These are the types of panels that you might see on the back of cell phones, for example. Light and thin equals much broader uses for the cells, which means more potential energy produced from the sun.

Most people know GE for light bulbs, but they are much more than that. “Over the last decade, through technology investment, GE has become one of the world’s major wind turbine manufacturers, and our investment in high-tech solar products will help us continue to grow our position in the renewable energy industry,” said Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy business.

In other solar news, Google has invested roughly $5 million in a German 18.7-megawatt solar power plant. It is Google’s first investment in clean technology outside of the United States.

The solar power plant occupies around 116 acres and can generate enough power for around 5,000 homes. More than 70 percent of the panels installed at the plant are manufactured in Germany.

Hat tip to Green Tech Media and Venture Beat’s Green Beat that do great jobs on the money that flows into the space.

Cleantech saw $7.8 Billion in 2010 (the most post-credit bubble), but that was somewhat tempered with slower third and fourth quarters.

“Venture funds are still in a cautious place” as they continue to try to raise money for their own funds, said Sheerez Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group. That makes it hard for early-stage startups, as investors look for later-stage companies where “the technology risk has been taken care of,” he said.

Greentech mentions that December was a big month, however. There were more than 40 solar, smart grid, efficiency, lighting, biofuels, wind and recycling firms that raised more than $700M in VC in December.

A couple of interesting other highlights:

++ OPower, the home energy-efficiency startup, closed on their round C with $50 million led by two of Silicon Valley’s premier VC firms — Kleiner Perkins and Accel Partners, along with New Enterprise Associates. OPower is focused on customer engagement and behavior modification, and is currently providing tens of thousands of homes with in-home energy data and efficiency advice via paper reports or online. The platform is described as advanced customer engagement.

They got a visit from Obama earlier this year with respect to clean jobs.

More on OPower’s $50M raise here.

See our earlier discussion using energy data to curb usage behavior: New Electric Bill could Drive Better Usage

++ Energy efficiency continues to be the hottest segment with 7 deals for $162 million in the fourth quarter per E&Y.

++ Solar saw $150 million in 10 deals.

Ernst & Young itself seems bullish on cleantech’s future. “This quarter reflects the ongoing volatility in cleantech investment that we have observed over the past two years, depending on the presence of the very large transactions we see in cleantech,” said Jay Spencer, Ernst & Young’s Americas cleantech director, in a company statement. “However, a number [of] factors point to the continuing strength in the U.S. cleantech sector, including growth in energy efficiency investments and corporate involvement throughout multiple industries — from utilities to technology to consumer products.”

Don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @greensquaredcom.

What about in this economy?

Prior to the recession, LEED-certified buildings enjoyed noticeably faster lease-up times and lower vacancy rates in addition to commanding higher rental premiums compared with their non-green peers.

However, currently, vacancy rates have remained relatively high for Class A LEED-certified buildings, with a national average of 37.6% compared with 25.8% for all Class A office.

Why?

Many of the new Class A office buildings that started development before the recession and came online after the economy had begun to weaken were LEED certified buildings. As a result of the economy, many new office buildings have struggled to attract tenants and have higher than average vacancy rates.

Miller then analyzed two sets of office buildings: pre-recession new builds (completed 2000-2005) and post 2005 new builds.

Pre-recession completed Class A LEED office buildings average $28.50 per square foot in rent with an average vacancy rate of 6.5%, compared with $25.89 per square foot in average rent and an average vacancy of 10.7% for all Class A office stock. That’s a 10% rent premium!

In post 2005 completed buldings, the LEED certified buildings average $33.24 per square foot compared to $30.11 per square foot for all Class A office. Again, that’s over 10% rent premium!

However, the national vacancy rate for all Class A LEED office properties was 36.4% at the end of the first quarter of 2010, compared with 31.1% for all Class A multi-tenant office property. That makes it about a push in this economy, but as the economy strengthens that rental premium will pay big long-term dividends. Plus, annual operating expenses should be less in the LEED building, tilting the balance again to green.

Don’t forget that Green Squared promotes Green that makes cents! — (i) “green”, as in environmental sustainability, and (ii) “green”, as in cost savings. That’s Green²; that’s Green Squared!

The city of Houston announced a new initiative called the Green Office Challenge with the goal of getting property owners and managers across the city to reduce their energy consumption, water use and waste, as well as encourage more office tenants to do things like recycle, car pool and use eco-friendly products.

A key component of the initiative includes an energy-efficient loan program that would provide an incentive to those concerned about the costs of going green. Later this fall, the city plans to offer low-cost loans to property owners and tenants, providing the money goes to reducing their energy usage. This will be part of Houston’s answer to some of the issues surrounding PACE financing. (See earlier blog article titled, “Four Texas cities eye PACE program”)

“People like the idea of doing energy-efficiency improvements, but they still get nervous about that upfront capital,” said Laura Spanjian, the mayor’s director of sustainability.

The details of the program are not yet finalized but it sounds as though the city will have about $7 million to make energy-efficiency loans at less than 3%.

Other Houston Greening Facts:
No. 8 in the nation in the number of LEED-certified buildings with 89
No. 6 in the nation in the number of Energy Star-rated buildings with 133

For more Houston green facts, see our notes from the recent Clean Air Through Energy Efficiency where Spanjian spoke.

Here’s a quick run-down of several energy-efficient projects cited in the article.

Projects at Fairmont Waterfront hotel include a heat-recovery system to preheat incoming city water using heat captured from the hotel’s water system. It saves an estimated 305,380 kilowatt-hours (1,100 GJ) per year and $12,000 per year. Estimated payback is in two years.

In a separate article, Fairmont set a corporate commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent from its 2006 levels by 2013.

One caveat: the survey was of only 48 people who are in charge of sustainability for their companies. I think that sample size is too small. And, given these folks’ role in the organization, I am afraid their viewpoint is a bit slanted so to speak. But there are lessons to be learned.

My takeaways included:

+ “The green workforce is the general workforce.” – they believed that sustainability would be integrated into existing roles and job descriptions as a prerequisite for employability: Jobs in the future, respondents thought, will require people to bring a certain basic level of familiarity with sustainability issues and competence in skills related to sustainability to the table.

Interesting. I’ve never heard it put quite that way, but I agree with the premise wholeheartedly.

+ “Sustainable products can be competitive – with the right marketplace approach.”

Thumbs up from me.

+ “Sustainability’s bottom-line results might be better if you broaden your view of ROI.” – But to improve its performance, a company needs to do more than reap an immediate financial ROI on its sustainability initiatives. It also needs to consider managing risk, building its brand and reputation, complying with regulatory requirements, and investing in developing future products and services that will be viable in a world where sustainability plays a greater role in driving buying decisions.

There are definitely qualitative benefits that should be considered that are difficult to incllude in your CFO’s spreadsheet.

+ Primary owner of sustainability efforts? COO was 6%, Head of Environmental Health and Safety 6%, Board of Directors 4%, CFO 2%, other = 91%.

Two things: 1) It’s odd that Deloitte did not list Chief Sustainability Officer as one of the options (they were part of the others), and 2) quite obviously the multiple people selected as an owner leads to a lack of accountability, which is not good for results.

+ There is a clear lack of understanding between these sustainability owners and the ARRA funds that are available to them.

That’s bad news for policy makers and even worse news for those heading up these sustainability efforts. I would have guessed the sustainability folks would have been more aggressive in understanding the grants, tax credits, tax deductions, and rebates that are available to them and their projects.

+ Energy efficiency was the across-the-board winner as the most important environmental issue to the business.

EE rated 9 on a scale from 1 to 10 in importance and was the leader in every business sector. Wow, that’s impressive and surprising at the same time. Efficiency does not get near the publicity as other answers like alternative energy and transportation. Someone has been listening and reading this blog.

David Roth of gbNYC (Green Building in NYC) nails it with “What happened at 375 Hudson is a smashing success, but it’s also really nothing more than a pretty down-the-middle retrofit done well. It’s tough to imagine a better advertisement for green commercial retrofits than that.”

Roth continues, “This is common-sense stuff, not a revolutionary leap forward. It’s low-flow fixtures and improving fixtures, not slapping on some solar panels and hoisting a wind turbine. It is, in short, a basic green retrofit — one that happens to grade very highly in terms of LEED points and the sort of building performance metrics Energy Star measures, but not one that would be beyond the reach of most Manhattan office buildings. Which, in a way, is what makes it most extraordinary.”

Now you see why I said I love this story.

From the official press release, here are the main items which earned the LEED GOLD:

+ reduced electricity consumption by nearly 110,000 kWh per year by making changes to the HVAC and mechanical systems and installing variable frequency drives on the cooling tower fans;
+ reduced steam consumption by improving heat exchangers and making other HVAC improvements that reduced heating demand;
+ reduced annual water consumption by 1 million gallons by replacing original restroom fixtures with low flow aerators and new water closets;
+ adopted an expanded recycling program that encompassed not only office paper and waste, but batteries, electronic waste and construction debris;
+ implemented a building-wide Green Cleaning policy focusing on improving air quality and ensuring the purchase of sustainable cleaning and janitorial paper supplies.

That’s as basic as it gets…Down the middle of the fairway stuff…things that every building should do, whether they want a LEED plaque or not.

Golf clap for Tishman Speyer and main tenants Saatchi & Saatchi, Penguin Group, and Turner Construction.

Those four are San Antonio, Austin, Houston and El Paso. The CenTex cities of Austin and San Antonio were widely regarded as the most likely candidates as Austin already is the most progressive with its green building codes and much of the push to pass the state law came out of San Antonio.

Houston, the “Oil Capital of the World”, has a recently appointed Director of Sustainability, Laura Spanjian, and she told the Texas Tribune that her city was “not going to wait” for the PACE problems to get solved. “We have set aside funds to help commercial property owners with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements,” she said in an e-mail. “We’re going to find another model in the short-term while the issues with PACE are being worked out.”

Kudos to Ms. Spanjian on her aggressive approach.

*******

If you have missed some of the prior discussion on PACE on this blog, I recommend the following reading:

The Case for and the Concerns of PACE Financing

What is PACE Financing?

PACE 101 video

Google initially announced its intentions with PowerMeter in early 2009.

Cisco has also recently announced its intentions to be in the Home Energy Management space.

Below is a picture of the Cisco product.

The installations were to be performed by a company call SunRun. On Tuesday, June 29th, SunRun announced it closed a Series C round of funding for $55 million led by Sequoia Capital and joined by existing investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital.

For those of you not wise to the VC world, Sequoia is the biggest and baddest Silicon Valley VC that there is. You may have heard of prior early stage investments like Google, YouTube, Apple, Yahoo!, and Cisco, among others.

Original investor, Accel Partners, is bigtime too with investments in Facebook, Veritas, and comscore.

Similarly, a recent report from Matter Network states that Goldman Sachs has begun covering the solar sector, including First Solar and SunPower.

We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about green investment, so if you’d like read more here.