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.

The ever-growing Oracle OpenWorld descends upon San Francisco today, complete with its full cadre of patrons, partners...and, this year, green techies.

As part of an overarching green focus, leading panelists will discuss topics such as data center efficiency, smart meters and other ways to "green the enterprise."

In fact, PG&E will be one of few accepting Oracle's Empower the Green Enterprise award for our SmartMeter program. Presented to select customers and partners that utilize Oracle's products to take an environmental lead, while reducing costs and improving business efficiencies, the award will be presented to PG&E for managing billing, payments, credit/collections and meter inventory using Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing on an Oracle enterprise grid.

Oracle's OpenWorld will also feature such fodder as laptop-charging stationary bicycles and other interactive tips and tricks for reducing the conference's -- and one's own -- carbon footprint. While many of these displays serve more of an "edu-active" purpose, the need for such large-scale conferences to control their carbon footprint is very real. Check out the numbers, per today's San Francisco Chronicle: 

• 43,000 local and out-of-town attendees, each with a host of chargeable electronic equipment
• 72,000 lunches, complete with disposable packaging and utensils

Then, there's the conference crowds and traffic, likely more of a headache for locals than a significant environmental threat.

With this footprint comes great opportunity for sustainable practices. Oracle's efforts to balance out some of its own environmental footprint have the potential to make a big -- or smaller -- impact compared to that of last year.

Usually met with moans and groans of local SOMA-ites, this year's more sustainable OpenWorld should be welcomed with OpenArms.

Rock 'n' roll legend Janis Joplin launched many outdoor concerts in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in the late '60s but her spirit may have felt a little lost this weekend at the three-day, 65-bands Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in GGP. Eco-Lands environmental exhibits? Solar and wind-powered cell phone charging? Carbon footprint calculator? Help! What gives?

Festivals are going green. Ditto for political conventions. The Democratic convention opening this morning in Denver is coloring itself green. The party aims to recycle or compost at least 85 percent of the convention waste and leave town with a carbon-neutral footprint. Republicans won't be outdone at their party next week. The GOP "is committed to making this year's nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the 'greenest' in party history." Eco-awareness is spreading.

Joel Selvin, senior pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted the movement in his review today of the Outside Lands Festival:

"The technology exhibits proved surprisingly popular and the crowd easily adopted the three-way recycle/compost/landfill refuse collections that should now be standard for public events. For the young crowd that was the event's target audience, this kind of techno-eco-consciousness helped strengthen the subtext." Festival producers said 150,000 people attended over the weekend.

Corporate sponsors included AT&T, Visa, Dell and PG&E, and non-profit organizations set up tents to provide information on issues ranging from water conservation to voter registration to environmental education.

PG&E provided a range of energy technologies, services and information for the festival, among them the Outside Lands Solar Stage in partnership with Sustainable Waves, the Pop Up Cafe made entirely of materials reclaimed from the San Francisco dump, Smart Energy information, Carbon Footprint Calculators and the utility's ClimateSmart program.

Hot on the heels of naming its 44 finalists last week, the California Clean Tech Open keeps the momentum alive with an Energy Efficiency symposium tonight at PG&E's own auditorium.

Beginning with opening remarks from California Public Utilities Commissioner Dian Grueneich and PG&E Director of Customer Energy Efficiency Roland Risser, the symposium hopes to draw together researchers and engineers, industry professionals, and entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs.

The topic du jour? Energy efficiency.

From companies like Power Assure, which claims their pending software can cut Data Center electricity bills by 50 per cent, to Serious Materials, which develops eco-friendly building materials -- CCTO finalists are bringing cutting edge energy efficiency technologies to the market. And, with a backdrop of skyrocketing energy prices, carbon consciousness and regulatory mandates, their timing couldn't be better.

Tonight's energy efficiency symposium will engage key players in this dialogue and also bring us one step closer to making the winner's technology a reality.

Today marks the beginning of Intersolar North America 2008 - the nation's largest trade event serving the complete solar energy supply chain. 

And with it, of course, a ton of major solar announcements to leverage the excitement around the event.  Below is a list of some announcements leading up to and during today's conference.

• Concentrated photovoltaic provider, GreenVolts, today announced that it is going to raise a series B funding round of a little less than $100 million.
• Ausra, a utility-scale solar technology provider and developer, announced that it was looking into selling its solar powered steam for oil recovery. 
• First Solar announced that it will build California's first thin-film photovoltaic solar power plant. 
• As reported by NEXT100's Len Anderson, SunPower announced that it was going to build a 25 megawatt photovoltaic solar plant, the nation's largest, for Florida Power and Light.

Stay tuned.  With three more days of Intersolar, there will no doubt be more to come.

The next time Stanford University hosts a Silicon Valley "energy summit," it may want to find a larger space than the Arrillaga Alumni Center - like the football stadium across the street. Some 400 people - corporate leaders, mayors, regulators, state energy commissioners, economists, engineers, professors, consultants, venture capitalists and newly-minted graduates looking for jobs - jammed the center today to get a sense of where "The New Energy Economy" may be headed. Put a bet on Energy Efficiency.

Professor Jim Sweeney, director of Stanford's Precourt Insitute for Energy Efficiency, set the tone at the outset this morning: "The next 20 years will be dominated by energy efficiency."

Morning keynoter CPUC Commissioner Dian Grueneich echoed the message, noting that the CPUC's strategic draft plan for energy efficiency will be issued on Monday. The plan lays out four initiatives to reach "zero net energy" goals for new construction of commercial buildings in California by 2030 and a similar result for new home construction by 2020. The plan also sets goals for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and measures to ensure low-income ratepayers get a piece of the energy efficiency pie. The next round of energy efficiency funding in California will run $3 billion in 2009-2011, she said.

The Efficiency ball kept on rolling through the morning. Bob Hines, vice president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a summit sponsor, retraced the group's steps in partnership with PG&E to develop and complete energy efficiency projects with the likes of companies like IBM, Yahoo and Cisco.

A separate panel walked us through the technical ins and outs of commercial building retrofits for high-efficiency chillers, cooling towers, exhaust relief fans, and high-efficiency transformers and flywheels. My head was spinning. But it stopped when panelist Mukesh Khatter, energy director at Oracle, said something very clear: Through energy efficiency programs, his company saved enough electricity to light up 1,700 homes.

Energy efficiency also headed PG&E CEO Peter Darbee's priorities. Energy efficiency "is our single most important opportunity...the 'first fuel' and among our most cost-effective solutions," he told the conference. "Our plan is to meet half of PG&E's aggregate demand growth in the next 10 years through efficiency savings."

Incentives are essential to promote energy efficiencies, Darbee said. "If we get the incentives right, utility energy efficiency programs can be a big part of the solution for California and the country."

Darbee also called for utilities to revitalize basic infrastructure and equip the power grid with smart technologies and smart meters; reduce the carbon intensity of power generation with the expansion of renewable power supplies; and set up a workable, market-based framework for greenhouse gas regulation. PG&E supports a cap-and-trade approach.

Bad news: Expect higher utility rates due mainly to rising fuel costs, hot demand in China and India for construction materials, more expensive renewable supplies, and big capital needs to fund infrastructure, Darbee said. Good news: Utility rates in California over the long term have risen less than the total increase in the consumer price index. And expected rate hikes in the state will be substantially below 20-30 percent increases forecast in other states. PG&E rates have been helped by lower prices for nuclear and hydro generation, hedging long-term power contracts, and efforts to reduce business costs.

This week has unexpectedly been dominated by the topic of Green Buildings. 

On Monday, I attended a presentation at PG&E by UC Davis Professor Deb Niemeier on energy use in the context of neighborhood design.  She presented research on a comparison of energy use by two distinct communities in Davis, Village Homes and Mace Ranch.  Created by Mike Corbett 25 years ago, Village Homes is a seventy acre subdivision designed to focus on the conservation of energy use and natural resources.  Mace Ranch, on the other hand, is a typical 1990's style subdivision, with little conservation design philosophy.  It makes for an interesting comparison as household income and size do not very much by each community. 

Not surprisingly, Dr. Niemeier's research based on PG&E energy use data, found that Village Homes used considerably less energy annually than the homes in Mace Ranch.  The smallest design considerations - such as which direction a home faces, how it heats its water, the use of trees for shading, and the types of construction products - can have a significant impact.  More surprisingly, Village Homes had considerably older appliances than those in Mace Ranch.  With updated appliances in Village Homes, the energy use variances would have been even greater, according to Dr. Niemeier. 

On Tuesday, I attended a panel on green buildings called "Going Green" and hosted by iReuse, Studley, and Skyline Construction.  The panelists included David Hayes, CEO of Skyline Constructionn; Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability for Autodesk; Steven Wolmark, vice president of SKS Investments; and Eunice Barnett, a business manager for PG&E.

Two points from this panel really stuck out:

1.  David Hayes said that, if done correctly, there is now only a one-two percent marginal difference on building a LEED Certified building and a traditional building. In the last couple of years he's really seen the price of LEED inputs decrease.  David also made the point that buildings account for 50% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, so there's a huge opportunity and responsibility for

2.  Lynelle Cameron made a very compelling case for why Autodesk's CAD technology is at the center of the green building industry and alluded to some very cool new technology that will help planners and builders account for sustainability when beginning the design process.

Restaurants are going green. The National Restaurant Association's annual convention  gets underway Saturday in Chicago and the agenda is big on green, with "education" sessions like "Food with Integrity: Creating a Sustainable Food Supply," "5 Things Operators Must Know About Energy Efficiency," and "Marketing to Conserving Customers: A Guide to Operating Green with a Triple Bottom Line."

The NRA aims to encourage owners of the nation's 945,000 restaurants to adopt environmentally friendly business-wise practices to save energy and water and reduce utility costs, satisfy consumer demand, and reduce waste.

A USA Today story on Friday reports that former media tycoon Ted Turner is taking his Ted's Montana Grills casual dining restaurants down the green road, adding things like straws made from biodegradable paper, menus printed on 100 percent recycled paper, and cups made from cornstarch.

"Imagine the implications for global warming if we get the whole restaurant industry to go green," Turner said.

Here's some useful industry information from PG&E's Food Service Technology Center, cited in the USA Today story: Restaurants are the retail world's largest energy user. They use almost five times more energy per square foot than any other type of commercial building. Nearly 80 percent of the $10 billion that the commercial food service spends annually for its energy use is lost in inefficient food cooking, holding and storage. The average restaurant annually consumes roughly 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, 20,000 therms of natural gas and 800,000 gallons of water. Using EPA carbon equivalents, that amounts to 490 tons of carbon dioxide produced per year per restaurant.

Here in the Bay Area, you can find "green" restaurants and cafés certified in nine counties by the Bay Area Green Business Program. There's even a green-certified saloon in San Francisco - the Elixir - which specializes in organic cocktails.

So, today I experienced my first foray into my dual role as Environmental Communications Representative for PG&E and Reporter -- how sweet it is.

While attending the California Climate Action Registry Annual Conference on behalf of PG&E, I found myself merrily amidst the key players in others Navigating the Carbon World, as is the theme of this year's conference. In speaking with The Climate Registry's Executive Director Diane Wittenberg and Board Member Doug Scott, director of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, I was able to glean a few insights into the carbon market today and what we can expect in the future.

And what I was able to glean is that we cannot have the market until we have the regulations to drive that market in a meaningful way -- which is what The Climate Registry seeks to develop. The U.S. needs standard, voluntary carbon reporting in order to create markets that are responsive to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In Diane's words, "you've got to measure what you've got first."

In some sense, The Climate Registry must serve both masters -- voluntary and mandatory markets. A couple of months ago, we were able to see this happen with voluntary carbon offsets in California, with the signing of the first ever forest projects verified under California Climate Action Registry (CCAR) protocols. However, according to Doug Scott, we are still working on mandatory protocols.

The good news: The Climate Registry is working with the US EPA on its charge to develop reporting and is looking to the work already done, here in California and elsewhere. In fact, through The Climate Registry's work, 4/5ths of the country -- and the country's emissions -- is already working with The Climate Registry on these protocols...nothing to sneeze at. Bottom line is that The Climate Registry's objective is to stay nimble enough to sustain any changes at the Federal level. Amen.

When I safely positioned The Climate Registry as a sounding board for all regional protocols, I was promptly corrected that The Climate Registry is not just a sounding board, but an actual working mechanism for regions to create working policy that will hopefully translate to a national paradigm.

We will see what tomorrow holds but, as is the case with my dual-identity, today's news is indeed daunting and also enlightening on Navigating the Carbon World.

I'll be the first to admit it -- I don't really get all the fuss around big school rivalries. Yet I am surrounded by them through friends and family: UCLA-USC, Boise State-Univ. of Idaho...and, of course, UC Berkeley-Stanford.

While they may not play nice on the field, Berkeley and Stanford came together (for the second time!) in a meeting of the minds on cleantech, specifically "Big Solar," as this year's conference was aptly named.

PG&E, along with GreenVolts, SunPower and others working to bring solar to the masses discussed issues such as state policy and innovations in solar technology -- all as related to utility-scale solar. The idea is: by bringing together today's thought leaders with up-and-comers of tomorrow, not only can we work to address the framework issues of the day, we can also start sketching out a picture of what utility-scale solar power generation technology will look like in the future. Pretty exciting stuff.

I think most interesting was probably the 'Innovations in Technology' panel, which was moderated by Eric Wesoff of Greentech Media. During the panel, Eric raised the question of how the financing process and PPAs are able to integrate new technologies. As Hugh Kuhn of Solar Power Partners also pointed out at Greentech Media's Solar Finance & Forecast event: PPAs, while extremely complex, have lead to improved design and performance from integrators as well as new products, processes and services from manufacturers. Implication: change is underway in the solar industry, and we could see it unfold in a way that marries financial structures and technological innovation...cool.

So, paint your face, bust out the pom-poms and sound the rally cry. Big Solar is taking the field.