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http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/02/17/report-greatpoint-energy-grabs-420m-from-chinese-investor/

Report: GreatPoint Energy Grabs $420M from Chinese Investor Gregory T.
Huang<http://www.xconomy.com/author/ghuang/>
2/17/12 <http://www.xconomy.com/archives/?xyear=2012&month=2&xday=17>Leave
a Comment<http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/02/17/report-greatpoint-energy-grabs-420m-from-chinese-investor/#comments>

After last night’s stellar event with Amory Lovins and Jim
Matheson<http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/02/16/hope-to-see-you-tonight-for-chat-with-amory-lovins-few-tickets-left/>,
I’m thinking about our energy and cleantech future today. Luckily, so is
a Boston-area company that apparently makes billion-dollar deals
for breakfast.

GreatPoint Energy <http://www.greatpointenergy.com>, a coal-to-natural-gas
company in Cambridge, MA, has formed a $1.25 billion partnership with China
Wanxiang Holdings, in a deal that includes $420 million in Series D equity
investment, according to a report by Lora Kolodny in Dow Jones
VentureWire<https://www.fis.dowjones.com/article.aspx?ProductIDFromApplication=32&aid=DJFVW00020120216e82gazd4o&r=Rss&s=DJFVW>(see
the
*Wall Street Journal* article
here<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577229501058611924.html>).


GreatPoint, which started in 2004, previously raised more than $100
million<http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2007/09/21/funders-commit-100-million-more-for-greatpoints-coal-to-gas-technology/>from
investors including Advanced Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher
Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Citi
Sustainable Development, Dow Chemical, and Suncor Energy. ATV has confirmed
the deal, but I haven’t been able to reach original investor Bill Wiberg
for comment yet.

According to the report, GreatPoint plans to build a large-scale coal
gasification plant in China to convert coal into methane (the main
component in natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal) and carbon dioxide
(which can be sold to oil companies to extract more oil from existing
wells). The company has done tests at pilot plants in Massachusetts,
Illinois, Iowa, and North Dakota.

Today’s deal is also significant because it is the largest equity
investment by a private Chinese company in a U.S. venture-backed firm, the
report says.

Interestingly, a
study<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/ci-otl021512.php>published
this week by Nathan Myhrvold and Ken Caldeira suggests that
natural gas plants are a good start, but not enough by themselves to curb
the effects of climate change (here’s the
paper<http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014019>
).

* Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's National IT Editor and the Editor of
Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com, call him at
617-252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at @gthuang. *


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