Cleantech Business Competition Announces Winners

A California company that designed a personalized residential energy management solution for heating, ventilation and air conditioning won the business plan competition this year in the Cleantech Open.

Selected from the 12 finalists, EcoFactor will receive $100,000 in seed money and an additional $150,000 in business services. 

The Cleantech Open is a business competition created to find, fund and foster startup clean technology companies. Winners were announced this week at the annual Cleantech Open Expo and Awards Gala in San Francisco. Dubbed the “Academy Awards of Clean Technology,” the event marks the grand finale of the Cleantech Open’s yearlong business competition.

Judges nominated two runners-up for the National Prize: Alphabet Energy (waste-heat recapture); and MicroMidas, a company that transforms raw sewage into biodegradable plastic.

Other awards include:

2009 Alumni Award winner
Each year, the Cleantech Open leadership team identifies an alumni company that has made significant progress during the year. This year, the Alumni award went to Adura Technologies, which manufactures and sells lighting and energy management controls that are easy to install and use. In a recent two-week test with PG&E, Adura managed to reduce light load by 72%.

2009 National Sustainability Award winner
This year’s National Sustainability award of $20,000 goes to HydroVolts, whose innovative in-stream hydrokinetic turbine enables distributed clean-energy generation from canals, waterways, spillways, rivers, streams, and tidal currents around the world.

2009 Global Cleantech Open Ideas winner
For the first time, cleantech innovations from around the world were featured at the Cleantech Open. The Global Cleantech Open Ideas Competition looks to find ‘big ideas’ by working at a grassroots level and to support and foster those ideas. Orchestrated in conjunction with the Kauffman Foundation, startups from around the world competed for a prize worth $100,000 in startup services. Entries were received from Brazil, China, Denmark, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, and the USA.

Audience members voted Replenish Energy of Puerto Rico the winner of the Global Cleantech Open Ideas competition. Replenish is a micro-algae based fuel program of Bio-Lipids of Puerto Rico, a private innovation company. Micro-algae are said to be the World’s most efficient renewable energy source currently available, capable of delivering 48,000 kilowatts of electricity per million dollars capital invested. That compares to 470kW for solar panels and 1,300kW for wind turbines.

The Cleantech Open is supported by numerous public, private and government organizations, including U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy;  PG&E; Google, Southern California Edison; and San Diego Gas and Electric.