Silicon Valley has always been a place for startups operating in the software, semiconductors and other computing tech sectors to raise money. Starting around 2006, Silicon Valley investments in “cleantech,” a catch-all term for technologies related to renewable energy and other environmentally beneficial areas, started gathering steam. It’s been estimated that startups in the clean energy sector alone had gathered a total of $25 billion from VCs, but of that total, it’s been estimated that over half was lost.