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Khosla’s PVT Solar Taps Wasted Heat
Earth2Tech — ... just launched and already features a nice profile of a stealthy solar startup ...

Renewable Energy Tax Credits Pass As Part of Bailout Bill
Green Stocks Central — ... A quick update on a story we’ve been following: The bailout bill has passed both the House and the Senate, was signed into law by President Bush, and includes provisions to extend the tax credits for renewable energy. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the tax credits for the renewable energy industry. ...

A Middle Eastern Push Into British Wind Power
DealBook — ... are looking to prop up renewable energy projects in Britain. The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a renewable energy initiative of the United Arab Emirates also known as Masdar, said on Thursday that it was forming a joint venture with Germany’s E.ON to invest in alternative energy projects. As a first step, Masdar bought 40 percent of E.ON’s stake in London Array, the large offshore wind project in the Thames estuary that Royal Dutch Shell unexpectedly abandoned last May. MORE »

VeraSun Files for Bankruptcy Protection
DealBook — ... : The VeraSun Energy Corporation, which accounts for roughly 7 percent of ethanol production capacity in the United States, announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Friday. Shares in VeraSun were trading for pennies in anticipation of the move, which, the company said in statement, was “precipitated by a series of events that led to a contraction in VeraSun’s liquidity, impairing its ability to operate its business and invest in production facilities.” MORE »

Venture Capitalists Hunker Down
DealBook — From Kate Galbraith at Green Inc. : Venture capitalists were decidedly somber about the prospects of start-up companies in the tough economic climate, as they spoke on a panel at a clean-energy conference in Austin. “It is a tough business right now. It’s tough for companies to raise money. Capital is in short supply. We’re all in triage right now,” said Al Schuele, a general partner with Sevin Rosen Funds , who said that the goal was to keep afloat those companies already in venture capitalists’ portfolios. “Nobody anticipated how difficult a situation this would be,” he ...

In Leaner Times, Small Solar Start-Ups Get Busy
DealBook — ... : A downturn in financing for alternative energy start-ups has been relentlessly foreseen since the economic crisis took hold and ...

U.S. Makes First Renewable-Energy Loan Guarantee
DealBook — From John M. Broder at Green Inc. The Energy Department has tentatively awarded its first alternative-energy loan guarantee, breaking a four-year logjam in the federal loan program. The $535 million loan guarantee will go to Solyndra , which said it would use the money to expand its production of photovoltaic systems at its facilities in Fremont, Calif. The company said the federal loan guarantee would cover roughly 75 percent of the project costs and would ultimately produce thousands of new construction, manufacturing and installation jobs. ...

Clean-Tech Venture Financing Takes A Dive
DealBook — From Kate Galbraith at Green Inc. : The amount of venture capital going into clean technology fell sharply in the early months of this year. According to figures released today by the Cleantech Group, venture investments in the sector are down 48 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared with a year earlier. Investments had also fallen in the final quarter of 2008. ...

Maker of Natural Gas Fueling Systems Tanks
DealBook — From Clifford Krauss at Green Inc. : Natural gas is cheap and plentiful, and last summer the future for vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas — or CNG — looked bright. But then crude oil and gasoline prices tanked. Now, the future of CNG cars looks a lot less certain. It hardly got any attention, but late last week ...

For Once, Clean Energy Financing Trumps Fossil Fuels
DealBook — From James Kanter at Green Inc. : Global investors spent about $250 billion building new power capacity in 2008, and for the first time the lion’s share of that money went to renewable sources, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Renewable sources accounted for 56 percent of investment dollars, worth $140 billion, while investment in fossil fuel technologies was $110 billion, the U.N. program said in a report, Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2009, released Wednesday and produced in collaboration with New Energy Finance, a research company based ...

Tempers Flare Over Wind Farm Planned for Texas
DealBook — ... planned for the plains of west Texas — had many readers of the Green Inc. blog in a state of agitation, The New York Times’s Tom Zeller Jr. writes. “I don’t understand why China is exporting wind energy to the U.S.,” wrote Mark from New York City. “Isn’t this exactly the kind of project a United States company could and should be doing?” Another reader — Drew from Boston — was more blunt: “Again, China is playing the West for a sucker,” he wrote. “We send them our engineering, they get the manufacturing work and experience.” The details of the deal known so far: Contingent ...