Today the U.S. Senate voted to pass an amended version of the BILL, H.R. 3221 to include an extension of both the Production Tax Incentive (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The PTC provides extra money for wind power while the ITC helps fund solar installations. So hooray! Now, before you get too drunk off of the legislative lager, this doesn’t mean the ITC and PTC have all green lights. The bill will now have to head back to the House where Democrats will likely, and rightfully, question where the money for these extensions is going to come from.

The amended bill passed with overwhelming 88 to 8. While the House has passed extensions for these renewable energy tax credits several times over the past year, the Senate has failed repeatedly to extend them past their December 2008 expiration dates, often times failing to pass by just one or two votes.

While the Democrats have been adhering to their tough “pay-go” policy of not passing legislation that doesn’t stipulate where its funding comes from, Josh Dorner at Grist points out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Dems easily passed a $17 billion package for clean energy just last month.

While the Democrats would love to fund these extensions by cutting some of the billions that Big Oil collects from Uncle Sam in the form of tax breaks, this has been the sticking point for Senate Republicans.

The Senate amendment was drafted by Sens. Mary Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.), who had previously introduced their bipartisan Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008 just last week.

So, while this is certainly not the final chapter in the ITC/PTC renewal saga, it does show that there is good will on both sides of the aisle for this issue. Now the two sides just need to figure out how to fund it.

Making San Francisco a solar city isn’t enough for Mayor Gavin Newsom — he also wants to refashion it as the new windy city. Speaking beneath a 1.8 kW Skystream wind turbine in San Francisco’s Mission District (spied by E2T here), Newsom announced the creation of the “Residential Wind Power Work Group,” which will investigate the feasibility of small-scale wind power generation in the city.

One of the things we wanted to underscore is the opportunity to take wind turbines and bring them into an urban setting. Most people are familiar wind turbines when they go down the Altamont Pass or they go down towards Palm Springs or Bakersfield…Many are not familiar with the opportunity to do wind in their own backyard, in this case quite literally.

Newsom said he became interested in wind power while pushing for tidal power under the Golden Gate Bridge, saying the tidal turbines are simply submarine wind turbines. He added that the Public Utility Commission (PUC), which has been studying tidal as well as wave energy off the coasts of San Francisco, is now also actively investigating offshore wind turbines — the ultimate in NIMBY eco-phobia.

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Your twilight years probably won’t be spent cloning your pet dog or reforming the California energy market. But then you aren’t a bored billionaire looking to leave behind a legacy in clean energy (and your pup, Missy).

We’re talking about John Sperling, the founder of diploma mill University of Phoenix who’s also been portrayed as “the Howard Hughes of Biotech”. The 87-year-old Arizonian billionaire’s current plan is to back the Solar and Clean Energy Act of 2008 with his considerable wealth. The Californian ballot initiative would greatly boost the state’s renewable energy mandates and streamline the process for siting and approving renewable energy projects.

Many in the cleantech world, however, are less than thrilled with the proposal. “The initiative was put together by people who didn’t know what they were doing,” Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council told the LA Times. The problem, critics say, is that the act’s idealism would set unachievable mandates and accelerate permitting, resulting in a careless, ineffective and loophole-ridden energy system.

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There’s nothing like breathless morning show radio reports declaring “what the kids are up to these days.” NPR says young people are “flocking” to the carbon markets, both to make money and to feel like they’re doing some good in the world. After listening in on a dinner with three 30-somethings, all of whom work at energy think tanks and firms that sell renewable energy credits, the report declares them to be the whiz kids that are “pioneering the new carbon economy.”

Yeah, we’re excited, too. Except the carbon market is still rife with issues that have yet to be addressed — regulation, oil prices and transparency, to name a few. Regardless, our favorite quote from the NPR report comes courtesy of New Energy Finance’s Nathaniel Bullard, who says he gets asked questions like: “Hey, I’ve got a big pool of methane-oozing manure at my hog farm in Iowa, what can I do with that?” We’ll leave you with that picture.

Two Senators have reached across the aisle in an attempt to resurrect an extension for the soon-to-be-deceased renewable energy investment and production tax credits (ITC and PTC, respectively). Sens. Mary Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) introduced The Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008, which proposes to extend the ITC by eight years and the PTC by one year.

The move has been applauded by solar and wind energy lobbyists and could be good news for solar startups and wind giants. Though, the bill conspicuously doesn’t say how these extensions will be paid for. Previous iterations of the bill called for cuts in gas and oil subsidies to fund the tax credits, but that move sank the bill in the Senate and garnered a threatened veto from the White House.

The bill also makes several amendments to the current tax credits. It seeks to abolish the $500 cap (per 0.5 kilowatt of capacity) for fuel-cell power plants as well as the $2,000 credit cap for solar electric properties. The bill also redefines the PTC to include “marine and hydrokinetic energy” meaning that tidal and wave energy projects could also now qualify.

Some are calling the new bill “promising,” but the lack of pay-fors could easily be a sticking point as the bill moves through the legislature.

Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton unveiled an agenda this week in Pittsburgh, Penn., that seeks to dole out $7 billion in tax benefits annually to encourage job creation. Why does the cleantech world care? Because of that money, a whopping $1 billion would be used to shore up federally funded cleantech R&D and the domestic manufacturing of clean energy goods.

Clinton’s calling it “insourcing” (as opposed to “outsourcing” our jobs overseas) and is advocating a “Made Green In America” fund that would invest $500 million annually to encourage the transition to a green economy.

Under this proposal, domestic facilities that manufacture qualifying clean energy technologies, such as wind and solar, or the components of such technologies, would be eligible to receive awards of up to 30 percent of the costs of engineering, retooling or construction of facilities to manufacture qualifying clean energy technologies.

She also laid out a Green Manufacturing Extension Program, which would provide a broad range of tools and technical assistance (read: a vague amount of funding) to small and medium-sized manufacturers with a focus on green energy.

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While our nation’s labs might be delivering cleantech breakthroughs, the country’s legislatures are facing stagnation. There’s the languishing renewable energy tax credit extension, the California Resource Board’s deteriorating zero-emission vehicle program, and this week San Francisco saw its latest bout of foot-dragging on the city’s solar incentive pilot program.

On Wednesday in the Legislative Chamber of San Francisco’s City Hall, representatives from SunTech, SolarCity, Luminalt, Occidental Power and DBL Ventures were all on hand to speak out in favor of the solar incentive program, which is still hanging in policy purgatory. The program, which has a pilot budget of $3 million, would grant homeowners a rebate of $3,000 to $5,000 for installing a solar power system. Its budget was frozen last week by Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. Despite the collective call for action now, today’s committee meeting decided to gather more information and reconvene on the issue in two weeks.

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The fight against climate change in the U.S. is getting billions of VC dollars for tech innovation, the attention of presidential candidates, and game-changing legislation. So what else could it possibly need? Better advertising, at least according to Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore.

Gore is working with the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection to launch a $300 million, three-year-long ad campaign that advocates carbon-reducing policies, according to the Washington Post. The group, which was founded by Gore, has just put its first ad online; the “We” campaign is also slated to launch Wednesday on TV. One spot will supposedly feature the bizarre duo of Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton bonding over climate change policy — and that will convince…?

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Mayor Newsom’s hopes of making San Francisco a solar city were suddenly put on hold yesterday when Supervisor Jake McGoldrick issued a resolution freezing the $3 million the Mayor and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting had lined up for their Solar Incentive Rebate Program, which had been scheduled to launch as a pilot program on April 1. (The video is from our conversation with Mayor Newsom on March 18th, before the Supervisor’s most recent resolution.)

The program intends to provide rebates of $3,000 to $6,000 $5,000 for residential installations and up to $10,000 for commercial installations, with extra incentives for installers with offices in the city, including Akeena Solar, SolarCity and SunRun. The city hopes that the $3 million in public funding would leverage some $1.5 million in private investment to boost the city’s solar capacity to 55 megawatts from 5 megawatts on some 15,000 rooftops over the next 10 years.

“This is the kind of thing I’d expect from the White House not the city of San Francisco,” Akeena CEO Barry Cinnamon told us on Thursday. While Cinnamon says he thinks the citizens of San Francisco will suffer the most, he is also concerned about the solar installer industry, including Akeena, which have already spent a lot of money on marketing with the expectation that this program would go into effect next week.

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Update: Bummer. The California Resource Board voted to cut the number of zero-emission vehicles that auto makers would be required to produce to sell in Cali by 70 percent (to 7,500 for the three years from 2012 to 2014.) While that was less than its staff had originally recommended (to 2,500), it’s still a significant speed bump for the state’s electric vehicle startups.

Watching green car advocates and big Detroit debate the future of California’s “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEVs) policy in Sacramento on Thursday, was like watching a rerun of Who Killed the Electric Car — hopefully there isn’t the same outcome. Craig and I spent the better part of a day watching the live video-stream of a town-hall-style public hearing in front of the California Resource Board, and heard a slew of 3-minute testimonials from everyone from the major automakers, to startups like Tesla, and even Google.

At stake is no less than a major reduction in the number of zero-emission vehicles that auto makers would be required to produce to sell in Cali over the next few years. The CARB is considering (yet another) weakening of its ZEV policy, offering major concessions to the big auto makers, and causing trouble for younger startups that are building businesses off of electric vehicles.

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