Thanks again to all of you who participated in the Cleantech Investing Readers' Survey over the past week.  Pretty good turnout, actually, esp. considering how many folks were on vacation and out of the office over the past few days...  As promised, we randomly selected a few participants to receive either a mug from demand response system provider (and @Ventures portfolio company) Powerit Solutions, or a USB memory stick from GreenTech Media -- we've emailed those folks already to get their addresses, so the rest of you will have to settle for our heartfelt gratitude... The results provide some pretty interesting predictions for 2008.  But first, it's useful to note that the participants came from across the spectrum of cleantech market participants:  Investors, entrepreneurs, service providers, students, government types, even a self-described "rancher".  "Entrepreneur" got the highest number of responses, but no category claimed more than 25% of participants, so it's a nice broad sample. So to jump right into it -- is there a cleantech VC bubble? Participants overwhelmingly (95%) felt that there is not an investment bubble across all cleantech categories.  And they expect strong growth in the volume of cleantech venture deals in 2008 (a 64% plurality chose "will increase 10-50%", and only 12% expect deal volumes to drop).  However, participants felt (79%) that there ARE bubble-type conditions in specific investment subsectors.  And biofuels and solar were overwhelmingly fingered (each by about 2/3rds of participants) as being the epicenters of these bubbles. The theme that solar and biofuels are and will continue to be somewhat over-bought came through clearly throughout the survey.  When asked what sectors might see bubble conditions develop in 2008, solar and biofuels were again the strong favorites (although notably, demand response/ energy efficiency and advanced lighting got more than a few votes).  I did inexplicably forget to include energy storage when laying out the various categories, and a couple of readers volunteered this as another suspect investment area going forward. Energy efficiency and demand response is clearly a crowd favorite sector right now.  When asked where they would like to invest right now, 90% of those surveyed rated this sector as "Attractive" or better.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the cleantech investment sectors mentioned got strong support from survey participants -- with the exception of biofuels, which seems to have lost some of its luster:  Only 27% rated the sector as "Attractive" or better, and more than 50% gave it a low rating (1 or 2 out of 5).  Solar, water, advanced lighting, advanced materials, and new tech in incumbent energy all received very positive ratings, however.  It's particularly interesting to see solar get such a high rating (52% at "Attractive" or better) in light of the bubble sentiments described earlier... And in terms of exits, as we discussed earlier this week?   When asked to indicate the sub-sectors within cleantech where they expect to see "spectacular" successes in 2008, solar (43%) and energy efficiency/ demand response (45%) got high marks.  Advanced lighting and advanced materials also had a strong showing, but aside from solar and EE/DR no category got a thumbs up from 20% or more of participants. In terms of "spectacular" failures, solar (50%) and biofuels (61%) are the two sub-sectors where CI readers expect to see a shakeout in 2008.  No other sector had even10% of respondents expecting major failures in the coming year. Putting it all together, it seems that:

• CI readers think too much money is chasing too few opportunities in biofuels, despite all the visible government support for the market, and they expect some kind of a shakeout in 2008.

• CI readers also think that there have been some questionable venture investments made in solar, but that 2008 will present a mixed bag of some big wins, and some big collapses.

• Readers seem to generally look to energy efficiency, demand response and advanced lighting as possibly being the "next big thing" in cleantech venture capital, but there is already some contrarian sentiment out there expecting investors to jump into these sectors too quickly as well.

Finally, when asked what investment areas should be getting more attention from VCs than they are so far, the results were very interesting -- and I'm keeping those to myself. Just kidding.  No, the responses were all over the map:  Energy efficiency, water, wave energy, geothermal, energy storage of various flavors, waste-to-energy, clean coal, wind power, etc., etc., etc.  Even vertical farming got a nod!  What this really demonstrates is the depth and breadth of the investment opportunities in cleantech.  When asked to pick just one under-examined investment area, readers came up with a long laundry list of opportunites... So there you have it, your CI Reader Predictions for 2008.  Thanks again to all who participated.  This worked out well, we'll have to do it again next year -- but with better thought-out questions and more fun prizes!