NGEN announced today that they have completed the first close of their next fund, at $50M. NGEN is an advanced materials VC whose investments often fall in the cleantech sphere... More information as it becomes available, but in the meantime congrats to Steve Parry and the rest of the team at NGEN.

Update: The fund is targeted for final close at $150M. Already signed up as LPs are CalPERS, CalSTRS, The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Cycad Group, the Glenn Foundation, Siemens Venture Capital, Asahi Glass Co., Air Products, BASF, Bayer MaterialScience, DuPont, DSM and Henkel. Kudos to NGEN for attracting a great group of investors.

At the Red Herring spring conference, as the magazine reported here, several cleantech VCs including Bill Green (Vantage Point), Chuck McDermott (Rockport), and Nancy Floyd (Nth) talked about how far behind the U.S. is falling when it comes to clean energy technologies.

As usual, Bill, Chuck and Nancy have it right, and in fact this trend has been easy to see for a while now (see this 2001 MSNBC article, for example). In 2002, Japan-based PV manufacturers made 251.1MW of solar panels; Europe-based manufacturers made 135.1MW; and US-based manufacturers only made 120.6MW. In terms of wind power, Germany has over 15GW of installed capacity, first in the world; the U.S. is tied with Spain at down around 7GW or so.

But while things may be growing faster overseas than here at home, they're still growing quickly here too. And once one looks outside of energy generation to other clean technologies such as clean water technologies, clean manufacturing, intelligent energy efficiency technologies, etc., U.S. cleantech markets look very robust indeed.

Red Herring came out with their list of the "100 Hottest Private Companies in North America" this week, and several are venture-backed cleantech companies that we've previously talked about.

I'm not sure what exactly are the metrics to define how "hot" a company is. But it's still another great sign that cleantech continues to gain attention among venture investors and pundits. As the editors of the magazine wrote:

"The Red Herring 100 is a leading indicator for the next wave of promising companies. Our list provides a barometric reading of the market, revealing the industry sectors where technology is exciting, where money is being invested, and where the possibility of long-term growth is strong."

Here are the leading cleantech companies that I spotted on the list:

• AgIon
• Dust Networks
• Comverge
• Konarka Technologies
• Nanosolar

I'm sure we could all nominate other well-deserving companies as well, but kudos to these companies for the recognition they're getting by being included on this list.

On Sunday, June 26th in Anaheim, the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) is going to be holding a VC pitch-and-feedback session where four pre-selected firms seeking funding will get the chance to present to a handful of VCs interested in the space.

CABA is pleased to invite your company to take part in an exciting session where you will have an opportunity to pitch your innovative intelligent building technologies to a team of venture capital (VC) professionals.

These investment professionals are interested in exploring the next wave of intelligent building technology innovations. They will offer constructive feedback, move-forward strategies on how to better prepare presentations to VCs. There will also be an open discussion that will give you a perspective on the key drivers fueling investment for tomorrow's buildings.

VCs who are interested in participating should contact David Dern at CABA for more details. I believe they are still soliciting applications from companies interested in being one of the companies pitching the VCs as well...

CarboPur, a maker of advanced activated carbon products for filtration applications, announced they have raised Series A funding of an undisclosed amount from Ventures West. The company had previously raised $440k in seed funding in 2003 from MSBI Capital.

See this good post by Tyler at Clean Break for a useful description of the company and its potential. He reports the round was probably $3-5M.

Here's an article which mentions that Ion America (the "stealth" solid oxide fuel cell company at Moffett Field that is backed by John Doerr and others including Cypress Semiconducts) will soon be placing a demonstration unit at Cypress's campus in San Jose. It will be a small unit (only 5kW), and represents just a nice small positive step for the company.

What's interesting is that now Ion America is finally starting to emerge from its "stealth mode", a period which had seen a lot of speculation (such as this post on SiliconBeat). Whereas now you're actually seeing quotes from Ion America management -- who are now also being seen out and about at industry events and local cleantech meet-ups -- and acknowledgement of certain financial backers. Does this mean the company feels it's getting close to ready for prime time? Or simply a recognition that Ion America has been the biggest open "secret" in the fuel cell industry for some time now?

The BizJournals article is also a general good overview of the SOFC market, mentioning several other companies in the space.

EnviroClean Technologies, which offers a surface cleaning service (e.g., cleaning sidewalks, parking garages, etc.) that is environmentally-friendly, announced a raise of $650k in seed financing. Blackbird Ventures, part of the Blackbird Group, provided the capital. EnviroClean claims that they have the only surface cleaning solution that meets current legal requirements...