The Open Table and SolarWinds IPOs, along with massive stimulus dollars, seem to be finally brightening the mood among investors.

"I'm optimistic," said Alain Harrus at Crosslink Capital eariler this week. He predicted one or maybe more greentech companies might try to go public in late 2009 and early 2010. Why? Despite the downturn in the economy, the federal government, local governments and several investor-owned utilties clearly support the industry. Governments will provide loans and utilities will be willing customers for smart grid technologies and solar equipment. Indirectly, utilities will also help industries like wind. Overseas, you see much of the same picture. The United Kingdom is issuing leases for offshore wind farms as a way to reduce coal consumption and increase employment and exports. Australia lacks water, so it wants to boost its water technology industry.

When asked, most investors speculate that Silver Spring Networks (which used to be named Real Time TechComm) could be one of the first to go public. The company has large contracts with PG&E and it can farm out a lot of its basic manufacturing to contract manufacturers. Relatively low capital expenses and a secure deal with a large customer: those are two things that were absent when A123 Systems put forth its plans for an IPO. But don't hold your breath: people have been waiting for the S-1 from Silver Spring for weeks, but it has yet to be filed, as far as a search tonight shows. Is it being prepared? Probably, but it's not public yet.

If Silver Spring does go public, it will underscore an interesting trend. So far, traditional VCs have not played a huge role in the 'big' green IPOs. First Solar was funded by a member of the Walton family for nearly two decades before going public. SunPower got life support from T.J. Rodgers and Cypress Semiconductor. Energy Recovery, the desalination outfit that went public last year, was funded by Norwegian investors. So far, the only two really big clean IPOs that have had VC money have been EnerNoc and Comverge. Like Silver Spring, both are smart grid companies.

I’m writing this from a BIPV Summit in San Diego. There are about 100 people attending, rather scant for a solar event, but it's an interesting group.  Utilities, roofers, architects, and the usual suspects from the PV world -- Suntech, Solyndra, Heliovolt, some startup called Pythagoras Solar. First let’s make the distinction between BAPV and BIPV.  BAPV is Building Applied PV -– it’s a retrofit added to the building long after construction, while BIPV is Building Integrated PV and it means just that -- the architects, building designers, building owners designed the photovoltaics into the skin and roof of the building from day one. And as of now -- it’s a tiny market.  Lots of potential, but tiny.  Nadav Enbar, Research Manager, of Energy Insights, estimates that the total amount of installed BIPV, even with the most aggressive estimates, is about 70 megawatts.  Lux Research says that 97 megawatts was installed last year but they are probably including BAPV as well.  Suntech's Leonard May, Director of BIPV Products, claims to have shipped $80 million in BIPV last year. And that’s a tiny sliver of world PV. But it feels like we’re at the inflection point of this market.  The new format of the U.S. investment tax credit and Europe’s new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive are policy tools that will  serve to accelerate BIPV penetration. Despite the potential, there are very few pure-play BIPV firms, and there are very few VC-funded BIPV firms. Here is a small gallery of examples of BIPV.  More info on BIPV in the next blog post.

“The U.S. has to deal with the issue of nuclear waste regardless of whether they build any more reactors,??? said Ariel Levite, the former Principal Deputy Director General for Policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. “The U.S. has the least intelligent solution — spending billions on interim storage.???  The question of storing nuclear waste is still in front of the U.S. he said, adding, “Yucca Mountain ain’t going to work??? because of politics and sheer capacity. And by the way -- Yucca Mountain has quite a bit of seismic activity -- not a great idea for an above-ground storage site. Dean S. Engelhardt, a nuclear design engineer has a patent on an invention that he claims will completely eliminate nuclear waste from our environment by sending it to the center of the earth.  Well, to the surface of the inner core, anyway. His early stage company is Permanent RadWaste Solutions. “Solve the waste problem and you solve the contamination problem for nuclear power and make it a green method of power,??? Engelhardt said. The container for the waste is called a Submarine Transport Vehicle (STV) and is similar to a nuclear submarine that uses the seabed as a transit medium, not a dumping ground. The nuclear waste starts its journey in a 75-foot deep hole in the seabed at a subduction fault in the Pacific Ocean. A subduction fault is an earthquake fault at the edge of a continental crust that is in collision with the adjoining oceanic crust. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but Permanent RadWaste Solutions has a process that uses a subduction fault to send the waste to the center of the earth in what Engelhardt  claims is a permanent, zero maintenance, less expensive and terrorist-proof solution to the nuclear waste problem. To do this requires burying a specially designed pressure-and-temperature-compensating submersible transport vehicle in the sediments at a subduction fault. The seals on the STV are dynamic and maintain a slight difference in pressure as it descends; the internal pressure being slightly less than the external pressure, insuring that any leak would travel from outside in with the continuing slow descent of the STV. The slow progress of the STV in the fault means that the waste will be harmless by the time it reaches the magma in a few million years. Once buried in the seabed at a subduction fault, the waste cannot go anywhere but down.  Gravity eliminates the chance that the waste can return to the surface in a volcano. The ultimate goal of this concept is not getting the waste to the earth’s core, but to subject it to the increasing pressures of the descent for the first million years or so. Engelhardt  quotes the recently deceased Dr. James Warf, one of the original nuclear scientists on the Manhattan project, as saying that this is the only concept he’s seen that will eliminate nuclear waste.

The Gainesville City Commission has approved a solar feed-in tariff for residential and business customers served by the Gainesville Regional Utilities in Florida, making it the first such program in the country.

The approval followed a previous vote by the commission last December to draft an ordinance for the program. Under the program, which still needs the state’s approval, owners of solar energy systems would sell the electricity to the utilities at $0.32 per kilowatt-hour under a 20-year contract. The rate, which is higher than the price for conventional power, will remain for the first two years of the program.

The rate likely to be adjusted lower for new solar energy system owners after the first of the two years to reflect the expected declining costs of owning and operating solar energy systems.

The program is modeled after the successful one in Germany, which has become one of the largest solar markets in the world. Spain, France, Italy and other European countries also have similar programs. Utilities there also are required to buy all the solar power available for sale at prices higher than conventional power.

The Gainesville program could take effect as early as March 1.

If you attend lots of energy seminars and conferences and speeches -- and yes, I do -- you start to hear a common refrain and it goes something like this: Energy storage is the missing link for renewable energy.  Sometimes the word “holy grail??? will be substituted for “missing link.???  (Note that attached picture is a holy hand grenade, not grail.) Wind turbines are useful only when the wind blows and photovoltaic panels work only when the sun is shining.  Therefore these renewable energy sources are not considered “dispatchable??? and require a measure of dispatchable backup (typically in the form of a non-renewable source such as natural gas). “We can make intermittent sources of renewable energy into dispatchable power.??? These are the fighting words of Bill Gray, the CEO of Velkess, a kinetic energy storage system startup.  He is trying to deliver the holy grail of renewable energy -- cheap, effective energy storage. Up until now the most efficient energy storage technologies have been:

• Pumping water up a hill

• Heating a rock

All technologies available to The Flinstones. Flywheels from companies like Active Power, Beacon Power and Pentadyne Power are typically built from carbon fiber or high tensile steel.  The flywheel is basically a large mass spinning on a non-contact magnetic bearing,   Because of high costs they are used in frequency regulation or UPS applications, not actual utility-scale MW-size energy storage. Velkess has a new type of flywheel technology, which uses a different set of materials and engineering principles than traditional flywheels.  Mr. Gray was unwilling to disclose the details. But he did claim that the cost of his solution was ten times less than the current $3.00 per Watt cost of storage.  And he did volunteer that the technology has been demonstrated, and uses a flexible rather than a rigid body -- “like a cowboy’s lasso.??? In Gray's words, "Energy storage is a crucial functionality to a clean energy future -- and this space deserves more thought and review.??? Velkess will be competing not only against other flywheel companies but against other storage technologies like flow batteries, compressed air storage, NaS batteries, and pumped hydro.

Two Congressmen have authored a bill that would require 25 percent of the electricity generated in the United States to come from renewable sources by 2025.

Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Todd Platts, R-Pa., introduced the American Renewable Energy Act on Wednesday. If passed, the legislation would take effect in 2012. Markey also introduced another bill that would require the nation to cut its power use by 15 percent by 2020. The reductions would result from setting new codes for buildings and appliances, and from utility-run or other programs that encourage conservation.

The lawmakers claim that the two bills together would create more than 500,000 jobs while saving people more than $180 billion in energy costs.

Passing the renewable energy standard would be good news for the solar industry. Mark Bachman at Pacific Crest Securities estimates that 5.9 gigawatt -- or $30 billion -- worth of solar cells would be needed between now and 2012 to meet the initial goals set by the standard. Another 55 gigawatts of cells, or $111 billion, would be required to meet the 25 percent mandate, he wrote in a research note.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has endorsed the renewable energy bill, saying it would increase renewable energy generation by 135 percent above what current federal and state policies would create.

The two lawmakers hope a new administration would make it possible to pass the two bills. They tried to get a renewable energy standard passed in 2007, but it didn’t receive enough support in the Senate, reported Grist.

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.