VentureBeat

Indoor building material-maker Serious Materials has taken on a large $50 million second round of financing to launch a line of environmentally friendly drywall, the most common indoor building material in the United States.

The funding will help the company cover the costs of a manufacturing plant, to open next year. The cost for new plants commonly runs into tens of millions of dollars.

Serious will make three product lines: EcoRock, ThermaProof, and Quiet Solution. EcoRock is drywall that produces less carbon dioxide and harmful chemicals to make, ThermaProof provides superior insulation against temperature extremes, and Quiet is a line of soundproof building materials.

We reported on Quiet earlier this year, without mentioning that Serious is the parent company’s name. Marc Porat, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, started it along with a pair of other green building companies, California Cement and Global Homes, which remain secretive.

Porat’s persistent investments into green building suggests he foresees a lucrative market. He isn’t the only one. Khosla Ventures, which invested in California Cement, also recently put money into Calera, which has plans to recycle escaping carbon dioxide into concrete. Gigacrete is another company after the same market.

Other green-building startups range from Solar Cynergy (our coverage ), a decorative LED maker, to the entire gamut of solar cell makers, who rely in part on consumer interest in solar paneling for their homes.

The funding for Serious Materials was led by New Enterprise Associates and Foundation Capital. Rustic Canyon Partners, which provided the previous round of $5 million, also participated.

Now we’re 90 percent sure global warming is caused by humans, according to a major UN report just released.

[Update: And Exxon is fighting back, reports the Guardian, which writes that the AEI, an Exxon Mobil-funded thinktank, offered payments of $10,000 to scientists for articles that emphasize the report's shortcomings. This, even as Exxon reports record profits.]

Meanwhile, California continues its lawsuit against U.S. and Japanese car manufacturers for contributing to global warming.

And entrepreneurs forge ahead with new ideas. The organic carpet cleaning guys at Naturell are using sea-kelp to clean carpets. It cuts down on indoor air pollution (see Merc story). The Santa Clara company got a boost when search engine Google used it for two years.

And there’s Marc Porat (pictured above), a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who started at Apple, and later spun out General Magic and took it public at $800 million valuation. Now he’s transformed himself into a green entrepreneur. He has launched three companies targeting the green building market, VentureWire reported today (sub required). They are secretive, except for Quiet Solution, which has a Web site, and also a brief overview of Porat’s activities (scroll down)

Quiet Solution, backed by Rustic Canyon Partners, sells soundproofing materials. The other two are California Cement, backed by Foundation Capital, and developing a new process for cement (third leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, behind energy and transportation); and Global Homes, backed by Khosla Ventures, which sells sustainable pre-fabricated homes for developing markets.