Items of interest on a busy Tuesday

• Regretfully unable to attend the Cleantech Venture Forum in Washington, DC this week. Fortunately, Tyler Hamilton is blogging his notes and thoughts from the Forum, which is quite helpful and great to see. I definitely encourage checking out his site, both during the Forum and beyond, especially for those particularly interested in the Canadian players in cleantech.

• Speaking of the Cleantech Venture Forum, the organizers -- the Cleantech Venture Network -- have announced that they are projecting that North American investors are going to put $10B of venture investments into cleantech over the next four years. That would represent continued strong growth from the estimated $1.5B in cleantech investments in 2005, and from the $7.3B that was invested over the previous 10 years. Just a further sign of the maturation of the space. Can the "cleantech is underinvested" secret be kept for just a little while longer, please? No thanks to sites like this, of course... I also found this article to be an interesting juxtaposition.

• Chrysalix Energy, a clean energy venture capital firm, announced the second close of their Chrysalix Energy II fund. LPs in the fund include Delta Lloyd, WestAM, Robeco, Teachers Private Capital, The Mitsubishi Corporation, BASF Venture Capital and Shell Hydrogen LLC and other investors. Chrysalix has broadened their investment focus beyond the fuel cell and hydrogen technologies they originally targeted, while maintaining their leadership position in those investment areas.

• On the general topic of nanotechnology, which intersects with cleantech in ways we've discussed before, here's an interesting column describing the Lux Executive Summit on the topic. It raises issues of environmental concerns, venture funding, business models, etc. [10/25 update: Here's an interesting blurb from Clean Edge discussing nanotech and green chemistry]
  

• Finally, it's worth noting the many clean technologies highlighted as part of the Wall Street Journal's Innovation Awards.