-
1. What Good Are Regional Climate Compacts? Cali Cities Aim to Find Out
-
2. Element Partners Rakes In $486M for New Cleantech Fund
-
3. Gemini Solar to Build Big in Austin
What Good Are Regional Climate Compacts? Cali Cities Aim to Find Out
Josie Garthwaite - Policy
As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., gear up for a battle over climate legislation, the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose on the other coast have joined hands to coordinate city policies for clean energy, greenhouse gas emissions, water use and waste, and to generally “increase resiliency to the impacts of climate change.”
For the Bay Area, that means figuring out how to deal with more frequent severe flooding and a sea level rise of up to three feet by the year 2100 (read: two airports and much of Silicon Valley underwater), according to studies from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
Cleaner forms of transportation are especially important for the Bay Area if it wants to make a dent in its greenhouse gas emissions, since the sector makes up a larger portion of total emissions there than it does in California and globally. Today’s regional compact calls for a 3 percent drop in gas consumption by the end of 2013 and an 8 percent cut by the end of 2018.
Part of the strategy for reaching those goals is a big push for zero- and ultra-low emission vehicles in municipal fleets. The mayors set 5- and 10-year benchmarks for this goal, too, aiming to increase the number of clean fleet cars to 10 percent of municipal fleets by the end of 2013, and to 25 percent by the end of 2018.
The three mayors ran an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle today, saying the agreement:
will help restore economic prosperity, as the innovative companies in the Bay Area continue to be world leaders in the technologies and products that will usher in a green economy.
They emphasize in their column that today’s agreement is not a dramatic leap forward. Rather, they say, it’s “a multiplier — enhancing coordination and achieving economies of scale” across a region that already has programs in place (in one city or another) for green jobs training, solar panel installations and waste reduction.
Graphic courtesy San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Element Partners Rakes In $486M for New Cleantech Fund
Josie Garthwaite - Startups
Excitement over growth in the industry had started to jack up the cost of investments. But with the economic downturn, the party’s over — and Element (formerly DFJ Element, since it’s part of Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s network of partner funds) sees opportunities as a result. Now it has a fat new fund to take advantage of them.
The Pennsylvania-based venture capital firm announced today that it just closed on $486 million for its second fund, convincing limited partners to pony up $86 million more than the firm’s initial target. According to the Business Journal, most of the commitments came in prior to the fourth quarter of last year, when fund raising took a dive — but closing on a fund of this size, in the current economic climate, represents no small task.
Unlike Index Ventures, which we wrote about earlier this week when it closed a new €350 million (about $440 million) fund meant in part to expand its sparse cleantech portfolio, Element has cleantech as its founding focus. The firm’s 22-company portfolio is dominated by ventures involved with energy efficiency, water treatment and clean energy technologies.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Gemini Solar to Build Big in Austin
David Ehrlich - Big Green
Gemini Solar Development scored its first deal this week, and it’s for one of the largest solar photovoltaic plants in the country — a 30-megawatt plant in Austin, Texas, that’s expected to go online by the end of 2010. The unanimous approval of the project by the Austin City Council comes just days after a shakeup in the ownership of Gemini Solar, but it could serve as a clear sign that Gemini’s future is a bright one.
Gemini Solar will build the plant for the city-owned Austin Energy, with construction to begin in the first quarter of 2010. The cost of the project was not disclosed, but Austin Energy has agreed to pay $10 million per year for electricity from the plant, adding up to a total of $250 million over the 25-year term of the deal.
The plant will be owned and operated by Gemini Solar, with solar panels spread over 320 acres. The panels will be ground-mounted on single-axis trackers that can rotate to follow the sun throughout the day, maximizing power production, and creating enough electricity each year to power 5,000 homes. The solar panels will come from Suntech Power Holdings which is a part owner of Gemini Solar.
Gemini was set up last October as a joint venture between MMA Renewable Ventures and Suntech, but that’s about to change. MMA Renewable’s parent company, Municipal Mortgage & Equity, made a deal earlier this week to sell substantially all of MMA Renewable’s solar assets to Spain’s Fotowatio for $19.7 million. A spokeswoman for MMA Renewable confirmed with us today that the Gemini Solar stake is part of the sale, which is expected to close by the middle of next month.
It’s becoming a busy year for solar deals. The same day the Fotowatio deal was announced, thin-film leader First Solar said it would buy OptiSolar’s entire solar project pipeline in an all-stock deal valued at $400 million. And earlier this month, solar installer groSolar acquired the residential business of Borrego Solar Systems.
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM’s Green:Net.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment