Just a day after the company reported record sales and its first-ever quarterly profit, Consumer Reports announced that the electric vehicle manufacturer’s Model S has received the highest test rating of any car in its 2013 car ratings. And just to put a cherry on top, the notoriously tough Consumer Reports writers say that the $89,650 Tesla Model S comes close to, and just may be, the best car ever.

“This car performs better than anything we’ve ever tested before,” Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ director of testing says. “Not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really, really well.”

Wow.

Because the batteries are in the floor, the car’s center of gravity is very low, Consumer Reports says, giving it superb handling. The Model S, which seats 7 with an optional jump seat, has “impressive power” and uses half the energy of a Toyota Prius, for a 200-mile range.

Here’s Consumer Reports video report:

Tesla’s 17″ touchscreen, which drivers use to control the vehicle’s climate and other systems, is “like a giant iPad,” and almost as simple to use, the report states. And despite the fact that Tesla has only been building cars for a few years, the Model S performs better than vehicles made by manufacturers that have been building vehicles for over a hundred years, Consumer Reports says.

Tesla earned its first-ever profit of $15 million this past quarter on record sales of $562 million. In the earnings release, CEO Elon Musk said he anticipates demand of 30,000 cars a year in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. But with reviews like this, he may want to revise that number significantly upwards.

One note for those of us who don’t have $90,000 in loose change under the sofa seats: Musk promised that Tesla’s next model will be much more affordable.

“The Model S is priced substantially lower than the Roadster, and our third generation vehicle will again be priced much lower than the Model S,” he said yesterday in a statement.

EcoMotors is poised to revolutionize cleantech engines after securing funding for the production of its Opoc engine.

The Opoc engine is EcoMotors’ clean, efficient, lightweight, and low-cost internal combustion engine. The technology, developed by EcoMotors, generates the same amount of power with half the weight and size as a conventional engine, the company says. It promises 20-50 percent better fuel economy than current state-of-the-art engines.

Consumers will benefit when these engines hit the market, improving the aesthetics and performance of cars and trucks.

“These engines take up less space in the cabin for the same amount of power, and will allow for more creative designs for the vehicle itself,” said Andrew Chung, partner at Khosla Ventures, in an interview with VentureBeat.

Zhongding Power, one of the largest automotive component conglomerates in China, will finance the $200 million and construct the first Opoc plant in the Anhui Province. The plant will have the capacity to produce 150,000 engines per year, and over $1 billion in revenue potential.

This internal combustion engine could answer a problem many consumers face: They want a high-performing vehicle for a low cost with good fuel economy, and increasing numbers of them want one that is environmentally friendly.

“Clean vehicles of the future need to be something that isn’t expensive, doesn’t cause fear in the consumers’ eyes, and you need to fuel these automobiles,” Chung said.

This internal combustion engine is less expensive than hybrid or electric vehicles, and produces 25-35 percent less carbon dioxide, EcoMotors claims. It’s based on an ”opposed piston-opposed cylinder direct gas exchange operation,” according to the EcoMotors website, which, it says, provides the emission benefits of a 4-cycle engine with the simplicity and compactness of a 2-cycle engine.

The engines are set for production next year, but won’t be seen in vehicles until 2015-2016. However, consumers could start to see the engines in products like portable generators as early as next year.

While the options for clean energy are growing for U.S. consumers, it’s not always easy to see what your options are, which is something clean tech startup Choose Energy is focused on.

Today Choose Energy announced it’s closed a new $4 million round of funding to help advance its web service that enables consumers to compare prices for all the retail electricity plans available in the area, educate on each type of energy, and enroll them into a plan. The goal is for people to find more affordable power services while ensuring that your home or business is using a green source of energy. (And I’m sure some people would even be OK with getting a higher monthly bill if they knew the power was coming from a renewable source, such as like wind and solar energy.) The company said about 40 percent of its customers choose green energy plans.

“Ten years after deregulation, we’re still experiencing a huge communications gap between the consumers of energy and retail energy providers,” said Choose Energy CEO Jerry Dyess in a statement. “Our goal is to bring transparency to the complex decisions consumers face when choosing a new energy plan in deregulated states.”

The new round of funding, Choose Energy’s first, came from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Stephens Capital Partners. The startup plans to use the new capital,  to further grow the company, advance its energy comparison service, and focus on building enterprise-level services for retail energy companies.

Founded in 2008, Plano, Tex.-based Choose Energy Inc. is currently available in Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, but the startup has plans to enter all 19 states that allow deregulated energy companies to operate as well as 22 states that have implemented deregulation of natural gas.

Energy diagram from Choose Energy

Through his company Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett has acquired two solar power plant projects from solar panel manufacturer and developer SunPower for between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway’s energy subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy, has a stake in many of the largest US solar power plants, including two First Solar plants. Buffett has increasingly become an important ally for the renewable energy industry, which is struggling to survive without government financial support.

Read our analysis of Buffett’s efforts to spearhead billion-dollar clean-tech initiatives. 

The newly acquired plants are located in California, and they are the world’s largest photovoltaic solar developments, meaning they use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. SunPower will retain the three-year contract to build and maintain them in the counties of Los Angeles and Kern. The Antelope Valley projects will generate 579 megawatts for Southern California Edison, which is not far off the output of a large fossil fuel power plant.

SunPower, based in Silicon Valley, will operate the projects for MidAmerican Renewables, a division of MidAmerican Energy.

“We are excited about these projects because they support our core business principle of environmental respect,” Bill Fehrman, president of MidAmerican Renewables, said in a statement. “We are very proud to add SunPower technology to our portfolio of projects.”

As The Street reports, market leaders like SunPower and First Solar are winning contracts to maintain large plants with multi-decade purchase agreements over their lifespan. By acquiring the plants, MidAmerican Energy has become one of the biggest backers of such projects.

The nearly five million commercial and industrial facilities in the United States account for nearly half of all domestic energy consumption, at a cost of over $200 billion each year. But according to Chris Pacitti, general partner at venture capital firm Austin Ventures, only five percent of that market has adopted sophisticated energy management tools. Investors are taking notice.

Software-based cleantech like energy management software (EMS) is a fast-growing segment as interest in hardware-based cleantech wanes. Leading EMS vendors like C3 and Hara offer tools that allow organizations to measure their energy consumption and, often, identify operational inefficiencies. That can lead to savings in energy consumption as well as real dollars, a fact that’s attracting some business owners’ attention.

A Pike Research report estimates the EMS and services industry will grow to $5.5 billion by 2020, from just under $1 billion in 2011. That’s a compound annual growth rate of more than 20 percent.

An example of a recently-funded EMS vendor is Noesis, backed by Austin Ventures and Black Coral Capital. The company’s Web-based tools track energy consumption across more than 640 million square feet in nearly 7,500 buildings. Noesis’ facility portfolio has grown by 200 percent in the past four months.

Sarah Groen, co-founder and director of SURGE Accelerator, says that cleantech investments are shifting from hardware plays (think wind turbines) to software plays like EMS. So-called “digital cleantech” investments fit more squarely within VC’s comfort zone.

“After minimal success with hardware-focused cleantech investments, a software play gets [VCs] back to what they’re comfortable with–the VC model of the dot-com days,” explains Wal van Lierop, president and chief executive of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.

Additionally, Groen says that hardware-based cleantech has received something of a “black eye” as companies like Solyndra have come to light, giving investors more confidence in funding EMS-based cleantech.

“These applications empower and incentivize both utilities and end customers to get more from their energy,” says Steve Vassallo, general partner at Foundation Capital. “Initial investments in cleantech were focused on the infrastructure, but the time has now come for the next wave of digital energy solutions and applications, of which energy management and technology-enabled conservation will play a substantial role.”

Vassallo further notes that “investing in efficiency is five times less [expensive] than investing in new [energy] supply.”

Several other factors are driving investor interest in EMS, specifically. “[Investing in EMS] is capital-light and may offer faster investment returns,” says van Lierop. In addition, customer demand is being spurred by new legislative mandates for reducing organizations’ energy consumption–which suggests lucrative long-term revenue potential for EMS vendors.

William Jaffray, an energy engineer at Associated Renewable, points out that many businesses are taking a hard look at their energy use for the first time. This stems from the desire to reduce consumption, lower energy costs, and address White House calls-to-action like the Green Button Initiative. “Good management software provides useful analysis of energy consumption and costs,” Jaffray says.

Juan Lois, financial analyst at Associated Renewable, adds, “The key to the accelerated growth of the industry is the fact that businesses and large corporations now have access to much more detailed and precise energy consumption reports. This allows them to reduce the variability of consumption–especially during peak demand times–reducing energy costs, maximizing efficiency, lowering operating costs, and increasing the value of the property.”

Vassallo is bullish on the long-term revenue potential for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) EMS vendors, particularly from utilities customers. “While utilities historically tilted toward capital-intensive enterprise software sales, the benefits of SaaS-based approaches are simply too good to ignore,” he says. “Utilities will absolutely gravitate toward Cloud-based, managed services.”

Tom Pincince, president and chief executive of Digital Lumens, believes the most promising long-term revenue models include solutions and services delivering continuous and ongoing operational efficiency. He says that “Simple reporting and monitoring will not deliver enough value; winners will be systems that drive changes in the way a building and its occupants use energy. Ultimately we’ll see new business models such as Light as a Service or HVAC as a Service.”

Economic and legislative forces are driving numerous changes within the energy management landscape. With the re-election of President Obama, there will likely be a continued emphasis on climate change, sustainability and energy independence. This gives investors a long-term opportunity for funding a market that will inevitably be expanding for quite some time.

Ashley M. Halligan is a 2007 graduate of Marietta College (Ohio) with a bachelors in journalism. She has a background in freelance feature writing–in particular, travel, musician and human interest features. She is a market analyst at Software Advice, where she regularly reports on sustainability news and trends along with trends in the nonprofit sector. Connect with her on Google+ or follow her Contemporary Pilgrim book project.

Top image: Energy history screen from Nest’s iPhone app.

SolarReserve, a U.S.-based solar energy developer has succeeded in closing a $586 million equity and debt round of financing for two South African clean-energy projects.

To raise the funds for the projects, SolarReserve joined forces with the Kensani Group, a South African financial advisory firm, and Intikon Energy, a South African developer of renewable energy.

The projects, Letsatsi and Lesedi, are based in the Free State and the Northern Cape respectively, and were selected in first round bidding by the South Africa Department of Energy as part of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program (REIPPPP).

In a statement, the company revealed that the projects will kick off in mid 2014 and will provide electricity to Eskom Holdings, South Africa’s state-owned utility, for 20 years. Jointly, the projects will cost almost $600 million, making these two of the largest project finance transactions ever completed in South Africa, and among the largest renewable energy projects in Africa.

“Kensani applauds the South African government’s large scale commitment to clean energy, and celebrates the exciting opportunities for empowering our rural communities,” said Kelley Starke-Dow, CEO of Kensani in an emailed statement. Kensani participated in the equity portion of the funding round.

The hope is that the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 100 permanent operational jobs for South Africans. The project leads will set aside a percentage of total project revenues for enterprise and socio-economic development, amounting to a total of approximately $59 million, which will be invested back into the local community.

According to SolarReserve, a California-based company, FirstRand Bank led the debt funding for the projects.

Top image via Shutterstock

Three years ago, Danielle Fong, a PhD student at Princeton, hit on an idea for a better way to store clean energy.

Today, her clean-tech company LightSail has earned some heavyweight support from both venture capital firms and angel investors, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The startup pulled in $37.3 million to deliver a better system to store energy generated through the wind and the sun. Holding energy for commercial use has been tricky — makeshift solutions include electrochemical batteries, mechanical devices, and liquefied air.

“The overall problem of how to store large amounts of energy is one we’ve been working on for a century without a lot of success,” co-founder and CEO Steve Crane told the Wall Street Journal.

“Since there is little capacity to store energy, green power is sold when available, instead of at the highest price,” the company’s website explains. To simplify the problem, the founders use the example of a “hot day in Texas.” Electricity prices typically sour — but what about green power? If solar farms could store energy cheaply, they could deliver it when needed.

The method that was dreamed up by Fong, LightSail’s young co-founder (she subsequently dropped out of her PhD program, which she enrolled in at the age of 17) involves a combination of water and compressed air. The technique is known as ”isothermal compression.” To test the idea, the founders built a system that stores and releases energy by compressing and expanding air in an old warehouse in Oakland.

Competitors include General Compression and SustainX, which are working on a similar technology and have pulled in government funding.

The challenge for all these companies will be to overcome investors’ reluctance to fund clean-tech startups. Return on investment (ROI) is choppy, if not a complete disaster. Many investors will point to solar company Solyndra, which raised close to $1 billion before declaring bankruptcy, as an example of what the clean tech sector can do to good money. Tax payer losses on that investment may be as high as $849 million. Last month, high-tech battery-maker A123 Systems, which under the Obama administration received almost $250 million in federal energy grants (note: it drew down $132 million of that grant), followed Solyndra into bankruptcy.

Investors include Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, as well as Khosla Ventures. The three-year-old company has raised a total of $52.3 million in funding.

Image via Shutterstock

AutoGrid, a Bay Area-based startup founded in 2011, pulled in $9 million to further the development of its software to help utilities and businesses control their energy usage.

Its technology works by analyzing data collected by smart meters to allow operators to adjust to meet supply and demand. Its major customers include the City of Palo Alto Utilities and Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and it is reaching out to municipalities on the East Coast.

The data is collected from smart meters through sensors that are placed on the electric grid. By incorporating machine learning, which gets smarter over time, it can make predictions about energy consumption patterns inside buildings and across service regions. When enough data has been processed, it can forecast how much electricity might be needed in the coming hours or days.

“The capacity of the [smart] grid is not deployed efficiently,” said founder and chief executive, Dr. Amit Narayan (pictured, left). Smartgrids are the computer-based remote control and automation mechanisms that are used today to deliver electricity. In the past, workers had to manually gather data by reading meters and measuring voltage, and keeping an eye out for flawed equipment.

With the advent of analytics tools, we can begin to make predictions about the future and further optimize energy usage. “Up to 20 percent of the power-generating assets in some regions only get deployed ten or fewer days a year,” said Dr. Narayan.

Prior to founding AutoGrid, he taught on the topic of electronic design automation software at Berkeley and Stanford. He founded Berkeley Design Automation, which is used by more than 20 of the top 25 chip developers.

“AutoGrid is creating the brains for the smart grid. If you can analyze all of the data, you can predict what the electrical parameters of the grid will be under any situation and use that to remove inefficiencies from the electricity supply chain.” said Dan Ahn, managing director at Voyager Capital in a statement.

What’s interesting from a competitive standpoint is the company’s focus on pattern-recognition and predictive analysis. It faces competition from Enernoc, a real-time energy-management tool, and Silver Spring Networks, an energy networking supplier that is used by over 15 utilities across the U.S.

The company’s investors include Foundation Capital,  Voyager Capital and Stanford University. Last year, it won a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy program to devote to improving the product.

Image via Shutterstock

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Siluria Technologies, the San Francisco-based cleantech company that is developing a technology to turn natural gas into transportation fuels and industrial chemicals, announced it has raised $30 million in investment for its third founding round.

With over $63 million in funding poured into Siluria to date, the company is under pressure to bring its product to market. Siluria said in a statement that it will use the funds for two pilot-scale reactors and a commercial plant, in an effort to scale the technology.

On its website, the startup claims to be the first to provide a commercially viable alternative to petroleum or crude oil.

New investors from Bright Capital and Vulcan Capital (Paul Allen’s venture firm) are taking a bet that Siluria will significantly heighten the global demand for natural gas. ”Siluria opens new, more lucrative markets for the producers and distributors of natural gas,” said Mikhail Chuchkevich, managing partner at Bright Capital, in a statement.

As Bloomberg Businessweek reported, natural gas is mostly burned as a fuel to generate steam or power and fell to a 10-year low this spring in part due to an expansion of U.S. shale drilling.

Alex Tkachenko, Siluria’s president, told VentureBeat that the company will not suffer if the price of natural gas and oil fluctuates over the coming decades, because the price disparity is so stunning. Gas currently sells for around $3 per million BTUs in North America, while oil sits at around $88 a barrel.

“Even if the price of oil gets cut in half, chemicals made from Siluria’s processes will still be economical compared to their crude oil counterparts,” he said in an email interview.

Siluria’s technology unlocks the potential in natural gas by converting its primary ingredient, Methane, into Ethylene, using a catalytic process. The Ethylene Siluria produces can be converted into transportation fuels, chemicals, or materials such as plastic.

VentureBeat first covered the promising cleantech company back in 2010, on the eve of its first funding round led by Kleiner Perkins.

Between 2006 and 2007, cleantech and greentech emerged as hot terms in the investor vernacular. Startups focused on big-picture energy needs, including solar and wind power, pulled in huge investments, thanks in part to the rising price of oil. Government initiatives, along with venture capital, helped these companies grow quickly.

“Most of the investments were in energy production, focusing on increasing energy supply,” said Physic Ventures partner Andrew Williamson in an interview with VentureBeat. “These were capital-intensive investments in mostly solar, wind power, and biofuel commercial and industrial startups.”

But the demand for revolutionary energy technology startups has fizzled in the last few years. Solar production moved to China, and lower costs undermined United States manufacturing. The 2008 economic collapse hurt many industries, including greentech. After the famous Solyndra bankruptcy in Fall 2011, public opinion of solar and other large-scale energy technology slumped and new companies in the field have struggled to raise capital.

“The solar space as a whole is so depressed and troubled,” Pangaea Ventures partner Keith Gillard told VentureBeat.

Less solar, more consumer-focused tech

Since the 2008 recession, venture capital firms have refocused their funds away from solar and onto different areas of greentech. Physic Ventures has found success investing in consumer-focused green technology startups, as well as startups applying green principles to already viable technologies, such as cloud, mobile, and social.

Startups that take the latter approach have gained VC firms’ attention because their more-familiar business models can set them up for successful exits, says Williamson.

Business-to-consumer startups that focus on sustainable living, recycling, and collaborative consumption have also done well. Recycle Bank, which rewards people for doing green activities, and Energy Hub, a startup using cloud tech to manage home energy usage, are two examples of Physic-backed startups applying greentech issues to current technology.

Electric vehicle investments have remain steady

While solar and wind energy funding activity has slowed down, electric vehicle investments have remained steady throughout the years.

“If you can have an electric vehicle where people don’t have range anxiety, the ultimate market impact will be enormous. There is a particular value for EV startups, because there is urgency and pressure in the market,” says Gillard.

In addition, startups developing longer-range batteries for electric vehicles have done well in raising capital, as well as generating revenue. People want electric cars that can travel as far as the gasoline-powered variety, and that means car makers need better batteries. Pangaea Ventures has invested in two battery and energy storage companies, Envia and CNano.

Greentech funding will go on

Even though it has slowed down, greentech funding isn’t dying. Goldman Sachs announced a $40 billion fund for greentech investments, mostly earmarked for overseas energy companies. A few solar companies are still doing fine, too. Nanosolar, a company that prints ultra-thin solar cells on aluminum foil, recently closed a $70 million round.

But many of the big-name VC firms that invested in greentech several years ago have scaled back their efforts. Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, which once threw a lot of money at greentech startups, wouldn’t comment on the current state of its green investments for this article. However, KPCB still hands its hands in the game. For instance, the firm invested in alternative home electricity company Gen110 and electric-car charging company Coloumb Technologies in May, 2011.

Khosla Ventures, another leader in greentech investments, recently put its funds toward energy storage startup Liquid Metal Battery Corp. And in early June, it also invested in Climate Corp, a company that insures farmers against climate-change weather problems that can destroy crops.

While investors see the value in renewable energy, many have preferred to place their bets on more sure short-term payoffs in the social and cloud spaces. It’s hard to argue with lucrative exits like Success Factors or viral hits like Pinterest.

But in the wake of Facebook’s troubled IPO, it’s possible that the “easy money” won’t seem quite so easy any more. That might lead more investors to put their money into greentech companies that promise sustainable growth even without a viral network effect.

Green car on cash image via Shutterstock

The greatest ethnic diversity  in the venture capital industry is among those who have less than five years’ experience.

“As the venture capital industry continues to contract and the number of professionals declines over the next five years, we could very well see more dramatic demographic shifts within the industry,” said NVCA President Mark Heesen in a statement. Among newcomers 77 percent are white, 17 percent are Asian, three percent are African American or Latino, and three percent were of mixed race, according to the survey.

First conducted in 2008, the Venture Census looks at the composition of the entire workforce of the venture capital industry, not just the analysts and general partner roles. The number of female venture capital employees who listed themselves investors decreased to 11 percent in 2011 compared to 14 percent in 2008, while women represent 21 percent of total employment, albeit largely in non-investor roles. The industries with the highest representation of female investors were cleantech and life sciences, where women made up 18 percent and 15 percent of investors respectively.

The purpose of the survey was to gather facts and figures about people who make up the venture capital industry, as well as to assess quality of life issues, such as days spent traveling, and hours worked on weekly basis.

The survey also looked at other indicators of diversity in the venture capital industry, such as the background of investors. Fifteen percent of current venture investors were the chief executive officers of venture-backed startups and an additional 14 percent were CEOs of private, non-venture-backed companies.

Businessmen image via ShutterStock

North America’s winner is smart meter communications company SilverSpring Networks which announced plans a few months ago to go public. Silver Spring sells wireless networks that transmit energy consumption data between meters, consumers and utilities. The company also provides a web-based energy management portal to consumers, which takes the data from its relay points.

TaKaDu, which monitors water pipes for utilities, won for Europe and Israel. The company doubled the length of the water mains it monitors for leaks and other problems since the start of the year. Cities in the developed world lose on average 10 to 30 percent of their drinking water, and the associated revenue, though leaks.

TaKaDu’s VP of Marketing Guy Horowitz told me that high-profile cleantech failures like Solyndra, “have reduced the appetite for new stuff” among investors and are also steering them towards non-capital plays likes software. “The only way for startups to get noticed is to completely change how the sector in which you are operating works,” said Horowitz. “Don’t just build a better mousetrap.” Water utilities traditionally make minimal usage of IT and are slow to innovate but TaKaDu’s system is now in use in 10 countries. According to Horowitz, “Analysts are saying that what happened in the smartgrid space could happen in the water space.”

Asia’s Company of the year is LanzaTech, which coverts waste gasses into cheap ethanol. Its process traps the gases emitted by steel manufacturing — particularly carbon monoxide — and then ferments them with specially engineered microbes to produce ethanol. As previously reported by VentureBeat, Lenzatech has a partnership with China’s major iron and steel maker Baosteel. China, now hyper-conscious of air pollution following the criticism it drew during the smog-choked Olympics hosted in Beijing, has taken a special interest in technologies that reduce emissions from industrial plants.

The Global CleanTech 100 list, produced in association with the Guardian newspaper, also contains many names which have appeared Greenbeat’s pages including trash-to-fuel firm Enerkem, Ice Energy‘s ice-based energy storage and  plant-based plastic makers Avantium.

Cleantech investment may be down, but interest in cleantech is still on the rise, not least among potential employees. “People who would be flocking to Google or Facebook, ” says TaKaDu’s Horowitz, “are going to TaKaDu. For a cleantech startup, that’s a big feat.”

Google previously invested in the Alta IV project, which would generate 102 megawatts of power. This time the company is investing in the Alta V project, which will generate an unannounced amount of power. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete, and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power.

Google has thus far invested $780 million in clean energy projects, $700 million this year alone. Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google is the company that is using the renewable energy to power its data centers.

Google and Citi are purchasing the Alta V site from Terra-Gen, the original manufacturer of the project, and will lease it back to Terra-Gen as part of the deal. Terra-Gen will operate and manage the wind farm under a long-term agreement.

This wind farm might bring California more in line with other states in terms of wind energy usage. Though the state is known for its leaning toward renewable energy, it only harnesses the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Iowa is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The Alta wind farm will be one of the largest of its size, generating a gigawatt of power when all scheduled projects are completed by the end of the year. The Alta Wind Energy Center will generate 1.55 gigawatts of power when every project is completed and the wind power farm is fully online.

The U.S. government is still flexing loan guarantees as a way to promote renewable energy research stateside — which faces the constant threat of being out-produced and out-gunned by foreign solar panel manufacturers. SunTech Power, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, for example already has a massive presence in the United States and accounts for around 28 percent of all new residential home solar panels installed, said Ed Fenster, chief executive of SunRun, a company that leases out and handles maintenance for residential solar panels.

First Solar became the last major U.S.-based independent solar panel manufacturer after French oil company Total bought a majority stake in SunPower. But it also struggled to grow in its most recent operating quarter, and the company had a lukewarm outlook for the remainder of the year. It’s essentially the last major player on the solar panel manufacturing stage — and potentially one of the last holdouts before foreign solar panel manufacturers gain control over the U.S. market, which generates a lot of demand for renewable energy like solar power.

A loan guarantee from the Department of Energy helps companies like First Solar attract buyers and investors for new renewable energy projects. Basically it means the government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for the investors. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government is promoting renewable energy sources. Other countries like Germany offer feed-in tariffs, which means the government sets the rate for each kilowatt-hour produced and utilities purchase the power at premium rates. Germany’s solar power market has exploded as a result.

“The U.S. is certainly funding companies within its borders with different technologies that are less bankable to date,” said Matt Feinstein, an analyst with clean technology research firm Lux Research. “Everybody’s doing something different, it’s kind of tough to say which is an advantage — but you can look at Germany and say obviously they’re doing it right.”

It isn’t clear whether the loan guarantee program run by the U.S. government is enough to keep up with foreign competitors. China is already the largest investor in clean technology, according to a report by Pew. Investors in China dropped $54.4 billion into clean technology ventures in 2010, while the United States only invested $34 billion into clean technology ventures. There’s also still an enormous amount of room to improve the ways solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, said Dallas Kachan, managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech analysis and consulting firm.

First Solar was the first company to bring the cost of solar power down below $1 per watt. That’s a critical threshold that proved to regulators, lawmakers and consumers everywhere that renewable energy can scale. And First Solar still produces some of the cheapest solar panels in the world. But it isn’t clear whether loan guarantees and funding will be enough to ensure U.S. solar panel companies like First Solar can effectively compete with international players because local and state regulations are usually mercilessly complicated and can get in the way of creating renewable energy sources, Feinstein said.

“Many installers and project developers cite the numerous regulatory and electrical codes – local, state, and national – that projects must meet, in addition to utility requirements, for the inflated cost of solar systems relative to equipment costs and margins alone,” Feinstein said. “Though many agree with SunRun’s findings that creating a more uniform, sensible structure would bring down these ‘soft costs,’ few among them are optimistic that it will actually happen.”

First Solar also announced that one of the projects that might be eligible for a Department of Energy loan guarantee, its 550 megawatt Topaz Solar Farm, was approved by the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission.

The new project doesn’t rely on photovoltaic cells that capture sunlight and convert it electricity. Instead, if uses a large array of mirrors that focus sunlight onto a single point on a tower. The heat from the focused sunlight is used to boil water, creating steam that moves conventional turbines to generate electricity. (The idea is reminiscent of the Archimedes Death Ray, an oft-used trope in popular culture.)

The new plant will generate 392 megawatts of power — enough to take around 90,000 cars off the road over 25 years, according to Google. The average home in the U.S. uses around 920 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month.

Google also invested $5 million in a German solar power plant last week and has invested about $250 million in clean energy sources to date. The search giant has already been pushing clean technology stateside and its investment arm, Google Ventures, has invested in several clean technology companies.

BrightSource Energy’s power tower will be around 450 feet tall and use 173,000 heliostats — devices that mount two mirrors and move them to direct sunlight to the top of the tower. The project should be finished in 2013, and is also funded by NRG Energy — which also just unveiled the first of its line of electric vehicle charging stations Friday.

The deal is not specifically a clean-technology play because it is focused on improving the efficiency of transmitting power from oil- and other fossil-fuel-based power generation methods. Companies like GE have had to rely on less conventional sources for oil and other fossil fuels, so there’s a lot of potential to save power companies money by improving the amount of energy it can ship from one place to the next without losing any.

Converteam, for example, manufactures power drivers for low- and medium-voltage power sources — which convert electricity into some kind of mechanical energy, like a turbine or a motor. That’s only a small part of Converteam’s massive portfolio, which is why GE was willing to pay $3.2 billion for the company, said Steve Minnihan, an analyst with clean technology firm Lux Research.

“They can help smooth out the small imbalances and a lot of the unhealthy levels of reactive power that come out of a solar farm,” he said. “GE stressed the importance of this acquisition for its oil and gas sector, but looking beyond that, it can work for wind turbines and solar panels too.”

That’s because most researchers and companies have already figured out how to pick up energy from renewable sources like solar and wind power, said Matt Feinstein, an analyst with Lux Research. There’s still a lot of room to improve the efficiency of energy capture devices like the photovoltaic cells in solar panels — but the most commercial opportunity lies in actually getting that energy to consumers.

“You can look at GE overall being an energy player, look at renewables and we’ve mostly figured out how to get energy from renewables.” he said. ”We’ve got all the sources of energy, we’re not harnessing new things, it’s about the management and the more efficient harnessing.”

Dozens of top global brands — including some leading cleantech companies — have no female board directors. A recent article in The Atlantic asked why that’s the case, when many of these companies market aggressively to women and rely on women for large portions of their business. As well, women make up the majority of the U.S. workforce and U.S. management positions. While the exclusion may seem less glaring with cleantech than, say, Bulgari’s fashion empire, the fact remains that women are largely absent from cleantech boardrooms.

Women aren’t nearly as present as their male counterparts in the upper echelons of most industries, but that doesn’t mean that all-male boardrooms are a prudent business decision. An analysis by consulting firm McKinsey found that the operational profits of companies with female board directors were 56 percent higher than those with only male board directors. The analysis also showed that boards with women surpassed all-male boards in auditing, risk oversight and control.

But still the glass ceiling in cleantech persists. The majority of the top 10 cleantech companies as ranked this year by the Wall Street Journal have no female board directors. At the recent Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, the seminars were dominated by all-male panels. Lists of the most powerful females in cleantech often elicit a collective “huh?” from readers — they’ve never heard of the women, and they’ve never heard of the companies.

Some organizations are bucking the trend, but they are the exception to the rule. Here’s a roundup of some big names that don’t have women in the boardroom, as well as some that do:

Cleantech companies with no female board directors:
Bloom Energy
Tesla
Solyndra
Suniva
eMeter
Serious Materials
First Solar
MiaSole
Opower
GreatPoint Energy
SeaMicro
Luxim
Adura Technologies
Amonix
Harvest Power
NanoH2O
Ice Energy
Aquamarine Power
BrightSource Energy
LS9
Algae.Tec
SoloPower
Amprius
Genomatica
SmartSynch

Cleantech companies with at least one female board director:
SunPower
Suntech
Boston-Power
Sapphire Energy
eSolar
Silver Spring Networks
Amyris
Zipcar
EnOcean Alliance

[Image via SFO CP/Flickr]

That’s because having all those devices connected to a network will make it easier to run any number of aspects of life that have an impact on the environment more efficiently. That can range from power grids, to traffic or to fuel efficiency. The biggest opportunity lies in placing all those devices on a smart grid — a highly efficient power grid that uses advanced programs and wirelessly connected devices to distribute power without wasting it. Vestberg made the comments at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Fla.

“In the next 5 years, we expect two-thirds of all electronics will have some connectivity in them,” Vestberg said. “That means we can use a much more powerful grid in our society and reduce our impact on the environment drastically.”

There’s also a holistic opportunity to reduce the impact that other connected devices — such as vehicles — have on the environment, he said. One way would be to give drivers the ability to “download” more horsepower to their vehicles when they need it, like when they are going on a long trip or going up a hill. If they don’t require it, the car automatically restricts that horsepower — increasing fuel efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

“We can increase safety and improve (carbon) emissions by steering cars and keep those wasteful habits in check,” he said. “That’s another industry that can benefit from what we have built.”

That’s quite a potential impact, too — the average American spends around 45 hours in a car each month, Vestberg said. There are also around 250 million registered vehicles in the United States, and many of them don’t meet emission standards and are not very environmentally friendly or fuel-efficient.

There’s a huge opportunity in expanding the “Internet of Things,” a short-hand way of describing a massive wireless network where most electronics and devices are connected to the Internet. For every tenth of a percent increase in broadband penetration across a country, it’s sustainable gross domestic product — a measure of a country’s output — increases by around 1 percent. Every 1,000 new broadband connections, whether they are mobile or fixed, also creates another 80 jobs, Vestberg said.

That means that there’s a huge untapped market in the United States alone. There are entire sections of rural America that don’t have access to broadband, and coverage is pretty weak in some parts of the country. Connecting all those remote and weakly covered areas would add another 10 million jobs in the United States — which is pretty significant given that the unemployment rate still remains high at 8.9 percent.

The wireless industry accounts for around 2 percent of all carbon emissions today, Vestberg said. There are around 1 billion mobile broadband users today, and that number should go up to around 5 billion broadband users by 2016, Vestberg said. Around 85 percent of the planet has mobile coverage, and it will reach around 90 percent in 5 years — with around 8 billion active mobile subscriptions, up from 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions today.

“For the ones good in math, there’s not that many people on the planet,” Vestberg said. “People are going to have several devices with so many different types of descriptions, and anything that benefits from being connected will be connected.”

Fears of a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan sparked a new wave of criticism of nuclear energy — and a rally in clean-energy stocks on Monday. But that interest quickly waned as stocks in the sector dropped back from that day’s highs as the stock market experienced a broad sell-off.

And that brief surge of interest never touched the private investment community, because venture capitalists typically focus on longer-term plays, said Steve Minnihan, a partner at Lux Research, a firm which specializes in cleantech.

“I haven’t heard anything from my clients or from the companies that we speak to in terms of interest in solar and wind power,” Minnihan said.

Any sustained increase in interest probably won’t be felt for the next six to nine months, said Micah Myers, a managing partner with venture-capital firm Claremont Creek Capital. That’s because the energy sector’s investment cycle is typically longer than other venture investments, he said. Alternative energy sources have suffered from a lack of capital to finance projects, but that may ease as a result of the crisis in Japan.

“It’s a huge tragedy, but it’s only gonna give a tailwind to alternative energy technologies,” Myers said. “There will be more of a willingness to put capital to work in solar and wind.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the fuel rods in one of the nuclear reactors in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan had experienced a partial meltdown in a statement today. As of this afternoon, the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO) was attempting to restore power to the nuclear plants in order to cool the nuclear reactors and prevent a full-scale meltdown. The U.S. government has also urged any U.S. citizens within 50 miles of the reactor to evacuate the area.

While major natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina caused a huge outpouring of public support and aid funding, they didn’t move the needle much on technology, said David Mann, chief of staff at Khosla Ventures — a venture-capital investment firm well known for its backing of cleantech companies.

The events in Japan led to a tremendous amount of misinformation spreading among the public at large — but not the investment and scientific community, Minnihan said.

“I do think there will be a public backlash against [nuclear power],” Minnihan said. “I don’t think there will be a backlash around the scientific … community — the nuclear plant was designed with the appropriate safety mechanisms, just no one had foreseen this scale of a disaster.”

And it’s not like there are many private investment opportunities in nuclear today, Mann said. Khosla Ventures is an investor in TerraPower, a company that specializes in nuclear reactors called Travelling Wave Reactors that are powered by depleted uranium. But Khosla, known for bold and risky bets across a wide range of cleantech opportunities, may be a fringe case. Nuclear power typically takes a long time to reach the commercial market after the company is founded, Mann said — longer than a typical venture capitalist’s investment time horizon.

The only clean-technology plays that would be affected by the nuclear disaster in Japan would be Japan’s own clean-technology investment community. TEPCO, which owns the nuclear reactors, is also a big proponent of smart-grid technology that uses software and real-time data to distribute power across the country’s power grid. Smart-grid technology is seen as one of the major innovations in clean technology that will drive the costs of distributing power down and make it more efficient. That would inevitably take a hit as TEPCO covers costs of damage from the crisis.

Damage from the 9.0-magnitude quake that struck off the northeast coast of Japan and spawned a massive tsunami far exceeded what nuclear plants are built to withstand. The quake cut off power to the plants, and the tsunami that followed the earthquake destroyed diesel-powered generators that were providing backup power to the plant. That meant clean water was no longer pumping into the reactor to keep the fuel rods cool, causing them to overheat.

The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which loans money to clean technology companies that produce clean energy, will continue funding nuclear power programs as part of its efforts to promote clean energy production, the office’s executive director Jonathan Silver said at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco today. So the impact of the Japanese nuclear fiasco on U.S. policy might even be negligible — especially after President Barack Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu lobbied hard to bring nuclear power to the forefront as a potential alternative to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

While the immediate pop in interest might have already faded, there’s still an opportunity for clean technology startups to capitalize on the good will that will come from Japan’s nuclear crisis. The backlash against nuclear power will open up a hole that startups like Harvest Power, an alternative energy provider that converts waste into natural gas, can fill, said Ajit Nazre, a managing partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The company, which was founded by two ex-Google employees in 2006, offers what it calls “disruptive” technology that delivers personalized weather insurance products for the $3 trillion global agriculture industry. In a statement, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said WeatherBill has the potential to “fundamentally change the risk profile” of agriculture. The company’s products is aimed at helping farmers protect their business and crops from weather changes brought on by climate change.

As we wrote last year, data is the next big thing in cleantech. WeatherBill is one of the companies leveraging weather and data to produce new products aimed at billion-dollar industries. WeatherBug is using weather data to make smart grid offerings. A number of lighting systems, home energy management and building energy management startups also factor in weather to determine how to program lighting and air conditioning systems for the maximum amount of energy savings and tenant comfort. Others use data in other ways — Genscape, for example, uses sensors to provide data about the grid that energy traders pay to use. And while WeatherBill’s weather and data technology is currently used for agricultural insurance, it could one day be used for energy markets as they become more weather-sensitive.

Farming and food supply is, of course, very sensitive to the weather. More than 90 percent of crop losses happen because of unexpected weather, and WeatherBill expects things to get worse as the effects of climate change increase the frequency of those events, says CEO David Friedberg, pointing to recent droughts in Russia and China and flooding in Australia. Friedberg co-founded the company with other ex-Googler Siraj Khaliq, now WeatherBill’s company’s chief technology officer.

The company’s technology enables the real-time pricing and purchasing of customizable weather insurance by using weather modeling and local weather monitoring systems. WeatherBill’s programs pinpoint weather conditions expected to affect adversely affect farmer’s land, and automatically pays the farmer if those weather incidents happen. The company’s technology also powers Raincheck.com, an automated weather insurance program for travelers worldwide.

Investors in this financing round also include NEA, Index Ventures, Allen & Company, First Round Capital, Atomico and Code Advisors. The company plans to use the capital to support product expansion in the U.S. and worldwide.

[Images via Flickr/Sony200boy and NatalieMaynor]

Obama proposes $29.5 billion for DOE budget — The president pitched more clean energy projects for the 2012 budget, to be funded by cutting $3.6 billion in fossil fuel subsidies, an idea he proposed in his State of the Union address last month. The Department of Energy’s proposed budget would give it $29.5 billion for the fiscal year 2012, with $8 billion for clean energy research, Reuters reports.

BMW readies electric car pilot — The company will be releasing 1,000 ActiveE electrified BMW coupes (pictured) to drivers in the U.S., Europe and China. The cars are essentially in a field test phase, Autopia writes.

GE launches line of halogen lights — GE’s halogen lights are in the shape of the incandescent bulb, but are up to 22 percent more efficient, CNET writes. Two-backs of halogen bulbs will retail for between $4 and $7. LEDs, compact fluorescent light bulbs and haolgen lights are another alternative to incandescent bulbs, which are being phased out due to energy efficiency legislation. In fact, Ikea announced last month it would stop selling incandescent bulbs altogether.

Enernoc potentially snared in business troubles — The demand response company recently saw its Chief Operating Office step down for unnamed reasons, soon after grid operator and major Enernoc customer PJM made general complaints of market manipulation in the realm of demand response, Earth2Tech writes. Demand response is a increasingly popular program in which utilities pay financial incentives to customers who agree to cut energy use during peak times. Companies like Enernoc help implement such programs. Shares of Enernoc fell on the news, and the company released a statement this morning saying it was in compliance with PJM’s rules.

Florida-based LED maker Lighting Science Group (LSG) announced today it has filed for a $150 million IPO.

The news follows this week’s successful IPO of Gevo, a biofuels and biochemicals company (that has never turned a profit) that raised $107 million on public markets and was able to command share prices at the high end of its offering range.

So, could this finally be the year cleantech IPOs gain traction?

LSG is something of a unique case. It makes LED products for commercial and retail establishments (pictured) and has had its products used in installations for Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s and Bryant Park. The company’s stocks are already traded on the OTC Bulletin Board ($4.27 per share at the time of this writing), and the IPO plans would be  trade its stocks on the Nasdaq.  While LSG isn’t venture-backed, the majority ownership belongs to private equity firm Pegasus Capital Advisors, the same fund behind the IPO of Molycorp, the U.S. rare earths mining company whose stock spiked earlier this year on fears of undersupply of rare earths. Still, a $150 million LEDs public offering is nothing to sniff at, especially if LSG can pull it off successfully.

Asked last year about the cleantech IPOs market in 2010, venture capitalist Nat Goldhaber of Claremont Creek Ventures replied that it had been “recalcitrant.” However, he’s expecting 2011 to be a good year for more public offerings in cleantech. Among his potential IPO candidates are solar thermal company BrightSource Energy and the long-speculated IPO candidate Silver Spring Networks, a smart grid company acknowledged to be one of the most successful venture-backed startups in the space.

Venture capitalist Alan Salzman of VantagePoint, who has backed Tesla and BrightSource, is also betting 2011 will be a good year for cleantech deals. He told Reuters that he believes IPOs this year will come from utility-scale solar power plants, algae oils, smart grid components and thin-film solar panel makers (many companies in this space have recently received funding and are planning to build factories).

“You’re going to see much more of an active pipeline,” Salzman said. “You will see five to 10 significant, multibillion dollar IPOs in the U.S. this year, and as many meaningful acquisitions.”

Rachel Sheinbein of CMEA Capital spoke with VentureBeat recently about how venture capital fund-raising has declined and how that will affect the types of investing many VCs can do — namely, most investing will trend towards capital efficiency and in fact already has begun to. However, she’s seeing glimmers of hope:

“There is some momentum off a couple of IPOs late last year that returned very well for their investors. Once you start seeing that momentum, there’s interest from the public (markets),” Sheinbein said.

Last year did see a few successes, most notably Tesla’s $226 million public offering in June. SemiLEDs, a Taiwanese company, also had a successful IPO. Biofuels companies Amyris annd Codexis also publicly debuted at the lower ends of their offering ranges. Long-standing smart meter company Elster also went public last fall. Enel Green, a branch of Italy power company Enel, had the largest cleantech IPO last year in Madrid, raising $3.6 billion. Several Chinese companies also ranked in the top 10 IPOs of last year.

LEDs are part of the overall boom in energy efficiency, as we wrote last year, as are companies that specialize in building energy management and energy-reducing, sensor-based and programmable lighting systems. In fact, earlier this week, Silicon Valley LED-maker Bridgelux raised $21 million. Energy efficiency is by all accounts expected to be a hot topic this year.

Cleantech investing hit $4 billion in 2010 — Investments in cleantech companies are up 8 percent from the year before, according to a report by accounting firm Ernst & Young. Most investors decided to give money to late-stage cleantech startups that had already been well established. Only 26 percent of venture capitalists invested in early-stage cleantech startups.

U.S. can’t meet Obama’s goal of 1M electric cars by 2015 — Electric car manufacturers don’t have high enough production targets to meet that goal, according to a report by the University of Indiana’s school of Public and Environmental Affairs. Obama set the target during his State of the Union address last week.

Sungevity names Mac Irvin as Chief Financial Officer — the solar panel installation company snagged Irvin from SunPower, another solar panel manufacturing company. Irvin secured around $500 million in transactions with Morgan Stanley, General Electric, Wells Fargo and others while he was at SunPower.

$20 billion will be spent on smart grid research in the next 10 years — and 75 percent of that will come from major utilitycompanies updating their power grids, according to a report by Lux Research. GE said it would work with ABB, an automated power developer, to invest in cleantech companies as part of the effort.

Solar energy stocks have a field day after MEMC Electronic Materials posts strong earnings — Goldman Sachs also issued a note that First Solar and other solar power stocks were probably undervalued. Ardour Capital upgraded MEMC to a “buy” rating, but the stocks came back to earth during day trading once markets opened today as the rest of the market showed a bit of weakness.

Grants from the Department of Energy lead to later-stage venture capital investment — Six projects that received seed funding from the DOE’s Advanced Research Project Agency have gone on to raise $100 million in mid-stage venture capital funding in just more than a year, according to a report from the DOE. The companies focus on solar energy and improving battery storage.

[Photo: david_megginson]

At least, that’s the notion Peter Thiel — a cofounder of PayPal and president of Clarium Capital — subscribes to when he looks at cleantech companies as potential investing opportunities. He made the comments at a Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco Wednesday.

Thiel frequently expresses disappointment that Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial community is all about making profits and not about changing the world, so you’d think he’d be bullish on anything green. But he’s actually been surprisingly bearish when it comes to cleantech companies — those that specialize in producing more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly energy, transportation methods and others. That’s not because he doesn’t believe in the technology, he just doesn’t like the way the companies are run, he said.

“Most of the people who run cleantech companies are sales people, not engineers,” Thiel said. “Something seems to have gone quite wrong with cleantech.”

As a result, most cleantech companies that try to develop alternative energy forms are building power sources that are more expensive. Solar panels, for example, are still not a cost-efficient way to generate power, Thiel said.

“We need something cheaper, not more expensive,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the energy is cleaner, it doesn’t work if it’s more expensive.”

One potential route for cleantech energies is to work with something that’s slightly more environmentally friendly than current sources — natural gas. It’s a cheaper form of energy that’s much more ubiquitous and has less of an environmental impact than most energy sources today, but has not been harnessed, Thiel said. Entrepreneurs and governments should also explore nuclear power options because they are more energy-efficient, he said.

Outside of producing alternative energy forms, the biggest step has to come in the transportation industry, Thiel said. That amounts to building better and more efficient batteries for electric vehicles that are more environmentally friendly. Tesla Motors, he said, had as good a chance as any other electric car company to get it right.

But Thiel wouldn’t get any more specific about his expectations for the electric car company, despite the history Thiel has with Tesla founder Elon Musk. Musk was also a co-founder of PayPal. Thiel is also coincidentally an investor in SpaceX, another of Musk’s ventures that wants to bring space travel to the masses.

NRG, ConocoPhilips and GE create $300 million fund – Energy Technology Ventures will look to invest in early-stage technologies within the energy and cleantech fields. GE will conduct due diligence for the deals, while NRG and ConocoPhilips may also invest in demonstration projects for the startups, the Wall Street Journal reports. Three GE-backed startups have already received backing from Energy Technology Ventures: solar company Alta Devices, biofuels player CoolPlanetBioFuels and clean coal venture Ciris Energy.

Chevrolet Volt expands sales nationwide — GM’s partially-electric hybrid will be available nationwide by the end of this year. The company plans to step up production in response to high demand. So far, Volts have been delivered to customers in the Washington D.C. area, California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Texas.

Zipcar adds Prius Plug-In to lineup — The popular carsharing service will add eight of the partially-electric Priuses to its offerings in Boston/Cambridge, San Francisco and Portland. The car will not be commercially available until 2012; only 160 of the cars are currently available nationwide.

Enernoc has acquired M2M — M2M Communications makes wireless technology-enabled demand response solutions, and holds hundreds of megawatts in contracts with utilities. This is one of many acquisitions Enernoc has made lately. The company is one of the top makers of demand response solutions that allow utilities to create programs that offer financial incentives when customers lower electricity use during peak hours.

In a press call yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated Obama’s message, giving sign of how the administration will position the president’s clean energy plans politically.

“This is wealth creation,” Chu said.

In his speech, Obama made no mention of climate change. Instead, he couched energy goals in terms of making America competitive globally in a market that attracted $243 billion in investment worldwide last year.

Obama’s plan entails eliminating oil subsidies, a measure that has failed in the past. Major energy legislation has also struggled, but Chu pushed for a uniting theme that sidestepped the skepticism on global warming and environmental impact.

“This is the future of our economic prosperity… the driving reason can be any reason you choose,” Chu said, pointing to jobs, making money, saving money and saving the environment as a few of many motivators.

The repositioning of alternative energy also touched on a keystone of American anxiety about competing globally as countries like China rise (and are investing in major ways in cleantech).

“Around the world, countries are moving aggressively to lead the clean energy race,” Chu said. “We cannot take leadership and innovation for granted. This is a race.”

If the rebranding of clean energy as wealth and jobs creation goes off successfully, it could help push forward political support on measures that have been difficult to pass. Of course, execution is everything, but the state of the union speech has repositioned energy legislation into a more hopeful place than it was before.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own,” Obama said. “So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”

While Obama urged Congress to back legislation that would support such a lofty goal, the energy legislation has proven difficult to pass in the past. The president couched his plan in the terms of supporting American innovation and the need to compete and win globally — singling out the goal of the U.S. being the first country to get one million electric vehicles on the roads in the U.S. by 2015. (Secretary of Energy Steven Chu made a similar appeal last year, saying the clean energy revolution is the country’s “Sputnik moment.”)

The administration was unable to pass both a major energy bill last year and a proposal to eliminate $40 billion in yearly oil company subsidies, according to Reuters. Wind and solar industry associations mounted a frantic end-of-year struggle in December to renew an investment tax credit that was eventually extended for one year.

Obama will emphasize his point by touring two Wisconsin cleantech companies today, one that develops energy-saving solutions for clients, and the other a wind tower manufacturer.

Governments around the world have stimulated investment in clean energy. China, for example, has pledged billions to the smart grid and pledged to get five million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. California has decreed that 33 percent of power purchased by utilities must be from clean sources by 2030; Hawaii set a goal of 70 percent clean energy by 2030.

The idea behind those mandates was summed up by the president last night:

“Clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling,” Obama said.

Industry watchers have remained largely bearish on the likelihood of significant national clean energy policy, which would stimulate investment and expansion within the country’s cleantech industry. However, the Department of Energy has a large loan guarantee program, which has supported wind and solar investments, and recently awarded $405 million to three companies building biofuels refineries.

In his speech, the president included energy sources like nuclear, natural gas and clean coal technologies. Natural gas in particular has surged of late, with oil companies making acquisitions and starting projects in the area. In a report last year, consulting and engineering firm Black & Veatch forecast natural gas would power 40 percent of the nation by 2035, while coal will fade from dominance. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that emits fewer emissions than coal when burned and is considered promising because the infrastructure already exists it.

[Image via Wikipedia Commons]

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Could information be the ultimate renewable energy source?

Perhaps. According to Jennifer Pulliam, director of innovation for electricity retailer TXU Energy, data is one of the most exciting opportunities in the smart grid — a much-needed upgrade to our power infrastructure driven by information technology.

Data, Pulliam told me, allows customers to understand how they use energy — which in turn guides them to pick the best option from a broad menu of energy efficiency and pricing options that TXU has been working to cultivate in order to stay competitive in the deregulated Texas electricity market.

Of course, making energy use data interesting and engaging is part of the challenge of selling consumers on the power of data. But opportunities in data go far beyond just what’s presented to consumers.

Data was the biggest theme at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat conference last year. Software and services that will enable smart-grid analytics “will represent one of the largest growth opportunities in the utility sector over the next few years,” according to Pike Research. The market  – with contenders from IBM to Accenture to Siemens to Itron — will balloon from a size of $356 million last year to $4.2 billion in annual revenues by 2015.

The use of data to yield energy savings is also core to many of the most promising segments of the energy efficiency market, from greening data centers to better building controls. Not coincidentally, all three sectors are expected to do well this year.

Redwood Systems and SynapSense use sensors to find energy inefficiencies in energy-hogging data centers, while JouleX offers building controls  monitoring and analytics. The latter two companies have attracted investment from GE.

Weather will be a huge part of the opportunity, too, with companies like Genscape and even Google looking to use weather data to play in energy markets. One startup, Onsemble, wants to use weather and sensors atop wind turbines to produce more accurate weather forecasts. Better accuracy in weather forecasts are then used by building controls data-crunchers and analyzing software to help users save money on their energy bills.

Building controls players like BuildingIQ, for example, loop in weather forecasts and past energy use to predict a building’s energy needs — and recommend actions to offset them, such as pre-cooling a building in the morning, when load is lighter and electricity prices cheaper, say on a day expected to get hot in the afternoon. SCI recently nabbed $15.6 million for itsbuilding predictive analytics.

Of course, it’s not just companies that can get hooked on data. Players like Motorola’s 4home, Verizon, Tendril and Intel are betting that their engaging displays will win over consumers and get them to adopt home energy and security management systems. Consumers love raw weather data too — smart thermostat maker Ecobee’s CEO Stuart Townsend told me today at the Smart Energy Summit in Austin that it’s one of users’ favorite features in home energy displays.

If data can capture energy consumers’ imaginations, then perhaps it can power much-needed change across the sector.

[Image via Flickr/LaMenta3]

BrightSource to power up Crete — The Greek island of Crete will install a 38-megawatt solar project with BrightSource’s solar thermal technology, which uses thousands of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a boiler filled with water atop a tower, generating steam to turn an electrical turbine.

EPA approves ethanol-blended fuel — Cars and light trucks made between 2001 and 2006 are now permitted to use fuel blended with 15 percent ethanol, known as E15. The EPA approved the blend last year for cars made after 2007.

Cleantech venture capital rose in 2010 —  Venture capital dollars going into cleantech amounted to 17 percent of all venture capital invested in 2010, compared to 11 percent in 2009, for a total of $3.7 billion invested in 267 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Five of the top 10 deals last year went to cleantech.

Hug Energy shuts down — The energy management startup is closing its doors, Earth2Tech writes, citing lack of interest from investors. It had developed a computer-based system for home energy management, an area that has struggled to gain traction.

Texas approves wind power lines — The controversial lines will run 140 miles across the scenic Hill Country region to bring West Texas wind power to the rest of the state, Texas Tribune writes. Regulators, who have awarded several transmission line projects for wind, have butted heads with environmentalists and homeowners in the past, some of whom have successfully stopped projects from going forward.

[Image via Flickr/Horia Varlan]

Nat Goldhaber of Claremont Creek Ventures tells us that next year is The Year for some good old IPO action in green (we list a few of the companies he thinks are good candidates below) — as long as there’s not another global downturn. In that case, “all bets are off,” he cautions.

Peter Wagner of Accel says he sees next year as a year where success of startups will be determined by whether they can make a bottom-dollar appeal to enterprises and convince businesses to sign on to products on the basis of standalone return on investment (as opposed to, say, government incentives or subsidies). Smart buildings — startups that make building controls that save companies energy and money — are a prime area for mergers and acquisitions, Wagner predicts. It’s a trend VentureBeat has previously reported on.

Wagner, however, thinks this might not be the year for IPOs.

“It’s early to expect a large number (of exits) because many of the really good investments are just being made now,” Wagner says. “What we are likely to experience is a reorientation of the venture market on opportunities that stand on their own two feet.”

Dave Dreessen, partner at Battery Ventures, echoed that sentiment.

“I’d guess that we see a modest 2011, with a strong 2012 to follow,” Dreessen said. “Given that cleantech companies address huge markets and have strong growth prospects, public market investors are definitely looking to put capital to work in cleantech.”

Wagner of Accel named a couple of hot trends to watch for in cleantech — energy efficiency (which was the top sector venture capitalists invested in last quarter), energy products tied to cloud computing (recently endorsed by Bill Clinton), building controls and consumer efficiency.

Jason Matlof, partner at Battery Ventures also named energy efficiency and controls as a leading sector in cleantech next year. He added that scheduling technologies, power electronics and smart grid-oriented products would be hot to watch (VentureBeat made a similar prediction this fall when organizing our GreenBeat 2010: Charging the Super Grid).

“I’d say that the companies most likely to get out are less exotic and less aggressively marketed than what we’ve been seeing.  They are less likely to require technical ‘leaps of faith’ and will have rapidly ramping revenue and gross profitability,” said Matlof.

All in all, it sounds like investors are fairly united in looking towards more proven and capital-efficient technologies, a trend that’s been showing in the markets as of late.

“When the first round of cleantech investments were being made, it felt too frothy, too much like the old bubble days. We called it a ‘bub’ – an imcomplete bubble. There was all the enthusiasm and no exits,” Goldhaber says. “I think the frothiness has come off of our industry … and now we can get down to the serious business of building sustainable long-term companies.”

Another interesting trend to watch as pointed out by a few consulting companies as of late: natural gas is poised to rise as coal plants get retired, and could pose a threat to solar and wind because it’s cheaper and the infrastructure for it already exists.

Here are some top cleantech IPO contenders for 2011, per Goldhaber:

Opower — The consumer engagement and energy efficiency company is something of a energy tech darling and just raised $50 million in a third round of financing. If there’s any company that could fit the mold of a cleantech poster child, Opower could be it, Goldhaber says. Wagner, whose firm backed Opower, said: “They’ve cracked the code on how to synchronize their business model without a utility customer. That’s a hard thing to do and they’ve done it extremely well.” (Disclosure: MHS Capital, which backs Opower, has also invested in VentureBeat.)

Serious Materials — A big winner in 2008 stimulus funding, Serious Materials quickly made a name for itself  in green building materials and recently launched a software that manages and lowers building energy consumption, one of the hot new areas in energy tech.

SolarCity or SunRun — These two startups have mastered the solar leasing model, which gets solar panels on roofs without forcing residents to pay for the entire system; rather, they lease the equipment (SolarCity and SunRun handle installation) and pay for the solar power generated, which is usually less than conventional electricity rates. SunRun pioneered the model and has rocketed in growth in three years since being founded. SolarCity is also expanding to offer energy audits, and recently won a big project with Wal-Mart. “One or both will go out (for IPO),” Goldhaber said.

Silver Spring Networks — Declared a superstar home run startup (video) at GreenBeat 2010, this smart grid communications company is consistently named a top cleantech player. It has also expanded to make demand response offerings as of late. Every once in awhile, rumors swirl about an IPO from Silver Spring, but perhaps this will be the year it finally happens.

BrightSource Energy — Like Silver Spring, it’s a big company that does big projects, most recently breaking ground on the 392-megawatt Ivanpah concentrated solar installation in the Mojave Desert of California. Dow Jones Venture Wire reported that the company is, in fact, quietly preparing to go public next year.

Ice Energy — The company makes an energy storage unit that freezes ice overnight (when electricity is cheaper), then melts it during the day for air conditioner cooling units. It reportedly won a project with Target recently and raised $24 million in third-round funding.

MiaSolé or Solyndra — Both of these American solar startups have come under pressure lately from China, where solar manufacturers enjoy strong government support and have been able to undercut global competition in price. But MiaSolé recently beat its own record in solar panel efficiency. Solyndra has to prove some more traction given the November closure of its first factory and a nixed IPO earlier this year, but it enjoys a $535 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. “It would surprise me if one of (them) does not figure out an exit,” Goldhaber said.

Other companies that have filed S-1s include Gevo, PetroAlgae and SemiLED.

[Image via Flickr/meddygarnet]