As promised, we asked the smart team at New Energy Finance to provide a bit more information about their returns study that we mentioned earlier in the week. Michael Liebreich, Chairman and CEO at NEF, was kind enough to provide some additional explanation of their methodology, for those interested: "Hi, Rob - Your calculations are correct: the group has put in EUR 283.6m into 129 portfolio companies. It has had exits totaling EUR 390.4m. It is sitting on unrealized value of EUR 339.0m. Total value = EUR 729.4m. The unrealized holdings have indeed been held at book unless there has been a revaluation event. So we have the following: · 53 of the portfolio companies are held at exactly book value. · There have been 15 IPOs and 10 trade sales · 21 have been revalued upwards at subsequent rounds (with at least one external investor). We do not accept self-reported write-ups or valuations based on comparables etc. · 19 have been revalued down, some significantly, some only marginally. This we do either at subsequent rounds, or if companies self-report a write-down · There have been 11 liquidations, with most but not always all money lost It is the group of 21 valued upwards that are driving the unrealized gains. Of these gains, a reasonably significant proportion is held in what are now public equities, to which we give a 15% liquidity haircut, to be on the conservative side. I can’t comment on what proportion of the invested funds went into the exited companies as opposed to the others – the steering committee didn’t choose to release that information. The conclusion of the study was exactly as you understood it: "great returns, but not yet in the bag." Hence the use of the phrase "on track" in various places." Thanks much to Michael and his team for the helpful explanations... Other news and notes: Here's a great interview by Jennifer Kho, of A123's David Vieau... And finally, two interesting market data points on concentrated PV market adoption -- first, 24 gigawatts of CPV projects under development in California? And second, floating solar islands in the Persian Gulf?

The big news today is GreatPoint Energy's big financing, as has been reported by VentureWire, PE Hub and others (Earth2Tech has a blurb here). As reported by Jonathan Shieber at VWire, the $100mm round has been led by new strategic investors Citi Sustainable Development Investments and Dow Chemical. Other strategic investors AES and Suncor Energy also participated, along with previous investors (which could therefore include ATV, Kleiner, Khosla, DFJ, and the founders' own GreatPoint Ventures, from a previous $37mm round). It's a great example of how interested venture investors and energy giants are in the potential for coal gasification technologies. Other deals:

• Biofuel developer Amyris Biotechnologies has announced the completion of a first tranche of a $70mm Series B. DAG Ventures led the round, which also included previous investors Kleiner, Khosla and TPG Ventures. The funding is intended to help the company come to market in 2010 with biodiesel, biogasoline and biojet fuel.  GTM's Rachel Barron has more information about the financing, and as well as Solazyme's debt financing.  Shieber reported on Tuesday that the pre-money on the round was $400mm, and also adds that competitor Synthetic Genomics had previously raised a Series B round of financing from BP and others at a $300mm post-money.  Wow.

• Thin-film solar moves by big corporates:  GE has taken a minority stake in Primestar.  And meanwhile, in Germany Schuco and E.On are forming a joint venture (with $135mm in financing) to launch Malibu, a thin-film manufacturing effort using Applied Materials production equipment.  Feels like the thin-film market is finally poised for some major moves forward...

• Solar Power Partners, a solar PPA developer, has raised a $6mm Series A led by Globespan.  The company has 14MW worth of signed projects to date.

• Danish ammonia-storage technology developer Amminex A/S announced an approx. $7mm Series C (note: link opens pdf), led by Conduit Ventures and including SEED Capital K/S.

Cleantech investors in the news:  When Sevin Rosen pulled out of fundraising their tenth fund a year ago, they broadcast the message that the venture capital model was broken.  Now VWire reports they're re-launching fundraising, but "opening the aperture" to go later stage, and to move "beyond technology investments" (sic) into healthcare and -- relevant to cleantech investors -- energy.  It's an interesting development on one of the most pointed internal critiques of the venture capital industry, and in a small way also points to the way cleantech is getting more generalist VC mindshare these days.