First: Several folks asked if I could post my little Christmas Eve twitter poem. Well, Walt Frick was kind enough to do so here. So enjoy, typos and all! And my thanks to Walt...

It's that time of year again! Time for some prognostications of questionable accuracy, as we head into the new year. 2012 was hard for cleantech investors. Will 2013 be a rebound year? This time next year will we be looking back and smiling broadly at our good fortune?

Unfortunately, that's not what I'm expecting.

Our sector is at a pretty low point right now, and while I do personally believe cleantech is just in the "Trough of Disillusionment" and will eventually rebound, there aren't a lot of...

It's been a crazy year in cleantech, and a lot of things didn't go as expected.

Especially by me, apparently.

Even if I'm not particularly good at it, I find the annual prediction exercise to be useful for developing a coherent picture of the coming year, as at least a starting point for planning. And it's also just a bit of fun to take some guesses and see how they turn out.

2012 flummoxed me because I was too optimistic this time last year. I thought we were about to turn the corner on cleantech venture firm fundraising, and thus that we would start to see a rebound in dealmaking. I failed to see just how toxic the politicization of cleantech would become. And I generally...

Dear venture capital limited partners:

I get it.

You were promised that cleantech was going to be the Next Big Thing and it didn't happen. Instead, you've seen the GPs you've backed in the sector have to face a legislative/political headwind, a dearth of big exciting exits, and a number of high-profile flameouts. At this point you're doubtful that there are big returns to be made in the sector and your colleagues are telling you cleantech is a bad place to put capital and so you're pulling out altogether, at least for the time being.

Sure, some cleantech-focused GPs tell you that cleantech hasn't actually performed worse than other sectors for the venture capital category, and...