Venture Capitalists Going Green

2007 may be remembered as the year when venture capitalists went green.

At least that’s the idea you get looking at data from Dow Jones VentureSource, which surveyed and interviewed VCs to find out that 221 companies worldwide received $3 billion in venture financing last year, a 43 percent increase over 2006.

The U.S. is responsible for 83 cents of every venture dollar invested in cleantech. That’s a 79 percent year-over-year jump, and enough to see that eight cents of every dollar U.S. VCs invested are going into cleantech.

There aren’t yet signs that VCs are getting ahead of themselves. The average cleantech deal was $8 billion, up from $7.5 billion in 2006 and in line with investments in other sectors. VentureSource research director Jessica Canning says it’s still early days for American investments in the sector:

“59% of all U.S. investment in the sector is going toward companies in the product development phase, which suggests that funding for clean technologies is likely to continue as these companies continue to develop and start generating revenues.”

The results echo the trends seen last month in data from the National Venture Capital Association, which tracked a 46 percent increase in investments. NVCA counted $2.2 billion spread out over 201 startups. (The discrepancy in numbers may come down to how each defines a cleantech company.) Either way, the numbers show sustained and steady rise in the amount of money flowing into cleantech.