It’s taken only 7 months for UKIIF to launch the first of two funds, the Hermes Environmental Innovation Fund, which has already raised £125m and will continue to seek further funding from investors.

The Environmental Innovation Fund, managed by Hermes Private Equity, will now start investing in low carbon and clean technology funds and co-investing in companies, providing much needed venture capital to help these innovative businesses grow. The Hermes Fund will focus on investment opportunities aimed at increasing the efficient use of resources (both renewable and non renewable) at all stages of production and consumption.

Over the past decade, the UK has emerged as a European frontrunner in alternative energy investment and is well positioned to further develop a sustainable market competitive globally.  The Hermes Fund will look to benefit from this attractive market framework and expects to commit its capital over the next 2-3 years.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown MP, said

“The UK has a wealth of innovators and entrepreneurs seeking to create the businesses of tomorrow – businesses that will make the UK a world-leader in low carbon innovation and industry, and help to tackle some of the biggest challenges we face around energy and climate change. This fund will provide substantial investment where it is needed and deliver strong returns for investors.”

Science & Innovation Minister, Lord Drayson said:

“Investment has flowed into the UKIIF at extraordinary speed. It’s already one of the largest European funds for investing in high-tech firms. But what’s more important is rapidly channelling that capital into Britain’s burgeoning green tech sector. After a tough spell, things are looking up for our entrepreneurs and innovators.”

Energy and Climate Change Minister David Kidney MP said:

“Cleaning up our energy supplies and improving energy efficiency will give the UK the opportunity to develop the low carbon industries of the future.  This new fund will help the UK to build on existing strengths in the sector and enable British companies to demonstrate and commercialise these technologies.”

Hermes Private Equity CEO Susan Flynn commented:

“Increased awareness of environmental issues and policies to tackle climate change presents a real opportunity for investors and the innovative companies we will invest in. At this stage in the economic cycle there are many forward-looking companies who may not have funding available to them. The Hermes Private Equity Environmental Innovation Fund (HPEEIF) will ensure that those seeking finance for promising new environmental ventures will have access to a source of funding.

We have already identified a number of attractive investment opportunities and anticipate that HEIF will begin to deploy capital shortly.”

The UK Innovation Investment fund was announced last June by the Prime Minister as part of the Government’s strategy for Building Britain’s Future. Hermes Private Equity and the European Investment Fund were confirmed as fund of fund managers for two separate funds of funds. Backed by £150m investment by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department of Health, it has already attracted private investment to more than match this amount with the total first closing of £325m.

The UK Innovation Investment Fund will drive economic growth and create highly skilled jobs by investing in businesses where there are significant growth opportunities. Independent research^* estimates that the global market for low carbon and environmental goods and services (LCEGS) was already worth £3 trillion in 2007/08 and could grow to an estimated £4.3 trillion by 2015.

According to figures from the Carbon Trust, the UK is now the sixth largest low carbon and environmental economy in the world with 3.5% of global market share. This brings annual economic benefits and investment to Britain of £6-8 billion.

The UKIIF will target small growing businesses, start ups and spin outs including pre-profit and pre-revenue stages of development.

Evidence shows that venture capital-backed companies significantly out perform other companies in terms of their ability to create wealth and generate the spill-over benefits including export performance and the creation of high skilled jobs vital to the economy.^**

^* Source – Innovas 2009.

^** Source – British Venture Capital Association DATA 2008 – the economic impact of private equity and VC in the UK.

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is building a dynamic and competitive UK economy by: creating the conditions for business success; promoting innovation, enterprise and science; and giving everyone the skills and opportunities to succeed. To achieve this it will foster world-class universities and promote an open global economy. BIS – Investing in our future.

“Our Government continues to help bring innovative renewable energy technologies from idea to marketplace,” said Minister Raitt. “Investing in these projects will stimulate the growth of a domestic clean energy industry, create high-quality jobs for Canadians and help protect our environment.”

“Through SDTC, the Government of Canada is helping cleantech companies convert their new technologies into market-ready products,” said SDTC Chairman Juergen Puetter. “When these companies bring their technologies to businesses and consumers, they create jobs, provide Canada a technological edge and contribute to an overall reduction in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions”.

These innovative clean technologies involve many of Canada’s main economic sectors, including energy utilization, transportation and waste management. Some highlights of this round include:

Technologies that will help reduce the environmental impacts of the transportation sector by using renewable energy such as electricity and hydrogen to power vehicles.

Biomass-related technologies that will add value to Canada’s forestry and agricultural industries, furthering the development of a bio-based economy.

These new investments bring SDTC’s total portfolio value to over $1.5B. SDTC’s SD Tech Fund™ has completed fifteen funding rounds, committing $464 million to 183 clean technology projects, and leveraging over $1B from project consortia members.  These figures include adjustments made to the portfolio.

SDTC’s investments to date are creating Canadian green jobs, have leveraged additional private sector investment of nearly $900 million and are expected to deliver an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of between 5 and 12 Megatonnes – the equivalent of taking up to 1.5 million homes off the grid.

“The projects included in this funding round show Canada’s great potential and confidence in the cleantech sector,” said Vicky Sharpe, SDTC President and CEO. “Companies and countries around the world are looking to buy clean technologies. It’s through such promising innovations that Canada can seize the cleantech opportunity and become a technology seller to the world.”

The newly funded projects are representative of the investment priorities established in the SD Business Cases™, a series of six reports published by SDTC and which provide strategic insights into specific economic sectors (available in the Knowledge Centre section of the SDTC website at www.sdtc.ca ). The latest report on industrial freight transportation was released on December 2, 2009. Other sectors previously studied include clean conventional fuels, renewable electricity and commercial buildings.

SDTC will be launching its next call for Statements of Interest (SOI) for the SD Tech Fund on February 24, 2010. Applicants with projects that bring technological solutions which fall under the investment priorities established in the SD Business Cases™  and that address climate change, clean air, clean water and clean soil issues are encouraged to apply. Solutions that address more than one of these issues are of greatest interest.

About SDTC

SDTC is an arm’s-length foundation created by the Government of Canada which has received $1.05 billion as part of the Government’s commitment to create a healthy environment and a high quality of life for all Canadians.

SDTC operates two funds aimed at the development and demonstration of innovative technological solutions.  The $550 million SD Tech Fund™ supports projects that address climate change, air quality, clean water, and clean soil.  The $500 million NextGen Biofuels Fund™ supports the establishment of first-of-kind large demonstration-scale facilities for the production of next-generation renewable fuels.

SDTC operates as a not-for-profit corporation and has been working with the public and private sector including industry, academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the financial community and all levels of government to achieve this mandate.

Detailed information on the 16 projects, including their descriptions, can be found here.

London, January 11, 2010 – The world took a big step closer today to a green and more sustainable communications future with the launch of Green Touch™, a global consortium organized by Bell Labs whose goal is to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1000 times more energy efficient than they are today.

A thousand-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world’s communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day.

Today’s Green Touch press conference will be available via a video webcast at 2:30 p.m. GMT (3:30 p.m. CET/9:30 a.m. ET) through the following link: www.greentouch.org

Green Touch brings together leaders in industry, academia and government labs to invent and deliver radical new approaches to energy efficiency that will be at the heart of sustainable networks in the decades to come.  With its launch, the consortium also has issued an open invitation to all members of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) community to join forces in reaching this ambitious target.

“Truly global challenges have always been best addressed by bringing together the brightest minds in an unconstrained, creative environment. This was what we used when putting a man on the moon and is the same approach we need to implement to address the global climate crisis.  The Green Touch initiative is an example of such a response – bringing together scientists and technologists from around the world and from many different disciplines in an environment of open innovation to attack the problem from many different directions,” said Dr. Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy.

“The ICT sector is perfectly placed to bring its innovative and technological forces to bear in the low carbon transition as well as in curbing its own carbon footprint.  The Green Touch Initiative shows how business can play its part in delivering the low carbon society we are working to achieve. With Government creating an environment in which innovation can flourish, we welcome industry coming together with academia to create the research, technology and solutions necessary to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, UK.

“Industry has to play a major role in the drive to increasing global energy efficiency. This is both a matter of environmental responsibility and competitiveness. We regularly endorse such projects in our “pole de compétitivité” (competiveness cluster) policy and the Eureka clusters.  This is a particularly crucial area of focus because of increasing usage of ICT and the Internet. The world-wide Green Touch consortium will open the way to generating major technological breakthroughs.  France supports this project, which is open to all and in which two major French labs are founding members,” said Christian Estrosi, Minister for Industry, France.

“Climate change is an enormous and immediate challenge that needs to be address globally and with bold actions. It is only through harnessing the best minds around the world, regardless of their mother companies, industry, or nationality, that we will make the difference we need to. The Green Touch consortium, with its open innovation model that harnesses the leading minds across the globe and includes experts from every part of ICT, is the model for the sort of radical initiatives that we need to address the huge challenge of global warming,” said Jong-Soo Yoon, Director General, Ministry of Environment, South Korea.

“The Portuguese Government has been taking measures to promote the production of energy by clean technologies. The Green Touch initiative calls our attention to the importance of the network and collaboration between different institutions when we face global challenges as sustainable development.  I encourage the participants of this initiative to bring good solutions to promote the energy efficiency of communication networks,” said Paulo Campos, Secretary of State for Public Works and Communications, Portugal.

“Over the next decade billions more people will upload and share video, images and information over public and private networks as we communicate with each other in new, rich ways. We also expect ICT usage to dramatically increase as other industries use networks to reduce their own carbon footprints.  This naturally leads to an exponential growth in ICT energy consumption which we, as an industry, have to jointly address.  This consortium is unique in looking way beyond making incremental efficiency improvements and tapping into innovation and expertise from around the globe to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in ICT carbon emissions reduction,” Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of research at Bell Labs and consortium lead.

Green Touch Initiative founding members include:

• Service Providers: AT&T, China Mobile, Portugal Telecom, Swisscom, Telefonica
• Academic Research Labs: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), Stanford University’s Wireless Systems Lab (WSL), the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES)
• Government and Nonprofit Research Institutions: The CEA-LETI Applied Research Institute for Microelectronics (Grenoble, France), The Foundation for Mobile Communications (Portugal), imec (Headquarters: Leuven, Belgium), The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA)
• Industrial Labs: Bell Labs, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Freescale Semiconductor

This 1000-fold efficiency target is based on research from Bell Labs that determined that today’s information and communication technology (ICT) networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient than they are today.  This conclusion comes from a Bell Labs’ analysis of the fundamental properties of ICT networks and technologies (optical, wireless, electronics, processing, routing, and architecture) and studying their physical limits by applying established formulas such as Shannon’s Law ^[1].

“With the boom in broadband usage, ICT energy consumption is rapidly increasing and immediate steps need to be taken to address this trend and mitigate its impact,” said Vernon Turner, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Enterprise Computing, Network, Consumer, Telecom and Sustainability at IDC, a leading industry analyst firm.  “What distinguishes the Green Touch Initiative is its commitment to a hugely ambitious yet quantifiable goal that is rooted in hard science.  Its global profile and multi-disciplinary approach will accelerate the necessary fundamental rethinking and development of new technologies.”

To support its objectives the Green Touch Initiative will deliver – within five years –– a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components required to realize this improvement.  This initiative also offers the potential to generate new technologies and new areas of industry.

The first meeting of the consortium will take place in February and will be dedicated to establishing the organization’s five-year plan, first-year deliverables, and member roles and responsibilities.

For those companies interested in joining the consortium, please visit the web site:  www.greentouch.org

About the Green Touch Initiative

Green Touch Initiative, a consortium of leading industry players, research institutions and non-governmental organizations to define the challenge, identify solutions and develop solutions with the goal to deliver the architecture, specifications, roadmap, and demonstrations of key components needed to reduce ICT energy consumption per bit by a factor of 1,000 from current levels within five years. www.greentouch.org

Green Touch Press Contacts

Peter Benedict

Tel: + 33 (0)1 40 76 50 84

peter.benedict@alcatel-lucent.com

Paul Ross

Tel +1 908 230 8030

Paul.ross@alcatel-lucent.com