For a symbol of the new, diminished expectations of the once swaggering US “greentech” industry, look no further than Ausra.
With blue-chip backers like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, Ausra was one of those Silicon Valley companies that thought on a grand scale. Using a variety of techniques that included low-cost ways of producing and installing vast arrays of mirrors, it dreamt of building and operating utility-scale solar thermal power plants.
As we reported early on in the financial crisis (and the company went on to confirm earlier this year), Ausra changed course and decided its future lay in selling its technology to established utilities rather than becoming a power producer itself. As the project finance markets seized up, only a company with the balance sheet of a utility could hope to fund such ambitious projects, though Ausra said its decision reflected over strategic priorities as well.
Ausra has now raised $25.5m to back a new, more limited business plan designed to keep the company ticking over in the short term. This will be used to support less ambitious arrangements known as “power augmentation” projects, which involve adding a solar thermal capability to an existing natural gas power station to increase capacity. These projects typically take 6-18 months to complete rather than the five years needed for a large-scale facility, an Ausra spokeswoman says, and are a way to demonstrate the viability of the company’s technology.
As the Earth2Tech blog points out, this more limited approach has its merits, and could be a good stop-gap for the company.
Also, evidence that venture capital money is starting to flow back into greentech – even at a much reduced rate – will come as a relief. In the first three months of this year, just $154m of start-up money found its way into this sector as the greentech investment bubble popped.
Yet all this really does is buy time. With private capital not available in the large amounts needed, the greentech industry is now effectively reliant on the US government to pull it through from start-up phase to full production. As Paul Holland, a partner at Foundation Capital, puts it: “The government has become the lender of last resort – or the lender of only resort.”
Companies like Ausra claim not to have given up on their longer term plans, even as they have effectively been forced to put them on hold. But until the US economic stimulus money starts to flow, it will be impossible to tell which companies will make it through these dire times to reach their full potential.
