When Energy Secretary Steven Chu fast-tracked the long-stalled $25 billion dollars in loans and loan guarantees, created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and appropriated by Congress in 2006, it was a breath of fresh air for the clean power and green transportation sectors. But how long do government-backed loan guarantees actually take to get the wheels turning on helping a company raise funds?

More than a year — at least in the case of cellulosic ethanol startup Range Fuels. In January 2009 the company secured a conditional commitment for an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of the 2008 Farm Bill. And according to an SEC filing this week, Range Fuels has just filed to raise that $80 million in debt financing to build out its first commercial plant in Soperton, Georgia.

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Should greenhouse gas emissions resulting from changes in land use related to biofuels production — directly or indirectly – factor into official measurements of the fuel’s carbon footprint? That question has divided ethanol advocates, environmental groups and policymakers for years, and today the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in with its final answer: Yes.

The agency will consider emissions from direct and indirect land-use changes (such as forests cleared in other countries to grow food crops to compensate for U.S. crops being used as feedstock) when it implements the Renewable Fuels Standard, or RFS, which mandates an increase in biofuels production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, up from 11.1 billion gallons last year. To count toward the required volume, fuels have to show a smaller carbon footprint compared to the fossil fuels they’re meant to replace.

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Sure, your company’s smart grid tech might be the slickest on the market, but don’t expect that to guarantee success in the industry. According to a report out this morning from Lux Research, which predicts the smart grid market will be a $16 billion opportunity by 2015, getting ahead in the smart grid market is more about who you know , rather than how advanced your technology is. “Few smart grid companies are differentiated by the technologies they’re fielding,” writes Jacob Grose, a Senior Analyst at Lux Research.

That’s likely because the smart grid is made up of technology that’s already well-established: wireless networks, software applications, computing. Being fairly mature, this tech leaves less room for differentiation than say next-gen biofuels. Instead the key to moving ahead or falling behind in the market has to do largely with getting utility customers and being able to scale your technology. “Competitors unable to establish early commercial relationships with utilities will likely get squeezed out of the market before long,” says Lux.

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Nice. President Obama used the State of the Union to call for the Senate to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill. During the early part of his speech he said “This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate,” and:

“[P]roviding incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

Obama specifically gave a nod to building a new generation of nuclear power plants, “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” (that will no doubt get boos from environmentalists), and more investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. Phoenix-based electric vehicle charging company ECOtality says they were referenced in the speech. Some will see the mentions of nuclear and offshore oil as “Republican talking points,” but I am heartened that Obama took the opportunity to back the energy bill, despite the recent disappointment in Copenhagen.

See the tag cloud of the speech below – clean and energy front and center:

Khosla Ventures-backed LS9, which is using a genetically modified version of e.coli bacteria to make diesel, announced Wednesday that it has made a “major breakthrough” in the production of biofuels and chemicals from cellulosic biomass. The company, working with researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute, said it has developed a microbe that can produce advanced biofuels directly from cellulosic biomass, such as woodchips, in a “one-step” fermentation process that eliminates the need for additional chemicals and industrial processes.

LS9 aims to produce biofuels and renewable chemicals to replace conventional petroleum-based products, and the company said this breakthrough will enable it to do this at lower costs. Biofuels ultimately will need to compete against conventional fuels on the open market, and any technological advancement that lowers production costs should make LS9 more competitive.

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Turner Returns to Solar: Back in late 2007, billionaire Ted Turner sold his solar developer, Turner Renewable Energy, to First Solar for $34.4 million. Now he’s getting back into solar, joining forces with Atlanta utility Southern Company to seek out large-scale solar projects in the southwest. — Greentech Media

Recycled Weaponry at the Olympics: London’s Metropolitan Police Department said it collected more than 52 tons of scrap metal from guns, knives and old keys in the last fiscal year. Some was melted down and used in bridges, buildings, cars and trains, and some will be recycled and used to construct the main stadium for the 2012 Olympics. — CNET

Fight Over Algae Study: “In a face-off between academia and industry, algae biofuel companies have made a joint statement decrying recent research that highlights algae’s drawbacks,” namely that algae production can be energy intensive and end up emitting more greenhouse gases than it sequesters. — NYT’s Green Inc.

Where Opinions Meet Science: Researchers at George Mason University and Yale have broken down U.S. public opinion on climate change into six different categories, ranging from alarmed (18 percent) to dismissive (7 percent), with some interesting findings about what makes someone a “climate skeptic.” — Grist

Eolia Eyes IPO: Spanish renewable energy group Eolia is revisiting the possibility of a stock market listing, nearly three years after it scrapped a planned IPO due to market conditions,” according to an anonymous source. — Reuters

A new agreement between the U.S. Navy and the Department of Agriculture may offer a boost to developers of fuels derived from plants, and other greentech firms vying for military contracts. The two departments have agreed to work together — and with private partners — to “encourage the development of advanced biofuels and other renewable energy systems,” as part of an effort to bring more alternative fuels into the Navy and Marine Corps’ energy supply, and generally support the Obama administration’s clean energy goals.

The Navy, which has delivered funding and partnerships to startups including Ocean Power Tech (for testing and an advanced version of the firm’s PowerBuoy) and Widetronix (for silicon-carbide based wafer tech used in electronic devices), pledged recently in a separate announcement to consider the energy efficiency and “energy footprint,” among other factors, when awarding contracts, and the department reiterated that plan Thursday.

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Joule Biotechnologies — the folks behind the unusual hybrid solar-biofuel technology that officially launched last year — say they will build their first pilot plant in Leander, Texas and it will be operational within the first half of this year. That puts the 3-year-old Cambridge, Mass-based company on track with the strategy that CEO Bill Sims described to me last July, that Joule would break ground on a pilot plant in 2010, and potentially a commercial-scale plant in either late 2011 or early 2012.

I’ve got to say, compared to all the biofuel companies out there, Joule has the most unique technology (they don’t like being call a biofuel developer). The company has developed a hybrid system that uses a solar concentrating converter that is filled with brackish water, nutrients and a “highly engineered synthetic organism,” to produce a bio-based fuel. The solar system, called a HelioCulture, concentrates sunlight onto the mixture, and the engineered photosynthetic organism — which the company won’t disclose more about, only to say it’s not algae — converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into ethanol or a hydrocarbon-based fuel called a “SolarFuel.”

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Individual biofuels — algae fuel, cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, corn ethanol — have all had their day in the sun over the past few years. Is it time for everyone to cheer for the alternative version of butanol, biobutanol? This morning Mountain View, Calif.-based startup Cobalt Biofuels, which produces biobutanol, opened up its first pilot plant for a tour by Arnold Schwarzenegger, followed by a press conference that featured the California governor, Silicon Valley heavyweights from local trade groups and other local clean power startups that have set up manufacturing in the state.

We watched the event live, during which Cobalt Biofuels CEO Rick Wilson told the audience that now that the company is producing biobutanol at its pilot facility, it will be able to scale up to a commercial facility within the next two years, and “multiple facilities” by 2014. Wilson said that the company’s fuel, which can reduce carbon emissions by 85 percent compared to gasoline, already costs below the price of petroleum to produce and can be blended with any fuel — gas, diesel, ethanol — or can be used as a bio alternative to chemicals.

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It looks like, at least for the gubernatorial set, the bloom didn’t fall off the promise of green jobs as the calender year turned over to 2010. This morning dueling press conferences will be held by the governors of California and New Mexico touting how clean power companies can deliver a booming green economy, so-called green-collar jobs and innovation for the states.

First up at Schott Solar’s new manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, governor Bill Richardson plans to hold a press conference and make an announcement at 10:30 AM (9:30 PT) about how he will implement the five goals he outlined in his Green Jobs Cabinet’s report. German solar giant Schott opened up the $100 million plant (it makes both PV and thermal receivers) in May of last year, creating 350 jobs, with the potential to create 1,500.

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