Let there be light. The Obama administration unlocked $346 million in stimulus funds for energy efficiency earlier this week, including $50 million for advancing solid state lighting, or SSL, technology. The Department of Energy designed the program as “a coordinated development of advanced manufacturing techniques” and an effort to “reduce the first cost of high-performance lighting products.” So it doesn’t exactly have semiconductors written all over it.

But according to a recent report on GigaOM Pro (subscription only) from analyst Katherine Austin, President of KDA Consulting, SSL represents a big opportunity for chip makers as the technology gains a foothold in everyday applications beyond consumer electronics and displays.

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Updated: We’ve heard from a couple of our sources that President Obama is forming an advisory council on energy and economic policy that would be staffed by cleantech leaders, including the CEOs of some buzz-worthy startups along with some high-profile investors. Someone high up on Obama’s “green team” was making phone calls this week to bring well-known cleantech execs out to D.C. for meetings this week and next — after which an announcement will likely be made, we’re being told. We’re not sure how formal the council will be but we’ll bring you more details as we get them. Update: After talking to more of the members of the meetings today, this sounds less of an official group, but more a group of cleantech leaders from which Obama wants to learn.

Update: The CEO of Kleiner Perkins-backed carbon software startup Hara, Amit Chatterjee, has confirmed with us that he was one of three CEOs that met with Obama this morning at the White House to discuss energy and environmental policy. We’ve also heard that execs from these firms also met with Obama this week: Standard Renewable Energy, Dow Corning, Positive Energy, FPL, Hycrete, Applied Materials and Cree Lighting. Cree just released a press release on the meeting and sent over this photo.

Given that Obama has had the support of cleantech leaders since his campaigning days, we’re thinking that anyone from that sector would jump at the chance to help inform a council. Obama also needs some sound advice now that the climate bill is rounding the Senate and the first U.S. cap and trade system is in sight.

We give a lot of props to the entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers and investors that are building the greentech tools of tomorrow. But we don’t often offer a lot of praise for the legislative process or the policy makers that have been driving clean energy and climate policy (OK, except for occasionally Obama and Reid). And while the climate bill, which has passed the House and is still being negotiated in the Senate, delivered enough concessions that even eager beavers like Tom Friedman say they hate it (but pass it!) the political jujitsu required to get the bill through the House was laudable.

Politico (h/t Business Insider and Climate Progress) posted a colorful and insightful article recently explaining the “arm-twisting” involved in getting the climate bill passed in the House, even with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (described as floating “in and out of the House cloakroom all day, impossible to miss in an arctic-white linen pantsuit”) as the chief ax-grinder. From Politico:

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Cleantech investment is on the rise again, according to two reports released this week, hitting $1.2 billion in the second quarter. “Cleantech venture investment has rebounded moderately after free-falling for two consecutive quarters,” said Brian Fan, senior director of research for the Cleantech Group, in a press release. Other signs of recovery include more mergers and acquisitions, as well as increased solar tax equity, he said.

The Cleantech Group, which tracks deals in North America, Europe, China and India, said Wednesday that cash was distributed among more companies, too: 94 compared with 82 in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Greentech Media put the number of deals in the second quarter at 85 vs. 59 in the first.

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For cleantech companies, climate change has been a big deal for some time. But it’s officially become a major mainstream business issue, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “Capitalizing On a Climate of Change,” that says energy and climate policies are influencing the way all companies report their finances, raise capital, and value merger and acquisition deals.

In other words, climate change is evolving from a scientific and public policy issue to a business concern. “Until recently, the impact of climate change on the deal market was barely on the radar of most businesses,” PricewaterhouseCoopers said in the report released Tuesday. “However, national policy action on greenhouse gas emissions is requiring companies in virtually every industry to think about the impacts on energy and climate policies on their business.”

That’s good news for those developing and selling products to help businesses go green and comply with ever-changing energy and climate regulations. And PricewaterhouseCoopers expects climate change to become increasingly important to investors and to companies’ valuations.

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The Obama administration turned the page on a new chapter for energy efficiency today, opening up $346 million in stimulus funds for “energy-efficient technologies in all major types of commercial buildings as well as new and existing homes,” and raising the bar on efficiency and conservation standards for lighting. Three years in the making, the new standards come after a lengthy weighing of, among other things, potential upfront costs for consumers and manufacturers against national economic and climate benefits, and long-term energy savings.

In terms of lighting standards, President Barack Obama and DOE Chief Steven Chu announced tighter rules today that will take effect in 2012. Incandescent reflector lamps, commonly found in recessed and track lighting (and initially excluded from the Bush administration’s proposed standards update), will have to be 25 percent more efficient, and general service fluorescent lamps will have to be 15 percent more efficient than today’s baseline models. In addition to creating a tougher minimum efficiency for these lamps, the DOE said today that it’s also changing its testing procedures and starting to set efficiency standards for certain fluorescent lamps not covered by current rules.

In all, the new standards — and the DOE’s accompanying analysis of the implications for consumers — reflect an agency focusing more on the long-term impact than the near-term effects on consumer budgets, which have taken center stage in some of the most persistent debates over the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill.

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The fact that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, now a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, isn’t a big fan of the current energy bill that passed the House on Friday is hardly a shocker. A cap-and-trade system can be “easily abused,” particularly on an international level, she said Monday at the Silicon Valley Energy Summit at Stanford University, where Rice is also a professor of political science, and that her own preference would be for a carbon tax, because it’s straightforward and can be easily understood.

Rice isn’t the only one that thinks a carbon tax would be better than a cap-and-trade system. Climate scientist James Hansen, as well as Al Gore (who supports the energy bill), and business leaders like Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and Ralph Nader have also advocated a carbon tax, citing similar reasons.

Rice, who was on the board of directors for Chevron before she became Secretary of State and played a major role in the U.S.’s Kyoto negotiations, said that the cap-and-trade provisions in the Kyoto Protocol, which created a cap-and-trade system for many developed nations, were “ridiculous” and created circumstances where companies could trade credits for factories that they were shutting down anyway. A cap-and-trade system can be easily abused on a domestic level, she said, but on an international level that abuse can be 100 times worse.

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The energy bill passed the House on Friday, but the proposed cap and trade system and new incentives for renewable energy are still a long way from going into law as the Senate needs to pass its own version. As we transition to the next round of negotiations and lobbying, stakeholders from the White House to industry trade groups, environmental organizations and cleantech companies have been weighing in on the version that won approval in the House — and on where they’d like to see it go from here.

Since Friday’s vote, President Obama has continued his support for the legislation, as well as his efforts to win over lawmakers. (He phoned wavering legislators last week to help the bill clear the House.) This weekend during his radio address and media interviews, Obama called for senators to “come together” around the legislation, which he said “will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy.” In an interview with a group of reporters, Obama also said the bill would provide “clarity and certainty” and would “end up being much less costly, much more efficient; technology is going to move much more rapidly than people anticipate.”

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The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 has just cleared its biggest hurdle yet, winning approval from the House of Representatives in a close 219-212 vote late on Friday. The bill has already had a long and bumpy ride since a draft began circulating nearly three months ago — but while today’s victory may help build momentum for the bill, it’s far from a done deal.

At this point, the Senate still has to negotiate and vote on its own version of the climate and energy bill, which some environmental groups say falls short. After the Senate vote, the two chambers have to come up with a compromise version of the proposal to create mandates for increased reliance on renewable energy and the country’s first comprehensive regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, through a cap-and-trade system or marketplace for buying and trading pollution credits.

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The deals keep coming for solar thermal startup eSolar, indicating confidence from utilities –- but also increasing pressure on the Pasadena, Calif.-based company to deliver quickly. The startup on Thursday announced plans to build a 92-megawatt plant in Lancaster, Calif. It has signed a deal to sell 92 megawatts of power to Alpine SunTower, a subsidiary of Princeton, N.J.-based energy company NRG Energy, which will supply the solar power to Northern California’s Pacific Gas and Electric.

The project mirrors another deal announced earlier this month, in which the company agreed to develop a 92-megawatt plant in southern New Mexico with NRG Energy for El Paso Electric. Both deals are part of the companies’ previously announced goal of developing up to 500 megawatts of solar thermal power in the United States. eSolar is also building a 245-megawatt solar thermal plant for Rosemead, Calif.-based utility Southern California Edison.

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