• Very pleased to report (self-promotion alert) that Tiger Optics has completed its Series B round of financing, led by Expansion Capital Partners, and including Georgieff Capital. Tiger Optics is a good example of optical sensing technologies that have broad applications across a wide range of cleantech (and other) markets. Their proprietary sensors, which offer (IMHO) superior performance in terms of reliability, ease of use, low maintenance and cost, are being used to improve manufacturing efficiency in several process industries and to do emissions analysis. And they also have future applications in environmental, health and safety monitoring, in the hydrogen economy, and (albeit not "cleantech") in medical diagnostics. I'm far from an unbiased observer on this one, so readers will draw their own conclusions; but as we've discussed before, generally speaking optical sensors and other "enabling technologies" have a big role to play in the cleantech space.

• Closely related to the role of sensor technologies in cleantech markets is the additionally important enabling role to be played by machine-to-machine communications, something we've also discussed before. Along these lines, note the announcement today of Ember's $12mm latest round of financing, which brings total investment in the company to date up to $65mm. Ember is developing M2M communications using the ZigBee standard, which could end up being used in everything from sensor networks to automated meter reading to remote monitoring and control of manufacturing or "intelligent building" assets.
  

• Getting all the chatter today is VeraSun's IPO, which jumped early. We mentioned the ethanol buzz yesterday. Here's a pretty good analysis of VSE... although it's interesting to note the big delta between the analysis' conclusions and today's prices.
  

Other news to note: Decent article about the current overall state of private equity investing in clean energy (with some nice input from Vincenzo LaRuffa and data from New Energy Finance)... It's not private equity or VC, but just for fun here's the Green Energy Stock Challenge. Unfortunately, naked shorts are not allowed, apparently...

Biofuels and bio-derived fuels are in the spotlight now, even eclipsing solar in the hype cycle. Case in point, see the telling quote from Christopher Flavin of Worldwatch (which just released what appears to be a very useful report about the potential for the industry):

"You'd have to be an idiot not to make money out of biofuels."

That seems to sum up the current general attitude on the space quite well... Thus, upcoming ethanol IPOs and a lot of other investor interest (FYI, see this handy list of all U.S. ethanol plants operating and in construction -- thanks to Mark Wendman for pointing this out). Of course, Flavin was probably referring to operators, and not investors. There's a right price for everything, and even if the price deserves to be high, it's quite possible to overpay... In any case, hot times in biofuels right now. What will be the next cleantech darling after ethanol and solar?

Recent cleantech dealflow of note:

• Virent, which is developing technology to convert biomass into hydrogen, has raised a $7.5mm round of financing, including participation from strategic investors Cargill and Honda. Existing institutional investors include Venture Investors and Advantage Capital Partners (which has also invested in GridPoint and Hoku Scientific in the clean energy space) put in $1.6mm into the company last year as well.
  

• FriCSo, a U.S.-Israel company which is developing solutions to reduce friction in engines (to improve energy efficiency) announced a $5mm second round recently, with Aviv Venture Capital putting in around $4mm of the round, for a $20mm post-money. The company had previously raised $3mm.

• Irish plastic bottle recycler Irish Polymers raised 1mm pounds, including 250k pounds in venture equity from Viridian.
  

Other news to note: Great recap by Dan Primack (who also gave the heads-up on FriCSo) of the recent "Energy Investing in a Carbon-Constrained World" conference. Having worked at WRI in the past, it was great to see the keynote was given by environmental stalwart Jonathan Lash... In other investor conference news, interesting to see VCs plugging nuclear power. Clean or not, let that debate rage elsewhere, but it's tough to think about what would be a venture-backable play in nuclear. If you think of something, tell Peter Wagner... Finally, if you enjoyed the recent coverage of Tesla Motor's financing, here's a follow-up Q&A with the CEO.

Dan Primack revealed an up to $30mm Series B for coal gassification startup GreatPoint Energy, with involvement by Kleiner Perkins. He also provides details on the previous $6.55mm Series A, by Advanced Technology Ventures and DFJ. Dan also editorializes a bit about "clean coal" as an investment area, but it should be noted that it's certainly a space that a great many VCs are looking into right now, for what that's worth. It should also be noted that there are more than three VC-backed companies involved in the space (Dan even mentioned one other in his last clean coal column), especially if you include pollution abatement equipment, carbon sequestration approaches, supporting sensors and monitoring techs, etc.

News also came out recently of a watertech-focused VC firm being raised in Israel, H2Tech. Something between $12-20mm (the article is unclear) has already been committed to this first fund, targeted at $50mm.

Other items of interest: Here's the transcript of Warren Leon's thoughtful keynote from a recent Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Summit... More pressure to address climate change, this time from the insurance industry... Some interesting thoughts on biofuels investing... Finally, a review of some of the recently launched cleantech public market indices.

• Tesla Motors announced a $40mm Series C (thanks to Tyler for the heads up yesterday), co-led by Vantage Point and Elon Musk (founder of Paypal, CEO of SpaceX), and including several luminary angels as well as DFJ and JP Morgan Bay Area Equity Fund. The company is still being quiet about their car design (a brief Google Image search only turned up a picture of Nikola Tesla's 1931 electric car), but I've spoken with someone who's taken an early test drive and he reports it is "very, very cool."

• Millennium Cell announced that Dow Chemical has completed an option to purchase $1.25mm of the company's Series B-1 preferred stock, as their joint development efforts hit their first milestone. Millennium Cell is publicly traded, and their products offer both hydrogen-based fuel cells and hydrogen on demand to provide a "hydrogen battery".
  

• Neal Dikeman over at CleantechBlog has a very useful update on current happenings in capital fundings for ethanol projects. He also provides his own thoughts and predictions on the subject, well worth checking out.
  

• According to BW's Deal Flow blog, John Doerr of KPCB is very interested in finding a clean water tech investment. Amen! We've asked the question before, Are VCs about to get serious about water tech? It's definitely been getting a lot of attention since the Basin Water IPO...