Green Technology Gains Impetus in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley and the Bay area in general is known for high technology – semiconductors, web companies and software for the most part.  And yet, there seems to be a quiet revolution going on there – or more precisely, a green revolution.  Silicon Valley is the home of high-tech venture capital in the United States, with people such as Rick Bolander of Gabriel Venture Partners making their home there – and recently it has been shifting where it puts its money.  As of June 2013, no less than 30% of VC dollars went into biotech, and another substantial slice went into clean technologies.  For comparison, software startups only accounted for 19% of VC investment in the same period of time.  So, which are some of the green companies that are getting interest from the venture capital community?

Hara

Hara, based in San Mateo, is a good example of the type of company that is creating waves.  It is a software company, but it builds products that help major companies monitor and optimize their energy and resource utilization.  Founded in 2008, it has raised $45 million in investment to date, and now has 40 employees.  Interestingly, it has had significant success with a number of marquee customers, including Hewlett-Packard, AFLAC and News Corporation.  In the case of Hewlett-Packard, it apparently helped them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 20%, and managed to do this two years ahead of schedule.  Overall, Hara’s cloud-based software manages 25,000 buildings in over 100 countries, and monitors $3.45 billion in energy and resource spend.  They were selected by the Wall Street Journal in 2012 as one of the top 10 venture-backed green companies in the United States.

Horticulturist by chooyutshing, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

LS9

LS9, based in the south of San Francisco, is also leading the way with the venture capital community.  They use industrial biotechnology to develop sustainable fuels and chemicals, and are already scaling their business – producing hundreds of thousands of liters of biofuels at their production facility.  They are targeting both the diesel and aviation fuel markets, which they estimate have combined revenues of $1.8 trillion a year.  To date, they have raised over $81 million in capital from backers including Flagship Ventures, Blackrock and Chevron Technology Ventures.  Their products aren’t just limited to the energy field – they have been working with Procter & Gamble on producing green chemicals for manufacturing.

Envia Systems

Another startup to keep an eye on is Envia Systems, based in Newark, California.  They are taking on the challenge of making battery-powered cars a viable choice for long-distance travel.  Working with major partners such as General Motors, they appear to be leading the pack when it comes to high-capacity cells for vehicles.  In 2012, they announced their latest battery cell technology, which set a world record for power density – the amount of energy that can be packed into a battery for a given weight.  Backed by venture capitalists including Redpoint Ventures and Bay Partners, they have managed to raise capital investment to the amount of $28 million to date.