Altra, H2Oil, BPL Global, Imperium, and other news

• Jonathan Shieber of VentureWire reported yesterday that ethanol production startup Altra has increased the size of its Series B investment another $63mm, up to $183mm. The additional capital will be used to accelerate construction of the firm's three new plants, which we discussed at the time of the last mention back in August. Another quasi-venture/ quasi-project finance round (...and keep reading a few items below).
  

• Extremely happy to point out (self-promotion alert) that @Ventures has made a $3mm investment in H2Oil Recovery Services, as part of an overall $4.7mm Series B. The company uses a patented technology to reclaim valuable petroleum and clean water from the oil and natural gas exploration and production processes, cost effectively treating two of the industry's most common waste products - tank bottoms and produced water.

• Broadband over powerline developer BPL Global announced a $26mm Series C round, with $5mm of the investment from Morgan Stanley. It's unclear how this announcement relates to a similar announcement from the firm back in September, which was also described as a Series C round. We've discussed before why such "third pipe" efforts are relevant to smart grid and other cleantech-related sectors.

• More follow-up on the previously discussed financing round for Imperium Renewables... Turns out it was a bit more than the anticipated $100mm, with the announcement that the company has raised $113mm in Series B equity and is raising $101mm in debt. The company expects to have 400mm gpy in capacity by the end of next year. "Existing investors Technology Partners and Nth Power were joined by a number of new investors, including funds affiliated with: Ardsley Partners, Attractor Investment Management Inc., BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd., Capricorn Management, LLC, Ecofin, Robeco C.V., Silver Point Capital, Southport Energy Alternatives, Stark Biodiesel Investments, Ltd., and Treaty Oak Capital Management."

More news and notes: The latest MoneyTree survey is out, and apparently "no one had paid attention to [cleantech] before recently," but now the "secret" is out, I guess -- shhhhh... Finally, an interesting story about lightbulbs.