Feds Say Automakers Gets No Extra Time in Cali Regs: The US District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that automakers shouldn’t get an extension to comply with California’s emission standards. Assuming the EPA grants California it’s waiver, of course – Green Car Congress.

Global Biofuel Output to Double by 2030: The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that worldwide biofuel production will rise to 2.7 million barrels per day in 2030 from 1.3 million barrels per day in 2010, a big jump from the EIA’s previous estimate of 1.7 mbd in 2030 – Reuters.

Analyst Predicts “Mass Exodus” of Cars with $7 Gas: Jeff Rubin at Canadian brokerage CIBC World Markets predicts oil hitting $200 a barrel by 2012 facilitating “the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history” – WSJ Environmental Capital.

Duke Energy Buys Wind Developer for $240M: Duke Energy, one of the biggest coal burners in the world, bought Vermont’s Catamount Energy, which operates 300 megawatts of renewable energy, for $240 million – Cleantech Media.

First Pics of ZAP’s Alias: Our friends at Autoblog Green, with the help of an intrepid commenter, have located what seems to be the first pics of ZAP’s all electric Alias – Autoblog Green.

California introduced an ambitious energy road map today to achieve the state’s goal of cutting emissions by 28 percent. The policy mandates that a third of the state’s energy should come from renewable sources, and also boosts the efficiency of appliances, buildings and automobiles. Facilitating this entire process, the California Air Resource Board has proposed a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions from utilities, the power industry and businesses. The plan represents one of the most aggressive economy-wide cap-and-trade systems in the U.S.

This plan provides the details for the state’s 2006 decision to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, which Schwarzenegger signed into law but left to regulators to figure out. The plan does not estimate the burden of the cost on the effected industries, though Mary D. Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, tells the New York Times their “macroeconomic analysis” shows the plan will actually boost California’s gross domestic product by one percent.

While the plan might hit traditional fossil fuel industries hard, it will be a boon for cleantech companies across the board. An aggressive renewable portfolio standard in California has already driven a lot of clean power innovation in the state. And companies selling energy efficient products and services could potentially generate revenue for businesses through carbon credits salable on the newly minted carbon market.

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Yesterday our parent site GigaOM held an awesome conference, Structure08, which had some of the top minds in IT discussing and debating cloud computing. The big takeaway for Earth2Tech readers is that as the demand for Internet services keeps on growing, it’s requiring a massive amount of computing and that equals huge power needs. And one company that we met in the halls of the conference that is helping companies manage power is San Francisco-based CSRware, which offers what it calls “eco-analytics,” or a suite of services that measures and manages a company’s energy consumption, water use and waste.

CSRware CEO and president Gary Hermansen chatted with NewTeeVee’s Chris Albrecht to explain 4 topics companies can focus on to reduce their cloud’s energy use: virtualization, heating and cooling, intelligent meters that can determine which rows and racks are sucking up the most power, and making sure you’re running the newest, most efficient CPUs. Hermansen also tells Albrecht the company is out looking to raise its first round of venture funding. (disclosure: CSRware is a sponsor for the GigaOM network).

The Sunshine State could soon capitalize on its namesake and become one of the largest producers of solar energy in the country, if Florida utility FPL follows through on its plan to build three new solar power plants. FPL announced yesterday that it plans to generate 110 megawatts of solar capacity from three separate solar power plants – a 75 megawatt solar thermal plant at FPL’s existing Martin combined-cycle power plant, a 25 megawatt photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, Fla. and a 10 megawatt photovoltaic plant at the Kennedy Space Center. FPL will build the plants and estimates the three projects will cost a total of $688 million.

FPL says that the 25 megawatt plant will be the largest photovoltaic plant in the world, just eking out the 21.5 megawatt plant SunEdison and Duke Energy claimed would be the largest last month. But neither are nearly as large as OptiSolar’s planned 550 megawatt photovoltaic plant. FPL says that these 110 megwatts, in addition to its subsidiary Beacon Solar’s plans for 250 megawatts of solar thermal power in California, make it the world’s largest producer of solar power.

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eSolar is one of a dozen startups that are looking to build solar thermal plants in the deserts of California. While the company says it’s using the lessons of infotech — computing and algorithms — to make low cost modular solar, we were wondering what really makes eSolar stand out? The company has certainly gotten a lot of attention — receiving at least $130 million from Google.org, Bill Gross’ Idealab, and other investors, and inking a deal with California utility Southern California Edison for a 245 MW solar thermal power plant. We thought we’d check in with eSolar’s CEO Asif Ansari and see what all the fuss is about.

1). There’s about a dozen other companies building solar thermal plants in the desert, why will eSolar be a leader in this area?

eSolar is producing easily scalable and rapidly deployed concentrating solar power plants and we’ve brought the minimum economic size of our power plants down to just 33 MW. We build power plants in these 33 MW modules, and replicate the number of modules depending on the size of plant a utility needs, so it’s just as easy for us to build a 33 MW plant for a smaller utility as it is to build a 245 MW or larger plant for a huge utility like Southern California Edison.

This uniform modularity makes it easier for any sized utility to incorporate concentrating solar thermal power into the grid. It also substantially increases the addressable market in developing countries. Most other companies in the United States right now are only building huge power plants, even though companies such as Acciona and Abengoa are also following the trend toward the smaller, mid-sized utility-scale plant in projects in Spain.

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Science fiction writers speculate that robots will eventually take over our networks, but conspiracy theorists say our current grid is under attack from foreign hackers—conspiracy theorists and high-level intelligence officials that is, according to the cover of the National Journal. The article alleges that Chinese paramilitary hackers were responsible for two massive U.S. blackouts. The theory had enough credibility for former CIA Director-turned-venture-capitalist James Woolsey to ask a panel of energy experts what is being done to secure the grid at the Google/Brookings plug-in electric vehicle conference in Washington this month. Video of Woolsey’s question and the panel’s response below.

So just how secure is our grid? Does making our grid smarter and more interoperable increase our risk? The panel’s moderator, Thomas Friedman, pointed out that our current grid’s inefficiencies are theoretically preventing mass disruption. But the shift to IP-based, smart-grid services leverages all of the security technologies that have been developed in the IP space. Still, industry sources echo the panel’s response and say Woolsey’s is an “extremely legitimate question.”

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