ImageTree, a Morgantown, W. Va.-based startup that provides imaging and sensing data services about forests, has closed a $4.5 million Series B round of funding. The investment was led by Battelle Ventures, which last week said it had put $8 million into three energy startups.Two-year-old ImageTree uses topographical imaging and sensing systems combined with [...]

  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, [...]

  The rising tide lifting up most solar stocks has so far had little effect on Evergreen Solar’s boat, but now it looks like that may be changing.After rallying as high as $17.48 a year and a half ago, shares of Evergreen (ESLR) have sagged, spending most of the last year below the $10 level. But [...]

  We just watched the winners of this year’s California Cleantech Open accept their awards. Perhaps the best indicator of the importance of this competition is the success of last year’s recipients — solar startup GreenVolts, for example, said this evening that it’s raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Greenlight [...]

  What better way to find up-and-coming cleantech startups than to follow a business plan competition for just-out-of-the-lab companies with little funding. Tonight, the California Cleantech Open announced six winners in the categories of “Air,Water and Waste,” “Energy Efficiency,” “Green Building,” “Renewables,” “Smart Power,” and “Transportation.” We feel confident that the winners are an innovative bunch, [...]

  EnerNOC (ENOC), which sells demand response and energy management services to commercial and industrial customers, was one of the rare successful exits in the cleantech world — the Boston-based company went public earlier this year, netting nearly $100 million. Today, the company filed to offer 4 million shares of its common stock for net [...]

  Shai Agassi, the entrepreneur who, at one time, was expected to take over the CEO role at SAP, said today that he has formed “Project Better Place,” a venture focusing on electric vehicles, and is raising an initial $200 million to fund the project. When Agassi announced his resignation from software company SAP (SAP) last [...]

  A major political selling point of ethanol production is the possible salvation it offers small towns in the center of the United States. But does “the biofuel revolution” actually benefit these communities or just Vinod Khosla? That’s the topic that Kansas State researchers will tackle with the $696,000 grant they received last week from the [...]

  Creating more energy-efficient consumer electronics starts at the chip level. CamSemi, a fabless semiconductor startup based in the UK, is designing energy-saving integrated circuits for the power supply consumer electronics market. The five-year-old company this week raised a Series C round of $26 million from 3i Group, Scottish Equity Partners and Carbon Trust Investments.More energy-efficient [...]

  You can’t turn on an incandescent light, you can only generate one shoe box of trash a month, and you have to live out of a car for a year. Those are the rules of Your Environmental Road Trip’s (YERT) great American green voyage, an exploration of the nation’s environmental movement by a three-person crew [...]