Last week in cleantech venture capital…

• SiXtron, a Montreal-based developer of thin-film coatings for solar cells, announced a C$10mm Series A.  VenturesWest led the round, which also included existing investors iNovia Capital, Innovatech sud du Quebec, and FIDD.

• Plextronics announced Applied Materials has added additional capital to their Series B round from September (Greentech Media pegged the new investment at $4mm).

• Novomer, which is developing technology for producing plastics from carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, announced a $6.6mm Series A.  Physic Ventures and Flagship Ventures provided the funding.

• Vaperma, a gas separation membrane developer, announced a C$21.5mm Series B, led by Low Carbon Accelerator, and including participation by Volvo and existing investors Emerald Technology Ventures, BDC Capital, and FIDD.

• Shell made a strategic investment in biofuel developer Codexis—terms were not disclosed.

• Sort of cleantech-related:  Applied Isotope Technologies, which is developing kits for the analysis of environmental toxin levels in urine, raised a $150k seed round from the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse.

• CTI reported this week that Trellis Earth Products has raised $750k in “seed funding commitments” from angel investors.  There was also a lot of revealing information about an $18mm Series A round ($60mm post-money, “set by the investment bank”) that the company is trying to pull together—it’s been interesting to see more and more articles by the cleantech venture dailies, talking about financing rounds that are being sought (as opposed to rounds actually done).  Are bankers telling the companies it will drum up more interest?  But does it result in more potential VCs being turned off of a deal, to see such open discussion and investors already crowding around the trough?  It would be interesting to track how many of these “announced rounds” end up actually coming together, and if so, when…

Other news and notes:  More evidence that cleantech can be a big driver of jobs growth—see this study and this write-up...  Another interesting study—diesel is better than hybrids or E85?  The RAND Corporation says so…  Another sign of the growing Boston-area cleantech cluster, this terrific MIT event...  Finally, half of all Xconomy readers would rather put their investment dollars into cleantech than biotech, robotics, Web 2.0, or mobile—and the columnist says that means you should actually avoid cleantech.