You can't seem to go a week in this business without witnessing a mind-boggling CIGS deal. Yesterday, VentureWire reported that SoloPower, which plans to make solar panels with copper indium gallium selenide, has raised $200 million to build factories. This follows a recent announcement that Nanosolar raised $300 million. Miasole allegedly has raised $210 million for more factories. That's $710 million right there. Meanwhile, Solyndra is seeking $350 million, according to my sources. If the company gets that, that's $1.06 billion into four CIGS companies and only one of them (Nanosolar) has shipped anything. Even then Nanosolar is only shipping in nominal volumes. (If you want to add other thin-film companies into the total, cadmium telluride specialist AVA solar raised $104 million recently.) And don't forget, this is on top of the $300+ million CIGS companies have raised collectively between 2005 and 2007. Will it stop? Not yet. To stay in the market and remain competitive, the remaining CIGS companies will have to raise money as well build factories. It's sort of like the flash-memory market. It isn't really a business – it's more like a bad gambling habit. Which brings us to HelioVolt and Global Solar. They are the last two "big" names in CIGS and thus the next two companies that will announce big financing deals. If I had to guess, I'd say HelioVolt is next. Global Solar already has factories, and is actually producing and selling solar cells. Another factory in Germany will go on line in the fall. HelioVolt won't go into production until 2009. HelioVolt is also funded in part by the Masdar Foundation, the venture and development arm of the sultanate of Abu Dhabi. These guys have money. We will also see an announcement coming up about a CIGS company that is not making solar cells but will participate in CIGS in some manner. My guess is that it's going to be an equipment maker. In case you're wondering, the solar cells from all of these companies will be somewhat similar. Solyndra's is the most different in structure, but the active agents in each will be the same. Where they differ is in how they manufacture the cells. SoloPower uses electroplating. NanoSolar prints the CIGS materials onto substrates. HelioVolt has its FASST process. So if any of these companies run into trouble raising cash by producing solar cells, some of them could transition into equipment makers.

There is a water crisis in developing nations and in some not-so-developing nations. Additionally, there is a looming water crisis for everyone else on the globe as populations rise, as pollution increases and as climate and weather patterns change. There are a “scary number� of pollutants in our water supply, said Gayle Pergamit, the CEO and founder of Agua Via. These pollutants include “natural� poisons like boron and arsenic, nitrogenous wastes from humans and farm animals, and “other goodies� like hydrocodone and estrogen disruptors. “There can be any of 500,000 different interesting and entertaining chemicals in the water supply,� she said. “Nanotechnology-based water �ltration could deliver completely pure water from any source at vastly reduced energy usage and lower total costs,� said Pergamit. This process could end the world water crisis and provide abundant pure water at costs the developing world could afford. Abundant clean water could eliminate water-borne disease, improve farming productivity and remediate polluted bodies of water. It could lower the cost of desalination into the realm of affordability, even for developing nations. Pergamit’s early-stage startup, Agua Via, is working on what she calls a “molecular toolkit� with the ability to build a “smart membrane� one atomic layer thick that is capable of both purifying water and the desalination of water (desalination today can cost up to 10 times more than water puri�cation). Agua Via’s purification system uses a membrane with nanometer-sized pores compared to the micron-sized pores in most purification systems. She compared these size ranges to the size of an ant versus the size of a whale. Ten years in development, Agua Via’s membranes are looking to achieve the “holy grail� of water filtration. In Pergamit’s words they are: “high selectivity at low cost, low complexity and low energy.� According to Pergamit, “At one molecule thick, you’re in a very low-energy regime.� Because of the pore size the filtration can be achieved at low pressures of 1 psi versus the large amount of pressure it takes “push a water molecule through a conventional membrane.� The firm looks to nature in its material design. Said Pergamit: "How does nature filter water?� There is a lot of bio-mimicry going in Agua Via’s technology with the firm studying aquaporin, a cellular protein that shuttles water in and out of cells and the science of kidneys. The same technology for filtering urea and other bad stuff out of water in Agua Via’s technology is used by another Pergamit company, Biophiltre, in renal or kidney science. The basic unit of the kidney, the nephron, is a small miracle moving water and salts back and forth against osmotic gradients. “We are transferring information from kidney science to water science,� said the CEO. Others working on aquaporin membranes include the industrial plumbing giant Danfoss, while Novozymes and a startup called Aquaporin are doing similar work. These companies have produced samples and hope to be in the market by 2010 or 2011. The challenge, said Aquaporin CEO Peter Jensen to Greentech Media, isn't so much in creating artificial proteins. It is making the membrane durable. Agua Via wants to build the membrane like a pharmaceutical, with incredible specificity and precision. The nature of the membrane’s construction means that they “are not stuck just playing with the size of the filtered solutes but can play with charge and electrical properties. These pores give you a whole deck of cards and different strategies to apply.� Agua Via is a product company aiming to sell large-scale water purification systems and filtration cartridges that scale to handling hundreds of thousands of gallons of pure water per day. “Smaller systems down to point-of-use size will follow. Large scale water is first,� Pergamit said. There is a sort of VC lore that “you can’t make money in water.� (This is really not true – there’s been some decent M&A in the water market). �The discouraging thing about this is that [VCs] really don't understand that we (the U.S.) are entering an era of water scarcity (as opposed to large chunks of the rest of the world who are already in the midst of water scarcity),� said Pergamit in an email. “Maybe they don't buy the concept of climate change – anthropogenic or otherwise. But it also means that they don't understand aquifer exhaustion and the fact that even if there wasn't one whit of climate change, we are still going to run out of water. There's some very basic information that hasn't sunk in yet.� Pergamit claims that the firm is soon to close a single digit million dollar Round A of funding from a U.K. investor consortium for this potentially disruptive and enabling technology. Gayle Pergamit will be speaking at the Always On Going Green event in Sausalito on Wednesday Sept 17, 2008 during the Green Nanotech & Synthetic Genomics panel. The agenda for the event is here.

Lyngby, Denmark--As long as rivers flow into the sea, we potentially can get cheap power with almost no effort. That's the view from Scandinavia, where some scientists and start-ups are turning their attention to generating power from osmotic pressure. It works as follows. Fresh water from streams and rivers comes tumbling toward a tank of sea water filled by the ocean. Before it falls into the sea, though, it must pass through a membrane. The membrane eliminates any impurities and lets only the tiny water molecules get through. When fresh water enters the tank filled with sea water, it decreases the salt concentration in the seawater and increases the overall pressure. (You can get a more full description from Rolf Aaberg from Norway's Statkraft Energi here.). The pressure can then be harnessed to run a turbine. "You have the potential of approximately 2,000 terawatt hours a year globally. Any place you have a stream going into the sea you have potential energy," says Peter Holme Jensen, a microbiologist turned CEO of a water purification company in Lyngby called Aquaporin. Aquaporin is looking at this market, but Jensen said it is in the very experimental stage. The sun, meanwhile, keeps the whole process going by evaporating seawater, which later turns to rain to fill streams. Like coal and wind, osmotic power is indirect solar energy. It is one of those zany ideas--like nuclear fusion, piezoelectrics and self-powered hydrogen plants--that is on the fringe now but could pay off massive dividends in the future. A longshot, yes, but who knows. If someone in 1944 told you that a bunch of Europeans were in the New Mexico desert building a bomb that could flatten a city, you probably would have scoffed. Others are working on different passive ocean power concepts.  John Craven in Hawaii wants to exploit sea-based heat exchangers to generate air conditioning. The heat exchanger, a tube, would fill with frigid water thousands of feet below the surface. When that cold water gets toward the surface, it radiates cool. But if osmotic power sounds easy, how come we aren't doing it now? Getting adequate pressures is difficult. It has also been tough finding a durable membrane that won't foul. That is where Aquaporin says it can play a part. The company, along with Novozymes, is devising a water purification membrane based around a protein called an aquaporin. Aquaporins sit in channels in living cells: they eject impurities but let water pass. (Read more here.). Novozymes is working on developing a synthetic aquaporin while Aquaporin the company is working on arrays and membranes. (That's an artists' rendering of an aquaporin, by the way.) The companies will first sell membranes to the semiconductor industry, which buy membranes to turn very clean water into almost absolutely pure water. Later, it will move into the mass water market and in the meantime continue to work on the energy concept. "We could have energy as long as the sun shines," Jensen said. The Scandinavian countries, by the way, are pushing cleantech hard. Denmark, Sweden and Finland are trying to commercialize their university research more and large local established companies like Danfoss and Dong Energy are concocting spin-outs. Will all of these things make it? No, but it shows that, in greentech, you are going to continue to see a lot of activity overseas. It probably won't be like the IT revolution where most of the important companies came from the U.S. or the east coast of Asia. Other interesting Danish start-ups: fabric that can replace steel from PolyPower and an LED growing system.