-
1. The Daily Sprout
-
2. G8 Summit Misses the Mark on Cleantech
-
3. Innovalight Nabs $5M for Thin-Film Solar
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
GM to Get World’s Largest Rooftop Solar Installation: General Motors is set to get the world’s largest rooftop photovoltaic installation on one of its Spanish facilities. The system will have about 85,000 solar panels and peak capacity of 12 megawatts - BusinessWeek.
Better Energy Gets Funding for Pocket Solar Chargers: Berkeley, Calif.-based Better Energy, maker of the super cool Solio solar gizmo charger, has secured its first round of funding - VentureBeat.
Investments in LEDs Hits $100M in Q1 ‘08: The Cleantech Group estimates that investments in LED technologies hit $100 million in the first quarter of 2008, behind solar and biofuels in terms of total investments in cleantech - San Jose Mercury News.
Tesla Grabs Former Chrysler Exec: After 24 years at Chrysler, Mike Donoughe has left Michigan to join Tesla in California as Executive Vice President, Vehicle Engineering and Manufacturing. Welcome to the neighborhood, Mike - Tesla Motors.
G8 Summit Misses the Mark on Cleantech
Craig Rubens - Policy
The leaders of the world’s richest countries have squandered yet another opportunity to lead the global community when it comes to climate change. The G8 Summit in Japan has issued a classically vague and nonbinding statement endorsing the idea of halving carbon emissions by 2050, a goal well below the emissions cuts proposed by leaders of many of the G8 nations.
The declaration on the environment and climate change gives a lot of lip service to various “low-carbon technologies” but offers little in terms of new policy to help facilitate development and deployment.
More baffling is the way in which the statement names certain technologies and omits others. Nuclear and biofuels receive strong commendations, while wind and solar fail to get a single mention. Meanwhile clean coal technologies, including carbon capture and sequestration, are given a whole paragraph, in which there resides one of the most clearly worded assertions: “We strongly support the launching of 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects globally by 2010, taking into account various national circumstances, with a view to beginning broad deployment of CCS by 2020.”
The G8 also pats itself on the back for the $10 billion a year its members “have so far pledged over the next several years…in direct government-funded R&D.” The statement goes on to say that G8 members would “agree to take various policy and regulatory measures to provide incentives for commercializing these technologies.” For the U.S., this would mean extending the tax credits that are keeping solar and wind projects in the black, but those tax credit renewals are still languishing in Congressional partisanship.
For cleantech, the declaration amounts to little more than a call to “hurry up and wait.” The statement says “all major economies will need to commit to meaningful mitigation actions to be bound in the international agreement to be negotiated by the end of 2009,” those “major economies” meaning China and India. The waiting is supposed to end in 2009 when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes in Copenhagen to thrash out the next step after the Kyoto Protocol. Until then, the global cleantech community will have to make do with uncertain national policies.
Innovalight Nabs $5M for Thin-Film Solar
Craig Rubens - Startups
Innovalight is developing a silicon nanocrystalline ink, which supposedly will have the advantage of high throughput print manufacturing — without the lowered efficiency CIGS-based solar technologies suffer. The company says its technology “could be as much as ten times cheaper than current solar cell solutions.”
The market for thin-film solar is going to explode over the next few years. Last week Lux Research estimated that thin-film solar will grab 28 percent of the solar market by 2012. While this seems like a big jump for such a new technology, the sector is moving forward quickly as more startups like Innovalight put their funds into production. Nanosolar recently clicked on its 1 GW solar printer and Global Solar says it has the world’s largest thin-film solar production plant with a capacity of 40 MW a year.
Founded in 2002, Innovalight raised $28 million in series C funding last year led by Convexa Capital, and including Scatec AS, Apax Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, Harris Group, Sevin Rosen Funds and Triton Ventures. Previously, the startup had raised $14 million in series A and B funding. This newest financing pushes the startup’s funds up close to $50 million.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment