President-elect Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment to addressing climate change this week, asserting that, “[F]ew challenges facing America — and the world — are more urgent.” But the speech was notable for skirting that other urgent challenge facing the world: its tanking economy.

Sandwiched between an American flag and a heavily autographed basketball, Obama sent a videogram (transcript here) to the Governorpalooza summit that California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger is hosting this Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the world’s climate. The message: America’s stance on climate change is about to change.

No, it isn’t new, but it’s probably a welcome message to many, especially with Obama urging leaders at home and abroad to work with him. Gov. Schwarzenegger is hosting his climate summit at the Beverly Hills Hilton (because nothing says conservation quite like Beverly Hills) for U.S. governors as well as leaders from China, the European Union, Brazil and other countries.

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Who says corporate blogs can’t be informative? Sometimes what is deemed worthy of a blog post can speak volumes about the companies publishing them.

Let’s look at two companies and their posts. Both employ a lot of U.S. autoworkers. One of them is seeking a massive bailout from the U.S. government. The other is managing OK on its own. Can you tell from their blogs which one is which?

First up is Company No. 1, which announced on its blog today a new hybrid car running on natural gas that will be displayed at the Los Angeles Auto Show this week. The car replaces a gas hybrid’s fuel system with a compressed natural-gas system, giving it a range of up to 250 miles on a fuel whose price has been much less volatile than gas.

And while Company No. 1 stresses it’s just a concept car, it’s one of many alternative fuel applications under study.

This concept vehicle is a statement that we intend to include CNG in our diverse portfolio of future alternative-fuel R&D. Our purpose in building it as a concept is to demonstrate the efficiency and adaptability of Hybrid Synergy Drive, and to demonstrate that we continue to work with a variety of power-train concepts to ensure that we have products that meet the current and future needs of our customers on a global basis.

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J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Blansett created some buzz in the solar sector Monday with a note urging investors to make a “flight to safety” — noting that companies will have to weather “reduced solar subsidies next year, higher solar system borrowing costs and increasing competition at all levels of the solar PV food chain.”

Those factors, combined together, could damage the weaker players in the industry.

And investors, having stomached several months of volatility — most of it downward — are surely craving some safety. Just this week, MEMC cut its own forecast for this quarter. The solar-wafer manufacturer expects $500 million in revenue (down from $570 million) and its gross profit to be 48 percent of profit (down from 50 percent).

MEMC’s darker forecast follows another one that made even bigger waves last week: JA Solar (JASO), whose executives weren’t content with slashing its own guidance but went a big step further and used a word that can trigger a cascade of sell orders: “At this moment the market reaction has been panic,” JA’s CEO Samuel Yang said.

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One of the unintended but still entertaining side effects of deflated market caps is the corporate catfight.

As of yesterday, we have a promising one being performed in the energy sector: After a few weeks of gentle pawing at smaller rival NRG Energy, industry giant Exelon has gone hostile. NRG rebuffed the $6.1 billion tender offer Exelon made last month, so Exelon CEO John Rowe responded with a polite letter that ended on an unvarnished threat:

We are fully prepared to negotiate with the new board following the 2009 NRG annual meeting of shareholders.

That’s corporate-speak for: It’s on.

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America’s corn-ethanol companies are tired of being kicked around. Maligned for using corn as fuel while the world goes hungry, beaten down in the financial markets, threatened by falling gas prices — now, they are fighting back.

How? By forming a “moral purpose organization.”

That’s how Jeff Broin, CEO of ethanol producer POET, described a new trade organization called Growth Energy to the Des Moines Register. Growth Energy is lashing out against critics of corn ethanol by buying ad space in the New York Times and issuing “policy briefs” (bulky pdf files peppered with Excel graphs).

In other words, it’s a full-on PR offensive. Which might have had some impact if public relations hadn’t been all but dashed as the ethanol industry’s problems have come to light. An aggressive PR front might have helped corn ethanol a year ago. Now the realities facing it are much more substantial, and much more daunting.

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Solar stocks continue to have a rough time. In stark contrast to 2007, when the bigger names in the sector were rallying month after month on the promise of solar power, there is no clear sign of where the bottom is.

Just when it looks like old concerns have been priced into solar shares, a new glitch emerges to push them even lower. Positive earnings surprises or expectations of falling polysilicon prices will lift stocks for a bit, only to have new problems - cheaper oil curtailing demand for solar energy and tightened credit - drag them back down.

Take Suntech Power (STP), which started 2008 at $82 a share and then fell to $11.95 in late October, before bouncing back above $20 last week. But it soon tumbled back to $12 a share on a warning of a new threat - an unexpectedly resurgent dollar. Rival SunPower (SPWRA) said the strong dollar would hurt its earnings next year. The news pulled down the whole sector, including Suntech, which relies on a weak European market for sales.

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This year has brought more than its share of surprises to the energy industry, but the bankruptcy of ethanol giant VeraSun Energy was one that few would have predicted at the beginning of the year.

The stock started the year at $15.28, down from its June 2006 IPO price of $23 a share, but there was little indication of the sequence of hardships that would prompt the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which it did on Oct. 31. In VeraSun’s own words:

The Company suffered significant losses in the third quarter of 2008 from a dramatic spike in its corn costs, reflecting in part costs attributable to its corn procurement and hedging arrangements, and historically unfavorable margins. Beginning in the third quarter, worsening capital market conditions and a tightening of trade credit resulted in severe constraints on the Company’s liquidity position.

Corn and oil prices had been soaring when VeraSun locked into those arrangements. They have since plunged, making those contracts costly to maintain. Meanwhile, ethanol prices have also plunged, and cheaper oil means less demand for alternative fuels for now.

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It’s easy to read too much rational thought into a market that is as volatile as U.S. stocks are these days, but it seems First Solar has just handed the solar bulls a couple of very good reasons to be optimistic.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based, maker of thin-film solar modules said sales in the third quarter reached $348.7 million, up from the $339 million that analysts had been forecasting. Net income came in at $1.20 a share, a long shot past the $1.01 number from analysts.

Gross margin in the quarter came in at 56.1 percent, up from 54.2 percent in the previous quarter and 51.6 percent in the third quarter of 2007. Even more encouraging in these days of tight credit, free cash flow was $41.6 million after being negative for the past two quarters. Being able to generate cash from operations is a big plus for solar companies these days.

But as 24/7 Wall Street noted in a post, more positive news came from the company’s guidance during the conference call. First Solar expects net sales to come in between $1.22 billion and $1.24 billion this year and between $2.0 billion and $2.1 billion next year. Analysts had been looking for $1.21 billion this year and $2.13 billion next year.

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Remember those tens of millions of shares that Lehman Brothers held in solar companies as part of convertible bond deals it underwrote? It seems Barclays PLC ended up holding them after it bought Lehman’s broker dealer business following the U.S. investment bank’s bankruptcy.

A couple of weeks ago, Barclays filed notice with the SEC to disclose that it now owned sizeable stakes of Evergreen Solar, SunPower and JA Solar, which meant it was in a position to sell all of them into the open market and dilute the stocks just when the solar industry is facing what the New York Times called “big new challenges.”

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Exelon’s unsolicited $6 billion bid for its smaller rival NRG Energy may have been prompted by short-term concerns about raising capital and cash flow, but the longer-term outcome could reshape the nuclear industry’s landscape.

Nuclear power makes up only 5 percent of NRG’s power-generation capacity (vs. 46 percent for natural gas and 33 percent for coal). But the company has been gearing up for greater nuclear capacity for some time. In September 2007, it submitted the first application in 29 years to build a nuclear plant in the U.S.

Exelon, which at $19 billion in revenue last year was three times as large as NRG, owns 10 nuclear stations and 17 reactors, and is the largest player in the U.S. and the third largest in the world. Buying NRG will add to that total and give it enough resources and economies of scale to leverage even more plants in coming years.

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