Top 21 Greentech Deals of 2008

It’s a journalistic cliché to pile on the top 10 lists at the end of the year and we’re not above year-end clichés.

But here’s the problem—if we were to list the top 10 greentech investments of the year for 2008 we’d end up with nine solar deals and a biofuels deal which is kind of repetitive and not at all representative of the greentech sector.

So we’ll indulge ourselves, enlarge the list, and make room to include a water deal, a lighting deal, an automotive deal and a smart grid investment.

And allow us to announce…

The Top 21 Greentech Deals of 2008

As in 2007, solar was the dominant investment driver in greentech with more than a dozen solar firms winning funding rounds greater than $100 million. These large funding rounds occurred in the first three quarters of the year and for obvious reasons—we are probably not going to see that kind of flurry for a while.

Enormous funding rounds are not the typical M.O. for VCs -– building proprietary semiconductor factories is not what VCs consider “capital efficient.� But this size investment is required to work out the not trivial technical risks as well as scale to the production capacity needed to compete in this market.

Large capital requirements loomed regardless of PV material system being funded whether it was CIGS (Nanoslar, Miasolé, SoloPower, Solyndra, etc.), CadTel (AVA Solar), or amorphous silicon (Optisolar). These terms applied for solar thermal as well (eSolar, Brightsource, Solar Reserve, Solel).

This same capital intensity and scale was seen in the liquid fuels investments of Range Fuels and Amyris.

VC investment in cleantech in 2009 won’t be as dramatic as 2008 but will remain a brightspot in the VC universe. We expect a drop in the dollar amount but the number of deals should hold steady with a focus on storage, smart grid and energy efficiency.

Click here to view the full list.