JUNE 12, 2009

Reprinted with permission from the San Francisco Business Times. ©2009, all rights reserved. Reprinted by Scoop ReprintSource 1-800-767-3263.

BY MARK CALVEYSan Francisco Business Times

Silicon Valley Bank’s reputation among Bay Area venture capitalists and their portfolio companies gives the bank a great perch for spotting

up-and-coming green businesses.“We look for companies with the right

type of financial backing,” said Matt Malo-ney, head of the cleantech practice at Sili-con Valley Bank.

The bank enjoys good access to com-panies financed by some of the Bay Area’s top-tier VCs. It typically gets in-volved with young companies still fly-

ing under the radar, or in “stealth mode,”

and continues to work with them as they grow.

That strategy has made the Santa Clara company, with offices in San Francisco and other tech centers around the nation, the banker for about half of the nation’s ven-ture-backed cleantech companies. At the end of last year, Silicon Valley Bank had about $220 million in loan commitments to companies in the cleantech sector. Ad-ditionally, the bank holds deposits for 160 cleantech companies, manages more than $1 billion in these companies’ investments and provides them with a broad range of banking services.

Under the leadership of CEO Ken Wil-cox, the bank has chalked up annual loan growth of nearly 20 percent to technology com-panies over the past decade.

“SVB Financial Group dom-inates the business of banking emerging growth companies, primarily in the technology and life sciences industries,” said Joe Morford, bank analyst with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco.

In the cleantech sector, the bank’s client roster includes Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, which plans to operate large solar plants that provide energy to industrial com-panies and utilities. The bank also provided capital and banking services to Calisolar since the company’s founding in 2006. The Sunnyvale company has developed a proprietary approach to the use of so-called “dirty” metallurgical grade silicon to

produce high-quality solar cells. Silicon Valley Bank also helped Innovalight, also of Sunnyvale, with financing for its technol-ogy development and pilot plant facility, in

addition to providing banking services. The company is using high-precision inkjet manufac-turing to replace many of the costly steps of manufacturing solar modules.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Maloney expects government support through the federal stimulus package will give the cleantech sector valuable capi-tal at a time when many com-panies are trekking through the “valley of death” as key sourc-es of funding aren’t available.

The bank is a leader in developing financ-ing programs to help cleantech companies take advantage of collaboration with the public sector.

“The government can be a productive partner,” Maloney said.

mcalvey@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4950 n

Silicon Valley Bank cultivates new green startups

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10 GREEN BUSINESS AWARDS sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com SF BUSINESS TIMES | JUNE 12-18, 2009

W ells Fargo has lent more than $1.65 billion to finance an more than 160 wind and solar projects since debuting its environ-mental lending initiative in 2006.

The bank, which originally committed $1 billion for green initia-tives in 2005, has paid out more than $5 billion to finance alternative energy projects, green buildings and green businesses.

The San Francisco bank has helped finance large commercial solar projects and solar installations. It likely will help finance California’s

major utilities’ further expansion into alternative energy as well.

“We’ve been actively financing,” said Barry Neal, Wells Fargo’s director of environmental finance.

The bank, working with SunPower and Municipal Mortgage & Equity, or MuniMae, helped Macy’s

install solar panels at California stores. The bank also helped finance a large solar system at the University of California, San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus.

“These are large institutions with big balance sheets investing in alternative energy,” Neal said.

Wells Fargo is also rolling out a composting program at its San Francisco headquarters to eventually cut 97 percent of the waste flowing into landfills. The company’s biggest waste — paper — has long been shredded and recycled. The composting initiative expands those efforts by capturing food waste from the cafeteria along with corn-based utensils and other packaging that can be composted.

-- Mark Calvey ■

BY LINDSAY RIDDELLSan Francisco Business Times

K nowledge is power for Silver Spring Networks, which does for the next-gen-eration electric grid what the Internet did for email.

Silver Spring Networks provides the net-work by which utilities can manage energy use, track blackouts and provide information in much greater detail to customers who can then be empowered to manage their own energy better.

“Innovation around the Internet has been astonishing over the last 15 years when you have the infrastructure in place to let millions of peo-ple collaborate, and we see the same thing happening on

the smart grid,” CEO Scott Lang said. Silver Spring converts the electricity grid

into a 21st-century data communications net-work. A smart grid can alert utilities where outages are and what caused them, while helping consumers shift daily power use to off-peak times when it costs less. That’s more cost-effective than building new power plants.

“Nearly half of new generation that would need to built otherwise could be offset by intel-

ligently using the power we generate today,” said Lang.

The company has focused from its founding in 2002 on bridging the gap between the util-ity and the customer and making sure both have the information available to make more-informed decisions.

The problem was that in 2002 and even in 2004, when Lang joined as founding CEO of the Redwood City-based company, investors weren’t sure utilities were ready for such a transformation — or if they were, that they would be led there by a startup like Silver Spring.

“We were told ‘no’ more than 100 times,” Lang said.

The company knew it needed a big credible partner to test out its hardware, software and networking applications to prove that Silver Spring could catapult the dinosaur electricity industry into a new era.

Silver Spring found that partner in Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest investor-owned utility by energy sales, and it rolled out advanced networking and metering to 100,000 homes in 2007.

“We changed their way of thinking that this really could be pulled off,” Lang said. “With that performance we signed an agreement to

BY MARK CALVEYSan Francisco Business Times

S ilicon Valley Bank’s reputation among Bay Area venture capitalists and their port-folio companies gives the bank a great perch for spotting up-and-coming green

businesses.“We look for companies with the right type of

financial backing,” said Matt Maloney, head of the cleantech practice at Silicon Valley Bank.

The bank enjoys good access to companies financed by some of the Bay Area’s top-tier VCs.

It typically gets involved with young companies still flying under the radar, or in “stealth mode,” and contin-ues to work with them as they grow.

That strategy has made the Santa Clara com-pany, with offices in San Francisco and other tech centers around the nation, the banker for about half of the nation’s venture-backed clean-tech companies. At the end of last year, Silicon Valley Bank had about $220 million in loan com-mitments to companies in the cleantech sec-tor. Additionally, the bank holds deposits for 160 cleantech companies, manages more than $1 billion in these companies’ investments and provides them with a broad range of banking services.

Under the leadership of CEO Ken Wilcox, the

bank has chalked up annual loan growth of near-ly 20 percent to technology companies over the past decade.

“SVB Financial Group dominates the business of banking emerging growth companies, primar-ily in the technology and life sciences industries,” said Joe Morford, bank analyst with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco.

SEE SILVER, 11

SEE SVB, 11

WINNERSILVER SPRING NETWORKS

WINNERSILICON VALLEY BANK

WELLS FARGOLocation: San Francisco.Green executive: Barry Neal, director of environmental finance.Green investments: More than $1.65 billion in environmental lending since 2006.

Wells steers into wind, solar

FINALISTWELLS FARGO

Neal

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

FINANCE

Maloney: Government funds can help cleantech companies trek through the “valley of death.”

Persistent: “We were told ‘no’ more than 100 times,” says CEO Lang.

Silver Spring Networks helps light up the electric grid

Silicon Valley Bank cultivates new green startups

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TESY

SIL

VE

R S

PR

ING

NE

TWO

RK

S /

TIM

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Y A

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HIB

ALD

10 GREEN BUSINESS AWARDS sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com SF BUSINESS TIMES | JUNE 12-18, 2009

W ells Fargo has lent more than $1.65 billion to finance an more than 160 wind and solar projects since debuting its environ-mental lending initiative in 2006.

The bank, which originally committed $1 billion for green initia-tives in 2005, has paid out more than $5 billion to finance alternative energy projects, green buildings and green businesses.

The San Francisco bank has helped finance large commercial solar projects and solar installations. It likely will help finance California’s

major utilities’ further expansion into alternative energy as well.

“We’ve been actively financing,” said Barry Neal, Wells Fargo’s director of environmental finance.

The bank, working with SunPower and Municipal Mortgage & Equity, or MuniMae, helped Macy’s

install solar panels at California stores. The bank also helped finance a large solar system at the University of California, San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus.

“These are large institutions with big balance sheets investing in alternative energy,” Neal said.

Wells Fargo is also rolling out a composting program at its San Francisco headquarters to eventually cut 97 percent of the waste flowing into landfills. The company’s biggest waste — paper — has long been shredded and recycled. The composting initiative expands those efforts by capturing food waste from the cafeteria along with corn-based utensils and other packaging that can be composted.

-- Mark Calvey ■

BY LINDSAY RIDDELLSan Francisco Business Times

K nowledge is power for Silver Spring Networks, which does for the next-gen-eration electric grid what the Internet did for email.

Silver Spring Networks provides the net-work by which utilities can manage energy use, track blackouts and provide information in much greater detail to customers who can then be empowered to manage their own energy better.

“Innovation around the Internet has been astonishing over the last 15 years when you have the infrastructure in place to let millions of peo-ple collaborate, and we see the same thing happening on

the smart grid,” CEO Scott Lang said. Silver Spring converts the electricity grid

into a 21st-century data communications net-work. A smart grid can alert utilities where outages are and what caused them, while helping consumers shift daily power use to off-peak times when it costs less. That’s more cost-effective than building new power plants.

“Nearly half of new generation that would need to built otherwise could be offset by intel-

ligently using the power we generate today,” said Lang.

The company has focused from its founding in 2002 on bridging the gap between the util-ity and the customer and making sure both have the information available to make more-informed decisions.

The problem was that in 2002 and even in 2004, when Lang joined as founding CEO of the Redwood City-based company, investors weren’t sure utilities were ready for such a transformation — or if they were, that they would be led there by a startup like Silver Spring.

“We were told ‘no’ more than 100 times,” Lang said.

The company knew it needed a big credible partner to test out its hardware, software and networking applications to prove that Silver Spring could catapult the dinosaur electricity industry into a new era.

Silver Spring found that partner in Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest investor-owned utility by energy sales, and it rolled out advanced networking and metering to 100,000 homes in 2007.

“We changed their way of thinking that this really could be pulled off,” Lang said. “With that performance we signed an agreement to

BY MARK CALVEYSan Francisco Business Times

S ilicon Valley Bank’s reputation among Bay Area venture capitalists and their port-folio companies gives the bank a great perch for spotting up-and-coming green

businesses.“We look for companies with the right type of

financial backing,” said Matt Maloney, head of the cleantech practice at Silicon Valley Bank.

The bank enjoys good access to companies financed by some of the Bay Area’s top-tier VCs.

It typically gets involved with young companies still flying under the radar, or in “stealth mode,” and contin-ues to work with them as they grow.

That strategy has made the Santa Clara com-pany, with offices in San Francisco and other tech centers around the nation, the banker for about half of the nation’s venture-backed clean-tech companies. At the end of last year, Silicon Valley Bank had about $220 million in loan com-mitments to companies in the cleantech sec-tor. Additionally, the bank holds deposits for 160 cleantech companies, manages more than $1 billion in these companies’ investments and provides them with a broad range of banking services.

Under the leadership of CEO Ken Wilcox, the

bank has chalked up annual loan growth of near-ly 20 percent to technology companies over the past decade.

“SVB Financial Group dominates the business of banking emerging growth companies, primar-ily in the technology and life sciences industries,” said Joe Morford, bank analyst with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco.

SEE SILVER, 11

SEE SVB, 11

WINNERSILVER SPRING NETWORKS

WINNERSILICON VALLEY BANK

WELLS FARGOLocation: San Francisco.Green executive: Barry Neal, director of environmental finance.Green investments: More than $1.65 billion in environmental lending since 2006.

Wells steers into wind, solar

FINALISTWELLS FARGO

Neal

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

FINANCE

Maloney: Government funds can help cleantech companies trek through the “valley of death.”

Persistent: “We were told ‘no’ more than 100 times,” says CEO Lang.

Silver Spring Networks helps light up the electric grid

Silicon Valley Bank cultivates new green startups

CO

UR

TESY

SIL

VE

R S

PR

ING

NE

TWO

RK

S /

TIM

OTH

Y A

RC

HIB

ALD

WINNERSILICON VALLEY BANK

SF BUSINESS TIMES | JUNE 12-18, 2009 sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com GREEN BUSINESS AWARDS 11

network all 4.5 million customers in Florida.”

After Florida Power & Light, the deals started flowing. Silver Spring raised $75 million from Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and venture capitalists and climate-change experts John Doerr and Al Gore joined the advisory board in 2008.

To date, the company has networked 5.5 million utility customers, including 2.6 million of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s. The company has contracts allowing it to network almost 25 per-cent of the homes in the United States.

Silver Spring won a contract in Australia this year, its first overseas, and is pursuing contracts in other countries, too. Silver Spring says it

will hire 100 people this year mostly in the Bay Area.

“This team is really proud to do its part in an economy that’s really chal-lenging,” Lang said. “And we’re proud that (our employees) don’t just have a job, but really have a job that is having an impact on a global challenge.”

lriddell@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4968 ■

In the cleantech sector, the bank’s client roster includes Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, which plans to operate large solar plants that provide energy to industrial companies and utilities. The bank also provided capital and banking services to Calisolar since the company’s founding in 2006. The Sunnyvale company has developed a pro-prietary approach to the use of so-called “dirty” metallurgical grade silicon to produce high-quality solar cells. Silicon Valley Bank also helped Innovalight, also

of Sunny va le , with financing for its technology development and pilot plant facil-ity, in addition to providing bank-ing services. The company is using high -precision inkjet manufac-turing to replace many of the cost-ly steps of manu-facturing solar modules.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Maloney expects government support through the federal stimulus package will give the cleantech sector valuable capital at a time when many companies are trekking through the “valley of death” as key sources of funding aren’t available. The bank is a leader in developing financing programs to help cleantech companies take advan-tage of collaboration with the public sec-tor.

“The government can be a productive partner,” Maloney said.

mcalvey@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4950 ■

EMeter knows how to anticipate a problem. The company has worked since the 1980s on software that lets

a utility manage energy better. But that solution becomes much more important as more renewable energy comes online and the utili-ties have to manage more distributed and intermittent power sources like solar and wind and, soon, even electric car batteries.

“We make it so that utilities are able to use and support those things in conjunction with their facilities,” said CEO Cree Edwards.

It’s all part of the smart grid, which connotes the transformation of the electric grid from relatively static infrastructure to a network that can send and receive information allowing quick responses

to problems and more information for consumers. Emeter’s software allows utilities to make sense of all the data gathered from smart meters. The company has 24 million meters under contract through deals with 12 utilities.

— Lindsay Riddell ■

Emeter reads the future

FINALISTEMETER

SILVER, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

SVB, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

SILICON VALLEY BANKLocation: Santa Clara.Cleantech investments: SVB had about $220 million in loans at the end of 2008.Portfolio:Companies include BrightSource Energy, Calisolar, Innovalight.

High-tech:Under CEO Wilcox, the bank has ramped up loans to technology companies.

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EMETER CORP.Location: San Mateo.CEO: Cree Edwards.Founded: 1999.Employees:140.2008 revenue:$25 million.

Edwards

SILVER SPRING NETWORKSFounded: 2002.CEO: Scott Lang.Employees: 250.Venture capital: More than $150 million.What it does: The company’s networks help utilities manage energy use, track blackouts and give customers new information.

SF BUSINESS TIMES | JUNE 12-18, 2009 sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com GREEN BUSINESS AWARDS 11

network all 4.5 million customers in Florida.”

After Florida Power & Light, the deals started flowing. Silver Spring raised $75 million from Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and venture capitalists and climate-change experts John Doerr and Al Gore joined the advisory board in 2008.

To date, the company has networked 5.5 million utility customers, including 2.6 million of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s. The company has contracts allowing it to network almost 25 per-cent of the homes in the United States.

Silver Spring won a contract in Australia this year, its first overseas, and is pursuing contracts in other countries, too. Silver Spring says it

will hire 100 people this year mostly in the Bay Area.

“This team is really proud to do its part in an economy that’s really chal-lenging,” Lang said. “And we’re proud that (our employees) don’t just have a job, but really have a job that is having an impact on a global challenge.”

lriddell@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4968 ■

In the cleantech sector, the bank’s client roster includes Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, which plans to operate large solar plants that provide energy to industrial companies and utilities. The bank also provided capital and banking services to Calisolar since the company’s founding in 2006. The Sunnyvale company has developed a pro-prietary approach to the use of so-called “dirty” metallurgical grade silicon to produce high-quality solar cells. Silicon Valley Bank also helped Innovalight, also

of Sunny va le , with financing for its technology development and pilot plant facil-ity, in addition to providing bank-ing services. The company is using high -precision inkjet manufac-turing to replace many of the cost-ly steps of manu-facturing solar modules.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Maloney expects government support through the federal stimulus package will give the cleantech sector valuable capital at a time when many companies are trekking through the “valley of death” as key sources of funding aren’t available. The bank is a leader in developing financing programs to help cleantech companies take advan-tage of collaboration with the public sec-tor.

“The government can be a productive partner,” Maloney said.

mcalvey@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4950 ■

EMeter knows how to anticipate a problem. The company has worked since the 1980s on software that lets

a utility manage energy better. But that solution becomes much more important as more renewable energy comes online and the utili-ties have to manage more distributed and intermittent power sources like solar and wind and, soon, even electric car batteries.

“We make it so that utilities are able to use and support those things in conjunction with their facilities,” said CEO Cree Edwards.

It’s all part of the smart grid, which connotes the transformation of the electric grid from relatively static infrastructure to a network that can send and receive information allowing quick responses

to problems and more information for consumers. Emeter’s software allows utilities to make sense of all the data gathered from smart meters. The company has 24 million meters under contract through deals with 12 utilities.

— Lindsay Riddell ■

Emeter reads the future

FINALISTEMETER

SILVER, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

SVB, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

SILICON VALLEY BANKLocation: Santa Clara.Cleantech investments: SVB had about $220 million in loans at the end of 2008.Portfolio:Companies include BrightSource Energy, Calisolar, Innovalight.

High-tech:Under CEO Wilcox, the bank has ramped up loans to technology companies.

SP

EN

CE

R B

RO

WN

/ S

FB

T F

ILE

20

08

EMETER CORP.Location: San Mateo.CEO: Cree Edwards.Founded: 1999.Employees:140.2008 revenue:$25 million.

Edwards

SILVER SPRING NETWORKSFounded: 2002.CEO: Scott Lang.Employees: 250.Venture capital: More than $150 million.What it does: The company’s networks help utilities manage energy use, track blackouts and give customers new information.