Cleantech venture capital funding drops 44 percent in U.S., Ernst & Young reports

Second quarter venture capital investments in cleantech companies dropped 44 percent, bringing in total investments of $1.1 billion, according to an Ernst & Young analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The decline looks worse than it actually is and reflects a fluke in timing, stressed John de Yonge, a director with Ernst & Young’s Global Cleantech Center.
“When you see these big deals come in and out, you see big fluctuations in those quarterly numbers,” he said. “When you deduct that, it’s fairly flat year to year.”
Cleantech investments actually rose eight percent between Q1 and Q2 of 2011.
Northern California was hit harder than the national average, where cleantech investments dropped 63 percent compared with the same period last year. In San Francisco, energy generation companies received the most venture capital funding, with $311.6 million. Cleantech products and services, such as electric cars, came in second with $305.7 million.