Where are they now? Checking up on last year's cleantech winners.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION

TIME MARANES ON, AND LAST YEAR WE NARKED IT BY recognizing a handful of companies, institution and individuals as contributor of the year in cleantech.

So one year after last year's winners won their moment in the sun, we decided to catch up with what a few of them have been dong the past year, what progress have they made? What challenges do they face?

Last year's Breakout Cleantech Company of the Year, OPX Biotechnologies Inc., has as chief spokesman Cherles R. "Chas" Eggert, president and CEO of OPX and chairman of the Colorado cleantech Industry Association.

Boulder-based OPX Biotechnologies engineers microbes to create bio-chemicals that are cost-competitive with traditional petroleum-based products. Last year the company raised $41.2 million in private equity financing in order to speed commercialization of industrial-scale production of its first renewable chemical, BioAcrylic, with its partner the Dow Chemical Co.

"The good news this year for us is that we have taken a significant step up, a 10-fold increase in the scale of our opearation, and that demonstration-scale work proved that our technology performed at that larger scale the same way it performed at the smaller, pilot scale going in, "Eggert adds. "So that's a good proof and a good reduction in the perceived risk of our technology being viable for commercialization.

"That's the most significant development that we reported (hiring the course of the year. we have a number of other efforts uncle way.

"We're not in the financing market this Year. We will be next year."

Last year Paul Alan Nelson received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Cleantech Leadership. This Year Nelson, with Saoradh Energy, leads projects in distributed power generation and advanced vehicle fueling and charging infrastructure. Nelson is a founding member of the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association. He also sits on the advisory board of the CU Deming Center for Entrepreneurship in Boulder. The University of Colorado at boulder has awarded Nelson a in business-finance, a B.A. in chemistry with a minor in biochemistry, and a research M.S. in chemistry.

"I am managing partner at Saoradh Energy, where we focus on energy-related projects and company development efforts. For example, this year we worked with Ward Petroleum to launch Ward Alternative Energy in the compressed natural gas vehicle fueling space," Nelson says. "It has been a good year."

Nelson in addition finished a senior adviser role at...