Technology
Intel Heads Up $3.5 Billion Green/Clean Tech Investment Fund
Feb 24th
Intel CEO Paul Otellini Tuesday announced an ambitious $3.5 billion plan that, ideally, will lead to more technical jobs and start-ups in the U.S.
The Invest in America Alliance can essentially be split into two parts. The first part consists of an alliance between the chip maker and 24 venture firms like Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurveston to invest $3.5 billion into start-ups over the next two years. The investments will be made in a variety of fields, but green and clean tech are at the top of the list. As part of the push, Intel Capital will create a $200 million fund-within-a-fund to bolster the effort.
Second, a group of 17 companies — Accenture, Google, Dell, eBay, Marvell Semiconductor — will try to increase the hiring of college graduates (or NCGs, or “new college graduates” in Intel speak). Ideally, these companies will double the number of graduates. In 2010 alone, that could mean 10,500 more jobs.
“It would be a long-term mistake to let our future scientists and engineers sit idle after graduation. Today’s announcements are both an investment in the country’s innovators and a signal to the global marketplace about America’s commitment to innovation and future competitiveness,” Otellini said in a prepared statement.
Silicon Valley royalty wants to go on a hiring and investment bender over the next two years.
It’s a great idea, particularly the part about hiring new college graduates. The question now is to see how it plays out in reality and what impact it might have.
First, the VC part. Intel has created specialty funds in the past. It had a fund that invested in companies to support its push into communications, another one to build an ecosystem around its Itanium chip (there’s a name you probably haven’t heard of since the middle 90s.) and others for fostering investment in Russia and the Middle East. Some work, some don’t.
The Invest in America Alliance draws in other VC firms so it has a better chance of success. VCs and Intel Capital, however, are already investing somewhat heavily into start-ups. Thus, this represents probably an incremental, but not revolutionary, boost.
Hiring? It is always controlled by budgets, but an effort like this helps remind companies about their greater obligations to grow the economies where their executives live. There is a strong possibility that they will lobby state and federal officials for tax credits (Governor Conan in California has already outlined tax credits for manufacturers who train and hire new employees) but who isn’t getting tax credits these days? Another factor that could aid this push is the fact that a lot of these companies are run by people who still vividly remember being struggling students. Marvell was founded by grad students at UC Berkeley from Asia. They now contribute heavily to the school.
Elsewhere, Luminus Devices, which makes a large format LED, has raised $19 million more. The company right now sells LEDs to display makers like Acer and Samsung. How much has the MIT-spin out raised to date? $172 million. That’s about as much as any LED company ever. Our guess: Luminus will get bought in a few years. Philips, General Electric, Osram and others want to increase their share in the LED market.
Meanwhile, General Compression, which makes equipment for compressed air energy storage, raised $17 from, among others, Duke Energy. It is currently building a 2 megawatt facility.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/intel-heads-up-35-billion-greenclean-tech-investment-fund/#ixzz0gTpUHxAh
TSX carving a niche in clean technology sector
Nov 13th
The Toronto Stock Exchange is carving a niche in the growing clean technology and renewable power sector, raising more than $1-billion through equity listings in the year to October and attracting a growing list of international companies.
“The TSX is the exchange where the investors and the capital markets who are geared to invest in resource-based companies and investments converge, much more so than on the Big Board in the U.S., or the Nasdaq,” said Dan Schochet, executive vice president, Ram Power, Corp. (RPG/TSX), a Nevada-based geothermal power company that listed on the TSX in October.
Mr. Schochet who described his dealings with the TSX as “marvellous” and the listing as “exceeding expectations,” said the decision to list on the TSX was initially driven by Ram Power’s acquisition of two TSX listed companies: Polaris Geothermal Inc. and Western GeoPower Corp.
Ram Power is one of 21 foreign cleantech companies to have listed on the TSX or TSX Venture Exchange. In the first nine months of 2009, the TSX and Venture Exchange completed 73 financings compared with 48 over the same period in 2008. The number of listed cleantech companies rose to 123 compared to 102 at the end of last year.
Ungad Chadda, senior vice president of the Toronto Stock Exchange said there were a lot more listings in the pipeline. He said the listing of Ram Power in October pushed the two exchanges above the $1 billion-mark in equity financing for the cleantech sector, a record which exceeded the value financed for full-year 2008 by 100%. The volume of cleantech shares traded on the two exchanges also increased this year, up 21% in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2008.
“Our exchanges are number one in the world in mining and energy, and we are being viewed as the ideal financing markets for companies developing sustainable technologies and renewable power projects,” Mr. Chadda said. “We have made significant efforts in the cleantech sector and it is gratifying to see that Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange have become the listing and financing destination of choice for large and small cleantech businesses.”
He said the Toronto exchanges already had the highest number of listed cleantech companies in the world.
Clean-tech firms gird for funding gap – Globe and Mail
Oct 28th
SHAWN McCARTHY
OTTAWA — From Thursday’s Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 12:00AM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 2:36AM EDT
GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER
Investors are returning to the clean technology sector
but with a sharper eye for risk and more demanding appetite for reward.
But as private investors move back into financing for renewable energy, efficiency and pollution-abatement companies, money is running out at the federal government’s flagship program for financing startup companies whose technologies offer reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Ottawa’s Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) – a linchpin for startups needing development capital – is scheduled to announce a $50-million round of company financings next month, virtually depleting its $350-million climate change/clean air fund.
The sector was hammered by the global economic meltdown as credit dried up and investors became increasingly risk-averse. Financing is now coming back – but with a somewhat chastened approach to the much-hyped technology sector. “There is a renewed interest on the part of financial institutions who had clean tech and carbon finance on their radar prior to the economic downturn,” said Douglas Clarke, a partner in the climate-change practice at Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP.
Clean technology – What is it and what does it mean?
Oct 28th
Clean technology includes the renewable energy (wind power, solar power, biomass, hydropower, biofuels), information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, and many other appliances that are now more energy efficient. It is a means to create electricity and fuels with a smaller environmental footprint. And it is the need to make green buildings both more energy efficient and environmentally benign. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects that have proven that they are “additional” or “beyond business as usual” can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation (such as a Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism project) is also known as a carbon project.
While there is no standard definition of “clean technology,” it has been described by Clean Edge, a clean-tech research firm, as “a diverse range of products, services, and processes that harness renewable materials and energy sources, dramatically reduce the use of natural resources, and cut or eliminate emissions and wastes.” It notes that “Clean technologies are competitive with, if not superior to, their conventional counterparts. Many also offer significant additional benefits, notably their ability to improve the lives of those in both developed and developing countries”
Investments in clean technology have grown considerably since coming into the spotlight around 2000. According to the United Nations Environment Program, wind, solar and biofuel companies received a record $148 billion in new funding in 2007 as rising oil prices and climate change policies encouraged investment in renewable energy. $50 billion of that funding went to wind power. Overall, investment in clean-energy and energy-efficiency industries rose 60 percent from 2006 to 2007.[1] By 2018 it is forecast that the three main clean technology sectors, solar photovoltaics, wind power, and biofuels, will have revenues of $325.1bn. [2]
In the United States, the clean tech industry is largely based in Silicon Valley [3] [4]