Top 100 Global Cleantech Firms Named

LanzaTech, RecycleBank, ChargePoint and Desalitech are among the companies to make the most recent Global Cleantech 100 list and report.

The fifth annual list, compiled by Cleantech Group, recognizes the companies most likely to have a significant market impact over the next five to 10 years, according to the global consulting firm. It includes companies across 15 industry categories including biofuels and biochemicals, agriculture and forestry, transportation, recycling and waste, water and wastewater, and energy efficiency.

Fifty-one of the 100 companies on this year’s list are new entrants, which report author Richard Youngman says shows the popularity of new cleantech subsectors among investors.

To qualify for the Global Cleantech 100, companies must be independent, for-profit, cleantech companies not listed on any major stock exchange. This year’s list drew from 5,864 nominated companies from 60 countries and Cleantech Group’s i3 market intelligence platform, which tracks more than $7 billion of deal flow across 22,000 cleantech companies annually. A 90-member expert panel, including financial investors and representatives of multinational enterprises such as 3M, ABB, BP, Ecolab, EDF, GE, General Motors, Grundfos, IBM and Veolia Environment, gave input on the shortlisted 300 to get to the final list of 100 companies from 18 countries.

Cleantech Group presented awards in nine categories at the Global Cleantech 100 Gala at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, DC on Oct. 9. At the gala, LanzaTech took home the continued excellence award, given to the highest-ranked of companies that have made it onto the Global Cleantech 100 list for at least the last three consecutive years. LanzaTech has developed a process that increases industrial energy efficiency by capturing waste gases (CO, CO2) and converting them to fuels and chemicals.

The 2013 report also recognizes four companies that have made the Global Cleantech 100 all five years of its existence:

• NanoH2O, a US-based developer of thin-film nano-composite reverse osmosis membranes for the desalination market;
• Ostara, a Canadian firm that transforms phosphorus and nitrogen from used water streams into environmentally responsible fertilizer;
• Tendrill, a home energy management company also based in the US; and
• Trilliant, a US-based smart grid provider.

The report finds corporations to be ever more active in global cleantech innovation as investors, partners, licensees, customers and acquirers of Global Cleantech 100 companies. It says GE is the most active overall partner with 2013 Global Cleantech 100 companies, followed by Waste Management, Siemens, Google, and IBM.

Energy efficiency is the hottest and growing sector within cleantech, according to Cleantech Group. Of 15 industry categories, the energy efficiency category includes 27 companies, up from 22 in 2012 and 19 in 2011. Read more about the energy-efficiency honorees in Energy Manager Today.

Two of the Global Cleantech 100 companies, waste-to-ethanol company Enerkem and biopesticides producer Vestaron, are also among the top three innovating companies Lux Research profiled in the third quarter of 2013. The research firm published its Top 10 Innovators list earlier this week.