A Year of Change: Solar, Smart Power, and Carbon; Buying Greenhome.com; and Cleantech Blog Moves to Texas

Dear Friends,

We think it’s time cleantech grew up and learned to play with the big boys of energy and consumer goods.  That means learning cost down and scale like nobody’s business.  We think it can.  We think green is going mainstream – for good. We think LEDs are going to win.  We think wind and solar power will continue to grow, and bear the bruises to prove it.  We think EVs may have a shot, but have it to prove. We think climate change will be tackled, and beaten, but it will be a long hard road.  We think energy storage and cellulosic biofuels are not yet teething, and investors there will pay the price.  We think water tech may yet be a real sector on the back of shale gas.  We think smart grid is the sine qua non of cleantech’s future.  We think the future of cleantech means fewer venture capitalists, more globalization, and more energy companies at the table, and scale like you’ve never seen it before.

2010 has been a year of change and learning.

We learned about The Quantitative Easing, and we learned government stimulus does not fix economies, but stock markets can rise anyway. We learned to beware of Greeks (and anyone) who borrows too much, but we didn’t bother to take the lesson to heart (yet).Cap and trade survived in California, and the international climate change community breathed a big sigh of relief from a successful Cancun, but healthcare and a moribund economy crowded out a comprehensive climate or energy bill in the US.Arguably this was the year that China passed the US in energy consumption (barely two years after taking the carbon emissions crown), and Japan in GDP to become the second largest economy, and oil prices ended on a high note (yes we do think those have something in common).  It also reached 50% of global coal consumption.  China of course, officially disputed the first and the last, and accepted the second, but provides no data.)Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) (Electric vehicles), GM, and Codexis (NASDAW:CDXS) (bioenergy) priced IPOs, as did Molycorp (NYSE:MCP) (rare earth mining), but once high flyer Solyndra (CIGS PV) did not.  We learned the Chinese like IPOing things just like the rest of us, and we saw the nascent launch of EVs with the first shipments of Leafs and Volts to an unsuspecting public. 2011 will (maybe) tell us how much change Nissan and GM will see from those launches.And after 5 years, Cleantechblog.com moved off of Blogger and onto a new look on WordPress.  Finally!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jane Capital saw a year of change as well:

We were excited in 2010 to see our Carbonflow venture secure a CEO and raise a second round of finance, and Zenergy Power plc (AIM:ZEN) secure a new Chairman and a

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