In an old Polaroid film production plant in New Bedford, Konarka Technologies Inc. is now making a thin, flexible plastic material that generates electricity from the sun. In an East Cambridge lab, researchers at the stealthy start-up C12 Energy Inc. are trying to develop effective ways to inexpensively trap carbon dioxide so it isn’t absorbed into the atmosphere. Joule Biotechnologies, another Cambridge company, is setting up a pilot facility in Texas that will use genetically engineered organisms to produce ethanol or synthetic diesel fuel.
Entrepreneurs and scientists around Massachusetts are imagining an energy future that is radically different from our energy present. They see solar panels plastered atop everything, vehicles powered by cheap hydrogen, and cleaner ways to extract energy from notoriously noxious fuels like coal.
In most of the country, 2009 was not a good year to raise money for an energy-related start-up: Venture capital funding fell 42 percent, compared with 2008. But Massachusetts actually saw a 21 percent year-over-year increase in so-called clean-tech funding. Companies here banked $356 million, a sum that was skewed significantly by a single $100 million infusion of funding for A123 Systems Inc., a Watertown maker of batteries for power tools and electric cars that went public last September.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Venture backing may be scarce for clean tech - The Boston Globe
Author: Scott Kirsner
