from about 15,000 members to more than 4 million as of early August. The company also blew through four headquarters locations in about 18 months.

The August round, led by Meritech Capital Partners, brought Zulily’s total venture financing so far to $53.6 million.

Landing in second place was Vancouver, WA-based nLight Photonics, a supplier of high-powered semiconductor lasers. nLight said existing investors participating in the Series E round included Oak Investment Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.

That brings nLight’s total equity financing to $110 million—and the company hinted at an IPO in its future, saying in a press release that its investors have been with nLight for more than a decade and “have a strong record of companies achieving initial public offerings.”

The company also said it is growing in profitability, added more than 100 employees in the previous year, and booked more than $60 million in orders in the first half of 2011.

The third-largest financing for August went to Infinia, a Seattle-based developer of solar power generators. The company raised just over $6 million in equity financing, and could eventually raise a total of $25 million in the round, according to this SEC filing. The company’s listed investors include Black Pearl Capital, Foxconn Technology Group, and Seattle’s Vulcan Capital.

Coming in fourth for the month was Airbiquity, which raised $4 million in debt financing. Seattle-based Airbiquity supplies software and platform services for “connected car” features, with customers like Ford, OnStar, and BMW. Its investors are listed as Acorn Ventures of Bellevue, WA, Ignition Partners, Kirnaf Ltd., and Shell Internet Ventures.

The fifth-largest financing went to Medify, which reported in August that it had raised $1.8 million to date from angels and Voyager Capital, where the company was incubated. (The exact timing on that round is not exactly clear to me, because I couldn’t find it in the SEC filings).

In any case, as CEO Derek Streat told me, the idea behind Medify is to make information about healthcare much easier to navigate for patients and doctors. The team is stocked with veterans from Farecast, including co-founder Jay Bartot.

Rounding out the $1 million-plus financings for August is Presage Biosciences, which added nearly $1.6 million from unidentified investors. The company, which spun out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has developed a tool that drugmakers are using to get a better sense of which drugs are likely to succeed in clinical trials.

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Seattle-based 3Tier Group, which has developed a map of the world’s best places for wind and solar power, has named Craig Husa as its new chief executive. Founder Kenneth Westrick, who previously served as CEO, remains with the company as chairman. The company announced in December that Westrick was moving away from day-to-day duties.

Husa is an experienced businessman who previously served as CEO of NeuralIQ, General Software, and Healia, and founded CourtLink Corporation, 3Tier said in a statement. Westrick said Husa has a record of guiding “similarly sized companies through aggressive expansion.” Husa also holds an MBA from Harvard and is a former Navy officer who trained in nuclear engineering and served on submarines, 3Tier said.

We last checked in with 3Tier more than a year ago, when the company had just reported $3 million in additional equity financing and was fresh from completing its map of promising solar-power sites. The map of wind currents was completed in late 2008, and the company raised $10 million to finish the project around that time.

The recession hit alternative energy companies hard, though, and 3Tier was forced to lay off an unspecified number of people in 2009. 3Tier is privately held and backed by venture investors, with Switzerland-based Good Energies as lead investor.

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Michigan may have potential in medical devices and software but in the end, the state’s high tech future, for better for worse, is really tied to cleantech.

For one thing, it offers the most natural and logical extension of Michigan’s core expertise in automobiles/manufacturing, experts say. Think lithium batteries, electric cars, next generation engines equipped with software that smartly manages energy consumption.

“I think Michigan has a great chance at cleantech because it so tied with transportation,” says Chris Rizik, CEO and fund manager of Renaissance Venture Capital Fund in Ann Arbor, MI. Rizik is a featured panelist for Thursday’s Xconomy: Michigan 2031, a forum for the state’s best investors and entrepreneurs to envision the future of Michigan’s high tech economy and brainstorm ways to make that vision a reality.

But here’s what really pushes cleantech ahead of the pack: unlike medical devices and software, cleantech enjoys significant financial and institutional support from both Uncle Sam and Michigan’s top politicians.

Last fall, Watertown, M-based A123Systems opened a lithium battery plant in Livonia, MI, thanks a $249 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and $125 million in refundable tax credits from Michigan’s 21st Century Jobs Fund. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, along with then Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, attended the plant’s opening ceremony.

In 2009, Michigan established the Centers for Energy Excellence program, which provides $45 million over three years to fund technology commercialization and research between companies and universities and national laboratories.

Later this month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and University of Michigan are hosting a conference exploring Michigan’s investments into manufacturing and clean energy.

“Though Michigan’s research infrastructure suffered during the deep recession that forced major cutbacks in the research funded by the auto industry, the state has leveraged local investment, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [federal stimulus] funding, and the strengths of its universities to begin rapidly rebuilding manufacturing by investing in new industries,” the DOE said on the conference website. “Many of these new investments are in clean energy, and the DOE is interested in learning from this natural experiment in rapid rebuilding of R&D and manufacturing capability.”

Not surprisingly, local cleantech startups attracting investor cash are developing auto-related technologies. Khosla Ventures, for example, is backing lithium ion battery maker Sakti3 in Ann Arbor, MI, and EcoMotors in Allen Park, MI, which is developing a more energy efficient engine. (Sakti3 CEO Ann Marie Sastry will be joining ups at Michigan 2031 as well.) General Motors has invested $5 million in wireless charging startup Powermat in Commerce Township, MI.

But is there more to Michigan cleantech than just greener cars? … Next Page »

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[Updated 4/12/09 00:30 am. See below.] Oakland, CA-based BrightSource Energy disclosed earlier this month that it has raised nearly $202 million in Series E funding from existing venture firms and some unnamed investors, and now Mountain View, CA-based Google has stepped into the light. Today Google reveals on its blog that it has invested $168 million “in an exciting new solar energy power plant being developed by BrightSource Energy in the Mojave Desert in California.”

[Updated to clarify Google's investments in BrightSource] The item posted on the Google blog by Rick Needham, director of green business operations, says the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is designed to generate 392 megawatts of clean solar energy. Google spokesman Parag Chokshi told me late yesterday that Google’s $168-million investment was entirely for the Ivanpah project, and was not an equity investment in BrightSource.

So Google’s $168 million was not part of the $200 million round that BrightSource announced on April 1. But Chokshi says Google made a $10 million equity investment in Brightsource in 2007.

By coincidence, BrightSource today posted a photo on its website of the project under construction. The company began construction six months ago.

The design calls for erecting a field of mirrors, called heliostats, that concentrate the sun’s energy on a solar receiver at the top of a tower. The receiver, in turn, intensely heats a boiler so that steam spins a power-generating turbine.

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West Lebanon, NH-based SustainX, an energy-storage startup out of Dartmouth College, said today it has received $14.4 million in financing from GE Energy Financial Services and other investors including Cadent Energy Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Rockport Capital. SustainX, which started in 2007, uses compressed air in above-ground vessels to store energy in an efficient way. Possible applications of the technology include storing wind and solar energy and improving the stability of the electric grid.

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A March 11 regulatory filing shows that San Jose, CA-based flexible photovoltaic maker Solopower has collected an additional $13.5 million in an apparent extension of its $51.6 million January Series E financing round. Solopower’s past backers include Hudson Clean Energy Partners. In February the company received a conditional $197 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build a photovoltaics manufacturing plant in Wilsonville, OR.

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Timing is everything—especially in the tech world. If you follow trends in technology, science, or business for long enough, you realize there are very few new ideas. Instead, the combination of the right idea with the right timing and execution is usually the key to success in any field.

Look at all the snazzy tech products that have sprung up around us in recent years—iPhones and iPads, Kindle e-book readers, mobile and gaming apps, GPS and mapping technologies. And some services are so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice them anymore, like Internet banking or online shopping.

It made me think back a decade to 1999-2000, the height of the tech bubble, and consider which of these ideas were already around back then, but either didn’t quite pan out or failed. (Of course, you could go back much further than that, but 10 years feels like an eternity in tech these days.) If you paged through Red Herring, Fast Company, or Technology Review in the late ‘90s, I suspect you’d find many ideas that look a lot like the current tech landscape.

So I informally surveyed a few techies and venture capitalists on both coasts, and have compiled a list of 10 old ideas from the dot-com era that have finally arrived. In some cases, the old product was not positioned correctly, or the technology of the day didn’t support it well. But in most cases, the main issue was the timing of the market—the offering just wasn’t compelling enough at its price point or it cost too much to produce back then. Now times have changed.

This list is by no means comprehensive. If you’ve got a company or idea that I missed—or if you have a different take on the reasons for the turnaround—please leave a comment below.

Without further ado, here are 10 oldies that are new again:

1. Group-buying sites (Mercata vs. Groupon)

This is the quintessential old idea whose time has come. Mercata, the Paul Allen-backed dot-com that withdrew its IPO in early 2001 and closed down, struggled to gain traction in part because it competed for consumer-product deals with e-retailers and big portals like Yahoo and AOL. In the past couple of years, Groupon solved this problem by focusing on one deal per day, but across very different kinds of stores. A down economy, mainstream use of the Web, and lack of competitors didn’t hurt. Now there are more than 100 group-buying sites around the world—mostly blatant knockoffs of Groupon, which is … Next Page »

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Last week the Northwest Energy Angels—a group of over 45 private investors who have banded together to invest exclusively in cleantech and energy companies located here in the Pacific Northwest—held its annual Summer Showcase at Tesla Motors’ South Lake Union showroom. Founded by Seattle entrepreneur Martin Tobias and state lawmaker Jeff Morris in 2006, the angels provide early-stage capital to cleantech entrepreneurs and connect promising companies with potential investors.

So far, the group has invested more than $3 million in 17 local companies, a sign that it is active and growing—along with the Pacific Northwest cleantech sector. Back in March the Angels hired on local tech veteran Margo Shiroyama as the new executive director, and the group is recruiting new angels, hoping to bring the membership up to 60 by the end of the year.

On Friday afternoon many of the angels joined representatives from local cleantech companies, and green-minded community members at Tesla to mingle, connect, and hear updates from 11 companies that had presented at a prior NW Energy Angels event. Drinks were served in 100 percent compostable plant polymer Greenware. I would be lying if I said a few in the crowd weren’t eyeing Tesla’s bright red Roadster on display in the front of the room. (After the presentations, many signed up for test drives around the neighborhood, though I was not so lucky.) But the combination of compostable cups and fully electric cars sure did set the scene for an event on cleantech business ideas.

One of the more high profile attendees included U.S. Rep Jay Inslee, the Democrat who represents Washington’s first congressional district. Energy Angel Bill Lemon introduced Inslee as our “tireless advocate in the promotion of clean energies.” In his introductory remarks, Inslee urged the companies to develop new clean technologies and move the country and world forward toward renewable energies.

“The future of the U.S. economy is not determined at the Fed, or the White House, or the Congress. It is determined by people like you,” he said. “It is a system that is broken because it is rife with subsidies that support old technologies that have been around for the past hundred years.”

Inslee then outlined his five pillars for the future of clean energy, which he termed his “vision for America.” The steps included creating demand for new technology, increasing energy standards for machinery (including cars, buildings, and gadgets), changing the tax code to provide clean energy incentives for small businesses, increasing federal energy R&D, and leveling the playing field between clean energy businesses and industry old timers like oil and coal.

“These five pillars, I think, have the capability to get us into the international game. And it needs to happen this year—next year is a year too late,” Inslee said. “This is the most exciting thing technologically since we went to the moon,” adding that Seattle and the Pacific Northwest are poised to be cleantech leaders based on our booming regional tech industry. “When there’s a technological transition, Washington shines!” he said.

The remainder of the event was dedicated to a series of short company updates and networking among cleantechies. The presenting companies included a few more established startup success stories, as well as a handful of brand new companies fresh on the scene. Though all of the companies had been represented at prior NW Energy Angel events, many of them have escaped our radar until now. But whether you’ve heard of these startups before or not, if you’re interested in what’s up-and-coming in the Pacific Northwest cleantech sector, take a look at these highlights:

—EMME (Beaverton, OR)

Standing for Energy Management Made Easy, EMME develops energy management devices. These are monitoring gadgets for everything from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, to wireless power monitors, and power meter breaker boxes—that helps consumers keep track of their home’s carbon footprint, and save money and energy. “It will tell you how much you’re spending on heating, cooling, your refrigerator is spending, your big screen TV,” said Jon Brodeur, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. “And it will give you recommendations on what to do to save energy costs,” without having to change out any appliances.

—EnerG2 (Seattle, WA)

You’ve probably heard of EnerG2, a nanomaterials startup focused on energy storage. The company, which develops ultra-high performance synthetic carbon material for use in double layer capacitors, has had such success in the last few years that Lemon kicked himself for passing up an opportunity to invest. “Boy do I really, really regret it!” he said. Since that missed opportunity, EnerG2 has brought in $8.5 million in its Series A venture investment—which chief operating and financial officer Chris Wheaton joked happened during in the fall of 2008, “nearly financial Armageddon.” Later on, EnerG2 secured another $21.3 million in federal stimulus money. “It completely blew the doors off for us,” Wheaton added. “There’s nothing like success to create more success.”

—EnergySavvy (Seattle, WA)

This energy-efficiency focused startup works to help homeowners understand the “miles per gallon” of their homes by helping consumers calculate their energy use and find places they can cut back, make changes, and save both energy and money. Only an eight-person operation, according to Scott Case, the vice president of product management, EnergySavvy has had so much interest from prospective customers they have been struggling to grow fast enough to keep up. The company makes its money … Next Page »

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[Updated 4:00 pm, 3/25/10. See below.] Bend, OR-based PV Powered, a maker of solar energy components, announced yesterday it is being acquired by Advanced Energy Industries of Fort Collins, CO. The deal will be worth as much as $90 million—$50 million upfront ($35 million in cash and $15 million in Advanced Energy’s common stock), and up to $40 million in earn-out pay based on PV Powered’s 2010 sales.

The acquisition shows how solving a relatively small but crucial piece of the solar energy puzzle can pay off in spades, even in a difficult economy. PV Powered makes solar power inverters, which are electronic components that help convert the DC electricity output of solar cells into AC current that homes and businesses can use.

At least one cleantech industry observer thinks the acquisition—and more specifically, its size—signifies a resurgence of the mergers and acquisitions market in alternative energy. Michael Butler, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based Cascadia Capital, calls the Oregon company’s sale a “big deal” at a “huge price.”

“It tells me that M&A premiums are coming back,” Butler says in an e-mail. “Traditionally, balance of systems companies such as inverter companies trade at 1x revenue. This is more than 1x revenue. We are seeing M&A coming back big time in the alt energy /clean tech markets. This is another data point… and a good one.”

Gregg Semler, co-founder and managing director of Portland, OR-based Pivotal Investments, seems to agree. “Corporates have cash and a growing need to differentiate themselves with proprietary technology that can build their leadership in renewable energy,” he says. “This acquisition by Advanced Energy shows the increasing demand for growing companies that have innovative technologies focused on solar energy. I think we will see lots more this year.” [This paragraph was added for further analysis---Eds.]

PV Powered, founded in 2003, said it will operate under its current management team as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advanced Energy Industries, and will continue to sell its inverters out of Bend. The company has about 90 employees and made $21 million in revenue in 2009.

In a statement, PV Powered CEO Gregg Patterson said his employees are “excited” to join Advanced Energy Industries, and implied the cultural fit is a good one. “Both organizations share a common mission to deliver the innovations our customers are asking for in efficiency, reliability and uptime that will maximize the 20+ year financial returns of solar projects,” he said.

Advanced Energy Industries (NASDAQ GM: AEIS) says it expects PV Powered to contribute $40 to $50 million in revenues this year, the majority of which will come from businesses, not residences. Advanced Energy makes a wide range of solar components, including inverters, but also other power systems and thin-film semiconductor technologies for large solar power plants.

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Another quiet week for deals in the Northwest as we head into the depths of winter. Nevertheless, there were a few notable deals in software, hardware, and energy.

—Kennewick, WA-based Infinia snapped up another $11.5 million in equity financing in a round that could total $75 million over time, as Luke reported. The investors in the round included Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital and GLG Partners, both existing investors in the company. Infinia has raised more than $100 million, including a previous investment from Vinod Khosla, who says he is no longer involved with the company. Infinia, led by CEO J.D. Sitton, uses satellite dishes that capture rays of sunlight and channel them to a focal point that contains a single-piston Stirling engine, which uses the heat energy to produce electricity.

—Who bought whom in the Ontela-Photobucket merger announced in December? It turns out News Corporation, which previously owned Photobucket, sold the subsidiary to Seattle-based Ontela and its investors at a $29 million loss. Although News Corp. still owns a stake in the merged company (Photobucket), Ontela’s investors—Steamboat Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, Covera Ventures, and Voyager Capital—apparently control the firm now. Ontela, which had 23 employees as of December, was formed in 2005 and backed by about $15 million in venture funding. Last week, Ontela co-founder and former CEO Dan Shapiro said he is leaving his role as chief technology officer of Photobucket.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) formed a partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide cloud-computing resources to selected researchers and research groups through its Windows Azure software platform. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t given, but NSF will be in charge of awarding and managing the projects through its usual review process. Microsoft will grant the selected researchers free access to Azure’s cloud-based tools for three years.

—Seattle-based Amazon has acquired Touchco, a touchscreen technology startup based in New York. The news was first reported by the New York Times. No financial terms were given, but according to the report, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) will merge the New York University spinout’s technology and staff (about six people) into its Kindle hardware division, Lab126, based in Cupertino, CA. There is strong speculation that Amazon plans to add touchscreen capabilities to its Kindle e-reader device, in part to compete with Apple’s iPad.

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Many innovators lament that the time-honored VC model does not work for what they call “cleantech” or “greentech.” They raise as proof the capital intensivity and long timeframes for energy start-ups.

I say they have it backwards. Energy will get solved when the energy ecology changes to fit the VC model, not vice versa.

Take for a trivial example the names “cleantech” and “greentech,” both wrong.

Cleantech? Wrong. Energy solutions cannot just be clean—they also have to be cheap.

Greentech? Wrong. Because green is the wrong color for the energy movement. Green stands for environmentalism, fine, but The Greens are also anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-trade, anti-American, all those people green-tea-partying in Copenhagen—they are against all the tools we need to solve the energy problem. Green is the new red.

So, for the energy movement’s color, I urge we adopt blue. Long-term, energy solutions are very likely to come from the oceans, which cover 71 percent of Earth’s surface, and from the sky. Of course the color most associated with the oceans and skies is blue. Blue is the new green.

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Portland, OR-based Solar Nation, a developer of solar energy technologies for government agencies, businesses, and nonprofits, has raised $2 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing. The financing appears to be part of a $5 million commitment from Luxembourg-based Lynx Industries to help expand Solar Nation’s North American operations, as the company announced yesterday. The strategic partnership means Lynx Industries will also provide a $3 million credit facility, and will become Solar Nation’s preferred supplier. Solar Nation was founded in 2008 and is led by founders Paul Anthony Hodge, Paul Hodge, Jr., Dan Drummond, and Ryan Lambert.

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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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[Editors note: Architect Robert Noble wrote this article with Glenn Croston]

The San Diego area is the home of numerous cleantech businesses that are developing innovative green cars (Aptera, V-Vehicle Co.), developing alternative fuels (GreenHouse International, Synthetic Genomics Inc., Sapphire Energy), finding alternatives to petrochemicals (Genomatica, Verdezyne), and providing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions (KEMA, Kyocera, Envision Solar).

Assisting our growing cluster is a network of non-profits, trade groups, government agencies, universities, and investors who share a common interest in cultivating a green economy. These groups collaborate on many projects, strengthening our vision for more green businesses, jobs, and investments in cleantech innovation. But while they share common goals, local green groups are also distinct in many ways and often compete for money, members, and media; their varying perspective, focus, message, membership, and goals can be confusing. If you’re an entrepreneur, how can you find support for the green innovations you hope to commercialize? Where do investors look for opportunities and advice? Where can founders find the resources they need to move their ventures forward?

We’ve compiled a listing of these groups to help San Diego entrepreneurs and others find the resources they need to grow green, and to help San Diego’s green economy grow.

—The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) is the cornerstone in developing San Diego’s green business cluster. As a non-profit, the CCSE works to advance the adoption of renewable energy, green building design, clean transportation options, and energy efficiency by providing workshops, information, and training.

—Cleantech San Diego is a membership-based non-profit industry association that sponsors events for businesses, investors, and others working in the cleantech cluster. They summarize their mission on their website, saying, “Cleantech San Diego advocates for new sources of investment capital, workforce development, international trade, federal and state research funding, targeted regulation, and sustainable land use planning and development.”

—San Diego Clean Enterprise Program, which is administered by Cleantech San Diego through a partnership with the City of San Diego and the mayor, which provides interest-free financing for energy efficiency improvements for small businesses. Cleantech San Diego also is working with the rest of the green community to support funding and grant applications, such as the effort to win $260 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) for local solar projects.

—San Diego Gas & Electric committed to develop a distributed solar power generation system in the San Diego region in 2008. So it’s no surprise that … Next Page »

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[Corrected 7/1/09]

The atmosphere at last Wednesday’s XSITE energy breakout session was electric—clean electric, that is. The topic of the hour was the future and feasibility of wind, solar, and other alternative energy industries in New England. Rob Day, president of the Renewable Energy Business Network, moderated the panel, which included Jay Fiske (a VP at solar firm Wakonda Technologies), Daniel Goldman (EVP and CFO of GreatPoint Energy, a developer of coal gasification technology), Gerry Haines (EVP and chief legal officer at biofuel firm Verenium), and Roger Freeman (president of wind power firm Solventerra Energy).

The energy industry is staring down the barrel of heavy government involvement in its affairs. The Waxman-Markey bill, which at the time of the panel was still being debated in the House of Representatives, poses both potential opportunities and potential headaches for the clean energy industry. The new emissions regulations aimed at the largest polluters, intended to force large energy companies to develop cleaner fuels, may provide a huge boost to smaller cleantech firms. “The problem with Big Oil is, even with incentives given to work on alternative fuels, they’re not really in the tech development business, so we work with them,” said Haines.

Waxman-Markey’s detractors, however, say that the stricter federal standards for controlling carbon emissions leaves less room for companies, especially smaller ones, to adjust to local conditions. The costs that are more easily absorbed by large oil or coal interests may prove more challenging to a small cleantech company.

When asked how startup energy firms could cope with more stringent government regulation, GreatPoint Energy’s Goldman noted that utilities, for the most part, have always been regulated, and that “we have to accept that we work in a regulated industry, and that government policy plays a very significant role.” On the other hand, he said, most companies “can’t afford time to sit in Washington influencing members of Congress.” He advised that smaller cleantech companies not try to lobby for policy changes on their own, but to piggyback onto the efforts of larger companies. “Figure out how your company’s interests align with, say, GE, and leverage off their focus.”

When asked to comment on the difficulties that energy startups face in acquiring venture funding, Solventerra’s Freeman, the former managing director of the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation, said that the lack of potential for a big—or bigger than expected—payoff was the problem. “Energy is a tangible business. You put x amount in and get x amount of energy out. You can measure the risk pretty successfully, so it doesn’t attract as much venture investment.”

“It’s not Web 2.0,” said Day.  “You have to actually make something.”

Fiske noted that in the current economic climate, investors might be cautious, but alternative sources of funding for cleantech have never been more abundant.  Cleantech can always look to “SBIR grants, competition winnings, and of course, the three Fs—friends, family, and fools.” [Editor's note: this quote was originally misattributed to Daniel Goldman. We regret the error.]

Day asked the panel to describe some of the barriers in New England to the success of cleantech. Freeman said that Boston’s deeply engrained parochialism means navigating a maze of regulation for even the simplest matters. Major additions and infrastructure changes can only be that much more of a headache. “It took my friend two years to get a permit to build a deck. How long do you think it takes to get one for a wind turbine?”

“The good thing is, we have a forward-thinking administration here in Massachusetts,” said Goldman. The Patrick administration, he says, is a staunch supporter of cleantech innovation.

Wakonda’s Fiske said that Massachusetts could be doing more to capitalize on its intellectual resources, and that universities in particular could better support spin–offs and the commercialization of their research. The panelists all concurred that the concentration of both high-level research institutions and scientists was New England’s greatest advantage.

“Intellectual capital,” said Haines, “is our best resource.”

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Steve Ihnen knows to the minute when the clouds will arrive. From the Redmond, WA, office of his company, SolarCasters, he keeps an eye on weather conditions around the world with satellite data. Then, using complex mathematical modeling software, he collates cloud-cover, humidity, and other factors to calculate how much sunlight will reach the ground in a given spot in the next day, hour, or even minute.

SolarCasters is a “weatherman for the solar power industry,” among other roles, says Ihnen, the chief technology officer and only full-time employee of SolarCasters. Besides forecasting when the sun will come out, the company provides information and consulting to solar power companies about where best to build their plants, what kind of solar panels they should use, and how much electricity they can expect to produce. Based on criteria like how much the sun shines in a given area and what the relevant weather is like there, Ihnen can recommend the best options in placement and design to his clients.

Knowing how much solar energy is available minute-to-minute is vitally important because unlike nuclear, coal, or other types of power generators, solar power cannot be as easily controlled and managed. “The supply of electricity must precisely meet demand at every instant,” Ihnen said. Generally, large-scale power suppliers, whether public or private utilities or independent system operators like the California ISO (a power grid operator), share and move power about, buying and selling electricity as needed to keep supply and demand levels equalized. Solar power plants thus need to know in advance how much power they will generate in order to replace or buy power from another power plant as necessary. Ideally, Ihnen said, power systems together “operate almost as if they were one organism.”

Although not heavily used in America yet, solar power is a rapidly growing industry in places like Europe and Australia. SolarCaster’s clients are located all over the world, but non-disclosure agreements prevent Ihnen from revealing who his clients are, or even how many he has, since he began taking on clients last fall.

Ihnen founded the company in January 2008 after spending two years developing … Next Page »

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[Updated with comments from Kelly Jo MacArthur on page 2]
In recent years, we have seen an explosion of alternative energy devices, yet most of these technologies remain out of the reach of the average homeowner. To outfit your roof with solar panels, you’d probably be out $10,000 to $20,000 as an initial investment. Clarian Technologies, a brand new, three-employee Seattle startup, wants to change all that. With its products slated to hit the market in 2010, the company aims to bring affordable wind and solar energy devices to the masses. I spoke with Clarian founder Chad Maglaque to find out more.

The two products that he hopes are coming to stores near you soon are the Jellyfish (wind turbine) and Sunfish (solar panels). Maglaque’s vision is that an ecologically-minded but not necessarily wealthy homeowner could pick up one of these at Home Depot, Best Buy, or Costco, set it up on their roof or in the garden, plug it into a regular power outlet, and start generating electricity—without having to bring in a contractor, electrician, or inspector.

The cost? The starting price for the Jellyfish is $399, and the Sunfish is $899. Clarian is already talking with Costco about stocking the devices, Maglaque said.

In currently available wind and solar technologies, a device called the inverter is a big cost hurdle, Maglaque said. That’s the part of the technology that converts DC to AC current that can be used in your home, and adds at least $3,000 to $4,000 to the price tag. “We wanted to tackle that with the view that smaller is better,” Maglaque said.

So Clarian’s products don’t actually need the inverter. This isn’t a new concept, Maglaque said. Large industrial wind turbines don’t use inverters either.

When Maglaque explains how few obstacles there are to a plug-and-go wind or solar energy generator, it seems like there’s a huge hole in the alternative energy market. The existing plugs in your house are coded to take an appliance up to 1,500 watts. But a 1,500 watt solar panel array would normally cost $15,000 to $20,000, Maglaque said. “There are not many people who can afford to do that,” he said. “That’s where there is this disconnect in the market.”

Enter the Jellyfish, which is three feet tall and can be mounted on a roof … Next Page »

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It was a relatively light week for deals in the Northwest, perhaps owing to the holiday weekend. But there was still action in biotech, marketing software, and alternative energy.

—Kennewick, WA-based Infinia raised $14.1 million in debt financing out of a $50 million offering. The company, which is backed by Vulcan Capital, Khosla Ventures, and other investors, develops solar power generation technology that uses free-piston Stirling engines and power systems.

—Luke reported on the story behind Vulcan Capital’s investment in BiPar Sciences, the Brisbane, CA-based cancer biotech firm that was recently sold to Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis for $500 million. Vulcan led the seed financing round for BiPar back in 2005, and pumped $13 million in capital into it through its lifetime. The sale will earn Vulcan more than $100 million in cash, which managing director Steve Hall says has helped put the firm in the top 10 percent of all U.S. venture funds over the past five years. BiPar’s drug, BSI-201, could be a fundamental advance against breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and other tumors.

—Bellevue, WA-based Visible Technologies, a startup that makes software for online brand reputation management and customer service, raised $6 million in debt financing. Visible Technologies was founded in 2003, and is backed by Bellevue-based Ignition Partners and New York-based WPP.

—Seattle-based Survey Analytics, a marketing and customer relations software startup, scored a partnership with the White House to power the Open Government Dialogue website, which seeks to solicit ideas from the public on how the government can be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Financial terms of the deal were not given. Survey Analytics, which has been bootstrapped since 2004, has developed a software platform for hosting and managing feedback communities called IdeaScale.

—Luke reported that Seattle-based Uptake Medical, which is developing minimally invasive technology to treat emphysema, raised $3.1 million in a debt financing. Uptake makes a device that seals off access to diseased parts of the lung where air gets trapped. The technique does not leave an implantable device behind. The latest funding adds to the $3 million bridge financing the company raised for its clinical trials in December.

—HealthUnity, a Bellevue, WA-based maker of software for connecting healthcare IT systems, raised $2 million out of a $4 million equity financing, Luke reported. The company was founded in 2004 and is led by CEO Prem Urali, a former group manager in the BizTalk Server division at Microsoft.

—Luke also reported that Oncothyreon, a Seattle-based developer of cancer drugs, received commitments from several investors to buy new shares and warrants for $11.1 million. The deal was underwritten by Boenning & Scattergood. Oncothyreon (NASDAQ: ONTY) has been diversifying its pipeline, and has gotten renewed interest from investors in its cancer immunotherapy program, since Seattle-based Dendreon has had recent success in that field.

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Kennewick, WA-based Infinia, a maker of solar power generation technology which uses free-piston Stirling engines, has raised $14.1 million in debt financing, according to a regulatory filing. The financing looks to be part of a $50 million offering. Infinia is backed by Vulcan Capital, Khosla Ventures, and others.

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