HCL CleanTech Ltd., a biofuels start-up based in Tel Aviv, announced today a $5.5 million Series A financing led by Khosla Ventures, Burrill & Company, and angel investor Zohar Gilon.

HCL CleanTech has developed a proprietary technology to make an old, industrially proven German process converting lignocellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars economically attractive. According to the company, it is these fermentable sugars which are considered the gateway to advanced biofuels (biobutanols, biodiesel, jet fuel etc) and biochemicals (bioplastics etc). (more…)

Happy Earth Day… I hope you rode your bike to work, ate only vegetables, brought your own cup to Starbucks and followed the instructions in the signature line of your boss’ email and didn’t print it unless it was truly necessary.

If you are new around here – I was a Marine officer before running off to Europe for grad school and dedicating my professional life to sustainability. One of my happiest associations is with that group of men and women (the Marine Corps), and I can continue to do so through the Marines’ Memorial Association here in San Francisco. I’m very happy to support bringing relevant discussions to this venue that satisfy both my interests (likely yours if you are on this site) and that organization’s values, so if you have some ideas that need a venue and a good audience, please send me a note and we can chat about putting events together.

That said, next week you might want to mark your calendar for an event there and another fantastic event down the street at the Hotel Nikko.

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It already has to some extent.  I hate to be overly pessimistic, but sometimes you can’t just “make do.”  With the exception of high expectations from the Obama administration, things don’t look particularly great between the news of job cuts from Ausra, SunTech, OptiSolar and the abysmal rate at which new companies (and projects) are getting financed. Since the valley-jarring Sequoia deck slowed down bandwidth throughout the bay area in a display of viral marketing that rivaled anything put together by web 2.0 gurus, valuations have gone down, budgets have gotten stretched, and start-ups with great teams and traction have been told to jog in place.

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