Clean Tech Deal Flow

Is there nothing the might yeast can’t do?
Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led by Dr. Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley, have engineered the common industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae with an n-butanol biosynthetic pathway, resulting in a ten-fold improvement in n-butanol production from one of the strains to 2.5 mg/L. An open access [...]

More Catch-up Posts – Deals announced Bio-fuels- Blackstone Cleantech Venture Partners Leads Coskata Series C Round of Financing
Chemrec Completes US $20M Funding Round for Biorefinery Technology
Typical pulp & paper mills produce thousands of tons a day of a liquid biomass called black liquor. Currently this by-product is burned in steam boilers with low energy [...]

Stories I found interesting, but didn’t get around to blogging about.
Recycling- Market for Recyclables in U.S. Dwindling Rapidly Via GreenBiz
Efficiency-Turning Wasted Heat into Dollars in China Via GreenBiz
“There is more opportunity in China than anywhere in the world,” Ballentine said of waste-heat recovery.

There have been lots and lots of projects announced, and I just haven’t kept up with them.  This is a catchup post for anything worth reporting, but for things I don’t have anything specific to say about.  Roughly grouped together.
Solar-1 Gigawatt Solar project for Jordon Via Treehugger850 MW Solar project for California Via Treehugger [...]

3 years ago, the company didn’t even build cars. GM has had nearly 100 years experience. Chinese cars are coming, and it seems to me that a plug-in like this could be the beachhead that they need to gain acceptance among US consumers. And strike fear in the hearts of the big [...]

Ocean fertilization may cause changes in marine ecosystem structure and biodiversity, and may have other undesirable effects.
While controlled iron fertilization experiments have shown an increase in phytoplankton growth, and a temporary increase in drawdown of atmospheric CO2, it is uncertain whether this would increase carbon transfer into the deep ocean over the longer-term.
I’ve posted before [...]

As an environmentalist and a car guy, I love any excuse to post about cars here. I don’t think the Tesla will ever make a meaningful impact on the global environmental situation. For $100K, someone that really cares about the environment could by 5 Honda Fits. One to drive and 4 to [...]

Fascinating. I’m very leery of bio-engineering like this. How many well intended introductions have had disastrous long term consequences? (Nutria, Kudzu, etc, etc. ) But I can clearly see the economic and environmental benefits of creating trees that grow quickly, are disease resistant, and create high quality wood. Hmm.
“Vancouver-based CellFor [...]

It will provide Wal-Mart with 226 million KWh of power annually, and will offset 139,000 metric tons of carbon — the equivalent of what 25,000 cars would emit.
Hard to find fault with this. Whatever their motives, Wal-Mart moving towards green has the potential to be a real force in the evolving green-tech and alternative [...]

My favorite kind of solution. Simple, elegant, and effective.
“In a paper published in the International Journal of Vehicle Design, Inchul Kim of Metacomp Technologies, in Agoura Hills, California, working with Xin Geng and Hualei Chen of the University of Michigan-Dearborn report that the aerodynamic drag and lift on a mini-van moving at 108 kph [...]