Clean Sweep 75

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment.

Deals
Aberdeen-based marine contractor Subocean Group has raised £17m from LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, plus £25m debt from HSBC.
Founded in 2005, Subocean provides a range of services to offshore operators based on skills and technology developed for the oil and gas sector. The firm is increasingly targeting offshore wind and marine energy operators for power cable installation, and expects to double turnover in the next two years.

Solar concentrator developer Whitfield Solar has raised a £2.7m round co-led by Carbon Trust Investments and private investors. Existing investors Cascade Fund and Kilsby also joined the round.
A spin-out from the University of Reading, Whitfield produces PV modules which use Fresnel lenses to concentrate light, and two-axis tracking systems.

Carbon Trust Investments has also backed waste treatment group New Earth Solutions with an additional £4m, as part of an ongoing fundraising targeted at £15m. New Earth last raised £5m in September from Ludgate Environmental Fund.

Anglo-French carbon management start-up Carbon Hub has raised a Euro1m first round from Seventure Partners and angel investors. The firm provides software and supporting services to help organisations monitor and manage emissions.

German fuel cell start-up eZelleron raised Euro2.4m from investors led by eCAPITAL and Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen.
The Dresden-based firm is commercialising high-density gas-fuelled cells for mobile phones and other portable devices.

In the US, wind turbine blade manufacturer TPI Composites raised $26m from Element Partners and existing investors including Landmark Growth Capital Partners, NGP Energy Technology Partners, Angeleno Group and GE Capital. The Arizona firm produces lightweight blades using a composites vacuum infusion technology.

GE also invested in windpower tech company Danotek Motion Technologies, via its GE Energy Financial Services division which investing a $13.2m round alongside CMEA Capital, Khosla Ventures and Energy Capital
Management. Michigan-based Danotek produces permanent magnet generators for wind turbines, as well as a range of power systems for electric and hybrid vehicles.

Smart grid leader Silver Spring Networks raised a $100m institutional round including existing investors Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Northgate Capital.

Solar installation manager Tioga Energy closed a $20m second round. Investors include MEMC Electronic Materials, NGEN Partners, Nth Power and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The California firm provides PV systems and power purchase agreements for commercial and public sector clients.


Fund news
London-based Earth Capital Partners has announced a first close on its EON Climate & Renewables fund. The fund, which has a target of Euro750m, will focus on solar, biogas and biomass projects in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Final close is expected by end of 2010.

Anglo-US specialists Hudson Clean Energy Partners closed its debut fund at just over $1bn. Hudson focuses on capital-intensive areas in renewable power, alternative fuels, energy storage and demand-side energy management.


Further reading
Round-up of low carbon initiatives in the UK pre-budget review.

Interesting piece from Greentech Media on problems at prolific but secretive cleantech investor Quercus Trust.
Also, number-crunching the Solyndra IPO.


Finally, congratulations to the team at New Energy Finance on their acquisition by Bloomberg.

And Merry Christmas to all Clean Ventures readers, and best wishes for a cheery, clean and lucrative 2010!

Hermes to head cleantech UKIIF

Hermes Private Equity is managing a new £125m cleantech fund-of-funds anchored by UK government money.

The fund is one of two in the UK Innovation Investment Fund (UKIIF) scheme. The brainchild of science minister and erstwhile tech entrepreneur Paul Drayson, UKIIF aims to attract more institutional money into early-stage venture capital for UK tech companies. The business ministry BIS has put up £150m to anchor the fund, and has attracted a further £175m in its first close.

Hermes will be backing VC funds investing in the low-carbon and cleantech sectors, from seed to early stage. It has an initial £125m fund, including £50m from government.

The European Investment Fund will meanwhile manage an initial £200m fund, including £100m of government money, to invest across the ICT, life sciences and advanced manufacturing sectors. Both appointments are subject to contract.

Investors and tech transfer professionals in the tech start-up and spin-out space have welcomed the scheme, first announced in June. Rather than making direct investments (a strategy of limited effectiveness, which can potentially crowd out commercial VCs), the UKIIF is using public money to try and catalyse private sector investment.

In his pre-budget report, chancellor Alistair Darling also announced a string of initiatives to support domestic energy efficiency and electric vehicles. The BBC news has outline details.

Clean Sweep 74

A round-up of recent news in clean technology and cleantech investment.

Deals
After some 20 months of wrangling, UK renewables group Novera has been taken over by Infinis, a buy-and-build renewables vehicle backed by private equity group Terra Firma.
Infinis paid 77p per share for a final batch of shares to take a 50.15% stake in Novera, and is making a recommended offer at the same price for all outstanding shares. The bid represents a 60% premium on the market price for 6 October. The first takeover bid for the company was launched by 3i Infrastructure in February 2008, at a proposed 90p per share. The deal shows both the continued appetite from later-stage private equity players for renewables, and a slump in valuations.
Novera currently operates 58 sites with total 143MW capacity, mostly landfill gas, and has a substantial expansion of wind operations in the pipeline.

Norwegian solar module developer Innotech Solar has raised NKr52m (Euro6.1m) from state-backed VC Investinor. New employees invested a further NKr 2.3m.
Narvik-based Innotech acquires and upgrades sub-standard PV modules from other developers, and is also involved with power plant development.

German PV developer Heliatek closed a $27m second round led by Wellington Partners. The syndicated round also included corporate investors Bosch, RWE Innogy Ventures and BASF Venture Capital, as well as the High-Tech-Gründerfonds, eCAPITAL, the Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen and GP Bullhound Sidecar.
The funding will support a first production facility in Dresden for Heliatek's thin-film solar cells, which use organic dyes. The company was spun out of Technical University of Dresden and University of Ulm in 2006.

Sweden's Solarus has secured SKr2m (Euro192,000) from angel network
Sting Capital. Solarus is developing a range of concentrating solar collectors, including a hybrid solar thermal and PV panel which can provide both electricity and heat.

Spanish PV developer Siliken has secured backing from Italian investor Cape Live via its Helio Capital operation. The agreement will include construction of six new solar farms, including 5MW peak capacity in Puglia and 1MW in Sicily.

Hydrogen storage developer C.En has raised an undisclosed equity round with Italian insurance house Generali Group.
Zurich-based C.En is developing a relatively lightweight capillary-based storage system that could allow mass adoption of hydrogen-fuelled road transport.

French biomass producer Alpin Pellet, a spin-out from wood products group Savoie Pan, has raised Euro2.5m growth funding from Italian investor Ambienta. Ambienta takes a 51% stake in the business, and plans expansion through new production facilities and acquisitions.

US waste-heat recovery group Electratherm raised $5.4m from undisclosed investors.
The Nevada-based firm is developing systems to generate electricity from industrial waste heat, using a closed-loop organic Rankine cycle, and recently completed its first field tests.

US-Irish energy management tech group Powervation raised undisclosed extra funding from specialist investor Braemar Energy Ventures. The firm, which produces chips which can reduce energy use in IT hardware by up to 30%, previously raised $10m from investors including SEP and Intel Capital in July.


Fund news
Very active cleantech VC Foresight Group has launched its latest fund, the Foresight Environmental Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) Fund 2, with a £20m target. Under the government-backed EIS scheme, the fund is open to individuals with at least £10,000 to invest. The fund will focus on growth and buyout opportunities in unquoted UK environmental companies.

Swiss investor Mountain Cleantech is preparing to launch a second, later-stage fund with a Euro100m target. See Environmental Finance for more.

New sustainability-focused investor Earth Capital Partners is partnering with German utility group E.On to market a Euro750m infrastructure fund. The investor, backed by former Man Group supremo Stanley Fink, also told Environmental Finance it's still on course to raise $5bn for a string of funds.


Further reading
Pre-Copenhagen fretting and wobbling is threatening cleantech investment, says UN environment chief Achin Steiner, reported in the Guardian. Carbon Finance reports on similar concerns in the emissions-trading markets.
The Copenhagen Diagnosis meanwhile presents a synthesis of climate change research published since the last IPCC report. It's not a terribly cheering read.

Also, according to the Guardian again, UK plans for a feed-in tariff are looking shaky, with final proposals now unlikely to emerge before the new year.

From the IEA, an interesting report (pdf, 2.6mb) on how transmission grids can cope with variability of significant wind generation. Most of the common complaints about intermittency and cost can be overcome, they reckon.