NYS Comptroller's Green Strategic Investment Program helps make the U.S. one of the top ten countries for cleantech

The New York State Comptroller's Green Strategic Investment Program helped place the U.S. in the top ten cleantech countries in the world, according to a recent posting by Sustainable World Capital in Cleantech news.

According to the report, the winners are:

1. Denmark
2. Germany
3. Sweden
4. The United Kingdom
5. Israel
6. Switzerland
7. The United States
8. United Arab Emirates
9. China
10. Canada

The story notes that "The United States, with American-based VCs pouring about $5.9 billion of new investments into the sector in 2008, leads the world with 70 percent of total global investment. Preeminent VCs such as Nth Power, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, RockPort Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Enterech Capital and corporate investors such as Google and Intel have helped to fuel cleantech. Other large U.S. investors in cleantech include CalPERS, California State Teachers Retirement System, New York State Retirement Fund and the Oregon Investment Fund."

The New York State Green Strategic Investment Program (GSIP) was established to commit $500 million over three years to environmentally focused investment strategies.  Recently, the GSIP chose to invest $200 million of the assets of the New York State Common Retirement Fund (NYSCRF) in the FTSE Environmental Technology 50 (FTSE ET50) and the HSBC Global Climate Change Index.  Investment in companies in both indexes will be internally managed by the $154.5 billion NYSCRF.

Launched in December, 2007, the FTSE ET50 is designed to measure the financial performance of the 50 largest environmental technology companies worldwide. Twenty-one of the 50 companies in the Index are based in the US. Currently, the three top constituents in the Index are Vestas Wind Systems of Denmark, Suez Environnement of France, and US-based First Solar.

Read more about the New York State Green Strategic Investment Fund:
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/green/factsheet.pdf
Read the entire story about the top ten cleantech countries in the world at:
http://cleantech.com/news/5127/top-10-cleantech-countries-2009