by Amol Deshpande I am an investor and entrepreneur with a passion for biomass in all its forms. As a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), I am involved with three different biomass-related technology investments focused on extracting the energy value from organic waste such as food waste, yard trimmings, wood and municipal solid waste (MSW). The venture capital industry began investing in biomass, in earnest, five years ago when hype around ethanol and other biobased fuels led to an unsustainable capacity expansion and strained feedstock supplies. This was followed by an era of numerous investments in "second generation" biofuels and chemicals, mostly focused on sugar and syngas platforms or algae. All of these involved some metabolic engineering or related breakthrough energy conversion. These investments are interesting and worthwhile, but fundamentally challenged. First, in most cases, proprietary feedstock supply chains must be built around these innovations, i.e., thousands of tons of specially cultivated biomass (e.g., energy crops) need to be redirected to wherever the plant is. Second, technology hurdles in yield and selectivity must be overcome where organisms or catalysts are tasked with producing novel output and scaled up from liters to millions of […]
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GE invests in two startups; Soros commits $1B to cleantech; Morgan solar raises $4.7M; and more.
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Agency vows to step up enforcement of Clean Water Act for the new century.
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Change in wind patterns reduced hypoxia that may be linked to climate change.
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Scientists price the annual services of threatened forests and coral reefs.
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Massive New Mexico project wants to tie together nation's three power grids.
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Solel Solar Systems makes parabolic trough solar receivers that can be coupled with Siemens' turbines.
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22-MW wind energy and battery storage system was developed by Shell WindEnergy.
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Facility in Madison, PA can produce ethanol from a variety of feedstocks.
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The Green Week in Review is a podcast, hosted by SustainableBusiness.com News Editor Bart King. It’s posted every Friday morning and is about 15 minutes long. You can listen to it through your browser or download it to a portable MP3 player. Sign up for our General News RSS Feed and it will be automatically downloaded to your computer’s media player each week. In this week’s show… Imara Corporation is one of a handful of U.S. companies developing the next generation battery technologies expected to one day power everything from power tools to passenger vehicles. Imara emerged from stealth operations in December 2008 and was one of three lithium-ion battery companies named to the Global Cleantech 100 list by the Cleantech Group. Last month the company announced that it’s first battery model is ready for commercial use, and this week Bart interviews CEO and founder Jeff Depew. Plus, a summary of the week’s top cleantech headlines. ++++ Email comments or questions to bart@sustainablebusiness.com
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