Gore has outlined a five-step plan to achieve his goal of generating 100 percent of the U.S.’s electricity from renewable sources in 10 years. Though Obama hasn’t agreed to Gore’s lofty goal, he has committed, in varying degrees, to implementing Gore’s recommendations. Obama has promised to boost the energy efficiency of federal buildings, work with governors to promote clean energy, invest huge amounts in our electrical infrastructure and help Detroit retool to become a leader in green cars.

The elephant in the room is still the issue of carbon regulation. During the campaign, Obama said he was in favor of a cap-and-trade scheme, but since the economic crisis has taken the spotlight, carbon mitigation has been quietly looming in the corner. Putting a price on carbon, either through a carbon market or with a tax, as Gore himself suggests, is the greatest boost the government could give clean technologies.

But the cynical question posed by MSNBC isn’t how far Gore can push Obama to clean up our energy sector; it’s how much will Obama ask Gore to publicly temper his climate crisis rhetoric? While Obama has said renewable energy and energy efficiency will play vital roles in boosting the economy, he probably won’t go as far as Gore would like, given the stormy financial climate.

So, can Obama fight for cleantech while battling a recession? We hope Gore is able to explain how the only way to fight the recession is with cleantech.

Image courtesy of Change.gov

The companies say that the reflective white roofing membrane boosts the electrical output of Solyndra’s solar panels, which can absorb sunlight from all directions, by 20 percent. Carlisle has already installed a Solyndra solar system on the roof of its roofing membrane manufacturing plant (see picture) and tells us the entire system went up in just one day.

This deal is in addition to Solyndra’s previously announced $1.2 billion in backlogged sales, which include contracts with German solar integrators GeckoLogic GmbH and Phoenix Solar as well as U.S.-based solar manufacturer and integrator Solar Power Inc. Today’s announced sale pushes Solyndra’s customer contracts up to $1.52 billion.

Solyndra’s special sauce is in its unique panel design. A photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound is wrapped around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is curved to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need to be carefully angled or laboriously secured like traditional PV panels.

Solyndra currently operates a fabrication line at its headquarters in Fremont, Calif., and has a planned manufacturing facility in nearby Milpitas. The 300,000-square-foot Fremont facility has a production capacity of 110 megawatts and, when completed, the Milpitas plant will add 420 megawatts of capacity.

The company just came out of stealth last month but was founded three years ago. Solyndra says it has already raised more than $600 million from investors like Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital, Argonaut, CMEA Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, the Walton Family Fund, Madrone Capital, Abu Dubai’s MASDAR and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund.

Images courtesy of Solyndra and Carlisle.

Amyris Opens Synthetic Diesel Pilot Plant: Biofuel startup Amyris started production of its “No Compromise” synthetic diesel fuel and officially opened its first pilot plant at its headquarters in Emeryville, Calif.

The Debt Markets Cramped T. Boone’s Wind Plan: Pickens says he was originally planning to finance his 4,000-MW wind farm in Texas with 30 percent equity and 70 percent debt financing, but more recently the debt markets have caused a “financial hangup.”

Nuclear Catfight: Exelon, NRG Take Tussle Public: After a few weeks of gentle pawing at smaller rival NRG Energy, industry giant Exelon has gone hostile.

Al Gore’s 5 Steps To Deliver 100% Clean Power in a Decade: Gore is calling for 100 percent of U.S. electricity to be from renewable power within 10 years, achievable with Gore’s simple, five-step energy revolution plan!

A Green Auto Bailout Must Oust Execs: Tom Friedman calls the auto industry “brain dead” and Obama faults the industry with blocking the very reforms that could have saved it, so why do they deserve a bailout again?

The Wall Street Journal asked early on if an auto bailout package should boot the CEOs of Ford, GM and Chrysler just as the government ousted top executives at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group (AIG) as part of its takeover.

Speaking in May to the Detroit Economic Club, Obama did not mince words when it came to telling auto execs what their role was in their own downfall:

“Whenever an attempt was made to raise our fuel efficiency standards the auto companies would lobby against it, spending millions to prevent the very reform that could have saved their industry. Even as they shed thousands of jobs and billions in profits over the last few years, they’ve continued to reward failure, in some cases with lucrative bonuses for CEOs.”

Thomas Friedman was far less forgiving in his latest column, calling most of the “brain dead” auto industry’s woes self-inflicted and scoffing at the idea of subsidizing innovation in Detroit. He would rather have the likes of Steve Jobs take the reins of domestic auto sector. Sure, Jobs has built his company on innovation, but perhaps someone more like Better Place’s Shai Agassi, of whom Friedman is already a fan.

The auto execs are preparing to testify before Congress next week, but perhaps they should also be updating their resumes.

Octogenarian Texans aren’t regulars on “The Daily Show,” but Pickens seemed to win over the audience, or at least Stewart, with his plan to switch America’s trucks to run on natural gas. Pickens explained: “When people talk about ‘We’re going to go to the electric car,’ I love it. But remember, they said car, not truck. A battery won’t move an 18-wheeler. The only thing that will move an 18-wheeler is foreign oil, diesel and gasoline — and our domestic natural gas. There’s where the fuel needs to go.” It only took Pickens six minutes to have Stewart standing, saluting and shouting at him, “Sir, reporting for duty!” in support of his plan. The Pickens Army likely picked up some new recruits following the Comedy Central appearance.

Absent, though, was much (if any) talk of the wind-power half of his plan. Pickens’ plan to build the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas panhandle has been put on indefinite hold because of the depressed debt market. But the former oilman is unflappable, and he said confidently that oil will be back up to $100 a barrel in a year and that his plan is the solution to our energy crisis. He also encouraged people to buy his new book, “The First Billion Is the Hardest.”

Author Thomas Friedman was equally optimistic on the show Tuesday while pushing his latest book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” the culmination of the last two years worth of his columns. Friedman reiterated his belief that energy technology, or ET, will be the world’s next great global industry and a sector that America must dominate. Friedman said we need a Silicon Valley approach, not a Manhattan Project, to jump start this revolution. “What we need is a market signal that will get 100,000 people in 100,000 garages trying 100,000 things, 1,000 of which will be promising, 100 of which will be way cool and two of which will be the next green Google and green Microsoft,” Friedman told Stewart.

Stewart wasn’t as easily convinced by Friedman’s pitch and quipped back, “What you [are] advocating is a green bubble, where a lot people can lose money.”

Let’s hope he’s wrong.

Says Who the Cleantech Bubble is Bursting?: Tired of reading those fatalistic headlines proclaiming the imminent collapse of the cleantech boom? Yeah, us too, so read this and brush those haters off – Clean Break.

How Many “Miles Per Gallon” Does Your Data Center Get?: The Green Grid, a consortium of IT firms, is working to make standardized metrics to measure and compare the efficiency of different bits of IT equipment, just like MPG can be used to compare cars – Business Green.

Credit Crunch Shifting Desert Sands in Solar Land Grab: All the sunniest spots in the California desert are already leased by potential solar developers, but the credit crunch could force firms to give up their claims and bigger solar players are laying in wait – Green Wombat.

Sun Improves OpenEco, Free Carbon Footprinting: Sun Microsystems enhanced its OpenEco.org service, which now provides a more comprehensive carbon footprint by tracking emissions across electricity, travel and utilities energy consumption – Press Release.

International Battery is designing its Lithium Ion 6TLi Battery to be the same size as currently deployed lead-acid batteries so that soldiers can swap them out on location. The Oakland, N.J.-based company says its battery has four times the energy, half the weight, a significantly longer life and enhanced combat readiness as compared to the current lead-acid battery systems.

Meanwhile, Firefly Energy is using carbon foam to make more lightweight lead-acid batteries for use in military and commercial trucks. The batteries are for the military’s “Silent Watch” program, which allows reconnaissance vehicles to turn off their noisy engines and instead power sensor and communication arrays silently with on-board batteries. This is the fourth time the DoD has provided funds to Firefly, bringing the total received $12.75 million.

Both battery makers have considerable private capital. International Battery raised $25 million of financing from Digital Power Capital in 2007 to complete its manufacturing facility in Allentown, Penn. Meanwhile, Firefly has raised over $25 million in private funding from investors including Khosla Ventures, Quercus Trust and Infield Capital.

This is International Battery’s first contract with the DoD and the company says it’s currently making batteries for testing. Firefly Energy says it plans to start delivering batteries to the military by late 2009.

Aquaflow says its free-range algae approach allows it to save money on facilities and maintenance. Aquaflow is working with new partner UOP, a subsidiary of Honeywell, to process algae harvested from open-air sludge ponds and waste streams into high-quality fuels. UOP has years of experience in the petro-chemical refining business but has been moving into biofuels in earnest recently with its own Renewable Energy & Chemicals business and collaborations with aircraft maker Boeing, bio-oil vet Ensyn and the DOE.

Aquaflow raised funding through a public offering at the end of the 2006; it’s also received a NZ$3 million investment from renewable energy business Pure Power Global of Singapore, the company’s largest shareholder, according to Aquaflow’s prospectus. The company built its first pilot plant in 2007 and in September this year said it produced the first samples of its “green crude.” The shares will be made available to Australian investors starting Nov. 18; the offering will close in December.

Image courtesy of Aquaflow Bionomics.

The Fremont, Calif.-based startup takes standard crystalline silicon solar cells and slices them into thin strips, a process the company calls “cell multiplication technology.” The 2-millimeter-wide silicon strips are reassembled in a stripe pattern and then an optical concentrator is laid on top to focus light away from the gaps and onto the strips. The company says its unique module design has the same form, function and — most importantly — efficiency as traditional solar modules but uses half the amount of silicon material. Update: Solaria has a 10-year, 1.3-gigawatt solar cell supply deal with one of its backers, Australian German solar firm Q-Cells, that ensures it has access to materials.

In addition to Q-Cells, the company has other big backers, including Sigma Partners, NGEN and Moser Baer. The company has been relatively quiet since closing its $50 million Series C round in July 2007. The company is older than many other solar startups and has built an expansive partner network that includes BP Solar and Spire. Sharma tells us the company’s current customers are large project developers but Solaria is developing a series of “specialty modules” for different market segments which it hopes to start bringing to market in 2010, and the company is looking to hire a number of engineers to finish R&D on these new products.

Image courtesy of Solaria.

RecycleBank Launches Incentive-Based Recycling Across Country: East coast-based RecycleBank is taking its incentive-based residential recycling program to a number of new cities across the South, Midwest and Central Plains – Press Release.

Minivan Spoilers Improve Aerodynamics, Awesomeness: Researchers say they’ve designed a new spoiler that could reduce the drag on minivans and SUVs by 5 percent, which could help soccer moms everywhere save gas in style – Green Car Congress.

Tesla Roadster Visit UK PM: After the British Secretary of State for Transport took a Roadster for a spin around Parliament Square, the Tesla car stopped by No. 10 Downing Street for a pit stop with Prime Minister Gordon Brown – Tesla Blog.

The Freescale/MES system wouldn’t work exactly like the boring regen system in your Prius. Regenerative systems in passenger vehicles collect kinetic energy during braking and store it for use in regular acceleration. Freescale and MES have more of a Batmobile/Knight Rider approach to using that banked energy. According to the press release: “The stored kinetic power is released using a “boost” button that delivers a burst of extra power to the car for a short period — for example, while overtaking a competitor or defending a position.” A sort of cleantechy afterburner, if you will.

Freescale says the main goal of the project is to increase the car’s fuel efficiency, which would mean fewer pit stops. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s (FIA), the governing body of world motorsports, has committed to greening motorspots, an effort that has also brought innovations from tire makers and biofuel brewers. It’s a truism in the auto world that many innovations, from biofuels to efficiency to crash safety, are trialed on the race track before becoming part of everyday driving, and this initiative is no exception. According to the companies, this Bond-esque technology will lead to smaller, lighter and more efficient hybrid systems in mainstream vehicles.

Image courtesy of FIA.

Comverge Secures $25M Credit Facility: Demand response firm Comverge announced today that it has entered into a $25 million credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank. $15 million will be used to pay off old acquisition costs while the other $10 million will be available as working capital – Press Release.

China to Adjust Gas Prices to Avoid Slump: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China would “take advantage of good timing” to adjust gas prices to better reflect global pricing. We guess “good timing” means “while everyone is distracted by that $586 billion stimulus package we gave out” – Bloomberg.

An Interview With a Scandinavian Carbon Capture Expert: Karl Anders Hoff has been working on carbon capture and storage technology since the 90s and is now project manager of an eight-year, $46 million CCS R&D project. We’ll ruin the ending for you – it’s still too expensive – Biopact.

Boeing and Air New Zealand Set for Biofuel Flight: The aircraft maker and airline have set December 3 as the date for their test of jatropha-based jet fuel in a 747 jetliner – Green Car Congress.

The company, which crafts synthetic biological organisms to produce chemical compounds, will fine tune its process in Emeryville over the next year-and-a-half, and it aims to begin commercial production by June 2010 in Brazil. The initial feedstock for the plant will be sugar from sugarcane, but any sugar would work with the company’s genetically-modified yeast. Melo acknowledges that cellulosic feedstocks are coming up fast, and in 5 to 10 years he says Amyris might partner with or acquire a cellulosic biofuel company.

Melo described the company’s business model as “a capital-light model to scale up fast.” The company plans to partner with existing ethanol plants and convert a portion of those partners’ production capacity to make diesel and other chemicals using Amyris IP. The startup will then buy the products back from the refiner and take them to market, Melo said. The startup has already formed a joint venture with Santelisa Vale, Brazil’s second largest sugar grower, called Crystalsev, which aims to produce 200 million gallons of fuel a year by 2011 at several of its existing ethanol plants at a price of less than $2 a gallon.

The Brazilian partnership, Melo explained, gives Amyris access to ports and ships to export the fuel. Amyris plans to import it to the U.S. and sell its to large customers, like Wal-Mart and the U.S. government. Foreign ethanol is hit with a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff as it comes into the U.S., but Amyris would be importing hydrocarbons, not ethanol, and therefore avoid the tariff. Amyris is already marketing other companies’ biofuels in the Southeast to make sure its distribution channels will work.

To date, Amyris’ strategy hasn’t seamed particularly “capital light.” The company has raised more than $120 million in capital (see previous coverage here and here) from heavy-hitting cleantech and biotech investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, TPG Biotech and DAG Ventures.

Oerlikon doesn’t make the actual cells, instead it sells the manufacturing equipment to customers like Ersol and Schott Solar, who then make branded solar products. Applied Materials has the same business model, and Sharp formed a joint venture with chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron to make thin-film fab lines starting in 2009. Both are competitors of Oerlikon’s.

The idea is that the equipment manufacturers will develop better thin-film solar fabrication methods, while the manufacturers use the equipment to make the product. “More and more you’re going to see an ‘Intel-inside’ approach to thin-film production,” Chris O’Brien, Oerlikon’s head of market development in North America, tells us. Just as Intel makes the chip but doesn’t sell the computer, Oerlikon makes the solar fab line but doesn’t sell the panels.

Today’s announcement is part of the company’s road map for delivering equipment that can produce solar cells for $1 per watt by 2010, as well as making cells that have a 10 percent efficiency. Oerlikon currently has deployed 130 megawatts worth of fabrication lines to customers who are making cells with 6.5 percent efficiency. By the end of 2008 that capacity will exceed 300 megawatts, O’Brien said.

Oerlikon currently has a factory in Switzerland and a supply chain in Singapore, but O’Brien says that a supply chain for North America will be coming in 2009. “Utilities and states with Renewable Portfolio Standards will be big markets,” O’Brien said.

The thin-film solar space has been attracting increasingly large manufacturing players that can leverage their backgrounds in producing electronics and semiconductors. Oerlikon, which also makes industrial manufacturing equipment for industries like textiles and vacuum systems, formed its own dedicated solar division in 2007. Meanwhile, Japanese electronics giant Sharp ambitiously claimed that it would secure half of the thin-film solar market by 2012.

Oerlikon’s O’Brien doesn’t seem worried about the competition. “The market opportunity will dwarf the capacity that is coming online,” he says. “Particularly in the U.S. with the recently enacted 30 percent tax credit for the next eight years, you’ll see rapidly accelerating demand.”

“The Secret Life of Quercus Trust”: David Gelbaum’s stealthy cleantech fund has funded dozens of startups but unlike other prolific cleantech investors, like Vinod Khosla, Gelbaum has kept quiet about his various green energy plays - Greentech Media.

Fisker to Open R&D Office Near Detroit: Green car startup Fisker Automotive says it plans to open a new Engineering and Development Center in Pontiac, Michigan which will employee 200 engineers and help support the company’s first car, the plug-in hybrid Karma – Press Release.

Carbon Investor Sees Recession Pushing Carbon Caps Down: A global recession could make carbon mitigation even cheaper, allowing governments to mandate deep carbon cuts, according to carbon credit investors – Bloomberg.

Solar-Powered Football Goes Prime Time: Tonight’s Monday night football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals will be played at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale which will be powered by entirely by solar power – Arizona Republic.

To maintain grid reliability with so much new, intermittent and far-flung renewable energy generation, our national electricity grid needs a serious upgrade. In fact, the Brattle report estimates that more money might have to be invested in the grid than in actual renewable energy generation.

Another report released today by the energy regulatory group North American Electric Reliability (NERC), identified the lack of investment in transmission infrastructure as a major obstacle for green energy deployment. “Inadequate attention to the transmission grid will undermine all efforts to address climate change while endangering our electric reliability, and thereby our national security,” Michael Heyeck, senior V-P of transmission at utility American Electric Power, says in the report.

In an op-ed yesterday, Al Gore called for an investment of $400 billion over 10 years to build a national smart grid needed to connect renewable energy in remote locations to the cities where people will use it. Gore said the $400 billion cost “pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.”

Both the Brattle and NERC reports highlight cleantech’s favorite low-hanging fruit, energy efficiency programs, as a way to reduce the costs of integrating renewable energy. NERC identifies demand-side controls as critical for giving the grid the needed flexibility to grow while the Brattle Group estimates energy efficiency programs can reduce the need for new energy generation by as much as 48 percent by 2030.

But energy efficiency and demand response alone can only partly quell America’s appetite for energy and more generation capacity will be needed. In order to deliver power from the mega-wind farms and solar plants being built in remote locales, NERC says a new, extra high-voltage transmission backbone will be required. This “transmission superhighway” would be overlaid on the existing grid to allow green energy to head directly to population centers.

NERC says new climate change regulations must support the development of new transmission lines. President-elect Obama has said he plans to invest in our electrical infrastructure on the scale that Eisenhower pumped public funds into the interstate highway system. That highway system cost U.S. taxpayers, in inflation-adjusted terms, more than $2.8 trillion in the first 20 years. Hopefully we’ll be able to muster the necessary funding in the coming 20 years needed to create an interstate transmission superhighway.

Graph courtesy of the Brattle Group.