Nancy Floyd is the founder and managing director at Nth Power, a venture capital firm established specifically to invest in clean energy startups.
Solar, energy efficiency, smart grid and advanced transportation all feature in Nth Power’s portfolio. Keep reading →
Nancy Floyd is the founder and managing director at Nth Power, a venture capital firm established specifically to invest in clean energy startups. Floyd began her career as the first professional recruitment of a woman at the Vermont Public Utilities Commission. In 1982, Floyd founded NFC Energy Corporation, which developed over $30 million in wind projects and sold the company, generating a 25-fold return within three years. She then went on to help found a telecoms company, which was sold to IBM in 1987.
Nth Power now has $430 million under management and successfully exited investments through nine M&As and four IPOs since the firm started investing in 1997. Keep reading →
Policymakers must make more effort to de-risk geothermal exploration for investors and companies, said a vice-president at a leading US generation and utility company.
Jonathan Weisgall, VP of legislative and regulatory affairs at MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, said: “We need to de-risk this industry. The tech costs have to come down for investors too, and all the time there is the spectre of low natural gas prices. But above all we need regulatory certainty.” Keep reading →
Geothermal resources could become California’s “bread and butter” baseload power as nuclear and gas-fired plants are retired, a state commissioner said this week.
The licence for the San Onofre nuclear power plant is due to expire in 2022, and the Diablo Canyon plant will not be permitted to continue generating after 2024, unless it applies for a 20-year extension. The facilities have a combined nameplate capacity of around 4,300 MW. Keep reading →
US venture capital investments in cleantech rose 12% in 2011 despite strong headwinds from slow global economic growth, political deadlock in Congress and Europe’s debt crisis, according to the MoneyTree report released today by PwC and the National Venture Capital Association.
Both dollars and deal volume increased in 2011, bringing the year’s total to the highest level ever recorded at $4.3 billion across 323 deals, compared with $3.8 billion going into 289 deals in 2010. Keep reading →
Clean energy remains the new kid on the block for an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels for electricity generation both currently and for years to come. As the sector develops along with newly emerging technologies and falling costs, venture capitalists and other early-stage investors have seen enormous potential.
That potential has been regularly stymied to date by a number of factors, ranging from the specific like the financial crisis to the heavily regulated nature of an industry with reliability as its primary goal. Keep reading →
The first in a two-part series in which Breaking Energy asks a leading venture capital specialist about the intersection of two of the hottest parts of the economy today. Both are also are major contributors to hopes for increased hiring and accelerated tecnology innovation.
Q: What is the state of the venture capital industry, particularly in the energy sector, at the start of 2012? Keep reading →
The founding president of the offshore division of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer said that if the industry does not drive down costs, then it risks killing itself off in its nascent phase.
“Offshore wind is a higher cost energy because we are where we are in the learning curve,” said Anders Søe-Jensen, president of the offshore division at Vestas. “We are at risk but we all have to commit to bringing down costs otherwise we’re going to kill our industry.” Keep reading →
Ambitious offshore wind targets in the UK could result in the country becoming the world leader in the technology and help accelerate the global industry through lower costs, a British energy minister said yesterday.
“We have to accept that there are some technologies where we can really influence the global price and there are others where we can’t,” said Charles Hendry, minister of state for the Department of Energy and Climate. “UK offshore is a fantastic example of where the work that we do here will influence the global price. There are other areas, solar for example where the UK market is not significantly large enough to change the price. So we’re focusing our resources and efforts on where we can see the change in the pricing structure.” Keep reading →
State-based targets for green electricity generation have been so successful in developing renewable energy projects that any current proposals for a federal clean energy standard could require little or no additional capacity, according to a leading academic.
Ryan Wiser, a scientist specializing in electricity markets and policy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said recent data showed that any proposed federal RPS would require fewer additions than were seen in 2008-10 to meet state-based Renewable Portfolio Standards targets. Keep reading →
