Altra's $120mm, plus Proven Engineering and other company notes

• Biofuels continue to get a lot of attention in the private equity world, with the most recent example being Altra's $120mm newly-announced round of financing. It was just back in April that the company announced a significant round of financing, and the new round is on top of that. This brings the company's total "warchest" up to $250mm, according to the RH article, so clearly the company is being positioned to make some major moves in acquisitions and greenfield builds in ethanol and biodiesel. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omninet Private Equity, Sage Capital Partners, Angeleno Group, and Khosla Ventures were co-leads in the round. Sounds like these investors probably see an opportunity to create a solid consolidated player on the execution side of a pretty fragmented market in ethanol production (ADM is around 25% market share, no one else comes close). The LA Times used this funding as the centerpiece for this provocative article about the current state of alternative energy investing... (self-promotion alert: Expansion Capital Partners' Mark Donohue is quoted)
  

• Proven Engineering, a UK wind turbine developer, took in 5mm pounds in new financing. The financing appears to have been provided by Low Carbon Initiative, but it's not entirely clear...

Other notes: Regarding Calisolar, here's an interesting post by Mark Wendman... In case you missed it, the Chicago Climate Exchange was featured in the NYT Magazine... What happens to cleantech investing in a recession scenario?... Finally, check out the new $100k Lemelson-MIT award for sustainability.

One other administrative note: Trying out a new tool... On the lower right hand side of the page is a Meebo chat widget (thanks, Matt Marshall, for the heads up on this tool). Supposedly it's a way for readers to chat directly with the people who write sites like this one. I'm guessing most such writers don't have full-time jobs in venture capital... but if I'm online and available (a big "if"), feel free to drop me a line, we'll see if this works and is useful. Don't forget to introduce yourself, "meeboguest83456" is a fairly unenlightening moniker...