California leads in green-tech funding

Your Olive Branch reports.

Californian companies raked in $2.8 billion, or 57%, of the $4.9 billion in venture capital offered up in the so-called clean-tech category of funding nationwide last year, according to a recently released analysis from Ernst & Young.

Green-tech companies nationwide raised a total of about $688 million in initial public offerings last year, The Los Angeles Times writes.

Rentech, a Los Angeles provider of clean energy solutions, raised $136.8 million in November. Its products have included a renewable synthetic diesel fuel. Intermolecular, a San Jose research and development company for the semiconductor and clean-energy sector, raised $96.5 million.

Northern California green-tech firms received three times as much funding as their Southern California counterparts last year. But Mark Sogomian, an Ernst & Young partner and leader of its clean-tech group in Los Angeles, said there were promising opportunities for green-tech growth in the Southland, in part because of efforts to reduce pollution at the nation's two busiest cargo container seaports, Los Angeles and Long Beach.