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There’s a bad moon on the rise for Imperium Renewables. The biodiesel maker has lost a major contract that was one of the lynchpins holding the company together, according to the Seattle PI’s John Cook, who has been chronicling the company’s rise and fall.

Imperium, as you may recall, is a biofuel startup founded in 2004. It hit a growth streak in 2006 and secured a massive $113 million investment the following year, as hype grew around the biofuel market. Imperium’s investors fast-tracked it to an IPO, which was announced three months later, even as losses at the company mounted. Another half-year later, Imperium had lost its CEO and put its IPO plans on ice.

The company’s rocket-ride to fame and fortune — followed by the attendant explosion — draws an interesting contrast with A123 Systems, an early entrant on the cleantech scene. In fact, it’s debatable as to whether A123 could have been classified as “cleantech” at all when it started. As Rob Day recounts, the company was founded in 2001 at MIT with the idea of making superior lithium-ion batteries. Not for cars, but for power tools.

That’s not necessarily a small market, but compared to A123’s newer ambition, supplying cells for electric vehicles, it certainly held less potential. Regardless of the end market, it was essentially a technology play: Could the company produce a high power, safe battery, better than existing ones? The company’s valuation rose slow and steadily as it reached milestones. By 2006, its fundings valued it at $125 million.

Contrast that with Imperium Renewables, which was hyped from its very first outside investments. Investments came fast and furious, and within a year or two of its first funding, Imperium was saying it was worth $1 billion, through the planned IPO.

A cynical observer might call Imperium’s sharp upward trajectory, and the massive hype surrounding the company in its early days, a cash grab by VCs hungry to capitalize on a booming new market. Of course, there are plenty of possible explanations for Imperium’s failure to shine, like the volatile markets for both fuel and feedstocks, not to mention the uncertainty of any new technology. But it’s certainly a very different story from A123, which limited its initial ambitions, and thereafter plodded, over a period of seven years, to its own current $1 billion valuation (no word on the value of the IPO yet, but chances of it failing to happen look low).

Count on seeing some of the other hyped entrants flaming out sooner than most of the successes come through. For instance, consider the developing story of Solyndra, which Green Light is tracking. Despite filing multiple patents, the secretive (but very heavily funded) company’s key scientists and early employees seem to be fleeing.

And in another hyped area, cellulosic ethanol, Robert Rapier has run the numbers on Coskata, the cellulosic ethanol startup that came out of nowhere earlier this year with plans to take over the world, and pronounces it a “Dead Man Walking”, based on the costs of its pilot plant. Coskata’s founders and investors, one of whom I recently met with, would strongly disagree, but it certainly fits the profile of a high-flying, fast-moving startup making a very large bet.

Meanwhile, at the single giant refinery Imperium operates, staff have continued to show up for work, but shipments have not been arriving for refining, according to Cook. For the moment, it’s one to keep on deathwatch.

[Photo: Imperium's opening day, by Flickr user skidrd]

AOL execs add oddly, allege examiners — Eight AOL executives are facing fraud charges at the conclusion of a six-year long investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into alleged revenue overstatement of $1 billion during the company’s merger with Time Warner. Four of the men have already settled. Given the company’s historic performance, it’s surprising the remaining four haven’t gotten away with pleading incompetence. More at the WSJ.

MetroFi municipal WiFi throws in the towel — It’s the end of the road for MetroFi, one of several startups that envisioned free municipal WiFi around the nation. The company is looking for a buyer in the nine cities in which it still operates networks. The company had raised some $15 million from August Capital, Sevin Rosen Funds, Western Technology and individual investors.

Mobile fingerprint companies point fingers at each other — Following a suit brought by AuthenTec (NASDAQ: AUTH) alleging patent infringement, Atrua Technologies has turned around and counter-sued, with one exec telling VentureWire, “Some information came to light that it was a frivolous suit, intended to harm our business.” Mobile authentication is a rapidly growing business, which has led to plenty of in-fighting in the courts; just last month, AuthenTec won a judgement against Atmel, a third company in the space that had sued it. We also recently reported a $4 million funding for Atrua.

Bay Area tech immigrants headed home as conditions improve — Bay Area Vietnamese American immigrants are returning to that country in growing numbers as the standard of living rises, as described in a pair of San Jose Merc articles here and here. As one happily remarks on suddenly being able to afford maid service six days a week, “You’ve got to have your first IPO in the U.S. before you get that.” Though Vietnam is a relatively small source of immigrants, if the same happens down the road with Chinese and Indian transplants, the Bay Area may find its talent pool significantly drained.

Advanced Equities set to pour $5B each year into late-stage venture — Advanced Equities Financial has opened an online market for large-stage venture investors, according to VentureWire. The firm brings together groups of investors on a deal-by-deal basis to put money into companies already backed by high-profile, early-stage venture outfits. It says it’s gearing up to put $5 billion yearly into the category.

DuPont and Schott wade into the thin-film game — The thin-film solar cell game is already crowded with multiple well-funded startups, and still only accounts for a miniscule portion of the solar cells actually sold each year. That isn’t preventing industry giants DuPont and Schott Solar from wading in. DuPont will have an R&D facility in Hong Kong and thin-film silicon plant in Shenzhen, China, while Schott is splitting off a separate production facility and business arm in Jena and Putzbrunn, Germany.

Thin-film solar startup Solyndra says goodbye to several founders — Three high-level members of the original technical team of thin-film CIGS startup Solyndra have headed to greener pastures, according to Green Light. The departures may indicate that Solyndra, like other CIGS manufacturers, has run into some developmental difficulties.

Trulia launches real estate ad network — Real estate startup Trulia, which we reported last month is booming amid the housing bust, has launched the Trulia Ad Network to sell targeted ads across sites including Oodle, Homes & Land and The Savvy Source. The press release is here.

HelioVolt CEO BJ Stanbery is set to announce that his company has set a new speed record for CIGS conversion efficiency, ratcheting up the pressure in the competitive, high-stakes thin-film solar cell sector. The Austin, Texas, start-up, which raked in a cool $101 million in second round funding last October, claims its proprietary FASST reactive transfer printing process can produce cells with a 12.2% conversion efficiency in a mere 6 minutes.

This latest technological breakthrough comes as HelioVolt and competitors such as Nanosolar, Miasole, Solyndra and OptiSolar race to bring the cheapest, most efficient solar cells to market. All are competing to lower the cost of solar cells by using copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) instead of the costlier, but more efficient, crystalline silicon material. Silicon solar cells have a conversion efficiency of around 14-20%.

Nanosolar, the most heavily-funded thin film firm outside of the public market and one of the first to commercially sell its cells, broke the crucial $1 a watt price point in December — an important metric because it means cells can become competitive with conventional sources of electricity — and First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), the largest publicly traded thin-film firm, is close to doing so.

HelioVolt’s FASST process helps reduce costs by building CIGS cells 10-100 times faster than its competitors’ processes, Stanbery says. The 12.2% efficiency figure was independently confirmed by scientists at Colorado State University. Stanbery added that there was still much room for improvement, and that his company was focusing on squeezing a higher efficiency out of its cells.

The FASST printing process can directly apply (or “print”) thin film layers to a variety of substrates, including glass substrates for solar modules, roofing tiles and other construction materials. HelioVolt said last Tuesday that it would partner with Architectural Glass & Aluminum to develop building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products.

Stanbery hopes to make a dent in silicon’s once indomitable lead in the industry by accelerating the commercialization of the high-throughput printing process to scale production at its soon-to-be completed 20 MW plant in Austin, after which it plans to aggressively expand its operations overseas.

Though it remains to be seen whether HelioVolt remains on schedule to get its cells out by the end of 2008, the company says its record breaking technology will put it out in front of its much bigger rival, First Solar, which uses cadmium telluride to build its cells, from the get-go. Even assuming its technology is superior, HelioVolt will have a lot of ground to make up if it ever hopes to catch First Solar, which already has over a gigawatt of production capacity, and some of its other rivals, which have announced more ambitious construction plans.

Nanosolar CEO Martin Rosecheisen, whose first plant’s capacity exceeds 400 MW, scoffs that HelioVolt’s plant looks more like a pilot project than a commercial-scale one. OptiSolar recently announced plans to build a 550 MW plant in San Luis Obispo County, California. It has already started construction on a 50 MW plant in Sarnia, Ontario, with two additional 20 MW plants to come in nearby Petrolia and Tilbury.

Amid all the excitement about new solar technology, several promising companies are slipping on their delivery dates.

However, most of the companies still say they plan to deliver — it’s just a matter of time before they hit the market

Solyndra, a Santa Clara, Calif. solar company (see VB’s coverage), has seen one of its executives, Monier Nessim leave, after that company returned to more basic research and development, instead of push on toward production. Investors Redpoint and CMEA did not respond to a request for comment. The company could not be reached for comment. The company recently raised $79 million.

Meanwhile Palo Alto, Calif. start-up Nanosolar saw the departure of Chris Eberspacher, a recognized expert in solar “thin film” technology. Like Solyndra and several other companies, Nanosolar’s thin film approach uses a new flexible compound called CIGS for its solar cell material. The cells are cheaper to make, and can used for coating on large expanses of roofs and parking lots. The question surrounding them, however, is whether they will be efficient enough at converting the sun’s energy to be able to compete with silicon solar cells.

CIGS stands for copper-indium-gallium-selenide, and is made of those four elements.

Eberspacher was chief scientist at Nanosolar, and it isn’t clear why he left (see CNET Michael Kanellos’ story here, which first talked about the departure). CEO Martin Roscheisen said Nanosolar’s timing is still on track. While several years ago he suggested informally that the technology might be ready by 2006, that was never a firm date, he said. He said things are going well, and that Eberspacher’s departure does not impact the company. Werner Dumanski, who previously ran IBM’s storage disk R&D, product development, and manufacturing operations, has taken over Eberspacher’s job. He said: “Werner is the right guy in charge of this in this phase of our company.”

Eberspacher, meanwhile, is in talks to join Miasole, a Santa Clara, Calif. company doing something similar with CIGS. However, Miasole itself has slipped more noticeably. David Pearce, chief executive, had said in 2005 and 2006 his company would be in full production by now, but that hasn’t happened. (CNET’s Kanellos has another good story about this here.) Pearce tells VentureBeat that while the company has gotten its solar cells to the eight percent efficiency rate needed to grab a large market share, he hasn’t been able to do that in real production conditions — but that he hopes to soon. He plans to roll out production this summer.

He points to competitor First Solar, an Arizona publicly traded company that now has the highest market value ($5 billion) of any solar company. It uses thin-film solar technology too, but applies telluride, not CIGS. The company took 15 years of tinkering and testing before its cells became competitive. Telluride is much less efficient than CIGS in a lab setting, for instance. Its product began at six percent efficiency, but by last year it reached the desirable range of eight percent. That sparked demand so great that First Solar sold out of its product. First Solar went public in November. Now the company’s cells boast a nine percent efficiency. While that efficiency is still below that of silicon — used by companies such as SunPower ($4 billion market value) — it is much lower in cost, and so is still more desirable.

So it takes time. Pearce said he replaced Tim Starkey, his executive vice president of operations, with someone with more technical depth. He hired Stephen Barry, a thin film expert from the data storage industry, as vice president of operations, and Dallas Meyer, formerly at Seagate, as vice president engineering. He’s also in the process of raising more money, and has finished raising a significant portion of that — at a valuation that is higher than the round Miasole raised last October, from both new and existing backers. He expects to wrap up the rest by early July.

In separate but related to green tech:

See two-part series the Mercury News recently ran this week about California’s energy challenge:

First part: Is renewable energy enough?
Second part: Nuclear power?

And finally, see the unfortunate piece today about the Bush administration making a pro-auto industry pitch to members of Congress, urging them to oppose California’s efforts to enforce tough emissions standards on vehicles. The language of these pitches sounded suspiciously as if it were taken directly from the car lobby, according to the report.