The Week in Cleantech – Apr 29 – May 5

Last week opened with more news in cleantech fundraising. After an initial close of $60 million back in Q1, long-time cleantech investor SJF Ventures held a final close of its third fund at an oversubscribed $90 million. All-cleantech funds have been scarce recently, but the first quarter saw an uptick, including funds raised by The Westly Group, Israel Cleantech Ventures, and others.

NEA and NGEN Partners put $6 million into Canadian solar-as-a-service start-up Pure Energies, betting that the Ontario feed-in-tariff program will provide a profitable market. Pure Energies last year acquired One Block Off the Grid (1BOG), which NEA had also invested in.

Pixelligent Technologies, a producer of a product family of nanocrystal dispersions with diverse applications in electronics and renewable energy, among others, raised $5 million in new equity from existing investor Abell Foundation. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the scaling-up of its manufacturing capacity (in Baltimore, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) and to hire application, engineering, and business development focused employees.

Meanwhile, the week was full of new partnerships across diverse sectors. New York utility Consolidated Edison (ConEd) is to pilot Eos Energy Storage‘s zinc-air battery technology for grid storage applications. And Demand Response leader EnerNOC announced a partnership with Noesis Energy, giving EnerNOC access to Noesis’ customers and Noesis another offering in its list of energy efficiency and energy management services.

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