How much green in greentech? An accounting

One VC firm has just added another $450-million US to its fund for placement in cleantech companies. Those may be devalued US dollars, but that's stillmore than you or I make in a whole month. RockPort already has considerable money in cleantech start-ups. RockPortr now has nearly a billion dollars for cleantech and claims it is the largest single such fund on earth.

It's easy to feel downhearted about the condition of the US economy and polity these days. Our huge American trade deficit feeding into a growing montain of debt is not reassuring. But check this out, a European website glad to claim #2. That's right, Germany and the UK are proud to be considered runners-up to the US in cleantech. Just as the US economy lost industrial production strength before the Internet boom, right now American prospects look not so hot. But clearly everybody in the VC and money world expects the cleantech boom to be led by American ventures and innovation. Something to look forward to.

Of course, this American view of the same Deloitte survey finds the US barely ahead. Since Katrina and some other recent obvious failures Americans do not seem too confident about their own nation.

Our own CNET coverage notes that American VCs and others are still looking first at American start-ups, but increasingly they are going for new ventures in Europe and Japan as well.