by Eric Puravs

Created on: November 09, 2010

The Global Cleantech 100 list is a list of the 100 cleanest companies, produced by the Cleantech Group and Guardian newspaper. The Cleantech Group has been holding conferences on clean technology since 2002. They emphasize a distinction between “cleantech” and “greentech”. According to their definition “Greentech has traditionally only represented small, regulatory-driven markets. Cleantech is driven by productivity-based purchasing, and therefore enjoys broader market economics, with greater financial upside and sustainability.” The group has been forecasting trends to watch for since 2007, and published their first list of companies in 2009.

The list is based on which companies experts think are the most likely to have a significant market impact over the next 5 to 10 years. So it could be seen as a list of companies experts would be excited to invest in. But beware, in 2009 the Cleantech Group did forecast high turnover. 57 companies did drop off the 2009 list. One went out of business, 3 were acquired by other companies, and three were listed on stock exchanges, nice achievement but one that made them ineligible. The other 50 were simply not chosen to be in the top 100 this year.

How do companies make the list? Companies could nominate themselves as long as they also nominated two others at the same time. Or they could be passively nominated, chosen because they meet other criteria like having raised over $1 million dollars, having major partnerships, or winning awards. In 2010, there were 4,616 nominations. This was narrowed to 218 companies by a filtering and collating system that tried to keep a broad representation of different areas. Then a panel of 60 experts was given a number of votes, and they voted secretly. They could also cast negative votes. The system was not totally successful in keeping a geographic balance because of the overall level of entrepreneurship in various regions, 55 of the top 100 companies were in the USA, 11 in the United Kingdom, 7 in Germany. But there are also regional top 10 lists, and even though China now had 3 companies on the top 100 list, the top 10 list for the Asia Pacific region still had to include 3 companies that did not make the overall top 100 list.

The top sectors on the list were Energy Efficiency, Solar, Biofuels, and Energy Storage, each had 10 or more companies on the list both years. Smart Grid and Water & Wastewater were close, but fell below 10 one year or another. Transportation had 6 companies on the list each year, but some of the companies changed. Fisker Automotive, which makes the Karma, was on the list both years. But this year Tesla dropped off because it was listed on Nasdaq and ZipCar was added. Wind energy may not be sexy enough to make the list. It seems to be one of the most developed technologies in the marketplace, but the number of companies on the list has dropped from three in 2009 to one this year. 63 of the 100 companies are shipping product, the others are in the Product development stage.

The ability of panelists to cast negative votes lead to the lust and “Marmite” lists. Companies on the lust list were loved by everyone. These companies include Silver Springs Network, ZipCar, Opower, Bridgelux, and BrightSource Energy. Marmite is a British spread that people either love or hate. Companies on the marmite list were either loved or hated, but loved by enough voters to keep them on the top 100 list. The experts knocked the solar sector in general because of it's price. Bloom Energy was the most divisive single company. Some think it is the best solid oxide fuel cell maker, others think solid oxide fuel cells in general are over-hyped and will not take off.

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