Private equity firm Warburg Pincus will invest up to $355m in First Green Partners, a newly-formed early-stage venture capital (VC) company.
First Green will, in turn, invest in early-stage companies that focus on developing methods of converting renewable carbon, such as non-food biomass and carbon dioxide to fuels and chemicals, and applications of clean or green technologies in the conventional energy or industrial process,
First Green will make initial investments of $500,000 to $10m in each emerging technology and up to $100m in a single business as it commercializes.
Doug Cameron, former chief science officer at VC firm Khosla Ventures, and Tom Erickson, a general partner of VC firm BlueStream Ventures, are co-presidents of First Green.
Erickson said: "Warburg Pincus has deep domain expertise in the energy industry and a broad network of relationships in both conventional and unconventional energy."
Warburg Pincus has more than $30bn in assets under management and since 1996 has invested more than $5.5bn of equity for 42 companies around the world involved in oil and gas exploration and production, midstream, power generation, oilfield technology and related-services, and alternative energy development, including: Antero Resources, Bill Barrett, Canbriam Energy, Ceres, Competitive Power Ventures, Kosmos Energy, MEG Energy, Newfield Exploration, Omega Energia, Spinnaker Exploration, Suniva and Targa Resources.