In no particular order, here are my top 10 cleantech stories of 2009. Any other interesting stories that you think should be on this list?

1. Copenhagen Accord: From Hopenhagen to Nopenhagen
The widely anticipated UN climate talks at Copenhagen in Dec 2009 ended with a whimper. After spending much time haggling about the main issues, world leaders could only come up with a kind of letter of intent. In fact, it was US President Barack Obama who brokered the final deal with China, India, South Africa and Brazil. Europe, which was left out, was apparently angered with this move. For now, the goalpost has been shifted to Mexico in 2010.

2. Global Cleantech Stimulus
Though we’re facing the toughest financial crisis yet, several governments around the world managed to announce multi-billion dollar stimulus packages for the cleantech sector, underscoring the importance of the sector to deal with climate change and energy supply issues. US, China, South Korea, Japan, EU, Germany, Australia and UK are among the biggest contributors.

3. A123 Systems IPO Soars
Lithium ion battery company A123 Systems was clearly the star of cleantech IPOs this year, with its shares soaring more than 50% on the first day of trading in Sep 2009. A123 Systems has not made any money, yet its stock price is still trading above its offering price with currently $2 billion market cap, even though Chrysler cancelled its electric vehicle plans which included A123 batteries. Doesn’t this remind you of the tech boom in the late 1990s? More IPOs are expected to come with Solyndra already filed for IPO in Dec 2009 while we’ll just have to keep guessing when Tesla Motors, Silver Spring Networks and Codexis will make their debut.

4. Khosla Ventures Raises $1.1 billion Cleantech Funds
Even as VC/PE cleantech investments slumps in 2009, Khosla Ventures raises the bar with its $1.1 billion funds raised in Sep 2009. It was the largest amount raised by a VC firm since 2007 and the largest first-time fund raised since 1999. This was also the first time Khosla Ventures has raised funds from outside investors which included the CalPERS. It was a rare feat to raise a fund of this size and Vinod Khosla has definitely proved it.

5. Cleantech Investments Shift from Solar to Energy Efficiency
Indeed 2009 proved to be tough on solar companies where declining orders, excess inventory and project financing problems were accompanied with massive layoffs. While Spain’s removal of government subsidies and the financial crisis contributed to the solar slump, China continues to provide state funding to the Chinese cleantech firms via low-interest loans from big state banks to fund their growth. It is no surprise that investment is seen shifting from capital-intensive cleantech such as solar and wind to less capital-intensive cleantech such as energy efficiency, storage, transportation and smart grid sector. Have you heard of the Jevons Paradox – the more efficient we become in our use of energy, the more we will use? Ironically, energy efficiency may lead to more energy consumption as the cost of energy resource reduces.

6. Electric Vehicles: Electric Dreams Come True
It’s no doubt that Obama’s stimulus package has jolted the US electric car industry into life. Anything from electric vehicles, fuel cells, battery technologies, hybrid vehicles to charging stations have turned into golden opportunity for investment. Even the Big Three, GM, Ford and Chrysler were pressured by the US government to make electric cars. The stakes are high here, as we look forward to reduce oil dependence. Yet this has caused another “gold” rush, i.e. rare metals which are important components in making the fuel cells and batteries and China is the main producer of rare metals. Meanwhile, expect the Japanese Toyota and Honda to continue to lead in the hybrid car sector.

7. Biofuel Flights Sizzle
With biofuels craze fizzling out this year, a good news from the industry appeared. Biofuel flights were tested successfully by 3 different airlines this year. In Jan 2009, Continental Airlines tested flight with 50% jet fuel, 47% jatropha, 3% algae in 1 engine (the first to use algae). In the same month, Japan Airlines tested flight with 50% jet fuel, 50% biofuel (of which 84% is camelina, 16% jatropha, less than 1% algae; the first to use camelina). In Nov 2009, KLM demonstrated the first passenger flight with 50% jet fuel, 50% camelina. Previously, Virgin Atlantic was the first to test flight with biofuel mix with 50% jet fuel, 20% mix of coconut and babassu oil in Feb 2008 (some people were mocking Richard Branson at that time!) while Air New Zealand tested flight in Dec 2008 with 50% jet fuel, 50% jatropha (the first to use jatropha). No doubt, we will see more of these biofuel flights realizing in the future.

8. Algae is Oil’s Best Friend
It seems like algae is the new biofuel. Exxon Mobil invested $600 million in Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by none other than the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, in July 2009 to produce fuel from algae. BP, already an early investor in Synthetic Genomics, invested $10 million in Martek Biosciences in Aug 2009. Though it is applauding to see oil companies to look at alternative energy sources, Exxon Mobil’s latest $31 billion acquisition of XTO Energy, the largest natural gas producer in US, in Dec 2009 is a bet that alternative energy is not viable enough to meet US energy needs for the next few decades while hoping that the cleaner fossil fuel will reduce possible carbon tax in the future.

9. Smart Grid Gets Smarter
The smart grid has been hailed as the electricity Internet and it is such a big play that even the big IT players IBM (via its IBM Venture Capital Group) and Cisco are eyeing for a piece of it. In Obama’s stimulus plan, it calls for the creation of a smart grid and 40 million smart meters to be deployed in American homes. Smart grid may be the largest cloud (computing) and expensive but it will be lucrative for smart grid players. Silver Spring Networks, GridPoint, Trilliant, eMeter, Grid Net and SmartSynch are just some of the players that should benefit from the stimulus.

10. Water Splashes With Osmotic Power and Reverse Osmosis Desalination
In Nov 2009, Norway’s state-owned power company, Statkraft opened a prototype osmotic power plant which is the world’s first that generates energy by mixing fresh water with sea water. The idea of generating power from osmotic pressure gradients is actually an extension of reverse osmosis (RO) desalination. RO desal is used for water and wastewater purification, and such large plants are usually found in Middle East nearby power plants where they can easily get their electricity needs from oil. While the Middle Eastern plants consume oil to generate power for its desal process, Norway’s plant generates power from its desal process. I wish I could say much more for the water space but it is noteworthy that Kleiner Perkins has made its first water-related cleantech investment in APT. Hopefully we will see more VC investments in water-related cleantech next year.

Will 2010 be the year for greentech IPOs? When lithium ion battery maker A123Systems (s AONE) successfully debuted on the Nasdaq back in September, there was much speculation that the move would ready the market for a following of greentech IPOs. The notion seemed over-enthusiastic then, but three months later solar power startup Solyndra has registered for an IPO, which will likely happen in 2010, and we’ve heard rumors that Tesla is plugging away at its S-1 (Reuters also reported an upcoming Tesla IPO).

Then there’s Silver Spring Networks, which just raised $100 million and looks like it’s getting to that stage where it’s too big to be acquired but will need more financing to compete in the smart grid infrastructure market. Silver Spring isn’t commenting on any IPO rumors, but it is clearly one of the best candidates in the greentech world. If these three — Solyndra, Silver Spring and Tesla — do go public in 2010, it’ll make investor Steve Westly look like a pretty solid market forecaster — he predicted in May that these three would go public by early 2010 and he’s already good for one out of the three.

Out of any of the venture capital investment sectors, greentech has the most bullish outlook in 2010 from a VC standpoint. According the National Venture Capital Association, more than half of a group of venture capitalists surveyed predicted that clean technology would see higher investment levels in 2010. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, venture capital investing in cleantech already rebounded sharply in the third quarter of 2009 to $898 million in 57 deals, up from $475 million in 49 deals in the second quarter of 2009.

The IPO market in general is also looking better to VCs. VCs surveyed by the NVCA are predicting “a mild improvement” in the number of venture-backed IPOs overall in 2010, with 74 percent of respondents saying they think there will be more than 20 IPOs in 2010. However, according to this Reuters article, greentech companies’ offerings represented only a small portion of the overall U.S. IPO market in 2009, ranking fifth by dollars raised in 2009 in the IPO market, and accountng for 8.5 percent of issuance by companies going public in 2009.

Will 2010 see greentech firms gathering a bigger percent of those IPO dollars? I think so, but it all depends on how strong the companies are. As Westly explained to us, his 2010 greentech IPO predictions were based on a company showing 10x growth in revenue between 2008 and 2009. Solyndra has generated revenues of $58.8 million for the nine months ended October 3, 2009, rising from revenues of $6 million for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2009.

So which firms beyond the three mentioned are seeing that type of growth in the greentech space? Greentech Media added smart grid firm Trilliant, solar thermal company BrightSource Energy, and LED maker Bridgelux to the potential IPO list after A123Systems went public. If you have any predictions add them to the comments.

Here is a good summary from Shai Goldman on top events in the VC and tech industry of 2009.

“Given that we are just about at year-end, I wanted to provide a recap of some of the most memorable moments that took place in the venture capital and technology ecosystem.  Below is a list of  the 10 most important events:

First VC backed technology IPO –  OpenTable goes public at $20/share on May 21st.

First VC backed acquisition (above $500M) - Pure Digital acquired by Cisco for $590M.

First VC backed cleantech IPO – A123 goes public at $17/share on September 23rd.

Khosla Ventures raises $1.1B – in 2009 most VC funds were shrinking in size, yet Khosla Ventures was able to raise $1.1B, this event was a sign that Limited Partners (L.P.s) we actively seeking investment opportunities in the VC sector – September 1st.

Tesla Motors receives $465M from the D.O.E – First technology company to receive a loan guaranty – June 23rd.

Twitter raises a $100M VC round of financing - at a time when there are questions about the consumer internet sector, this funding provided some positive support that $ can be made in the sector - September 25th.

NASDAQ closes above 2,000 – August 3rd- the previous time NASDAQ was above 2,000 was September 30, 2008.

Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 10,000 – October 14th – the previous time the Dow was above 10,000 was October 2, 2008.

Apple App Store gets more that 100,000 applications published – November 4th – as you may recall the App Store launched on July 10, 2008 and the creation of the iPhone and App Store has created opportunities for both VCs and Startups to make $$.

Facebook Connect is widely adopted by 60M users and 80K sites – the utilization of Facebook Connect has allowed startup companies a way to reduce the time / effort for their users to sign up for a particular service.”

Read the full article here.

Here is some IPO news from Marketwatch.

After recent optimistic comments about an upcoming rebound in technology initial public offerings by several Silicon Valley venture capitalists and investment bankers, I decided to see if the reality lived up to the hype — and hope — and trolled through several regulatory filings to see what technology companies are in the queue to go public.

Last week, wheeler dealers at the Venture Summit Silicon Valley conference said there were a slew of technology companies working on S1 filings, the core regulatory document for an IPO. At least 50 venture-backed companies could seek to go public next year, possibly as high as 100, dealmakers said. See column on venture capitalists’ optimism here.

“It’s certainly going to start a lot more robust than 2009, which was completely dead,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of the IPO Boutique. “The last three months of 2009, though, have been quite busy.”

Currently, though, it’s a rather motley crew of tech companies that have filed S1s to go public, and nothing yet that might have the buzz — or shall we say hype — of some of the widely-anticipated Silicon Valley names like Facebook, Zynga, or Tesla Motors.

That said, many look to be solid citizens, with revenue growth and earnings, but some firms are still losing money, not exactly an example of the new, improved IPO. Sweet said two tech IPO names that have the most chatter in this batch are Calix Networks Inc. and Fabrinet, both of which were founded during — and survived — the dot-com bubble and bust.

Calix Networks develops broadband access equipment for network service providers. Revenue jumped in 2008 to $250.5 million, up from $193.8 million in 2007. It’s still losing money and lost $17 million in 2008, an improvement from its loss of $26 million in 2007. Founded during the boom in August, 1999, Calix is based in Petaluma, Calif., a farming area north of San Francisco, dubbed Telecom Valley, a once fertile area for telecom startups as well. Earlier this year, it raised $100 million in additional venture.

Fabrinet was also founded in August 1999 and started operating in January 2000. Its corporate headquarters are in the Cayman Islands. It offers contract manufacturing services for developers of optical communications components, one of the most-hyped hardware areas of the late ’90s. Fabrinet designs and makes products like application-specific crystals, prisms, mirrors and laser components for six of the ten largest optical communications components companies worldwide.”

Read the full article here.

The meaning of Southern California “car culture” may be poised for a makeover, as the regions around Los Angeles, long notorious for smog, traffic congestion and endless freeways race to take on a greener profile. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced this week at the LA Auto Show that he’s shooting to have infrastructure ready for electric vehicles in the city by next fall, upgrading or installing 500 charging stations and setting aside up to $10 million to help pay for home charger installations for the first 5,000 residential customers, as the Los Angeles Times reports.

Villaraigosa’s plan comes as part of a larger effort to attract cleantech investment and manufacturers of batteries and charging stations to the area. Countless regions around the country are engaging in similar efforts, assembling juicy incentive packages for companies like A123Systems (s AONE), V-Vehicle and Tesla Motors. But Southern California is building momentum toward a significant role in the growing EV ecosystem: the launchpad, where some of the earliest plug-in vehicle models will roll out to customers, and where many of EV-related challenges for the power grid will be figured out.

California as a whole offers an early test market for plug-in vehicles, thanks in no small part to state incentives and regulations tied to goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For Southern California in particular, key figures in the push to become a green car hub include utilities Southern California Edison (a partner in Villaraigosa’s plan) and San Diego Gas & Electric (which is partnering with the Renault-Nissan Alliance and planning to install 2,300 charging units in next 1-2 years), both major players in the smart grid buildout. Back in March, President Obama stopped by SCE’s 15-year-old Edison Electric Vehicle Technical Center, which has teamed up with Ford Motor (s F) to deploy a test fleet of plug-in Ford Escape Hybrid SUVs.

On the tech innovation side, plug-in car startups Fisker Automotive, Coda Automotive and Aptera are all headquartered in SoCal. And AC Propulsion, which first developed the prototypical technology that evolved into the Tesla Roadster, calls San Dimas, 30 miles east of Los Angeles, home. When it comes to manufacturing, Tesla Motors, while based in Silicon Valley, will likely assemble its planned Model S in the Long Beach area, making use of facilities once used for the region’s aerospace industry.

But while Southern California is home to key players across the spectrum of work to produce electric vehicles for the mass market, it may be the region’s charging infrastructure efforts in coming months and years that ultimately transforms its old car culture. As Enid Joffe, president and founder of infrastructure installer Clean Fuel Connection said at this summer’s Plug-In 2009 conference in Long Beach, putting in a plug — a basic necessity for drivers to switch off gasoline — may not be rocket science, but it’s complicated by the amount of coordination that’s required.

SDG&E’s Bill Zobel told us earlier this year that when electric cars hit California in the 1990s, utilities, car dealers, the local government and drivers lacked understanding of the “requirements for an owner walking off the lot with a plug-in car.” With the next generation of EVs, he said, “We’ll be much more prepared than we were last time.”

Image courtesy of Eyeshotpictures Creative Commons Flickr.

As reported on abc news today, a brighter opportunity is beginning to spring up for the auto industry in a town in southern California. An estimated 1500 new jobs are now available as one new car maker, Tesla opens a new factory in Downey in an old facility belonging to NASA.

The community has been revived with hopes about this new opportunity that promises to cut the 15% unemployment rate in Southern California.

This is the greenest auto manufacturing plant in North America says Elon. This new S model will go about 300 miles on a single charge. Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla motors says it’s a move to speed up the manufaturing of electric cars by five or ten years pace.

The company that made electric vehicles cool again and dispelled the ugly golf cart stereotypes is rumored to file for an IPO very soon according to a recent Reuters report. What makes this CleanTech startup unique from say the recent A123 Systems IPO? Tesla is currently profitable! Profitability is one way to counter the IPO risks noted in this well blogged article about Goldman Sachs and their IPO business.

Tesla is on a mission to prove that Silicon Valley can do what Detroit, Tokyo and Frankfurt cannot. While some may think their Tesla Roadster (costs approx. $109k), which has a range of approximately 220 miles and Ferrari like performance, is a toy for the rich- a new Tesla Model S is in the works to dispel this theory and open the company to those with a smaller budget. The Model S will cost around $50,000, have 4 doors and appear similar to a nice Lexus, but more beautiful in my opinion. It also will not have any tailpipe emissions and will cost about $2 to power for 300 miles.

While Tesla’s automobiles are an evolutionary step as far as design, production and backing- they will nonetheless need to compete with companies like Nissan, GM, Fisker  and Ford who all have both government backing, and either an EV or Plug-in EV in the works. Along with several battery makers including A123 Systems, Ener1 and Johnson Controls, Tesla received $465MM in low cost loans from the US government to help spur development. It is interesting to ponder whether or not the market for efficient automobiles will prefer plug in electrics, pure electrics or if it is large and wealthy enough for both. Signs point to the latter as several of these planned or existing cars, including Tesla’s, have a lengthy customer waiting list.

Tesla’s investors include Google, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Daimler AG, Aabar Investments, Valor Equity Partners, Technology Partners, The Westly Group, Compass Venture Partners. Tesla has also received an ‘opportunistic’ US$82.5m equity investment from a group led by Fjord Capital Management, a private equity firm which focuses exclusively on clean energy. “Daimler, which invested US$50m in Tesla earlier in 2009, along with Aabar Investments, which is also Daimler’s largest shareholder, contributed to the offering to keep its stake at just under 10%. The new money was earmarked for Tesla’s expansion of its retail store network globally.”

The IPO would be the first from a US Automaker since Ford in 1956.

Only US based grid-tied photovoltaic inverter company.  Inverters convert the electricity from solar panels (DC) to power that can be used in the home or injected back to the grid (AC).  Their key differentiator: quality and reliability through simplicity of design.  They are a local Bend company and the kind of home grown industry needed throughout the economy.  Recent stimulus and marketplace wins have them projected to triple their revenue in 2009 and 2010 (Powered Up)

Palo Alto based company that is doing truly remarkable work for changing the world.  Better place is tackling the infrastructure to support electric vehicles.  This is a brilliant idea, as so many are working on cars, but a frequent obstacle to replacing fossil fuel for transport is always the network required to support our car-based lifestyle.  Their CEO, Shai Aggasi came from software and services giant, SAP AG.  This company was born out of a session at the Davos economic conference where participants were challenged to come up with ways to make the world a “better place”.  Installations are already in Israel, and planned in Hawaii, California, Canada and others.  Partnerships are forged with Renault, and the list goes on…  They have incredible star power and momentum.  In April 2008, Deutsche Bank analysts reportedly concluded that the company’s approach could be a “paradigm shift” that causes “massive disruption” to the auto industry, and which has “the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine altogether.” (“Deutsche Bank: Project Better Place has “the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine”)

Tesla motors is to electric vehicles what Apple is to computing and entertainment.  Rather than just making an electric car because it’s better for the environment, they built a sports car that you would want to drive because it was sexy, powerful, oh and it’s good for the environment.  Applying principals like good design and targeting beyond the stereotypical “green granola hippie” consumer has made Tesla successful.  Their roadster is already in production, and a more “sensible” sedan is on the way.  Did I mention the roadster goes 0 to 60 in 4 seconds?  Good luck Detroit.

Nanosolar is attacking the problem of manufacturing solar panels.  Traditionally, this was done no different than how integrated circuit wafers are made.  This made sense since there was such a big infrastructure already in place to support the fabrication.  However, the process is costly, uses very expensive materials, and doesn’t provide solar panel manufactures with a good way to screen out defective panels before they sink a lot of cost framing and packaging them.  Nanosolar adapted “the economics of printing” to dramatically reduce the cost of making and deploying panels.  Making the technology more affordable is key to wide spread adoption of solar.

-Rob

November 18, 2009

Seattle, WA

With gas prices steadily rising, fuel efficiency and alternative fuel are all the rage now, and there’s a special buzz on the UD campus about powering vehicles.

The University of Delaware is a pioneer in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology which allows plug-in battery operated vehicles to charge from the main power grid and to discharge their stored power to the grid based on demand.  Also UD has a hydrogen powered bus that gives off zero-emissions in its fleet of shuttle buses.

Recently, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk was on campus to speak about the production of Tesla’s all-electric sports car line and the need for a sustainable energy future.

But all of the above pale in comparison to a student’s effort at hybrid technology. Colin Sweeney ‘11 has converted his ‘86 Mercedes to run on a cooking oil and diesel.

Sweeney travels to campus each day from Townsend (about 30 miles south of Newark) and he tackled the project of converting the car due to the high price of gas. Combining his passion for working on engines and his knowledge of fluid mechanics and heat transfer, Sweeney is now rolling to school everyday in a Benz customized unlike any other.

When the car is started, it runs on diesel because the cooking oil has to reach a temperature of about 120°F before it can power the engine. Sweeney says getting the cooking oil hot enough is the trickiest part.

Now the trunk of the car is outfitted with a 20-gallon tank for the oil and using both sources of fuel, the car has a range of about 1,100 miles. Sweeney estimates that the car gets about 100 miles to the gallon.

No word yet on whether Sweeney has ever rolled up to a tailgate, busted open the trunk and started deep frying all kinds of food (mmm, car fries). These are the questions the UD Alumni Relations Blog demands to know!

Chemical engineering student modifies car to run on cooking oil [udel.edu/udaily]
V2G Home [udel.edu/v2g]
UD unveils hydrogen-powered bus that produces no pollutants [udel.edu/udaily]
Tesla CEO champions sustainable energy, space exploration [udel.edu/udaily]