Sad news from the once hot cleantech VC realm. During the first three months of 2009, investments have dropped 48 percent.

It doesn’t bode well for the burgeoning field, or does it? Here’s the silver lining according to the Wired Science report:

Still, on a slightly longer time scale, green tech funding is far more accessible than at almost any time in the last 25 years. According to The Cleantech Group numbers, the $1 billion pulled in from January through March is more than the total venture capital investment in green tech in 2005.

“It’s important to put these numbers in perspective,” Ira Ehrenpreis, a longtime green tech investor and booster at the firm, Technology Partners, said in a statement released by GTM Research. “The $800 million of investment this quarter is more capital than has been invested annually for most of the years that we’ve been investing in the clean tech sector.”

Source: Wired Science