I spent a couple of busy days in Washington, DC this week, meeting with old colleagues and making some new connections.  (And I drove all 1,000 round-trip miles instead of taking the train, how do you like me now, Xconomy!)  One thing that was impressively clear in DC is how front-and-center energy technology is among staffers on the Hill.  A lot of very important things being worked on there right now, and minds seem to be pretty focused.  Great to see.  Unfortunately, it's also clear that the entire cleantech venture and startup community is gearing up to bombard the Hill and the DOE with funding requests... Meanwhile, outside of the Beltway, it's starting to feel like maybe some cleantech VCs are starting to get back in the game.  It's just anecdotal, but I see my colleagues in the industry getting more serious about doing deals, after a hiatus of a few months. For a while there, even VCs with capital left in their funds were sitting on the sidelines.  The limited partner community just wasn't making commitments to funds.  So VCs were forced to consider that it might be a long time before they could raise additional capital.  And thus, even if they still had capital left in their existing funds, they needed to hoard their resources and a) make sure they had enough in reserve to fully back their existing investments; and b) make sure that they stretched out their remaining new deals, so doing fewer deals over the course of 2009 than they had originally anticipated. Of course, many funds are still in this situation, so it's not like dealflow is coming rushing back.  It's still a very difficult time for VCs to raise capital from limited partners, and thus it's still a very difficult time for startups to raise capital from VCs.  But I do see some faint stirrings of life out there. Naturally, however, that won't be reflected in recent deal announcements, since there's a significant lag between VC interest and then deals and then the eventual press releases...  So here are the few announced deals from the past week:

• Lightscape Materials, an LED phosphor spinout from Sarnoff Corp., has raised a $3mm Series A from Wisepower Co. LTD and Foosung HDS Co. LTD.

• Nordic Windpower has raised $3.5mm in convertible notes from new investors I2BF Venture Capital and Pulsar Energy Capital, alongside existing investors Goldman Sachs and Impax Asset Management.

• New Leaf Paper, offering "environmentally responsible papers", has taken in a $5mm round of financing led by Pacific Community Ventures.

• Cleantech investors in the news:  Redpoint Ventures has added a cleantech CTO, Dr. Nety Krishna...  and Robeco is teaming up with China's TEDA International to launch a new sustainable private equity fund.

Other news and notes:  REBN continues to grow, with another great REBN-MidAtlantic event in Philly, and a new chapter being launched in North Carolina...  If you're reading the NYT Mag article on Freeman Dyson today, here's Hansen's reply...  A good catch-up on cleantech in the Pacific Northwest...  Here's a cogent critique of efforts to focus on breakthrough R&D efforts in energytech instead of driving adoption of already-commercialized energy efficiency technologies...  You heard it here last -- Al Gore is planning a new book timed to impact the upcoming climate legislation debate in Washington...  Finally, the Conspicuous Consumption Award has to go to this vacuum, which nature must certainly abhor -- if you can afford to buy it, I'm guessing you're not using it yourself.