Salient to Investors:
Private equity companies and venture capitalists reduced renewable-energy investment to the lowest since 2006.
Vinod Khosla at Khosla Ventures said all the fashionable VCs have exited, and the number of new businesses is smaller. Ethan Zindler at New Energy Finance said venture investors in early stages do not have the same access to capital they did 5 years ago.
Alan Salzman at VantagePoint Capital Partners said the level of activity by corporations has kept growing at a very significant rate. Salzman said it all starts with the IPO market and the M&A market, and markets have been discouraged by the poor performance of biofuel IPOs and the solar wars with China.
Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings will build two large solar farms in California, and formed a unit in 2012 dedicated to its wind and solar holdings.
Ravi Viswanathan at New Enterprise Associates said investors are shifting away from solar manufacturers into other sectors of the industry, away from pure energy generation and manufacturing-intensive businesses to sub-industries like software, networking, monitoring, and financial services.
Wal Van Lierop at Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital says we are going through a repositioning of cleantech, with the big sectors including solar, wind and LEDs being consolidated.
Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-15/private-equity-flees-clean-energy-as-investment-falls-energy.html.