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Cleantech

Sometime shortly after 7 a.m. PST on Monday, execs at algae oil company Solazyme and members of the media will board a plane at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport and take off on the first commercial U.S. domestic flight to use Solazyme’s algae-based jet fuel. Read More »

Looks like Groupon will go public on Friday morning at $20 per share, giving it a valuation of $12.6 billion for its online coupon business. Let’s compare it to some of the greentech startups and big energy firms and try not to get disturbed. Read More »

 
 

Biofuels made from algae that will be able to scale, and compete with oil, will have to be synthesized and will not come from nature, says genomics scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter. That notion could put a damper on Venter’s current deal with oil giant Exxon. Read More »

Next-gen biofuel and biochemical companies Genomatica and Mascoma have filed notices recently indicating that they plan to go public some time soon. But how are the other next-gen biofuel companies that have gone public in recent months now faring on the stock market? Mostly down. Read More »

The U.S. military has stepped up efforts to invest and use more cleantech at its bases and battlefields, including renewable electricity, energy storage and a host of energy efficiency technologies. Here is a list of plans and projects underway. Read More »

Obama’s $510M bet to boost biofuels for the military

To promote biofuel production, the U.S. government is becoming both the investor and customer. The White House announced Tuesday a $510 million investment to speed up biofuel production for the military and beyond. Read More »

Greentech stocks rebound, but only partially

After the great market sell-off yesterday, stocks are rebounding slightly on Tuesday, including many of the greentech stocks that took a beating yesterday. But most of them are only up slightly. Here’s the latest: Read More »

Algae oil company Solazyme, which went public in May of this year, reported both revenue and losses up for the second quarter of the year. At the same time, the company said it expects to produce 500,000 metric tons of algae oil by 2015. Read More »

When it comes to greentech investing, it’s basically all or nothing, and either you have a commitment to the field or you don’t, says VantagePoint Capital founder Alan Salzman. Read More »

Biofuel companies may not get as much venture capital investments, but they sure are attracting a good number of investors in the public markets. Renewable Energy Group is turning to the public market route and on Monday said it will go public to raise up to … Read More »

Cleantech venture investments dropped by a third in the second quarter of this year compared to the same quarter last year, according to the Cleantech Group. However, energy efficiency technologies such as LED lighting and energy management software are still getting some love from private investors. Read More »

Four-year-old OPX Biotechnologies, which uses genomics to make biofuel production more efficient and economic, is in the process of raising a $45 million round, and has closed on $37 million of that funding, according to a filing. Read More »

More Must Reads

Waste to fuel startup Enerkem already had trash king Waste Management on its side — now Enerkem has scored backing from oil refiner giant Valero. Enerkem announced it has raised $60 million from Valero, along with existing investors like Waste Management and Braemar Energy Ventures. Read More »

On its first day of trading, algae oil and fuel company Solazyme, saw its shares trade up around 15 percent from its IPO price of $18 per share. At one point Solazyme’s shares hit $22 per share, but leveled back down to close at $20.71. Read More »

This morning, as algae oil maker Solazyme made its debut on the Nasdaq, the company’s co-founders and investors are popping the champagne corks on pricing shares at the high end at $18 per share. Who made good in Solazyme’s debut? Hint: The Roda Group, co-founders and … Read More »

Algae oil and fuel maker Solazyme priced shares for its IPO late last night at $18 per share — above its previously estimated price range — enabling the company to raise around $198 million when it debuts on the Nasdaq on Friday. Read More »

Algae oil maker Solazyme has set the estimated terms of its planned IPO and boosted its maximum offering to $184 million, almost double the $100 million IPO it filed for in March. Solazyme plans to sell 9.98 million shares at a range of $15 to $17. Read More »

Nine-year-old energy-focused venture capital firm Braemar Energy Ventures is looking to raise $300 million for its latest fund, Braemar Energy Ventures III, according to an SEC filing. Read More »

Amyris has opened its first industrial scale facility to turn sugarcane syrup into Biofene, a form of the industrial chemical farnesene, which is a fragrant hydrocarbon that’s used to make cosmetics and lubricants. It’s a big step, though not quite yet to commercial-scale biofuel production. Read More »

Algae oil maker Solazyme filed for an IPO late Friday, joining the pack of next-gen biofuel IPOs that have occurred in recent months. Here’s Solazyme’s S-1 by the numbers: Read More »

Algae could land on the Nasdaq some time this year. Late Friday algae company Solazyme filed for an IPO of up to $100 million. The move follows the company’s announcement that it had struck a deal with Dow Chemical to make a algae-based fluid for transformers. Read More »

There’s a whole lotta stuff to make out of algae beyond the oft-discussed algae fuel. The latest is an algae-based insulation fluid to bathe transformers, courtesy of a partnership between Dow Chemical and algae startup Solazyme. Read More »

Grab your biofuel startups fast, Lux Research says — the field of contenders with game-changing technologies for turning non-food feedstocks into useful hydrocarbons is getting sparser by the minute. The report sees Big Oil and consumer products conglomerates quickly winnowing the field of the best technologies. Read More »

It’ll be a long road for algae biofuel producers to make any significant dent in the world’s overall fuel supply. How long? Consider this: By 2020, the algae biofuel industry is likely to produce only 61 million gallons per year globally, Pike Research said Wednesday. Read More »

Two and a half years ago we put together this cheat sheet on 15 algae fuel startups you need to know. But boy have things changed since then. Here’s our updated 2010 version of our original 15 algae fuel startups bringing pond scum to fuel tanks. Read More »

Algae fuel is likely decades from powering our vehicles, which is one of the reasons that federal lawmakers already are focusing on tax breaks for companies in the field. Yesterday the House passed a bill that gives $1.01 per gallon tax credit to algae fuel producers. Read More »

Joule Unlimited, a startup that promises to genetically engineer an organism that eats CO2 and produces a drop-in diesel fuel, has landed a patent on its “recombinant biosynthesis” technology. Read More »

Algae fuel startup Solazyme already had a long list of backers — from Chevron’s VC arm to Morgan Stanley — but this week, the company says it’s added two more high profile names: investor Richard Branson and food and personal product giant Unilever. Read More »

Dutch oil giant Shell and Brazilian ethanol giant Cosan sealed the deal Wednesday on a $12 billion joint venture to turn sugarcane into pump-ready fuel. How will the massive partnership affect Codexis, Shell’s biocatalyst partner and recent entrant to the public markets? Read More »

The well-funded Range Fuels said it has begun producing cellulosic methanol from its first commercial factory and plans to begin making cellulosic ethanol sometime this quarter. Read More »

Greentech has become a big subject in corporate conference rooms over the past year. Large companies have been among the top investors so far this year, and the latest example came from Samsung Electronics. Read More »

Investors are still pumping money into algae fuel, despite the lack of commercial availability of the green gas. This morning seven-year-old Solazyme announced that it has raised $52 million in a Series D financing from investors including Chevron Technology Ventures. Read More »

Amid the rubble of the first generation of biofuel projects focused on ethanol derived from corn, a new landscape of biofuel tech has taken shape. As Lux Research puts it in a report released today, the companies range “from backyard brewers to billion-dollar industrial giants,” … Read More »

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has likened the current state of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology to a half-baked web tool in need of debugging, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t powerful forces driving the growth of the CCS industry. Those forces — the need … Read More »

Despite the crumbling of the first generation of biofuel projects (corn-based ethanol), the U.S. government is in full support of the next generation of biofuels, particularly cellulosic ethanol and algae fuel. This morning Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack … Read More »

Algae fuel has become the latest beloved cleantech product of politicians. Last month Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), co-sponsor of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, toured algae fuel startup Aurora Biofuels’ lab and earlier this month kicked off an algae-fueled road trip (using fuel from … Read More »

Automakers Eye Fuel Cells for 2015: Auto companies Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Nissan and Toyota have issued a joint letter of understanding today saying they anticipate a “few hundred thousand units” of fuel cell electric vehicles will be commercialized. — Green … Read More »

Plane flights are the bane of the eco-elite. You can buy a plug-in car and build a green home, but when it comes to preaching the green gospel, or attending numerous greentech sales meeting, racking up plane flights — and swelling your carbon footprint as a … Read More »

In the world of big oil balance sheets, Exxon’s decision to invest $600 million into an algae fuel deal with startup Synthetic Genomics is kind of like oil finally agreeing to take algae out on a date. While it’s definitely a first step in a … Read More »

Algae-based biofuels hold enormous promise as an alternative transportation fuel, but investors had better have patience. Fuel made from algal feedstocks is forecast to reach commercial availability by 2012, according to a report released today by Pike Research on the global biofuels industry, but isn’t … Read More »

Despite the slow demise of algae fuel company GreenFuel, investors are still pumping money into algae-based fuels. The latest recipient is Solazyme, which uses synthetic biology to produce algal-derived fuels in dark, closed fermentation tanks. The company said this morning that it … Read More »

A kerosene-based aviation fuel called Jet Propellant 8 made up more than 90 percent of the fuel used by the Department of Defense in 2006, at a cost of $6 billion, according to Cleantech Group. Take all of that fuel, and combine it with commercial … Read More »

A technology developed at Ohio University to grow algae in efficient bioreactors has been licensed by Atlanta-based startup Green Bios Technology, the university said this morning. The developer of the algae bioreactor, Ohio University Professor of Mechanical Engineering David Bayless, told us that the reactor … Read More »

Algae biofuel maker Solazyme said today that its microbial-derived jet fuel has passed inspection with flying colors. The South San Francisco-based startup had its algal-derived aviation fuel studied by the Southwest Research Institute, a fuel analysis lab, and it passed the American Society … Read More »

V-P nominations and the Democrat’s supposedly green convention clogged the airwaves this week, but what does it all mean for cleantech? Here’s our take on the running mates and the other headlines from the week. 10 Things to Know About Sarah Palin and Energy: Presumptive Republican … Read More »

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