It’s been quiet lately…

At least in terms of public pronouncements of cleantech deals.  Is the industry taking a breather?  Or, as several fellow investors have mentioned to me recently, are deals increasingly going stealth in the space, as competition heats up for deal access?  Certainly seems like the latter scenario has some truth to it, given talk we’ve heard about various deals that aren’t being publicly announced.  But of course, journalistic scoops are the business of other sites, VentureWire and PE Week Wire, and not the purpose of this site…

So that having been said, here are some news items and tidbits from recent public announcements and articles:

• Bill Gates’ Cascade Investments and PNM Resources have formed a joint venture, EnergyCo LLC (soon to be renamed, no doubt), to invest in unregulated energy businesses.  Given Cascade’s previous energy investment activities, alternative energy tech investments may be on tap…

• “Fair trade” sourcer World of Good has raised a $4mm Series B, from DFJ, Omidyar Networks, and Cliff Higgerson.

• Boston-Power Inc., a developer of advanced lithium ion batteries, has raised an $8mm Series A led by Venrock Associates and Gabriel Venture Partners.  The company had previously raised angel/management seed financing.  The company joins A123 and Li*On in the lithium battery space, among others.
  

• The business of climate change:  We didn’t mention the recent Stern Review out of the UK, which attempted to put a dollar (pound?) figure on the overall future economic cost associated with climate change, but it was sobering news.  Joel Makower puts it nicely into perspective.  It also once again helps make the case for a strong economic value proposition for climate-friendly technologies and businesses—not least of which, of course, would be technology-enabled energy efficiency, which we’ve discussed before, and which can provide winning economics even today, without any necessary market shifts.  It furthermore helps make the case for the continued development of carbon emissions credit markets, as private market-based solution schemes proliferate and mature, even in the absence of regulatory change.  We’ve talked before about how the development of such markets will be another big impetus for adoption of clean energy technologies (and thus a nice value accelerator for cleantech investors).  Hence, it’s very interesting to note that Morgan Stanley is planning to invest $3B in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credits and related businesses over the next five years.  The GHG credit market is starting to come together…

• Other cleantech market updates:  The market for sensors and related technologies continues to develop.  For those taking a close look at such applications and affiliated techs, this news about Zigbee and mesh networking (millions of components to be sold in 2006?) is also interesting…  Electricity transmission remains significantly underinvested in the U.S.—with important implications for investors in distributed generation, smart grid, and infrastructure techs…  Here’s a nice overview of tidal energy efforts.

• Finally, more cleantech investor news, which both relate to Miasole (self-promotion reminder):  This article provides some interesting insight into Khosla Ventures’ approach and portfolio…  And here, Fred Destin explains why Atlas is excited about their participation in Miasole’s recent fundraising round.