Business Week recently published an article on advice for start-up trying to attract venture capital and it made interesting reading on a couple of fronts.

First of all as I am sure a lot of you are aware the pool of venture funds has got smaller, a lot smaller additionally the opportunity for concept or speculative deals is near enough impossible to fund and finally on the plus side, if a business asks for less (sub 5m) and manages to succeed in a bear market, it has a very good chance of survival.

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In the last few weeks both Shell and BP have pulled out of developing off-shore wind developments in the UK due to better incentives and support from the US government in the form of tax breaks and incentives.

The same is true for Spain where in the last few years the country has been unprecedented growth in wind farms along the majority of the eastern part of the country. Then just as the country was seeing clean and green as a way forward – they remove the tax break for further development. Almost overnight the work stops, new planned sites are abandoned and people are laid off.

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Yesterday Q-Cells reduced their revenue guidance for Q4 by 25%, effectively implying there would be no revenues in December. This is just three weeks after being particularly upbeat during their investor conference call. Certainly the signs were there three weeks ago as well, but according to management, shipments of product (solar cells) were strong through November but in the last couple of weeks business slowed down dramatically.

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Nov. 4th was a great day for progressives as well as community-based energy solutions. Little-noticed ballot Issue 1A in Boulder County, CO, passed by nearly 2:1, marking an historic milestone in the United States’ quest for energy independence/security. Ballot 1A approved $40M in local EE/RE bonds for local residents and businesses who wish to invest in energy efficiency or green energy generation, and is similar to Berkeley’s $80M solar roof bond program.  Bonds are paid back on property taxes-and the obligation stays with the home so repayment is assured even if the house is sold.

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If you made it out to GreenBuild last week, you likely saw San Francisco based Project FROG’s latest product.  Last week the building start‐up announced it had closed an $8MM Series B financing led by RockPort Capital Partners, a leading Boston and San Francisco based CleanTech Venture Capital firm.

That wasn’t all they had to announce though, earlier this week they announced that they will build their first energy-neutral building in New England on Hartford’s Watkinson School. John Bracker, Watkinson’s Head of School, announced, “Not only will the building provide state of the art science classrooms and a hub for Watkinson’s Global Studies Program, but also deliberately provide a location for teachers and students to explore the intersection of these subject areas, specifically environmental studies and ethical action. We believe the building should be as twenty-first century as our educational philosophy.”

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According to Steven Milunovich, Merrill Lynch’s cleantech strategist, energy concerns will not disappear despite the falling price of oil, so investors can expect significant long-term opportunities in the cleantech space.  That is reassuring for us, but not big news. What is surprising is the commotion on the wire by their announcement.

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CleanTechies blogger Nat Kreamer (COO and co-founder of SunRun) had some big news this morning for us.  Hopefully the announcement of $105M in loan financing for SunRun customers by U.S. Bancorp is a sign of credit houses freeing up some of the liquidity that the department of treasury has passed along to them.

This is big news because while it indicates some thawing of the credit freeze, it also indicates some serious innovation.  This kind of financing is as sexy as any of the new technologies you see coming out of Silicon Valley.

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New photovoltaic projects have grown at a phenomenal rate in Spain in the last several years, reaching around 1500MW of new installations in the last 12 months (from 250MW built over the past 5 years) and accounting for an enormous amount of global PV panel demand.  However, the land of eternal sunshine seems to have gone dark these last few months with almost no publicity on new project development. 

A quick scan of Greentech media and Greenbiz.com still shows a substantial number of new projects in the California area while Spain-based energias-renovables.com is showing almost no dealflow for new installations.  What gives?

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In his new book “Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks” (→read book discussion) Jeff Siegel explains how to position portfolios in order to achieve long-term investment success in the renewable energy field. CleanTechies has talked to the author about his book, his suggestions to investors and his personal career and investment experiences.

Jeff Siegel, author

CleanTechies: Jeff, how do you define the target audience of your book? Do you want to appeal to institutional or individual investors?

Jeff Siegel: The book primarily addresses individual investors as most of the information found in it is information any institutional investor should already know. Though I have found that a lot of folks who are simply renewable energy advocates have been buying the book too. I think it provides a great resource for those who simply want to learn more about why the large-scale integration of renewable energy is inevitable.

CleanTechies: What do you suggest individual investors then – to invest in private companies, in publicly traded companies or in funds?

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The economy has entered a stage of worldwide recession and pessimists argue that “renewable energy” is a bubble about to burst. Be it a smart decision to now publish a book in this field or not, “Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks” is out to prove that it is.

Author Jeff Siegel (→ read interview) wants to show his readers how to position their portfolio to achieve long-term investment success in the renewable energy field. He aims to explain how to tap into this market early, and logically, in order to capture unparalleled profits.

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