Energy production and generation is attracting the biggest share of
cleantech investment dollars. But however the landscape of energy demand shapes up in the future, conservation and energy management technology will be a key partner in both reducing demand and softening the environmental impact of production.
One area venture capitalists are focusing on is new construction materials that either helps end users conserve power and reduce carbon footprints, or reduce the so-called embodied energy and carbon impact of their production. The last week has seen deals for both the largest and one of the most intriguing such business models, with
Serious Materials LLC landing $50 million in a Series B round from New Enterprise Associates, Foundation Capital and Rustic Canyon Ventures, and Novomer Inc. pulling in $6.6 million in an A round led by Flagship Ventures and Physic Ventures. (Rustic Canyon Ventures is an investor in The Deal LLC.)
The Serious deal is a fairly straightforward bet that developers will opt for drywall materials that are vastly more eco-friendly than existing products if the company can produce them at comparable cost. And investors have justified the large capital investment on the assumption that the company will enjoy a lead in offering such materials because of the prohibitive cost of entry.
Novomer's bet is obviously much smaller, but with a more complex and potentially more flexible back end. The three-year-old company was spun out of technology from Cornell University to make polymers using waste gas as a catalyst in chemical reactions, rather than more energy-intensive processes.
Novomer has to date funded itself largely with grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and New York State, but the new investment to commercialize the technology is a bet that its biodegradable end products will be attractive in their own right and that its use of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as inexpensive feedstocks will also make it attractive.
With funding at an early stage, Novomer is developing new materials itself, but it also retains opportunities for providing what it has called its proprietary "zinc-based pixie dust" as a catalyst to allow others to develop low-cost, high-performance, green plastics, polymers and other
chemicals. Novomer has identified a broad spectrum of packaging, commercial, consumer and
industrial markets as potential sources of customers and partners.
- Clifford CarlsenSee Sept. 28 story from The Deal newsweeklySee Nov. 1 story from Tech Confidential
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