The California Clean Energy Fun has announced today that they closed an $11 million fund, The CalCEF Angel Fund with money from institutional investors and CalCEF committed to spur the growth of renewable energy technologies.

CalCEF is an independent non-profit which was created in 2004 as a result of the bankruptcy proceeding of Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E), which is an investors and industry partner. Angel investment often is committed in increments of $500,000 or less to early stage companies that show promise, so that the founding team can build prototypes, go after new clients and demonstrate proof of concept.

Alphabet Energy is among the fund’s portfolio companies. The startup was spun out of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where last week a team of scientists announced a breakthrough yeast that could revolutionize how ethanol is made from biomass.

According to the Alphabet Electric home page, more than 60 percent of the energy we produce is wasted as heat. Alphabet Energy is working to pioneer composite materials that turn this wasted heat into energy. Tapping into this energy source offers tremendous profit potential for the company or companies that do it right.

In their young years still, renewable energy technologies are relying on sex appeal and future growth to nab the vast pools of money they need. Investors are seeing little return on their dollars and this is likely to remain the case until clean energy is cost competitive with conventional fuel sources without the need for subsidies. Right now the best way to cash out is to take a company public, even when they have dubious finances, or a very long profit horizon.