{"id":135925,"date":"2010-01-04T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T16:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/cleantech-to-attract-10-trillion-by-2017-2010-1"},"modified":"2010-01-04T11:45:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T16:45:00","slug":"cleantech-takes-a-bigger-slice-of-vc-pie-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/135925","title":{"rendered":"Cleantech Takes A Bigger Slice Of VC Pie, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"solar<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Close to 20% of all dollars invested by VCs in 2009 went into clean technology, up from roughly 14.4% in 2008 and 10% in 2007, according to MidwestBusiness.com<\/a> and a 2007 report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Solar was the leading investment category in 2009, TriplePundit<\/a> reports, with over 25 cents of every cleantech VC dollar being invested in a solar related technology, according to Greentech Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Deals from 2009 that point to a growing solar industry<\/a> this year include the acquisition of Solel<\/a>, a solar thermal power components vendor, by Siemens for $418 million, and MEMC’s purchase of Sun Edison<\/a>, a “solar Power Purchase Agreement pioneer” for $200 million.<\/p>\n

Bill Roth, author of The Green Secret Sauce<\/em><\/a> and founder of EARTH 2017<\/a>, predicts that Solar prices will continue to decline while consumer demand will continue to grow, eventually creating “a future where solar power will be price competitive without subsidies.” This trend leads Roth to believe that cleantech will be “a $10 trillion global annual revenue sustainable economy by 2017.”<\/p>\n

Other than solar, VC investments<\/a> have branched out into 19 different cleantech investment categories. Batteries, for example, attracted $455 million in 2009, invested in 36 different companies.<\/p>\n

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