PHOTOS: The Y-Combinator for greentech kicks off

Greenstart, a Y-Cominbator-style accelerator program for greentech startups, kicked off its first program on Tuesday at its new offices in downtown San Francisco. We covered the program, which was founded by entrepreneurial investors Mitch Lowe, Dave Graham, and Dillon McDonald, back in May, but on Tuesday the accelerator announced its first four startups in the program: renewable diesel company Sylvatex, Lono, which makes a smart film for windows, wireless smart plug maker Tenrehte Technologies, and energy monitoring tool Wa.tt.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee gave some opening remarks at the event and helped founder Lowe with the formal “ribbon cutting” ceremony — here’s some photos we snapped. Last week another accelerator program called Surge launched in Houston solely focused on the intersection of energy and information technology. We also attended the Cleanweb Hackathon earlier this month, a weekend hacking event focused on developers creating tools to help with resource constraint, from energy to water to food. Are incubator programs the new (or only) way for early stage greentech companies to make it in this hard fundraising environment?