Despite Solyndra's spectacular collapse, a report issued Tuesday suggests that California's clean-tech industry continues to thrive, soaking up more venture capital in 2011 than it did before the recession.
The annual California Green Innovation Index from public policy group Next 10 tracks the green economy's health, pulling together data on employment, patents and the rising use of renewable power. It tries to show real-world benefits of the state's global warming policies, which have helped make California a magnet for green businesses.
"California's forward-looking policies, our world-class entrepreneurs and our savvy population of early adopters I think all contribute to this growth," said F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10.
California clean-tech companies attracted a record $3.5 billion in venture capital last year, according to the report. That's slightly more than the previous high of $3.1 billion, set in 2008 as the recession was starting to take hold. It also represents 57 percent of all the clean-tech venture capital funding in the United States last year and 40 percent of the worldwide total.
The state also passed a major solar milestone in 2011. California homeowners and businesses have now installed enough solar panels to generate more than 1 gigawatt of electricity, a level reached by only five countries and no other states. A gigawatt is a snapshot figure, roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by 750,000 homes at any given instant.
California continues to lead the nation in patenting green technologies. From 2008 through 2010, the last year for which the report has patent data, Californians registered 910 clean-tech patents. Among other states, New York came closest, with 475 green patents. And the number of patents issued in California continued rising during the recession.
The state's green companies did not survive the downturn unscathed. A separate Next 10 report, issued earlier this year, found that the number of green jobs in the state dropped 3 percent in 2009 to reach 169,754, while the state's economy as a whole lost 7 percent of its jobs.
The Green Innovation Index does not offer new jobs figures to update that previous report. But index author Doug Henton said the more recent data on investments and patents show California's green industry has weathered the downturn.
"Even though we got hit horribly by the Great Recession, our numbers came through pretty well," said Henton, with the Collaborative Economics consulting firm. "It's all about resilience."
This year's index pays particular attention to California's solar industry. The bankruptcy last fall of Fremont's Solyndra, which made tube-shaped solar modules, focused public attention on the industry's woes, as plunging panel prices drove some manufacturers out of business.
But in 2011, California solar companies still brought in $1.2 billion in venture capital, 62 percent of all the venture capital spent on solar worldwide. Solar employment in California grew 166 percent between 1995 and the start of 2010, to reach 33,035 jobs. (That figure, the most recent available, obviously does not reflect the more than 1,100 jobs lost when Solyndra closed its doors.)
"Solyndra's gotten all the attention," Henton said. "People look at that and say, 'Boy, the solar industry has just gone away.' And what we're doing here is saying, 'Look at the facts.' "
David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. dbaker@sfchronicle.com
Original article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/18/BUS51O57OE.DTL#ixzz1sVVuHOko