Macquarie Capital Funds, the asset management unit of Australia’s Macquarie Group, has hired Bill Green, the co-founders of renewable energy-focused investment fund VantagePoint Venture Partners, as a senior managing director to expand the firm’s North American renewable energy investments. Read More »
BrightSource Energy, the developer of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, has signed an agreement with Israel’s Yissum Research Development Company, to improve power production of utility scale solar power plants, the companies jointly announced in a release issued this morning.
BrightSource, launched in 2004, is based in Oakland, Calif., and backed by Google and VantagePoint Venture Partners. So far it has signed supply contracts, mostly with California utilities, for some 2,600 megawatts worth of solar electric generation capacity. The projects are based on CSP power tower technology, which uses a field of heliostats to focus the sun’s rays on a receiver at the top of a tower. Each heliostat is a flat, high-efficiency mirror mounted on a frame that reflects solar energy toward the receiver. The receiver collects the energy as heat, which is used to turn water into steam that in turn powers electricity-generating turbines.
Until recently CSP technology, especially parabolic trough technology, was the technology of choice to develop large, utility-scale solar power plants. But the falling price PVs is now convincing a number of developers to give PV panels a second look.
Yissum is in charge of commercializing the technology developed by Hebrew University’s research labs. This morning’s release says that the two parties will work together to develop “new materials [that] may be integrated in the solar thermal power plant technology.” It does not say what that material is.
On the agreement Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum said:
Solar energy is definitely the most important, yet underutilized, clean energy source. Israel has always been a leading player in the solar energy field, and the Hebrew University is proud to collaborate with BrightSource Industries Israel in increasing the efficiency of solar thermal power plants.
We’re going to see more of that. “That” is the conflict pitting green power developers facing ever growing demand for clean energy and environmentalists who want to preserve the often remote areas that are attractive to clean tech developers.
Yesterday, utility-scale solar developer BrightSource Energy, facing intense opposition from local environmentalists and politicians, opted to walk away from a project to build a solar farm in California’s eastern Mojave Desert, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource, whose backers include Google and clean tech VC VantagePoint Venture Partners, had planned to develop its solar farm, requiring the deployment of tens of thousands of mirrors in a 5,130-acres (2076 hectares) remote area known as as Broadwell Dry Lake.
BrightSource probably concluded that the opposition from environmentalists and powerful politicians, including Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was not worth the time and money. Instead, the company will set its eye on one of the 19 other pieces of acreage it’s secured for development from the U.S. Bureau Land of Management.
The conflict does underscore one of clean tech’s Achilles’ heels as it morphs from a largely idealistic enterprise into a “big business.” As it stands, they, much like a Chevron (a BrightSource investor, so is BP) or ExxonMobil, today’s clean energy companies have to grow their business — which happens to involve the development of large, remote tracts of land — and respond to the demands of environmentalists and their traditional land preservation agenda.
The environmental movement seems to be split in two. It’s pro-business, seeing green as a way to create profits and jobs, and sometimes willing to develop wilderness areas if it means less CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Count not only companies like BrightSource in that camp, but also President Obama. The movement is also an advocacy movement that seeks to preserve land and views any encroachment, even by a carbon-free energy companies, as a negative.
In her statement praising BrightSource’s decision, Sen. Feinstein lightly addressed this issue:
“It’s clear that conservation and renewable energy development are not mutually exclusive goals — there is room enough in the California desert for both.”
Despite Senator Feinstein’s optimism, this green on green tension is likely to grow as more states implement Renewable Energy Standards, requiring utilities to produce more clean wind or solar-generated electricity. California legislators just approved a law requiring state power utilities to generate 33 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020.
Aware that opposition both from environmentalists and NIMBY folks could slow the Obama’s ambitious green agenda, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced legislation in Washington earlier this year that would streamline the contentious permitting process by giving the Interior Department final say on project siting issues, overriding local Public Utilities Commission.
AlertMe, a developer of home energy management devices based in the UK, has raised £8 million ($12.9 million) in a second round of venture funding.
Good Energies, Index Ventures, SET Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners participated in the financing. AlertMe, which was launched in 2006, will use the proceeds to commercialize some of its existing products and develop new ones.
In March, AlertMe started selling its SmartPlug – a power management device that retails for £25 ($40). GreenTechGrid reports that in its last funding round the Cambridge startup raised £5 million from angel investors and an unnamed Boston-based firm.
Tendril, a Boulder, Colo.,-based energy management company, has raised $30 million in Series C funding, the company said this morning.
Tendril, launched five years ago, offers a portfolio of energy management tools that help utilities communicate with their customers. Some of the company solutions include a smart thermostat, a Web-based energy portal, smart outlets and most recently cell phone applications.
In March Tendril unveiled a new application that let customers monitor their energy consumption, accumulating energy costs and pricing changes from their cell phones.
This third funding round was led VantagePoint Venture Partners, participating was Good Energies. RRE Ventures and Vista Ventures, an an early stage venture firm in Boulder, also participated in the financing round.
The funding follows a $12 million series B funding secured by the company last year.
The $30 million financing will support the company’s plan to grow its distribution network. “Smart energy management is poised to take center stage and we see the need now more than ever for an open operating environment to enable a smart, information-driven power grid,” said Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck, in a written statement.
