Smart Energy News

Redwood City, Calif. – Codexis, a Redwood City-based biotechnology company that focuses on the biofuels industry, has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its initial public offering of stock to raise an estimated $100 million.

Founded in 2002, Codexis provides biocatalysts that make existing industrial processes faster, cleaner and more efficient and that have the potential to make new industrial processes possible at commercial scale.

The company has commercialized its biocatalysts in the pharmaceutical industry and is developing biocatalysts for use in producing advanced biofuels under a multi-year research and development collaboration with Royal Dutch Shell.

Codexis is also using its technology platform to pursue biocatalyst-enabled products in other bioindustrial markets, including carbon management, water treatment and chemicals.

The company had revenue of about $58.7 million in the first nine months of 2009 and a loss of $15 million. Its investors include Bio*One Capital, Chevron Technology Ventures, CMEA Capital, FirstMark Capital, GE Energy, Maxygen, Pfizer, and Shell.

Codexis website

SEC filing

Washington, D.C. – Venture capital investment in green technology companies during 2009 totaled about $4.9 billion, a decline from about $7.6 billion raised in 2008, according to a new survey conducted by Greentech Media, a U.S.-based publisher.

Solar power was the leading clean energy investment sector, with about $1.4 billion raised in 84 deals, followed by the biofuels sector, which raised about $976 million in 44 rounds, according to the survey results.

While unprofitable, middle-stage companies in the green technology sectors are finding it difficult to raise additional venture capital, there has been a recent spurt in early-stage venture capital investments, with 110 first-round deals in 2009, the survey found.

Survey press release

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are urging senate leaders to quickly adopt an extension of the existing $1 per gallon biodiesel tax credit, according to reports.

The Small Agri-Biodiesel Producer Tax Credit was established as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It is a volume-based income tax credit for the production of agri-biodiesel made from first-use vegetable oils and first-use animal fats.

“You have a situation where maybe the cash flow is not so good, and the cash flow is going to dry up,” Grassley told Congressional Quarterly.

“It depends,” Grassley said, “kind of, upon what the feeling of the people that are loaning money and helping with the cash flow, if they’re going to be forbearing then they might make it, but I think you’re going to see a lot of them sold.”

The biodiesel industry is likely to lose 23,000 jobs in 44 states, according to the senator from Iowa.

The Senate is expected by some biodiesel producers to pass the tax credit extension when it returns from the holiday recess in January, according to a report by Successful Farming magazine.

Congressional Quarterly report

Successful Farming report

Dearborn, Mich. – Strong interest in its Fusion Hybrid model has led to a total increase of 67% in sales of hybrid vehicles for the company during 2009, Ford Motor Co. has reported.

Meanwhile, sales of hybrid vehicles industry wide were down 11% for the year, according to Ford.

Ford set a company record for annual hybrid sales of 31,000 vehicles through November 2008, eclipsing its previous high achieved in 2007.

Introduced in March 2009, the Fusion Hybrid accounted for 45% of all the company’s hybrid sales for the year.

The Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrids – both midsized sedans — have an EPA estimated 41 mpg rating in the city and 36 mpg on the highway.

Ford Fusion website

Beijing — China’s National People Congress has enacted a new series of incentives and penalties in a move to increase the nation’s use of renewable energy sources, according to a report by the news agency Xinhua.

The new law requires electricity grid companies in China to buy all power produced by renewable energy generators. Otherwise, they will be fined “up to an amount double that of the economic loss of the renewable energy company.”

Renewable energy suppliers accounted for 9% of China’s total energy consumption last year, according to the report. A national plan issued in 2007 set a goal of increasing the country’s total percentage of renewable energy consumption to 15% by 2020.

A lack of integration between China’s various electrical grids currently presents a hurdle in the effort to utilize various renewable energy sources, Wang Zhongying, director of the renewable energy development center of the National Development and Reform Commission’s Energy Research Institute, told Xinhua.

The new law requires grid companies to “improve transmitting technologies and enhance grid capability to absorb more power produced by renewable energy generators,” according to the report.

Smart grids and renewable energy should be developed together like “twin brothers,” Xiao Liye, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.

Xinhua report

National Development and Reform Commission’s Energy Research Institute