Budget wishlist for renewables

Industry group RenewableUK (formely the BWEA) has released a Budget Submission to UK Treasury (pdf 1mb) outlining the government support that the renewables industry wants to see - more money in a range of targeted programmes, basically.

The headline demand is a further £200-300m over two or three years to invest in facilities and technologies for offshore wind and tidal power. Also on the wishlist are tax breaks for manufacturers; a capital grant programme; longer-term support for marine renewables of up to £120m pa plus higher banding under the Renewables Obligation; and £45m to help solve aviation-related objections to wind developments. All worthy stuff, but I'd be surprised if its gets more than a nodding acknowledgement come red box time.

The paper also puts the case for a new public institution to support construction finance for renewables and encourage more private investment. Another VC-style initiative will not be sufficient, it notes:
It has been suggested that early-stage venture capital for entrepreneurial start-ups should be the focus of a public finance institution, but we do not see this as being an issue for wind power: the deployment of wind onshore and offshore over the next decade will require something in the order of £100bn of capital, and this dwar fs into insignificance the amounts that will be needed to develop technologies and the companies that produce them. This is not to say that VC-type funding will not be helpful: firms in the marine renewable and small wind sectors may well benefit greatly; innovation funds to bring forward cost-reducing techniques for offshore wind are also needed. But these other needs are orders of magnitude less than the requirement for mass deployment.

Clean Sweep 78

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

Deals
UK tidal group Marine Current Turbines has secured an extra £4.8m funding courtesy of engineering group Siemens. The funding follows a £3.5m round led by Carbon Trust Investments in January.
The new money will help Bristol-based MCT deploy its Seagen tidal turbine tech to create the UK's first commercial tidal energy farm.

Scottish wave energy developer AWS Ocean Energy meanwhile secured £2m from Scottish Enterprise and Shell Technology Ventures Fund (a corporate venture fund managed by Kenda Capital). The investment supports the continuing development of the Inverness firm's AWS-III wave energy device. AWS aims to deploy a full-scale demonstrator plant in 2013.

German smart metering company Cuculus has closed a Euro2.6m round led by Dutch clean energy specialist Yellow&Blue Investment Management. KfW also invested alongside existing backers High-Tech Gruenderfonds and Siegmund BG.
Thuringia-based Cuculus is developing its ZONOS metering platform in partnership with a number of German utilities.

Stealthy Israeli fuel cell company CellEra has raised a further $2m from Israel Cleantech Ventures and BrainsToVentures. It raised the same amount from Cleantech Ventures in 2008.
CellEra is developing what it calls 'a disruptive low-temperature fuel cell technology', thought to be a methanol-fuelled cell based on proprietary platinum-free electrode technology, aimed at stationary applications such as back-up power.

Canadian waste-to-fuel firm Enerkem has announced a C$53.8m (£34m) round, with corporate investor Waste Management and local VC Cycle Capital joining previous investors Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital.
The Montreal firm is commercialising a proprietary thermo-chemical process to convert carbon-based waste into biofuels such as ethanol. Last year, it received a $50m grant from the US DoE towards a Mississippi plant.

A couple of interesting Californian companies securing first rounds:
One Block Off the Grid (aka 1BOG, charmingly), a Californian company that helps neighbourhoods install solar systems, has raised $5m from New Enterprise Associates. 1BOG works with local groups of householders to identify suitable installers and secure bulk discounts, deriving its revenues from referral fees.
And consumer electronics recycling business ecoATM raised an undisclosed round led by TAO Venture Partners. The firm supplies automated stations which give consumers rewards, based on secondary market value, in return for depositing unwanted gizmos and gadgets.


Further reading
A report on the future of Britain's electricity networks from the UK government's Energy and Climate Change Committee. It calls for more government action to help deliver a smart grid, to manage a more diverse and distributed generation network, and a new regime to prioritise renewables and encourage sharing of grid capacity. Some 60-80GW of generation, including 17GW of renewable capacity, is currently waiting to be connected to the grid, the report notes.

A list of the Top 10 cleantech cluster organizations from Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital. From Europe, there's bodies from Austria, Finland, Denmark and Sweden - but (not unsurprisingly, to be honest) nothing from the UK.

Details of the new Veolia Innovation Accelerator run by the French environmental services group - the programme aims to support start-ups in areas including bio-resources, water and wastewater, waste treatment, energy generation and transport.


Housekeeping
Some readers might notice that the cleanventures.co.uk address is rerouting to cleanventures.blogspot.com. This is just while I sort out some hosting issues, and shouldn't affect your use of the site. A new improved site should emerge sooner or later, as time and web skills permit.

Clean Sweep 77

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

Deals
Emissions management firm AMEE has closed a $5.5m second round led by Amadeus Capital Partners. Existing investors including O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures also joined the round.
AMEE, which has offices in London and San Francisco, provides the data, modelling systems and application programming interface (API) to underpin enterprise carbon accounting packages. Customers include business analytics group SAS, Morgan Stanley and the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. The new funding will be used for product development and international expansion.

Waste management group Sterecycle has raised £10m from unidentified institutional, retail and existing investors. The London-based firm has been backed in previous rounds by Goldman Sachs, Fidelity International, Impax Asset Management and Ailsa3Ventures.
Sterecycle operates the world's first autoclave plant for household waste in South Yorkshire, which separates waste into sterile organic fibre and recyclable non-organics. The fibre can then be used for land reclamation, or energy generation. The new money will go towards doubling capacity to 200kT/a, and developing a second site in Cardiff.

Water monitoring tech developer Intellitect Water has raised over £2m. SME investor Catapult Venture Managers invested £1m, with the remainder from existing investors including Pemberstone Investments.
Dorset-based Intellitect produces a range of monitoring instruments, including the Intellisonde which features 12 sensors in a compact head that can inserted directly into water pipelines.

Also in water treatment, Clean Filtration Technologies raised $1.5m from Dow Venture Capital and others, in the first part of a planned $3m fundraising. The company's CFT Turboclone hydroclone system remvoes total suspended solids from difficult-to-filter water.
And GeoPure HydroTechnologies raised an undisclosed first round led by Stockyard Capital. The Texas-based firm specialises in recycling contaminated water from mining and drilling operations.

Climate Change Capital Private Equity invested NKr85m (Euro10m) in silicon recycler Metallkraft as part of a KNr140m convertible bond issue.
The Norwegian firm is commercialising a process for recycling the silicon carbine slurry used in the wafer cutting stage of standard PV cell manufacturing. The new funds support plant development in Singapore to service REC's 740MW solar wafer plant.

London-based Frog Capital has invested Euro3m to acquire a stake in German biogas developer agri.capital from the US-based TCW Group. The Münster-based firm produces biogas from manure and silage feedstocks, and is also backed by Ludgate Environmental Fund. TCW led a Euro60m round in May 2009.

US geothermal energy developer Vulcan Power has landed $108m from existing investor Denham Capital. The Oregon-based group is developing an estimated 300MW of geothermal resources in Nevade, California, Oregon and Arizona, and has long-term power purchase agreements with local utilities.

PV installer Petra Solar has raised a $40m round led by new investors Craton Equity Partners and Espírito Santo Ventures. Existing investors Element Partners, Blue Run Ventures, military venture fund OnPoint Technologies and Kuwait’s National Technology Enterprises Company also returned.
The New Jersey group specialises in installing its SunWave modules to utility poles and streetlights, delivering power straight to the grid. The new funding goes to recruitment and expanding its customer base.

PV tech group 1366 Technologies raised $5.15m from North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, as part of a targeted $6.2m round.
The MIT spin-off is developing a range of novel module technologies, including a 'self-aligned cell' which promises mono-crystal efficiences at multi-crystal production costs and a 'grooved ribbon' busbar to improve photocurrent capture.

And, in a rare exit for cleantech VCs, US solar thermal tech developer Ausra has been bought by French energy group Areva. The California company, which develops and installs solar steam generators, was backed by VCs including Khosla Ventures, KPCB, Generation Investment Management, Starfish Ventures and KERN Partners, most recently raising $25.5m in April 2009. Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but a price over $200m has been mooted.

Electric vehicle infrastructure developer Coulomb Technologies raised a $14m second round led by Voyager Capital and Rho Ventures. The California company is rolling out open-access networks of urban 'ChargePoint' stations. Coulomb also announced a new 'Flex Billing' system which means drivers don't have to take a subscription to fill up at its charge points.

Clean energy advisors Nexamp has raised a $6.5m first round from Good Energies, Point Judith Capital, RCG Ventures and individual angels. The Massachusetts firm provides systems integration and project management services for energy generation, efficiency and management, for commercial, public sector and individual clients.

Wind turbine tech developer Viryd Technologies took $5m from investors including China's Shentong Group, which is also entering a joint venture to serve the renewables market. The Texas firm is developing drivetrain technology based on a continuously variable planetary (CVP) transmission developed by Fallbrook Technologies.

Micro-CHP developer ClearEdge Power reportedly raised $11m, on top of $15m last August. The California firm is now selling its ClearEdge5, a compact gas-fired heat and power unit aimed at the residential and small commercial market.


Further reading
The Carbon Trust announces £22m new funding for what it calls the six most promising technologies in marine energy: Atlantis Resources, Aquamarine Power, Hammerfest Strom UK, Marine Current Turbines, Pelamis Wave Power, and Voith Hydro.

New Scientist reports on research showing that current algal biofuel tech isn't as green as it's painted -
Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has modelled the environmental impacts of algal farms and concludes that they require six times as much energy as growing land plants - and emit significantly more greenhouse gases.