Cleantech Ventures, an Australian venture capital fund manager focused on investments in companies developing clean technologies, has released a new report, Turning Green into Gold, which it describes as “the first-ever comprehensive analysis of cleantech venture capital, buyouts, merger and acquisition and IPO activity in Australia.” From the press release:
The first-ever study of Australian investment in the emerging cleantech, or clean technologies, sector, has found a higher proportion of local cleantech investments in agriculture, energy storage, transportation and water than has been the case in North America and Europe.
Energy generation technologies were found to be popular with cleantech investors, attracting the largest proportion of seed and early stage funding.
Cleantech Ventures co-authored the report with Cleantech Network LLC, a US company considered the world’s leading authority on global investments in clean technology operations in North America, Europe and China. The full title of the report is full title Australian Cleantech Venture Capital and Private Equity Investments Report: Turning Green into Gold.
You can download the report and the press release from separate links here.
Australian newspaper The Age spun the report negatively:
Australia may be blessed with solar, wind and other sources of renewable energy but biotech, manufacturing and even media fare better when it comes to attracting high-risk venture capital. “Investment in the nascent Australian cleantech industry has grown, but not at the same scale or speed as cleantech investing in North America and Europe where it has boomed,” according to a survey by Cleantech Ventures.
The report, Turning Green Into Gold, identified only one solar energy company, Sustainable Technologies International, winning venture capital backing between 1999 and the first quarter of 2007. “This is surprising given the abundance of solar energy resources in Australia as well as its known leadership in developing solar technologies in the past 20 years,” the report noted.
Sustainable Technologies International has some very interesting solar-cell technology called Dye Solar Cell, which the company describes as “third generation photovoltaic electricity generators, based on the principle of artificial photosynthesis, utilising nanotechnology and molecular engineering.”
The company’s solar cells are less sensitive to light variation and angle of the sun, and produce proportionally more power in lower light conditions, the company claims. The product is sold exclusively through DyeSol.
