Following an article from last week’s Jerusalem Post regarding Israel’s “much-hyped” venture capital market, which noted the favored status of the growing cleantech sector, Globes has reported two cleantech venture fund announcements out of Israel. Terra Venture Partners LP has raised its first $15 million, which it plans to invest in 10 startups, including IQWind, makers of a high-efficiency wind turbine gearbox, and Phoebus, a water heating company. Also, Greylock Partners and Israel Cleantech Ventures said they are forming a joint platform for investment in early-stage cleantech startups.

“The hype surrounding cleantech in Israel continues to increase. And yet one thing is missing — deals,” Asher Mechlovich, partner and head of the division focused on technology media & telecommunications industry at Deloitte Brightman Almagor, told the Jerusalem Post. Terra and the Greylock-Israel Cleantech partnership are both just starting to make deals and Terra plans to raise between $40 million and $50 million by the end of the year.

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The flood gates are opening up for water technology investments, the Wall Street Journal says this morning. Calling the water industry “one of the hottest areas for investors,” the article says that while investors struggled to fund water technology in the past, concerns over water supplies, contamination and aging infrastructure are now driving a funding boost. Missing from the article is a good look at how investors still seem to be struggling to figure out how to invest in complex technologies and develop business models.

The WSJ’s bullish water story sent us back to a report issued by the Cleantech Network, where a round table of investors discussed some of the problems they’ve faced when determining where to place a water bet. Stephan Dolezalek, managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners, says in that report:

“We certainly have come to a perspective which I’ve heard echoed time and time again that says ‘We keep looking at water deals, we keep getting closer to pulling the trigger, but we haven’t yet made that first water investment.’…There hasn’t been a particularly elegant solution to some of these very tricky problems.”

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That deafening roar you hear is the collective masses railing against the evils of bottled water. Unless you’ve been on a media fast over the past few months, you’ve probably read stats similar to those that have come from the Earth Policy Institute showing that the amount of crude oil used to make the plastic for water bottles in the U.S. alone has risen to 10 million barrels per year.

OK, we get it, it’s bad, but even though the bottled water market is projected to reach $75 billion by 2010, there’s also the gentle hum of water technology progress beneath all that uproar.

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Written by Georgia Biondo Flight

Hybrids and biofuels may be hot topics on eco-watchers’ lips these days, but with two-thirds of the world’s goods still being transported by sea, forward-thinking companies will be focused less on the highway and more on the horizon. Enter UK-based Blue Sky Intermodal, which has developed shipping containers lined with sustainable bamboo instead of the typical tropical wood (aside from growing again once it’s cut, bamboo takes just four or five year to mature — the current industry standard, Apitong wood, takes 60).

Who’s buying green in the more than half a trillion worldwide container ship market? French shipping giant CMA CGM was first on board. After giving the new containers a test run, the company discovered that bamboo is as durable, waterproof and pest-resistant as the non-renewable wood. CMA CGM has announced a roll-out of 37,000 TEUs (that’s shipping talk for huge heavy containers). According to the company’s senior vp of container logistics, Alexis Michel, the use of eco-containers “has a dual objective” in the form of modern eco-design and improved technical performance. Hmm, good for the planet and the bottom line? Sounds like smooth sailing.

Finavera Renewables (FNVRF, FVR.V), founded in 2003 and based in Vancouver, B.C., has a slew of cleantech projects under its belt and up its sleeves, including electricity generation from both wind and water. The latest of these projects, announced recently, is the AquaBuOY 2.0, which the company plans to test this week. That’s a fancy name for what amounts to an updated model of the company’s wave energy converter, a device that can convert the power generated by ocean waves into electricity.

We met up with Finavera CEO Jason Bak earlier this month to chat about the company’s wave power plans. Version 1.0 of the wave energy converter had “too many moving parts” and “too much corrosion to seawater,” according to Bak. But he seems to feel pretty confident Finavera’s newest wave power buoy will be a success.

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Do you have staff, equipment, offices, datacenters in various water-scarce areas? As companies get decentralized across the globe, water management can become a concern. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) wants to help with your water issues, and has launched its Global Water Tool.

The hefty tool is free and not too hard to use, though it takes some time to download it and get a feel for how it works. Companies can input their global water use data and compare that with validated water availability and sanitation info to learn how efficiently the company is using water resources.

The tool uses water data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program, University of New Hampshire, and the World Resources Institute.

Clean water startups in Washington state are getting more investment. Last week it was water purification startup HaloSource, which raised $15 million. Today water treatment company Clear Water Compliance Services says it has raised $25 million from Plainfield Asset Management.

The startup based in Lynwood, Washington, treats water at construction and industrial sites. Seattle PI’s John Cook wrote about the funding this morning, and we just confirmed it via a phone call with Clear Water’s CEO Thomas Leggiere.

Water purification and management startups are an underfunded clean tech sector. (You probably noticed our lack of stories in that category.) IBM’s Drew Clark called it a “sleeper area” for venture investing. We’re chatting with Leggiere at greater length this afternoon and we’ll add more details then.