Boston, MA-based First Wind said today that Harvard University has contracted to purchase half of the power generated by its Stetson II wind project in Maine. First Wind is expected to break ground on the project, an extension of its existing wind farm in Stetson Hill near Danforth, ME, this month. The 15-year contract could supply Harvard’s Cambridge and Allston campuses, which consume nearly 250 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, with up to 10 percent of their power needs, the company said, making it the biggest wind-power consumer of any New England university or college.

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The Department of Energy this morning announced that FloDesign Wind Turbine of Wilbraham, MA, and five other Massachusetts startups and laboratories are among the 37 companies and organizations awarded research and development grants under the department’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program. FloDesign has tentatively been awarded $8,325,400 to advance its research on radical new designs for electricity-generating wind turbines.

The other local winners include 1366 Technologies of Lexington, MA, Agrivida of Medford, MA, FastCAP Systems of Cambridge, MA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sun Catalytix, also of Cambridge. Massachusetts organizations won $33.3 million in all, or 22 percent of the overall funds awarded, making the Bay State the largest recipient by far of the ARPA-E funds. United Technologies Research Center of East Hartfort, CT, was awarded $2.25 million, bringing the New England total to nearly $36 million.

“I think the fact that Massachusetts organizations received over 22 percent of the money allocated by the DOE is clear testament to how fast the region’s cleantech cluster has grown, and to how much of an economic impact it will provide in the future,” says Nick d’Arbeloff, president of the New England Clean Energy Council, a Cambridge, MA-based non-profit working to boost the region’s cleantech economy. “Companies like FloDesign, 1366, Agrivida and Sun Catalytix represent the future of high technology in the Commonwealth.”

[Update 10/27/09: Massachusetts also has a plausible claim as the home to the top grant winner in the competition, Foro Energy, which will receive just over $9.1 million. As Xconomy reported last night, the Littleton, CO-based startup, which is developing a new drilling technology for tapping geothermal energy deep in the Earth, was originally launched in the Boston area and is funded by Waltham, MA-based North Bridge Venture Partners.]

FloDesign CEO Stanley Kowalski says his company learned about its award this morning in an e-mailed letter from the Energy Department.

“It will accelerate to market what is inherently a risky endeavor,” Kowalski says. “Or at least, it’s been risky in the past because of the many false starts by others. This will allow us to put the proper money into research and development, which is the most capital-intensive phase, and will hopefully help us to get out to market with a reliable turbine.”

FloDesign is building and testing wind turbines with an unusual tube-like design reminiscent of a jet engine. The company says this design allows it to capture more of the energy in wind than a conventional free-bladed wind turbine can. Though the startup has tried to remain stealthy, it has been in the spotlight almost since its beginning—it won a $200,000 grand prize in the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition in May 2008, and later scored an investment from prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

FloDesign shared a copy of its notification letter from the Energy Department, which said the company’s application was “among those of the very highest scientific and technical merit, and is part of an ARPA-E portfolio of high impact projects that have great potential to revolutionize the U.S. energy sector.” A total of $151 million was handed out to the 37 organizations on today’s list, who are all finalists in a competition launched last spring as part of a $400 million boost to Federal energy spending contained in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, colloquially known as the stimulus bill.

The $8.3 million awarded to FloDesign is the third-largest amount awarded today, after Foro Energy’s $9.1 million and an award to Dupont of Wilmington, DE, of $9 million.

The ARPA-E grant will make a big difference to FloDesign, Kowalski says. “It’s a sizeable investment, and I think it’s indicative of where we are and the capabilities of the team we’ve got on board,” he says. “We continue to recruit world class talent and we certainly have a radically different turbine that nobody has ever attempted to commercialize in the past. The support from ARPA-E will allow us to fund that appropriately for the R&D effort that’s approaching.”

1366 Technologies was awarded $4 million in the competition. Agrivida will get $4.6 million, FastCAP Systems will get $5.3 million, MIT will get $6.9 million, and Sun Catalytix will get $4.1 million. The full list of awardees is here; the Department of Energy said it selected the 37 winners from an initial pool of more than 3,600 concepts, from which the department requested 300 full applications. The exact amount of each award will be determined in final negotiations between the department and the winning organizations.

The 37 ARPA-E winners hail from 17 states. The department said that 43 precent are small businesses, 35 percent are educational institutions, and 19 percent are large corporations.

In a statement on the awards, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said, “After World War II, America was the unrivaled leader in basic and applied sciences. It was this leadership that led to enormous technological advances. ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution.”

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[Corrected 3:35 p.m 10/23/09] Wind Power Holdings, the parent company of Barre, VT-based wind turbine developer Northern Power Systems, intends to raise $45 million in a new private equity offering, according to regulatory documents filed October 21. [A previous version of this news brief stated that the company had already raised the funds; in fact the regulatory filing merely states its intention to do so.] We profiled Northern Power Systems, which raised more than $50 million last year from Boston-based venture firm RockPort Capital Partners and New York investment bank Allen & Company, in June.

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You know how Hollywood always goes overboard with gizmos and hijinks when it’s trying to represent young people doing science? (I’m thinking especially of 1980s movies like WarGames, Real Genius, and Weird Science.) Well, the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA, looked exactly like that last Friday as the annual “MIT Energy Night” event showcased dozens of energy-related research projects and entrepreneurial ventures, from photon-trapping dyes for solar concentrators to a Matrix-like project for extracting electrical energy from human body heat.

Organized by the MIT Energy Club and sponsored in part by local venture firms General Catalyst Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and RockPort Capital Partners, the packed-to-capacity event was a celebration of the amazing variety of energy-related labs, projects, initiatives, clubs, and prizes at MIT. I wandered in around 6:00 p.m., got my green drink-ticket wristband, and spent the next couple of hours checking out the demos on solar, wind, and geothermal energy; building technology; electric vehicles; nuclear power; and even the out-of-favor but far-from-outmoded coal, oil, and gas industries.

Student-led poster presentations were the main dish at the event, but I was even more interested in the local energy companies who sent employee-ambassadors to the event. A quick rundown:

A123Systems—This Watertown MIT spinoff (NASDAQ: AONE), which makes advanced lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles, power tools, and the like, has garnered plenty of news lately for its wildly successful IPO. Like most of the other companies present, it seemed to have recruited its youngest employees to run its table—most of them looked like undergrads.

DyPol—I first ran into this membrane technology startup, a spinoff of Paula Hammond’s chemical engineering lab at MIT, at a venture-sponsored university research symposium last April. They’re working on a green, layer-by-layer method for building polymer membranes that, the company hopes, will be used in the next generation of methanol fuel cells to make the devices more efficient. But Juliet Duffy, an MIT Sloan MBA student who’s working for the company, told me that in order to generate revenue while methanol fuel cell technology matures, DyPol is also investigating nearer-term applications for its membranes, such as water filtration. Duffy says the company is seeking a seed investment so that it can rent and equip local lab space.

EnerNOC-–This Boston-based public company (NASDAQ: ENOC) has pioneered the area of “demand response”—Internet-mediated management of electrical demand, which helps utilities forestall construction of new energy generation plants to meet peak demand. It isn’t an MIT spinoff, and oddly enough, there isn’t a single MIT degree among its senior management team. But it’s involved in MIT’s energy entrepreneurship culture as a sponsor of the 2009 MIT Clean Energy Prize competition.

FloDesign Wind Turbine—Based in Wilbraham, MA, FloDesign won the $200,000 MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize in 2008 and continues to test prototypes of its new jet-engine-like designs for wind turbines that sidestep the “Betz Limit.” (That’s the physical law that prevents open-fan wind turbines from extracting more than about 59 percent of the available energy from wind.) A staffer told me the turbine designs portrayed on the company’s posters, videos, and web materials are actually quite outdated, and that it isn’t showing off its latest designs in deference to …Next Page »

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Portland, OR-based research and publishing firm Clean Edge released a report today on job trends in the cleantech and energy industry. The highlights include a survey of salaries across a range of cleantech positions worldwide, performed in partnership with Seattle-based PayScale, the salary comparison firm. For example, the survey tracked median salaries for solar energy installers ($40,000), entry-level wind turbine technicians ($52,600), mid-level LEED-certified green architects ($58,700), and smart-grid hardware design engineers ($87,700). The survey also found that business analysts in green industries earned $61,500—13 percent more than non-green analysts—and senior accountants in green industries earned $67,300, or 16 percent more than their non-green counterparts.

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Seattle-based 3Tier Group, the company that raised $10 million in venture capital last December to help developers find ideal locations for renewable energy facilities, had a staff layoff today, according to a company spokesman.

Xconomy received a tip today that 19 employees were let go. The company had 85 people on the payroll the last time we counted in December, meaning today’s layoff would represent a 22 percent staff cut from that position. Todd Stone, a spokesman for 3Tier, confirmed the company laid off employees today but wouldn’t say how many.

“While this does reflect some temporary uncertainty in the renewable energy market, the reduction also aligns our headcount with the strategic transition that we’ve been making over the last 12 months toward a more scalable and efficient information services business model,” Stone said in an e-mail.

The 10-year-old 3Tier, which I profiled back in November, is based at the Westin Building in downtown Seattle. At the time I wrote that story, about one-third of its employees had expertise in atmospheric science, one-third were software programmers, and the rest were in business, said CEO Kenneth Westrick. The company uses supercomputers to forecast the ebbs and flows of wind, solar, and hydropower at different times of day and in different seasons, for example. This is supposed to give investors more confidence in the reliability of the source of renewable power, over decades, that is needed before they will plunk down hundreds of millions of dollars for a new facility, Westrick said at the time.

3Tier’s $10 million venture investment round last December was led by Good Energies.

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First Wind, the Newton, MA-based developer and operator of wind farms, nabbed $40.4 million in federal financing for a planned installation at Stetson Ridge in Maine, Mass High Tech reports. The project is one of 12 to receive a combined $500 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Wade wrote about the challenges First Wind and other cleantech developers face last year, when the company was known as UPC Wind.

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Newton, MA-based wind farm developer and operator First Wind said today that it has lined up two major loans totaling $191 million. The first is an 8.5-year, $115 million term loan from Canada’s Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMco), and the second is a 1-year, $76 million loan from Hamburg, Germany-based HSH Nordbank. The HSH Nordbank loan will go toward expansion of First Wind’s Stetson Mountain wind project in Maine (profiled here in January 2008).

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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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Noble Environmental Power, an Essex, CT-based wind energy company, has withdrawn its planned for an IPO. The offering, initially filed in May 2008, was to include some 23.4 million shares worth up to $375 million. In its filing today, Noble said withdrawing the offering “is consistent with the public interest and protection of investors.” The company operates six wind farms in New York state, one in Texas, and has 8 more under development in New York, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

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Soon, you really won’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing in Massachusetts (or one part of the state, anyway)—all you’ll have to do is look for the spinning turbines in Nantucket Sound. Last week, the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board voted unanimously to grant Cape Wind Associates all necessary state and local permits to begin construction on a wind farm to be located on Cape Cod’s Horseshoe Shoal, a little more than five miles from Hyannis. Yesterday, the state’s Undersecretary for Energy, Ann Berwick, signed off on the certificate. The project can begin construction once it receives approval from the U.S. Minerals Management Service. Governor Deval Patrick issued a statement of support for the venture: “The time has come to see the first offshore wind farm in America rise off the Massachusetts coast, a powerful symbol of our commitment to a clean energy future.”

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The Boston Globe is reporting today that Massachusetts is in line for $25 million in funding for a wind turbine testing facility to be located on the Mystic River in Charlestown. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was expected to announce the funding, which is part of the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus package, during a visit to the site this morning. The creation of the facility, where very long wind turbine blades (up to 300 feet in length) will be tested under various hydraulic stresses, is expected to crate 250 short-term construction jobs and 10 long-term positions.

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Boston- and San Francisco-based Sverica International, a private equity fund that invests in service-oriented businesses and light manufacturing companies, said today it surpassed its $250 million target for its third fund, closing the fund at $265 million last November. The company said its current areas of investment interest include wind energy, enterprise software, and healthcare services.

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Royal Bank of Scotland is leading a group of investors providing $376 million in financing for Boston-based First Wind’s project to build a 97-turbine wind farm in Milford, UT, the company announced today. The other lenders include Banco Espirito Santo, Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, CoBank, HSH Nordbank, KeyBank, Société Générale and Credit Suisse. Separately, First Wind said today that Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has approved its proposed 40-turbine Rollins Wind project in Penobscot County, Maine.

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First Wind of Newton, MA, said today that it has filed a permit application with Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection to build a 34-turbine wind farm in Aroostook County in the state’s northern tip. The 1.5-megawatt turbines, which would be placed near the town of Oakfield, would generate power for up to 20,000 homes, according to the company. First Wind, which we profiled in January 2008, already operates the 57-megawatt Stetson wind project and the 42-megawatt Mars Hill project, both in Maine.

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Cancer drugs are one of the core strengths of Seattle’s life sciences hub, and this week we found a couple of intriguing stories about startups that haven’t been covered anywhere else in depth.

—Seattle-based CG Therapeutics is moving toward clinical trials with an immune-boosting therapy designed to knock down a protein that cloaks tumor cells from immune system attacks. We profiled the company’s efforts to retool its strategy under new CEO Denise Harrison, and a couple of directors with experience at Seattle’s best-known immunotherapy company, Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN).

—Calistoga Pharmaceuticals, the Seattle-based developer of drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases, hired former Icos dealmaker Cliff Stocks as its chief business officer, which reunites him with a couple of former colleagues from that company, Michael Gallatin and Albert Yu. Calistoga CEO Carol Gallagher also provided a lot more detail on how this year is shaping up at the company.

—President Obama has reignited some longstanding interest in converting the U.S. healthcare system to electronic medical records, and Microsoft hopes this will provides some new momentum for its HealthVault platform. I learned more details about how this program is supposed to work from David Cerino, the general manager of Microsoft’s health solutions group.

—We’ve been dissecting the cleantech industry here at Xconomy as we prep for our event in Seattle on March 26, but here’s a cleantech story with crossover appeal to techies and biotechies. The top three clean energy sectors ranked by revenue last year were wind ($51.4 billion), biofuels ($34.8 billion), and solar ($29.6 billion.) To read more from the report by Portland, OR-based consulting firm Clean Edge, click here. (By the way, the deadline for discounted early-bird registration to the Xconomy Forum is fast approaching.)

—OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, the Bothell, WA-based developer of cancer drugs, said yesterday it has enough cash left in the bank to run through February 2010. It released provocative clinical trial results in December for an experimental prostate cancer drug, which it hopes will generate enough interest from investors or partners to keep the company alive much longer than that.

—Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics disclosed it is eliminating 34 jobs through the sale of its lymphoma drug, Zevalin, to Spectrum Pharmaceuticals. This represents a 28 percent cut to its workforce, leaving it with 88 employees. We added this to the updated list of layoffs at Seattle-area technology and life sciences companies.

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“If you’re a technology junkie, cleantech is the candy store for you,” said Byron McCann, co-founder and managing partner of Seattle-based Ascent Partners, an investment bank that advises cleantech and software entrepreneurs. McCann, who also serves on the board of the Northwest Energy Angels, was talking about his own transition from software to energy, and about his fascination with the complexities of cleantech. “Three years ago, I was doing some research, and the whole cleantech industry was starting to take off,” he said. “Now it’s on fire.”

McCann moderated a breakfast panel yesterday entitled “Harnessing IT for Energy.” Organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), the goal of the Seattle event was to stimulate discussion about the strengths of Washington state in software and energy distribution, and how they can be used to further innovation in cleantech. “We felt there was a huge opportunity for our state to become a leader in the convergence of IT and energy,” said Ken Myer, the chief executive of WTIA, in his opening remarks.

There are certainly some serious opportunities to consider. McCann noted that the state’s allocation of federal stimulus funding for energy transmission is projected to come to $574 million for energy efficiency, with another $1.5 billion going to smart-grid technologies (figures quoted from Climate Solutions, a Northwest nonprofit). He also pointed to financial industry surveys (as recent as November) that indicate cleantech and life sciences have the “highest potential for stability and growth.”

“The big issue for me is, this whole opportunity is not lost on the rest of the world,” McCann said. “If we win here, the stakes are huge. They’re bigger than information technology. The energy industry is the biggest on the planet.”

With that, he turned the discussion over to a distinguished panel, made up of Randy Berry, managing director at Areva T&D, a French smart-grid firm with operations in Redmond, WA; Jim Kensok, vice president and chief information officer of Spokane, WA-based utility company Avista; Marc Cummings, director of public affairs at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA; and Michael Butler, chairman and CEO of Cascadia Capital in Seattle. They hit on some key progress being made in energy efficiency and smart grid systems, as well as what Washington still needs to do to create a cleantech hub—all from the complementary viewpoints of technologists, utilities, policy, and finance.

Here are a few key takeaways from each panelist:

Randy Berry of Areva T&D, a computer scientist by training, clarified that a “smarter” grid means more efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly energy transmission and management. The problem is no longer just getting electricity from A to B. “Flows are all changing—it’s any direction on the grid,” he said, in part because of the addition of renewable sources like wind and solar. “It requires a lot of technology.” Berry said he has challenged his team to be able to display in a control center, …Next Page »

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Last week, we published a series of three stories documenting the companies and organizations in the Pacific Northwest that are focused on alternative energy and cleantech. We organized the lists by geography, breaking out separate lists for companies in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Now we can take a step back, analyze the trends in each region, and—although the lists aren’t comprehensive—compare them to one another in terms of their strengths and weaknesses.

But first, some big-picture trends from the whole Northwest. We catalogued 160 organizations in total—27 of them working on alternative fuels (17 percent), 18 on solar power (11 percent), 16 on wind power (10 percent), and 19 on other alternative energy sources like geothermal, nuclear, and hydro (12 percent). Thirteen companies specialize in transportation technologies like hybrid vehicles and engines (8 percent), while nine are focused on fuel cells (6 percent). We counted 15 organizations focused on smart-grid technologies and electricity management (9 percent). And in total, 20 of the companies (13 percent) have a strong software component to their products, while seven are focused on energy storage or new materials (4 percent).

“We haven’t quite seen anything like what’s happening in the energy space,” says Rick LeFaivre, managing director at OVP Venture Partners in Kirkland, WA, which has invested in several alternative energy companies on the West Coast. “There’s a huge drive for cleantech. We’ve hit an inflection point.”

Washington is the clear leader in software and alternative fuels, with about one-fifth of its 83 organizations focused on each of these areas. Its leaders in energy software include Optimum Energy, Powerit, and Verdiem, while a new generation of biofuels technology is emerging, led by the likes of Arzeda, Bionavitas, and Boeing. The state is also strong in smart grid and electricity management, with 11 companies in this emerging arena, including Itron and Areva T&D. For its cluster size and level of activity, however, Washington does not have many venture firms or angel networks with a focus on cleantech (we counted just three—Arch Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners, and Northwest Energy Angels).

Oregon is strong in solar, wind, and biofuels, with about one-fifth of its 36 cleantech organizations focused on each of these. SolarWorld and SpectraWatt are leaders in solar, …Next Page »

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(Updated) British Columbia is bigger in land area than Washington, Oregon, and California combined, but has about one-tenth the total population. Yet pound-for-pound, our neighbor to the north appears to have its share of entrepreneurs thinking hard about energy alternatives that can be profitable while also better protecting the natural environment.

We’ve been on a cleantech kick here at Xconomy this week, having already provided detailed lists of the major alternative energy players in Washington and Oregon. So to round out the picture of the greater Pacific Northwest region, we put together a similar tally for British Columbia.

For those who missed our earlier installments, here’s the basic methodology. We sought to define the cleantech cluster broadly, including innovative developers of biofuels, solar power, wind, and energy storage, as well as smart-grid applications for conservation and efficiency. We left out other environmentally-themed businesses like green builders, architects, consultants, makers of biodegradable plastics, or people who install or sell things like solar panels.

We have identified 41 companies at last count in British Columbia (thanks to four new companies readers told us about), bringing the grand total of cleantech organizations in Washington, Oregon, and BC to 159. If you know of any companies or projects we’ve overlooked, please send us a note at editors@xconomy.com. And stay tuned for some trends and analysis from these geographic clusters.

—Aeolis Wind Power (Victoria, BC). This company (pronounced A-Oh-lis) is developing large-scale wind power generation plants in western Canada.

—Altek Power (Kelowna, BC). This company aims to convert manure from farm animals and food waste into biogas for electricity.

—Alterna Energy (Prince George, BC). This company converts leftover wood, and other biomass waste into biocarbon for renewable fuel. It was one of 16 cleantech companies in Canada that received funding from the Canadian government this week. (Editor’s Note: This entry was added March 6)

—Angstrom Power (North Vancouver, BC). This company has developed what it calls “Micro Hydrogen” technology for handheld electronic devices. It combines a fuel cell with energy storage and microfluidic components.

—Azure Dynamics (Vancouver, BC). This company makes hybrid electric shuttle buses and other electric vehicles for commercial delivery. It says its technology has more than 25 million miles of driving experience.

—Ballard Power Systems (Burnaby, BC). This company makes hydrogen fuel cells, which can be used as backup power for the telecom industry, as alternatives to diesel generators, and other uses. It is preparing for a “very tough” year, CEO John Sheridan said yesterday on a conference call with analysts.

—Canadian Bioenergy (North Vancouver, BC). This company says it is western Canada’s leading supplier of biodiesel. It is building a 225 million liter per year (60 million gallons) canola-based biodiesel factory near Edmonton, Alberta. …Next Page »

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(Updated) Yesterday, we provided a rundown of about 80 companies we identified in Washington as players in the alternative energy industry. Today, it’s Oregon’s turn.

For those who missed the first installment, here’s the idea: We thought it would be useful for people across the Northwest (and elsewhere) to have a detailed list of who’s who in cleantech across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Given that President Obama and the U.S. Congress were elected on a pledge to break the country’s addiction to oil, lots of entrepreneurial ambition is being channeled into a new generation of clean energy ideas.

We sought to define the list broadly, including innovative developers of biofuels, solar power, wind, energy storage, as well as smart-grid applications for conservation. We left out other environmentally-themed businesses like green builders, architects, consultants, makers of biodegradable plastics, or people who install or sell things like solar panels.

We count 36 companies, big projects, or organizations involved in alternative energy in a significant way in Oregon—with particular strengths in solar and wind energy. Some of these may boom, but most will likely bust. This isn’t a comprehensive list, so if you know of any companies we’ve overlooked, or you know of companies that have come or gone, please shoot us a note at editors@xconomy.com. Enjoy!

—American Clean Coal Fuels (Portland, OR). This company uses gasification to turn biomass, municipal garbage, coal, or other carbon-based feedstocks into syngas that can be made into alternative fuels. It has a project near Oakland, IL, designed to convert 4.3 million tons a year of coal and biomass into 400 million gallons a year of synthetic diesel fuel and jet fuel.

—Brammo (Ashland, OR). This company, founded in 2002, makes plug-in electric motorcycles.

—Clean Edge (Portland, OR). This consulting firm has been analyzing the cleantech industry since 2000.

—ClearEdge Power (Hillsboro, OR). This company makes and markets what it calls CE5 home fuel cell heating systems that reduce carbon dioxide emissions for homes and small businesses.

—EcoSpeed (Portland, OR). This company makes and sells electric-assist devices for bicycles. As part of its marketing pitch to get people out of their cars, EcoSpeed’s devices offer a range of up to100 miles, with cruising speeds of 20 to 25 miles per hour, even uphill.

—Everpower Renewables (Portland, OR). This company develops wind power projects in Oregon and the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. It’s headquartered in New York.

—FirstPoint Energy (Beaverton, OR). This company uses Web-based programs to help utilities collect and manage data on energy usage, including products that allow access to daily consumption data.

—Green Lite Motors (Portland, OR). This company is developing a commuter vehicle which has the stability, safety, and comfort of a car, combined with the parking ease, express lane privileges, and fun of a motorcycle, according to this item from the Oregon Entrepreneurs’ Network blog. …Next Page »

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