Presenting companies have been announced for Cleantech venture forum iii.
Early registrations are at a record level.
Presenting Company Descriptions
These 22 companies have generated revenue in excess of $50 million and have raised almost $250 million in equity capital collectively.
1. Water Quality: The Company is an intellectual property-based firm that offers innovative solutions to improve surface water quality. The Company's proprietary polymer technology is unique in its ability to effectively remove, absorb and retain hydrocarbons from flowing or pooled water. By integrating this technology and an anti microbial agent into a broad range of products, this company has created effective solutions to a variety of water quality issues including stormwater pollution, industrial wastewater discharge and marine applications.
2. Photovoltaics: The Company provides advanced and cost effective photovoltaic cells, modules and integrated products to lead the next generation in solar power. Its initial products will include a full line of PV cells and modules based on proprietary emitter-wrap-through technology that both increases performance and reduces production costs. The team is led by two globally recognized leaders in photovoltaics--one from business and manufacturing, and the other from technology. The CEO has 22 years of experience in the PV industry in the U.S. and Europe. The CTO is a recognized world leader in crystalline silicon solar cell technology who has spent 21 years in R&D at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), primarily working on high-efficiency solar cells.
3. Air Quality: The Company provides the world's most efficient SO2 scrubbing technology and has shifted the paradigm for commercial flue gas desulfurization. Performance and cost barriers that had historically limited the installation of regenerable processes have been eliminated. The Company has commercially demonstrated SO2 removal to 10 parts per million (volume) in commercial plants with a modest consumption of steam (under 5 lbs per lb SO2 scrubbed for a 1.5% SO2 feed gas). It develops technology for treating industrial flue gases from boilers, furnaces and reactors. When installed in a plant, the system consists of several pieces of large industrial equipment (towers, pumps, heat exchangers, tanks and advanced controls) costing between $3 and $100 million depending on the size of the installation.
4. Fuel Cells: The Company has made a truly fundamental advance in fuel cell technology by developing a novel variation of the solid oxide fuel cell that will finally fulfill the promise of small-scale distributed generation. Their fundamentally new chemistry enables a number of significant benefits such as: high efficiency, low cost, long life, near-instantaneous load following, peaking capability well beyond the continuous power rating, minimal fuel processing requirements, greatly simplified fuel delivery, control, and power electronics, far better tolerance to fuel impurities. This combination of capabilities will enable the manufacture of mass-produced, low-cost primary power and co-generation "appliances" suitable for the demanding requirements of both residential and commercial load profiles.
5. Advanced Materials/Manufacturing: The Company has developed a unique, patented milling system technology that will revolutionize the way many materials are created and processed. Its unique system utilizes high velocity liquid jets in a milling system for particle size reduction, formulation development, surface preparation, ad-mix blending, de-agglomeration, densification, material cleaning and material separation. The process is highly efficient and therefore much less expensive than competing processes and is capable of producing nano- and micro-scale particles with unique morphologies that imbue important, even revolutionary, macro characteristics - like conductivity, strength and flexibility - to the processed material. The technology has applications across many sectors of our economy, with an addressable market within these sectors estimated at over $40 billion+ annually
6. Materials Recovery/Recycling: The Company provides a revolutionary solution to the problem of how to deal with the rapidly growing volume of discarded, obsolete electronic equipment (computers, VCRs, cell phones etc.), collectively known as electronic waste or e-waste. Once electronic equipment reaches the end of its useful life, the Company's proprietary granulation and separation technology reduces it to its constituent components (metals, plastics, glass etc.), which are then sold as feedstock to manufacturers, thereby transforming what is currently the fastest growing, most toxic waste stream in the US into a significant source of valuable raw material.
7. Environmental IT/Energy Infrastructure: The Company is a rapidly growing, integrated, provider of enterprise level asset management solutions with a vision to enable customers to manage distributed utility and process assets for the lowest cost, highest reliability and longest life. The Company is currently focused on the delivery of a comprehensive menu of energy management products and services enabling customers to understand and control energy utilization and cost. The Company's products and services are offered by way of a hosted software suite, supported by the Company's professional services group. The Company's software suite provides automated, remote monitoring and analysis of energy data and offers control of energy assets through proprietary applications.
8. Alternative Energy Generation: The Company is an independent developer and owner of electric generating facilities powered by non-commodity fuels and renewable energy sources. Its mission is to be a premier company in the alternative energy marketplace, a marketplace that is already sizable and has favorable long-term growth dynamics. Unlike most other companies in alternative energy, this company is already generating significant revenues and has been profitable. As a natural extension of its two current business units, they intend to become a holding company of selective interests in the alternative energy arena. The Company's goal is for each of its independently-managed profit centers or business units to be a leader in its specific market segment of the alternative energy arena.
9. Hydrogen Production: The Company develops, manufactures and markets on-site hydrogen fueling appliances that provide a significant breakthrough for the existing industrial hydrogen market and are a key enabling technology for the emerging hydrogen economy. Their patented hydrogen generator module (HGM) converts natural gas to pure hydrogen using a unique steam methane reformer. The Company is well positioned to build a large business on the industrial hydrogen and distributed generation markets. They believe there is significant additional upside as the HGM emerges as the leading fueling station for fuel cell vehicles.
10. Next Generation Sensors: The Company is introducing a breakthrough product line that reduces toxic mold analysis time from weeks to minutes. The Wall Street Journal recently stated that, "Mold has become a huge legal and financial problem …not to mention a significant health concern" costing real estate owners $5 billion in 2002. Some major laboratories are already performing up to 70,000 mold tests per month, using labor intensive and outdated methods, costing millions in false positives and errors. The Company integrates ultra-high-speed, ultra-high sensitivity DNA assay kits with automated bench top and field test devices to bring the laboratory customer a complete solution. This solution will increase the labs' profitability and productivity four fold. Estimated size of the mold assay and air quality market is $1.6 billion in the next three years and the Company believes that it can become a leader in this non-FDA regulated niche.
11. Water Purification: The Company develops advanced purification systems for hydraulic oil, lubricating oil, and diesel fuel used in high-performance, mission-critical industrial machinery. Through its patented technology, it is able to achieve a level of fluid purity unattainable by traditional filtration systems. The Company not only continuously purifies oil and fuel to a better than new condition, it also cleans the internals of the machinery by removing plaques and deposits thus providing a dramatic return on investment by improving plant uptime, reducing maintenance costs, extending the life of expensive capital equipment, and reducing fluid consumption and waste disposal.
12. Photovoltaics/Advanced Manufacturing: The Company's mission is to develop and market photovoltaic cells and modules based on unique technology that enables PV products to be fabricated inexpensively on plastic substrates using roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques. The Company's PV products are expected to be much lower in cost than the competing PV products due to high volume capability, inexpensive materials, and low capital intensity of its manufacturing process. Their PV products built on flexible substrates are non-fragile, can be bonded to different shaped surfaces, and can be easily shipped "assembled".
13. Renewable Energy: The Company was established to become one of the largest independent renewable energy companies in the UK with the combined goal of becoming the pre-eminent supplier of both renewable energy solutions and innovative waste disposal solutions in the UK. The Company is staffed by an experienced team of energy and utility professionals which will acquire, and/or develop and own a diversified portfolio of renewable energy generation facilities. The business opportunity for this company has arisen principally from the EU and UK government's efforts to encourage a move away from fossil fuel energy sources such as coal and natural gas. Between 1990 and 2000, the renewable energy sector was the fastest growing energy sector in the world. For example, in Europe, wind power expanded at an annual rate of > 25% per year. By comparison over the same period, conventional generating sources of power (coal or natural gas) grew by rates of 0.5 to 2%.
14. Waste to Energy/Product: The Company develops environmentally safe energy infrastructures using its proprietary patented technology, the Thermal Combustor. The Thermal Combustor gasification system converts waste, biomass, tires and any other solid, carbon-based materials into electrical and thermal energy, while capturing the pollutants and turning them into useful, valuable products. The Thermal Combustor's versatile technology has multiple applications in the field of electricity generation, alternative fuels, sustainable development, landfill and waste cleanup, "green farming" and water purification.
15. Flywheel Power: The Company designs, manufacturers and sells flywheel power systems, which provide high quality, highly reliable electricity for power-sensitive customers in today's digital economy. The Company's flywheel systems provide high power output and energy storage in compact, self contained packages. Its flywheels are a long lasting, low maintenance, lightweight, and environmentally sound alternative to conventional batteries. Flywheel systems draw electrical energy from a primary power source, such as the electric grid, or sources of distributed generation, such as diesel generators, fuel cells, or microturbines. The systems store energy in kinetic form within a rapidly spinning disk, and then release such energy to provide uninterruptible, high quality electric power. The primary market for the Company's systems is power quality.
16. Fuel Cell Membranes: The Company has developed the only commercially viable membrane specifically designed for use in direct methanol fuel cell power systems. Its innovative membrane technology will enable developers and manufacturers to create direct methanol fuel cell systems that deliver unlimited, unplugged runtimes for mobile computing and communication devices, such as laptop computers, tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones. The Company's membrane will enable fuel cell systems to be one-third smaller, lighter and less expensive than systems made with competing membranes, thereby enabling the wide proliferation of fuel cell power systems in portable devices.
17. Air Quality: The Company has discovered an inexpensive, proprietary treatment for powdered activate carbon sorbent (PAC) that increases mercury-removal performance by about 500%. Consequently, these new materials can cut the cost of mercury compliance at power plants by at least 60% and perhaps to 20% of that of competitive products or technologies. The Company does not intend to produce the PAC, but rather to purchase, process, and transship it, significantly lowering the company's capital requirements. Because the advanced sorbents will be consumed year in and year out, company revenues and profits are recurring.
18. Power Electronics: The Company is a developer and manufacturer of intelligent power electronics products for the alternative and renewable energy industries. Its main technology platform is a patented power inverter platform that will support multiple product applications for these and other distributed generation markets - a "universal" inverter. The Company's patented technology combines the best features of the two main approaches to power conversion to directly link the alternative energy device to the grid in a single power conversion step, eliminating complex circuitry, reducing electrical losses and providing superior grid interactive performance. The Company completed commercialization of its power inverter platform in March 2003, with the delivery of a 5kw grid interactive inverter to the stationary fuel cell industry.
19. Next Generation Sensors/Pipeline Integrity: The Company is developing a breakthrough remote sensing technology that will measure very small ground-level gas concentrations from an aircraft flying at 1000ft. The underlying technology was developed and proven out under Canada's Space Program by the University of Toronto and Canadian Space Agency and then further refined by our scientists. The instrument will not be sold directly but rather will be used by the company to enable a Geographical Information System (GIS) survey system targeted initially at companies operating natural gas pipeline networks. Natural gas leak information will be collected by the company, processed and archived to provide various reports and data solutions which will be used by customers in their pipeline integrity programs.
20. Hydrogen Production/Alternative Fuels: The Company is commercializing proprietary pulse enhanced steam reforming technology which represents a revolutionary approach to the conversion of organic wastes to hydrogen-rich gas for use in power generation (conventional and fuel cells) and the production of bio-based fuels. The Company's technology is being marketed as an environmentally advanced energy and chemical recovery system for the pulp and paper industry. At several thousand mills worldwide, the pulp and paper industry produces approximately 230 million tons of spent liquor solids per year with an energy content of about 2.1 quadrillion Btus. Utilizing the Company's steam reforming technology, the U.S. pulp and paper industry alone has the potential of producing the equivalent of 1 quadrillion Btus of hydrogen from spent liquor, thereby becoming a significant distributed energy production network.
21. Energy Efficiency: The Company develops and sells software that improves the energy efficiency of large computer networks. Its product is a software utility that operates invisibly in the background of every PC on a network, measuring and reducing energy use and thereby lowering network operating costs. The Company has partnerships with 21 utilities in the U.S. and Canada and has sold 25,000 client licenses since November 2002. Computer networks in the U.S. waste over $3 billion dollars of energy annually. This waste results from computers and monitors not being shut down or put into a lower energy state when not in use. There are about 60 million networked Windows-based PCs in the U.S. The market opportunity is to sell a software product that can measure, manage, and reduce energy use in computer networks. A product that could reduce energy consumption by 200 kWh per PC per year would produce a five year savings of $1 million for a network with 10,000 PCs.
22. Water Conservation: The Company provides utility sub-metering systems and utility cost recovery services to apartment building owners, using a proprietary low-cost radio-based sub-metering system developed by the company. This sub-metering system enables owners to recover water, sewer and domestic hot water energy costs that could not be sub-metered in 60% of North American apartment buildings before the technology was available. The current family of sub-meters was expanded in 2Q '03 to meter electric, gas and central system heating and cooling energy.
The Event
The third Cleantech Venture Forum will bring together leading clean technology companies - from alternative energy to advanced materials, with top investors and corporate executives. The first full day is structured as a venture fair with presentations from 20+ companies, selected by a committee of experienced investors led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The second full day is structured as an interactive learning event focused on the current dynamics and direction of cleantech investing and markets with over 20 speakers from Europe and North America. Pre-conference workshops, run by industry experts, will cover the basics of cleantech venturing and related topics. The entire event is carefully designed to foster effective networking, learning and identification of high potential partnering and/or investment opportunities. For a copy of the agenda, click Agenda.
Cleantech III is organized by the Cleantech Venture Network LLC, an investor-supported service that provides related information products, and is co-sponsored by leading industry participants. For more information, go to www.cleantechventure.com.
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