The Week in Cleantech – May 13 – 19

Last week we saw a flurry of activity in cleantech, from venture capital to project finance and big M&A news. In the realm of distributed solar project financing, SolarCity, which held its initial public offering in December, secured $500 million in project funding from Goldman Sachs. The deal constitutes the largest such lease-financing for residential solar to date.

In VC, Efficient Energy, a German developer of innovative and energy-efficient heating and cooling systems for both industrial and home/commercial building applications, raised EUR 15 million ($19.5 million) from Santo Venture Capital (Brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann), MIG Fonds, and private investor Cornel Lindemann-Berk.

After withdrawing its planned IPO in the fourth quarter of 2012, oilfield tech company Glori Energy has secured its latest round of private financing. The $12.8 million in new equity capital is supposed to have come from existing investors, including GTI Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund, and OMZEST Group. Glori Energy is commercializing its ‘Activated Environment for the Recovery of Oil’, or AERO technology, which seeks to extend the productive life of water-flooded oilfields previously thought to be tapped out.

In M&A, we saw the consolidation of two venture-backed car-sharing startups when RelayRides (Backers: GM Ventures, August Capital, Google Ventures and Shasta Ventures) announced its purchase of Wheelz (Backers: Fontinalis Partners, Zipcar, Felicis Ventures and Red Swan Ventures). RelayRides acknowledged the target of its acquisition was chiefly Wheelz’ DriveBox technology, which allows users to unlock and start the car without first meeting the owner to get a key.

To track the deal-making and investment in cleantech, consider subscribing to our i3 Platform. And we hope you’ll take a moment to nominate companies for this year’s Global Cleantech 100, our annual list of the 100 most promising start-ups in clean technology.