Scientists this week issued a number of disturbing new reports about climate change, but the news brought glimmers of hope as well:

• Millions of tons of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, entered the Earth's atmosphere in 2007 for reasons yet unknown, MIT scientists reported. Methane, which traps about 25 times much heat as carbon dioxide, today accounts for about a fifth of human-caused global warming. Sources of methane include rice paddies and wetlands, the oil and gas industries, and cattle.
• Frogs and salamanders are dying out in Yellowstone National Park at a frightening pace due to global warming, according to Stanford researchers. High temperatures and droughts are drying up the ponds they need for reproduction.
• Walden Pond, made famous by writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau as a natural haven, has in the past century and a half lost more than a quarter of the species documented by Thoreau, according to a report in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Another 36 percent of species that existed in his time are in danger of disappearing. The culprit appears to be temperatures that have warmed an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
• Within four decades, Sydney's famous beaches, coastal homes and other infrastructure may be eroded or inundated by rising sea levels triggered by global warming, according to an Australian government-sponsored study.
• Can you spare a dollar a day to save the planet? Another Australian government study--this time by the Treasury--concludes that greenhouse gas emissions can be rolled back through carbon trading schemes at a cost to households of only $7 a week more for electricity and gas. Real disposable income would continue growing about 1 percent per year. "What this modelling absolutely shows is there is a way ahead which is both pro-growth and pro-jobs," the Treasurer said. "The Australian economy will continue strong growth while reducing emissions. The earlier Australia acts, the cheaper the cost of action, and many of Australia's industries will become more, not less, competitive."
• More and more American businesses are beginning to acknowledge the material significance of climate change risks. After a deal brokered by former US Vice President Al Gore and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Houston-based Dynegy announced it would provide information on its carbon footprint and related risks in its annual reports. Dynegy, which operates power plants in 13 states, is reportedly one of the largest consumers of coal in the United States.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Green pumpkins? Add Halloween to the greening of everything. The Baltimore Sun notes that a "Green Halloween" movement is spreading across the land promoting organic candy, fruit, other wholesome treats, and even costumes made of natural fiber. This Halloween vet, however, will stick with a traditional bowl of chewy gooey candy bars for the wee goblins tonight.
• More greening: The New York City Marathon this Sunday will add biodiesel generators to power official race clocks, loudspeakers, a medical tent and other fixtures at the race's finish line in Central Park. The generators, developed by the GreeNow company, run on 99 percent biodiesel made from U.S.-grown soy, according to The New York Times' City Room blog.
• Senators Obama and McCain are getting a lot of advice from scientists, The New York Times' Dot Earth blog reports. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and some 180 other organizations want the next president to appoint a White House science adviser with cabinet-level rank to provide scientific and technical advice on energy security, climate change and other issues. The groups grumbled that the Bush administration was slow to appoint a science adviser and didn't give the post cabinet rank.

If you're an olive lover, don't throw out those pesky pits: in the right hands, they could be a valuable new source of energy (or moonshine), according to Spanish researchers.

According to a study published in the Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology, olive stones are rich in natural chemicals that can be converted to sugar and then to ethanol. The process uses high-pressure hot water to produce the sugar and yeast fermentation to produce ethanol.

For every 100 kilograms of olive stones you save, count on being able to produce 5.7 kilograms of ethanol with the right equipment. Just be sure to check with your spouse before making any plans.

Despite its preference for the color green, the U.S. Army isn't the first organization that usually comes to mind when you think of environmental sustainability. But with annual spending of at least $3 billion on energy, the army says it's getting serious about energy efficiency and more sustainable energy production.

In addition to appointing a Senior Energy Council to advise the Army on energy policy, programs and funding, the secretary of the Army recently announced several new projects, including:

• the purchase of 4,000 small Neighborhood Electric Vehicles to replace gasoline-powered vehicles traditionally used by maintenance and operations staff for use on its posts;
• a major geothermal project at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev., capable of producing 30 megawatts of clean power;
• biomass fuel demonstrations at six Army posts;
• a pilot energy savings performance contract with the private sector to serve as a model for monitoring and reducing energy consumption;
• and perhaps most exciting, a plan to partner with the private sector to construct a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, Calif., in the Mojave Desert, to provide renewable power on the grid and provide the Army post with added energy security against disruption of power supply.

The Army's planned solar power installation enjoys a unique advantage: the Army owns its site and can thus streamline the permit process. Many solar pioneers are reportedly facing long and costly permit delays for projects on parcels controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Oakland-based BrightSource Energy has warned that if the review process isn't speeded up, delays could send "a chilling signal to large-scale solar developers and their investors."

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Incandescent light bulbs be gone! Bright Green Blog reports on the EU's ban of filament bulbs beginning 2010. This switch will help reduce domestic energy consumption for lighting by 60 percent, saving about 30 million tons of CO2 annually. The 27 EU member states are in good company: Australia, Cuba and the Philippines are other countries phasing out incandescents.
• Project Better Place announces it will silently roll electric vehicles into Australia.  
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in partnership with Cisco, is encouraging Canadians to commit One Million Acts of Green over the next nine months. According to Conscious Consuming blog, acts can include recycling a cell phone and biking to work. What's more, participants can log their acts online and see an immediate impact via an extensive green calculator.
• Treehugger features the Consumer Electronics Association's new report titled Environmental Sustainability and Innovation in the Consumer Electronics Industry. The report discusses the shrinking environmental footprint of the CE industry, including such highlights as an 80 percent waste diversion rate from at least half of the companies interviewed.

Bakersfield, California, sometimes called "the city that oil built," yesterday celebrated its commitment to what may well become the 21st century's leading rival to fossil-fuel energy: solar power.

At a Bakersfield ceremony attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and PG&E Chairman, CEO and President Peter Darbee, Palo Alto-based Ausra, Inc. unveiled the first solar thermal energy plant built in California in nearly 20 years.

The 5-megawatt (MW) Kimberlina demonstration plant, with its thousand-foot long mirrors, uses the same core technology that Ausra plans to install a couple of years from now in a 177-MW plant east of San Luis Obispo that will serve tens of thousands of PG&E customers.

Ausra's Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar technology focuses heat from the sun's rays to create steam to power steam turbine generators, much like traditional power plants, but without use of fossil fuels or harmful emissions.

PG&E's Darbee called the opening of the Kimberlina plant "an important step on the path to commercialization of this new technology."

He also underscored the importance of making continued investments in clean energy projects, despite the nation's difficult economic straits, in order to fight the enormous challenge of climate change.

"I want to restate our commitment as PG&E . . . that we will not take our eye off the ball, that we will continue to pursue energy efficiency, we will continue to pursue demand management, we will continue to pursue renewables," Darbee said.

Commenting on the financial risks that could delay new investments in clean energy projects, Darbee added, "PG&E stands ready, as we were before, to take on the challenge of financing renewables, to work with people collaboratively to move renewable generation forward."

The American Wind Energy Association's call for more investment in electric transmission, noted in Len Anderson's posting, won a major endorsement today from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), whose mission is to ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in North America.

In its 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, NERC highlights both the extraordinary growth of wind power and the challenges posed by integrating such an intermittent resource into the nation's power system.

Over the next 10 years, NERC predicts, the total capacity of wind farms in North America will soar 750 percent--but this clean, renewable power will only do us good if high-capacity transmission lines connect big cities and other load centers with turbines in West Texas, the Dakotas, and other remote areas.

New transmission is also needed to connect reserve power sources, which can be cranked up when the wind dies down.

Unfortunately, owing to local opposition and environmental concerns, transmission permitting, siting and construction typically takes 7 to 10 years, much longer than for new generation, according to the report.

"We need more transmission resources to maintain reliability and achieve environmental goals," commented Rick Sergel, president and CEO of NERC. "Transmission lines are the critical link between new generation and customers, yet we continue to see transmission development lag behind generation additions. Faster siting, permitting, and construction of transmission resources will be vital to keeping the lights on in the coming years."

The American Wind Energy Association yesterday reported that the U.S. wind industry is on track to install a record 7,500 megawatts of wind power this year, enough electricity to power about 2.2 million homes, but the industry group warned that 2009 will not be as strong.

Some highlights from AWEA's third quarter report:

• Texas added 693 MW in the third quarter -- the most of any state -- to boost its total capacity to 6 gigawatts, which pushes the state to the "global leaders" status behind only Germany, India and Spain.
• West Virginia showed the fastest wind power capacity growth in the third quarter, more than tripling existing capacity with a 164-MW project and another 100-MW facility expected to come on line by the end of the year.
• Utah added its first multi-turbine wind project, and in the Dakotas, wind turbine maker Acciona Energy brought its first U.S. turbines project on line straddling the North Dakota/South Dakota border.

Next year, however, won't be as productive, AWEA said. Because of the late one-year extension of the federal wind production tax credit in the bailout bill and the evolving financial crisis, new construction starts of wind farms will likely slow in 2009.

AWEA next year will push the new administration and Congress for a long-term extension of the wind production tax credit, a federal renewable energy standard, national climate-change legislation, and spending for new transmission capacity.

You can read the complete report at AWEA's Web site.

San Francisco-based GreenVolts, which is on track to become the first supplier of utility-scale solar power to PG&E, yesterday announced that it won a $250,000 competitive grant from the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program for a proposal to develop low-cost installation methods for concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) power.

CPV power uses lenses or mirrors to focus solar energy on photovoltaic cells that convert the sun's radiation directly into electricity. The Energy Commission's PIER program supports research, development and demonstration projects aimed (among other objectives) at "developing renewable energy technologies, products, and services that provide electricity customers with more affordable electricity, improved reliability, and a selection of choices."

GreenVolts is currently developing a two-megawatt facility using that technology in Byron, south of Brentwood, under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric. The full project should be completed next year.

The Environmental Protection Agency this month released its fuel efficiency rankings for model year 2009 vehicles--and not surprisingly, the Toyota Prius topped the list of gas misers with 48 miles per gallon (mpg) in city driving and 45 mpg on the highway.

Aside from the Honda Civic Hybrid at 40/45 mpg, mileage ratings dropped quickly into the 30s and below. The Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD earned a booby prizes with a rating of only 11/14 mpg, not much better than a tank.

But while the world rightly applauds the innovation and performance of the Prius, how quickly we forget some car models going back more than a decade that achieved equal or better fuel efficiency, only to be sidelined by cheap gas prices and customer demand for faster acceleration and roomier interiors.

The 3-cylinder Geo Metro XFI, for example, earned stunning ratings of 53/58 mpg, and the much peppier Honda Civic VX managed 48/55 mpg in 1992. The rating system has changed a bit since then, and safety standards have improved, but those models apparently still sell well on eBay thanks to their oustanding fuel efficiency.

Of course, none of these models holds a candle to a single-passenger vehicle designed at the University of British Columbia, which won the annual SAE competition in 2006 with a record 3,145 miles per gallon!

They say virtue is its own reward--but it's always nice when there's an extra prize thrown in for good behavior. In the case of energy efficiency, the extra bonus for doing right by the environment is more jobs, according to a new study by UC Berkeley economist David Roland-Holst.

Roland-Holst's paper, "Energy Efficiency, Innovation, and Job Creation in California," finds that savings from the state's pioneering efficiency measures have allowed California households to spend less on energy and correspondingly more on other goods and services, creating about 1.5 million jobs with a total payroll of $45 billion over the period 1972-2006.

The service sector saw an increase in compensation of nearly $18 billion; wholesale and retail trade enjoyed an increase of just over $11 billion in payrolls, and the financial sector saw an uptick in compensation of more than $7 billion.

At a time when many critics wonder whether the country can afford to fight climate change, the study reminds us to the contrary that "in addition to energy price vulnerability and climate damage, the risks of excessive energy dependence include lower long-term economic growth. A lower carbon future for California is a more prosperous and sustainable future."

Climate change remained a hot topic in the news this week:

• The worldwide meltdown of financial markets called into question the political will to enact cap-and-trade legislation or other curbs on carbon emissions. "The truth is there is a very large question mark hanging over the idea that Congress would take economywide action on global warming with the economy in such anemic shape," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. In Europe, one expert said, "The Germans are giving up and the Italians are getting ready to follow."
• California Gov. Schwarzenegger doesn't buy the calls for caution. "We all know we're going through tough economic times right now, but that's no reason to slow down when it comes to protecting our environment and investing in clean, green technologies," Schwarzenegger said while dedicating a new solar facility at Applied Materials in Sunnyvale.
• EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso rejected the go-slow crowd as well. Speaking to European leaders on Tuesday, he said "Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis. Tackling climate change is central to Europe's future prosperity and to preserve the quality of life on our planet." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a similar declaration to the European Union today.
• At least the British government doesn't appear to be shrinking from the challenge. It plans to issue legally binding targets in a new climate change bill that will require the UK to cut its carbon emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.
• According to Johan Eliasch, the UK's Special Representative on Deforestation, major reforms in world forestry practices will be an essential part of any program to address climate change. "Without action on deforestation, avoiding the worst effects of climate change will be next to impossible, and could lead to additional climate change damages of $1 trillion a year by 2100," he said.
• Meantime, scientists say air temperatures in the Arctic have reached record levels, as the loss of sea ice reduces the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.
  

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Tesla To Delay New Car: The credit crisis has forced electric car developer Tesla Motors to delay its launch of a five-passenger battery-powered sedan and lay off a "modest" number of its 250 employees to save cash. Tesla, which sells the spiffy Roadster, faces stiff competition for electric cars with GM, Nissan, China's BYD Co. and possibly Chrysler, Reuters says.
• Pedaling For Progress In The Bailout: EnviroWonk reports the $700 billion bailout bill has a provision to allow bicycle commuters to get a $20 monthly credit for maintenance, repairs and purchasing, thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who bikes daily to his Washington office.
• What's Fresh Is Not The Only Factor: Environmentally conscious sushi lovers now can get a lot of information about sustainability of the seafood from three new pocket guides, says the New York Times' Dining & Wine page. The guides -- from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense Fund and the Blue Ocean Institute -- agree on which fish are sustainable but present the information in different ways.
• Another Reason For Bats To Like Halloween: The Reuters Environment blog notes that bats may get some help from the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, an unlikely group of conservationists, wind power companies and the federal government. They want to know if stopping spinning turbines during low wind conditions will reduce bat deaths at wind farms.

PG&E's leadership in customer solar, recognized today by an award at the Solar Power International conference and described in Katie Romans' accompanying post, reflects in part the remarkable leadership the state of California has shown in this sector. 

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) reported a few days ago that more solar panels were installed in the first nine months of 2008 under the auspices of the California Solar Initiative than in any previous full year.

PG&E and the state's other two investor-owned utilities together hosted new installations of grid-connected solar photovoltaic capacity totalling 111 megawatts in the first three quarters of this year, up 37 percent over the total for all of 2007.

The California Solar Inititiative is slated to provide more than $2 billion in utility-sponsored rebates for customer solar installations over 10 years.

Thanks in part to programs like this, California housed 69 percent of all grid-connected photovoltaic capacity in the United States last year, according to a recent report by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. California's total worked out to 9.1 watts per person, compared to 7.8 watts per person in Nevada.

The CPUC's report notes that customer demand for solar installations appears to be accelerating, based on the record-breaking number of new applications received in the third quarter (more than 3,000). However, a story in GreenTechMedia reports that some customers are opting to wait until next year to install systems, in order to cash in on higher tax incentives. Even so, the strong growth trend is likely to continue.

Just last week, I posted an entry on PG&E hitting our 25,000 milestone for net metered solar customers. And, this week, the hits keep on coming...

The Solar Power Electric Association (SEPA) today named PG&E winner of the 2008 Solar Business Achievement Awards in the category of Solar Portfolio Leadership. PG&E's award-winning solar portfolio boasts more than 25,000 net metered customer-owned solar installations and more than 2,500 MW in utility contracts for solar power, including both solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies.

Presented today at the Solar Power International conference in San Diego, other award recipients included:

Congratulations to all SEPA award winners. As for PG&E, we will continue to diversify our portfolio.

Do you wonder if you are a good candidate for rooftop solar power? Do you have $100 million to spend on a utility-scale solar plant, but need the ideal location?

German researchers, publishing in this month's issue of Nature Geoscience, are reporting evidence that the arid Sahara desert used to be a virtual Garden of Eden--not once but three times over the past 120,000 years. By studying marine sediments off the coast of Northwest Africa, they determined that grass and lakes covered what are now sandy wastelands, thanks to more favorable rainfall patterns in the past.

 The desert may yet turn green again if an initiative called the Sahara Forest Project gains any traction. A collaboration of inventor Charlie Paton, architect Michael Pawlyn, and engineer Bill Watts, the project marries concentrated solar power installations with a unique Seawater Greenhouse to produce electric power, fresh water and a cool, humid environment suitable for high-yield agriculture in dry coastal regions.

A first-generation greenhouse design, invented by Paton, was built in the Canary Islands; a lower-cost, second-generation model was erected in Abu Dhabi and a third was built recently in Oman. They use cold seawater to condense fresh water out of humid air.

The Sahara is an ideal place to site concentrated solar power plants, which could send electricity to Europe over high-voltage DC transmission lines. (Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy have reportedly both endorsed this concept.) In a clever feat of synergy, the power plants would also contribute waste heat to evaporate seawater for desalination. The greenhouses would use only about a quarter of the fresh water produced, leaving the rest to irrigate ground crops and trees or for use by the solar steam turbines.

The project has been called a "supremely elegant example of sustainable design."  And as another admirer said, it "could potentially produce enough energy for all of Africa and Europe while turning one of the world's most inhospitable regions into a flourishing oasis."

Last Friday's Green Inc. blog offered advice on ways to save money and energy while washing clothes, like using cold water and cleaning the dryer's lint trap after every load.

How 20th century.

Coming soon, the greenest way to clean up grease and grime may be with plastic, not water and detergent or dry-cleaning solvents.

You read that white.

Professor Stephen Burkinshaw at Leeds University in England claims that he has invented a method of washing an ordinary load of laundry with only one cup of water--using thousands of reusable plastic chips to scrub away dirt. Clothes emerge all but dry in the process.

A story in the London Independent quotes him as saying, "We've shown that it can remove all sorts of everyday stains including coffee and lipstick while using a tiny fraction of the water used by conventional machines."

Drought-stricken California residents would certainly welcome such a technology. And besides saving millions of gallons of precious water, they would also save huge amounts of energy now used to heat water in traditional washers and driers.

Xeros, Ltd. is commercializing the technology and says it may have a product to market as early as 2009.

Here's a roundup of some of the week's major news on climate change:

• The director of the U.N. University's Institute on the Environment and Human Security warned this week that environmental damage caused by climate change, including flooding and desertification, could displace 200 million people by 2050.
• As many as three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies could be damaged or killed if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
• Keeping world temperatures from rising beyond that level will require cutting greenhouse gas emissions about 60 percent below current levels, according to Britain's independent Climate Change Committee. For Great Britain, that will mean eliminating nearly all use of fossil fuels to produce electric power.
• A new report by health experts at the Wildlife Conservation Society cites 12 deadly diseases that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, putting human health at risk. The "deadly dozen" include plague, Ebola, tuburculosis, cholera, and avian flu. Sleep well on that tonight.
• Enough bad news. While most of the world is warming, one part of south-eastern Spain has actually been cooling an average of 0.3 °C per decade since 1983. The secret is the region's 26,000 hectares of greenhouses. According to a Spanish researcher, the white structures reflect so much sun that they cool the earth!
  

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

California was a leader in the early days of wind power, with the development of huge wind farms at Altamont Pass and Tehachapi Pass. Now a San Francisco-based startup, Principle Power, is racing to become the first U.S. firm to develop a wind farm offshore.

Principle Power, which also has an office in Seattle, recently signed an agreement with an Oregon agency to begin work on a phased development of a 150 megawatt floating wind power plant off the coast of Tillamook County.

Unlike existing offshore wind farms in Europe, which mount turbines on large steel tubes embedded tens of meters into the seabed, Principle Power plans to use unique floating platforms designed by Berkeley-based Marine Innovation & Technology. The project as currently envisioned would consist of 30 floating turbines, each with 5 MW of capacity.

The attraction of putting wind farms offshore may not be immediately obvious, given the harsh conditions and complicated logistics. But winds often blow harder and more consistently offshore than on land. Site acquisition costs are typically much lower offshore. And offshore wind farms may actually be closer to load centers than their terrestrial counterparts.

Principle Power has lots of competition. A recent report by the Department of Energy says the eight or nine proposals currently under development in state or federal waters total 1,500 MW.

Perhaps the best known is Cape Wind, whose plans to site turbines off of Nantucket have been stalled by esthetic objections.

Garden State Offshore Energy this month was awarded rights by New Jersey regulators to build a $1 billion wind farm off the southern coast of that state. Other projects are afoot off the coasts of Delaware and Rhode Island.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service is reportedly putting the finishing touches on a rule to govern leasing of offshore lands for alternative-energy production, which will be a boon to developers.

Principle Power has a long way to go to raise money and prove that it can deliver. As the Department of Energy report noted, "the commercialization of offshore energy faces many technical, regulatory, socioeconomic, and political barriers." But since when did that ever stop dedicated entrepreneurs from trying?

PG&E hit a mighty milestone in solar this week -- 25,000 customer-owned solar installations and counting.

What does this mean for an energy utility? It makes our customers the leading adopters of solar energy in the country, making up approximately 50 percent of the customer-owned solar in the nation. But, it also helps solar generation become more cost effective and reliable than ever.

Well, don't take our word for it...

Check out what California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had to say about what it means to the state and the city, respectively.

"I applaud this significant solar energy milestone, which goes a long way toward helping California meet its long-term renewable energy and climate change goals. Thousands of California homeowners are choosing to 'Go Solar' because it's good for their pocketbooks and for the environment, and they are a huge part of the reason that California continues to lead the nation in solar adoption." - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

"The City of San Francisco's solar incentives, combined with PG&E's incentives provided through the California Solar Initiative, allow us to infuse the city with a clean and reliable source of energy. PG&E solar customers are national leaders in customer-owned solar generation, and San Francisco is proud to support solar adoption as part of our larger environmental commitment." - Mayor Gavin Newsom

And, of course, the customer, the customer, the customer.

David Bower is nothing short of a case study in smart energy management and environmental leadership. Mr. Bower has completely retrofitted the 130-year-old Victorian home with state-of-the-art energy efficiency upgrades -- no small task. Now, with his new solar installation, which qualified for federal, state and local incentives, Mr. Bower will enjoy even greater energy savings.

We'll handle solar installations. I'm guessing Mr. Bower is busy counting some green of his own.

Economic turmoil aside, one of the recent silver green linings is the passage of tax incentives for renewable energy development. Clearly the solar industry has much to celebrate, including the flurry of exciting announcements issued today:

• Gonzales Winery in Monterey County will soon be home to the world's largest winery solar power energy system. Sized at one megawatt, the system will be installed by Constellation Wines U.S. and will meet 50 percent of the winery's total energy requirements.
• The San Francisco Chronicle's David Baker reports on a California-based solar company that's shaking up the solar industry. Solyndra exited stealth mode today with a radically different approach to solar (think tubes), $600 million in funding and $1.2 billion in customer contracts.
• New thin-film manufacturer Konarka opened a new manufacturing plant today in Massachusetts that will have a production capacity of one gigawatt per year. Click here for the New York Times' report on the effort that is repurposing equipment from an old Polaroid printing facility.

The long struggle to extend federal tax credits for the renewable energy industry resembled a season of The Perils of Pauline: By one count it took nine votes in Congress before the long-awaited investment and production credits finally passed last week as part of the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The solar industry won an eight-year extension of a 30 percent credit for residential and commercial solar power installations. One industry-sponsored study predicts that this credit will create more than 400,000 new jobs in the solar power industry.

The bill also extends production tax credits to the biomass, geothermal and marine (wave and tidal) energy industries for two years, and to the wind power industry for one year.

By spurring the development of renewable energy, the credits promise a win for the environment, a win for the increasingly depressed U. S. economy, a win for emerging industries, and a win for PG&E and other utilities that have contracted with renewable power companies to provide cleaner energy for their customers.

Since the start of 2007, PG&E has contracted for more than 2,600 megawatts of new renewable power. Many of those projects are still under development and count on tax credits as a condition of financing and development. Failure to renew the credits could have put them, and hundreds like them around the country, in jeopardy.

PG&E worked hard to help Congress understand the need to act, in partnership with organizations such as Alliance to Save Energy, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Clean Energy Now, Edison Electric Institute, and Solar Energy Industry Association. PG&E chief executive Peter Darbee stressed the critical need for tax incentives in an address to the 2008 United Nations Investor Summit on Climate Risk and in a lead opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle, among other places.

Extension of the tax credits removes the single biggest hurdle to the development of renewable power, but not the only one. As the California Public Utilities Commission (and many other parties) have noted, continuing challenges include the cost and delay in building transmission to serve new renewable power plants, developer inexperience, financing uncertainty, and site control and permitting.

With new warnings about the perils of global warming emerging almost daily, most experts agree on the urgency of finding ways to use energy more efficiently in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without slowing economic growth.

A new scorecard issued by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) gives California the top prize among all 50 states for energy efficiency, with a total score of 40.5 out of 50 points. Oregon, Connecticut and Vermont were close runners up.

The bottom-ranked state was Wyoming, with a grand total of zero points. Wyoming just barely saved North Dakota and Alabama, with 1.5 points each, from sharing the booby prize.

Califonia's leadership is no accident. The state's Energy Action Plan makes energy efficiency "the resource of first choice for meeting California's energy needs." The California Energy Commission estimates that the state's building and appliance standards alone "have saved consumers more than $56 billion in electricity and natural gas costs since 1978 and averted building 15 large power plants."

PG&E and other utilities have long had programs to help customers save money by saving energy. Since 1976, PG&E's energy efficiency programs have saved an estimated $22 billion and prevented 135 million tons of CO2 emissions. The ACEEE report gives California and Connecticut top marks for providing utilities with incentives to promote energy efficiency.

Joseph Romm, former acting assistant secretary of energy and founder of the non-profit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, lauded California's record earlier this year in Salon magazine:

While a few states have energy-efficiency strategies, none matches what California has done. In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California's much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.

How did California do it? In part, a smart California Energy Commission has promoted strong building standards and the aggressive deployment of energy-efficient technologies and strategies -- and has done so with support of both Democratic and Republican leadership over three decades. . . .

Significantly, California adopted regulations so that utility company profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. This is called "decoupling." It also allowed utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve. The bottom line is that California utilities can make money when their customers save money. That puts energy-efficiency investments on the same competitive playing field as generation from new power plants.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Think it doesn't really matter if you pass on using [insert eco-friendly item here]? Think again. As reported this week in the Wall Street Journal, new statistics tallied by consultant McKinsey & Co indicate that U.S. consumers have direct or indirect control over 65% of the country's greenhouse-gas emissions. Green power to the people!
• Véhicules plus vert à Paris. The Paris Auto Show kicked off this week displaying a variety of alternative fuel vehicles, many of which are scheduled to be sold across the pond very  soon. Check out the New York Times' slideshow here.
• Following on the heels of Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens, Google launched a $4 trillion clean-energy plan this week to wean the U.S. off coal and oil for electricity production by 2030. The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog examines the feasibility of their green vision.
• A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder uncovers a large source of fine, organic particle pollutants that contribute to hazy skies and poor air quality. Get the scoop from Science Daily here.

This week brought more doom-and-gloom warnings about climate change, as well as some belated action from Congress to promote renewable energy: 

• Scientists assembled at a three-day summit, sponsored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, warned that global warming could kill up to a third of the planet's species by the end of the century if dramatic steps aren't taken to protect fragile ecosystems.
• The British government's top climate change expert, Vicky Pope, warned that if the world takes no action to slash greenhouse gas emissions, "temperatures could rise as high as 7C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century. This would lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts." Even in the most optimistic scenario, where emissions fall 3 percent a year instead of increasing (as today) by 1 percent a year, temperatures are likely to grow about 2C by the end of the century.
• Taking strong measures to reduce GHG emissions by cutting the use of fossil fuels could produce tens of billions of dollars in ancillary benefits to the European Union (not to mention other parts of the world) by curbing other harmful emissions (such as particulates) that are known to increase mortality, according to a new study by three environmental organizations.
• The first U.S. cap-and-trade auction designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sponsored by a group of Northeastern states known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, raised $40 million last week. The auction set the price of carbon  at just over $3 a ton. Ned Raynolds, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "This shows it's possible to put a price on polluting and the sky won't fall. What was a concept now is a reality."
• The U.S. Congress this week passed a $700 billion bank rescue bill that included billions of dollars in tax incentives for the renewable energy industry, plug-in electric vehicles, and energy efficiency improvements. The extension of these credits should spur new investment and potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs in wind, solar, geothermal and other relatively clean energy technologies.

If you are as reliant on your morning cup o' joe as I am, you will be just as happy to hear that coffee has a new ally in the fight against climate changes that can put the precious crop at risk.

According to the October issue of BioScience, and as seen on the Medical News and Health News blog, shade trees can actually help improve crops' resistance to the higher temperatures and changes in precipitation that have resulted from intensified production over the years. Starbucks: take note.

The Daily Green takes the power of java one step further in its recent post, which cites Ivette Perfecto of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, who makes the claim, "Shaded coffee is ideal because it will buffer the system from climate change while protecting biodiversity."

So, not only is shade-grown coffee more resistant to the elements, it also fights climate change by contributing to a richer ecosystem.

Make mine a double!

Everyone these days is talking about the potential for new jobs in sectors that promise to help the environment.

The latest example is a new study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which projects that investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency will create 4.2 million new "green" jobs over the next three decades, making it perhaps "the fastest growing segment of the economy."

But those jobs won't all just happen automatically. The city of Oakland is jump-starting the process by contracting with three organizations to inaugurate the Oakland Green Job Corps, described by the Oakland Tribune as "an ambitious plan to lift at-risk youths out of lives of poverty and violence and place them into jobs helping the environment."

The training will start with general job readiness skills and basic construction practices, followed by modules on topics like solar installation, hazardous waste recycling and energy efficiency practices. The program will train about 40 students the first year and then seek to place them as apprentices with various Bay Area employers.

The city plans to tap three non-profit institutions--Laney College and Cypress Mandela, Inc. of Oakland, and Growth Sector Inc. of San Francisco to design and operate the program for its first eight months.

Funding comes from a national green-job training program authorized by Congress after the idea was championed by Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland and chief executive of Green for All.

A colleague was complaining in the lunch room today that weather forecasts call for possible rain this weekend. All I could think of were these ominous facts issued today in the California Department of Water Resources' Weather and Climate Newsletter. (Caution: Do not read the following information if you are prone to depression.)

• This water year, Oct. 1, 2007 - Sept. 30, 2008 has seen a deficit of as much as 10-20 inches of precipitation in the Sierra, source of much of our State's water supply.
• The seven-month period March-Sept, 2008 was the driest on record in the Northern Sierra. Only 3.5" of rainfall was received; merely 23% of average.
• For the Northern Sierra, the last 2 water years are the 9th driest 2-year period on record (88 years of record).
• Statewide precipitation for the six-month period, March - August, 2008 was only 31% of average; the driest March - August in 114 years of record for the State.
• State's major reservoirs are storing about 1/3rd of their capacity at a time they would typically be at about 2/3rds.
• Lake Oroville is at its lowest carryover storage since the drought of 1977. By the end of the calendar year, it may fall to a new record low.

Continued drought conditions will mean less inexpensive hydropower, degraded plant and wildlife habitats, and more devastating fire seasons. They may ultimately result even in browner golf courses. So pray for rain!

California's Gov. Schwarzenegger yesterday signed a pioneering bill to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions--not by controlling energy use directly, but instead by curbing sprawl development that makes long car trips all but inevitable.

SB375, authored by State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), aims to reduce the number of miles people drive by promoting housing and land-use plans that foster sustainable communities, alternative transportation options (including walking), and healthier lifestyles.

The new law is the first of its kind in the country. "This landmark bill takes California's fight against global warming to a whole new level, and it creates a model that the rest of the country and world will use," Governor Schwarzenegger said.

To learn more about some of the planning options Steinberg has in mind, check out the new report Smart Infill, published by the Bay Area conservation organization Greenbelt Alliance. Steinberg says it gives "local leaders practical tools to encourage climate-friendly development in their communities."

Investments in clean technology startups hit a record $2.6 billion in the third quarter, a 37 percent jump from the third quarter last year and a 17 percent hike over the second quarter this year, according to a report out this morning from the Cleantech Group. Total investments so far this year -- $6.6 billion -- are running ahead of $6 billion for all of 2007. California-based companies hauled in 42 percent of the investments.

Venture capital firms invested in 158 companies globally with a focus on three principal sectors -- smart power grids, algae companies, and solar power developers. Electric grid companies raised a record $202 million in the period, reflecting the growing move into plug-in electric vehicles by major automakers. Algae biofuel producers took in $95 million and solar power startups raised a record $620 million.

"Cleantech venture investing has continued to show strong growth despite the unprecedented turmoil in the credit markets during the quarter," said Michael Goguen, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and co-chair of Cleantech's advisory board. Cleantech is an investor group and market researcher.

Brian Fan, senior director of research for the Cleantech Group, said the third quarter "will probably be the high point for investment for at least several quarters," citing the current financial and economic troubles.

The five most active investors in the third quarter in the number of deals all have connections to Silicon Valley. RockPort Capital Partners topped the list with six deals, followed by Google Inc. with five, Advanced Technology Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with four each, and Khosla Ventures with three.

Both Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures have invested in Ausra Inc., a solar-thermal energy systems company which is developing a solar plant for PG&E in central California. Ausra announced today that it has secured $60.6 million in its latest preferred equity financing from a group led by KERN Partners of Calgary, Alberta.