Green Means Go: Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Daily Green Investing Round-up

Nissan and NEC Invest $115M in Lithium Ion batteries; Carbon Trading Exec Explains that Carbon Markets Work; $30MM Raised for GeoThermal; Spanish Renewables Company Planning to Invest $8B in US.

Nissan and NEC are investing $115M in a Li-ion battery manufacturer JV with the catchy but functional name Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC). This company will focus on building large format Li-ion batteries for… well, automotive applications. It is part of Nissan’s push to leapfrog Toyota and Honda in the race to roll out the next generation of vehicles in electric/hybrid market. Renault has already agreed to use AESC batteries in one of their electric car projects. via Wired

CNET Contributor, and Cleantech Blog founder, Neal Dikeman interviews Marc Stuart, one of the founders of EcoSecurities plc - a carbon credit generation and trading firm, to explain the U.S. carbon trading market. It does get a bit jargony for the unitiated, but there is some good info in here for those that don’t know carbon trading that well, or particularly the U.S. carbon trading market. via Cnet’s Greentech Blog

EnLink Geoenergy raises $30M for geothermal heat pump installations. VentureBeat is reporting that Houston, Texas-based EnLink Geoenergy Services has raised $30MM for continued development of its heat pump technology from Craton Equity Partners and Medley Partners LP. This is interesting because EnLink claims a fast capital payback on its products (as little as 4 years.) I think this is interesting because Geothermal tends to run under the radar screen of most investors - this despite the fact that Geothermal represents a larger share of the U.S. renewable market than solar. via VentureBeat

Spanish renewable firm announces big U.S. plans. As if renewable energy company valuations didn’t need any additional demand - Iberdrola Renewables, one of the largest owners and operators of renewable energy facilities in the world, announced yesterday its plans to invest $8 billion in American renewable energy by 2010. via GigaOm’s Earth2Tech