Both the Financial Times and The Economist had stories this week. Raser Technologies and Merrill Lynch just signed a financing deal. As the herd goes thundering off...
(just so it doesn't end like a BBC nature program:
"Sadly now, there can be but one outcome")
I'll go to the watering hole, er, link-vault, and see what we've got in the bookmarks.
From IBD via CNN Money:
Solar companies have drawn the biggest piece of the rising sums of venture capital going into cleantech startups, but that could be changing.
People in the venture field say VCs likely will fund more nonsolar cleantech companies as they grow more savvy about green industries. Observers expect more funding for companies that deal with energy-efficient buildings, alternative fuels, green cars, managing power on the electrical grid and more.
"I think you're going to see more diversity going on with the cleantech sector," said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association.
Cleantech helped fuel the VC industry in 2007. Heesen expects final figures to show cleantech funding totaled a record $3 billion or so last year. That's up 70% from 2006, whereas total VC funding rose just 9.4%, according to figures from the NVCA and Thomson Financial. As recently as 2003, cleantech investment totaled less than $250 million.
Cleantech made up about 10% of overall VC investments in 2007, Heesen says.
He sees the sector getting large enough to qualify as a "leg" of the VC stool in 2008, joining the other leg, or main, areas of funding: information technology, biotech and medtech....MORE
