So there’s not too much for cleantech entrepreneurs and innovators in this video — except maybe PR lessons — but still, check out the clip of the fake press conference that the prankster vigilantes the Yes Men put together posing as the Chamber of Commerce and fake-announcing that the Chamber has reversed its position on climate change. It’s hilarious, particularly in the typical National Press Club set up, which is half-filled with journalists wearing dark blue suits. Best part: when the real Chamber of Commerce executive tries to stop the fake press conference and a journalist tells him that he needs to keep listening to the fake conference because he’s on deadline.

For those not familiar with the Yes Men, here’s another clip of them posing as a Dow Chemical exec and pretending to take responsibility for an environmental disaster caused by Dow (and of course they have a movie in the works).

State law requires the California Energy Commission (CEC) to assemble a report every other year with recommendations for policies to “conserve resources; protect the environment; ensure reliable, secure, and diverse energy supplies; enhance the state’s economy; and protect public health and safety.”

That’s a massive task, particularly during a time of flux for how we generate, manage and consume energy, and according to Jeff Byron, the presiding member of the committee that put together the Draft Integrated Energy Policy Report (IEPR) released this week, a few factors made the challenge even greater: the state financial crisis, staff furloughs and the stimulus package, which created new funds and programs for the commission to manage.

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Hundreds of bills escaped California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto power last night ahead of a midnight deadline to act on a mountain of legislation — but not a pair of long-debated clean energy bills. As expected, the governor killed two items, which would have required utilities in California to get at least a third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, but with limits for how much of that goal they could meet with power generated out of state (at an Arizona solar farm, for example).

In Schwarzenegger’s view, those limits made the proposed laws overly “protectionist” and lacking in pragmatism, since development of renewable energy projects and transmission infrastructure within California has been relatively slow going. The governor’s veto last night, and the controversy over his executive order last month to have the California Air Resources Board (rather than the legislature) determine how utilities can meet the renewable portfolio standard, highlight a major choke point in the effort to clean up the national power supply: the approval process for transmission lines.

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The partners at venture firm Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) say there’s a dirty little secret in the current cleantech investing climate: Much of the sector has been based on modernizing outdated industrial technologies and we’re missing out on a new transformational industry. In an article in Forbes this week MDV partners Josh Green and Will Coleman say that to create that type of transformational new cleantech sector, like the U.S. successfully did with computing, the U.S. government needs to step in and start funding basic and early-stage research.

I agree that what Green and Coleman call a dirty secret is a problem. For example, updating the power grid with information technology (creating the smart grid) is basically about getting utilities up to speed with modern digital technologies, which should have happened years ago. There’s no revolution there, it just makes sense for utilities’ businesses, for consumers’ needs, and for fighting climate change. Smart grid technologies will create a lot of revenues for the existing players, including large IT companies like Cisco and IBM, and some newer firms like eMeter and Silver Spring Networks. But the VCs are right — this isn’t a sector that the U.S. can use as a way to revitalize the American economy and maintain our lead in the global economy.

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Renewable energy has for years been hailed as the predominant solution to California’s energy dilemma, a sentiment that more recently has been supported by public policy as well. But while there’s no question that sustainable energy is exciting, if Spain’s experience is any example, misplaced government mandates, aggressive special interests and taxpayer-funded subsidies for the clean power industry would cost us dearly.

Spain is often held up as the role model for renewable energy development. The Spanish government has been generous with subsidies for clean power in the form of grants and direct low-interest loans — $1.6 billion for the solar industry alone in 2008. The result has been that it’s basically subsidized companies’ losses and the true costs of renewable energy development has not been passed on to the consumer. Now the Spanish government is warning that its clean power policies could result in significant end user cost increases for electricity — for many years to come.

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Apple wants no part in the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to EPA regulations of greenhouse gas emissions. The company has sent a letter to the lobbying behemoth today announcing its decision to resign its membership.

Apple’s departure makes is just the latest company trying to distance itself from chamber’s stance on climate policy — several utilities including California’s PG&E have said they will let their membership lapse at the end of this year and Nike has stepped down from the chamber’s board. But in a move that shows the high stakes of the climate policy debate for corporations, Apple has taken a bolder step and made its resignation from the chamber “effective immediately.”

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There’s a growing laundry list of complaints about the climate bills that passed the House and were introduced into the Senate this week. But here’s another very important one: the bills basically neglect to promote the use of natural gas for electricity production, points out Mark Zoback, a Geophysics professor at Stanford University, who gave a presentation at Stanford this week.

Zoback, who has given a variety of talks on natural gas before, says that newly discovered abundant sources of natural gas, combined with carbon capture and storage, could play a very significant role in fighting climate over the next several decades. As the U.S. transitions to truly clean power, he urges that incentives for natural gas — for both electricity generation and vehicle transportation — make it into the final version of the climate bill, which policy-makers will be debating over the coming months.

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Industry watchers have been predicting – and companies have been eagerly awaiting – the return of tech IPOs for months. A123Systems’ successful IPO last week set off a new flurry of those forecasts, with many seeing it as a sign of more offerings to come, and a new break through for cleantech IPOs. But at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum West on Wednesday, Pascal Levensohn, founder of Levensohn Venture Partners and a National Venture Capitalist Association board member, called those predictions “wishful thinking.”

While he’s glad to see a few IPOs emerging, they amount to “drops of water in the desert” and are “not relevant to the majority of companies out there,” he said. “I disagree with predictions that U.S. IPOs are about to come back in a meaningful manner. Underwriters are only willing to accommodate a small number of companies.”

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Back in 2006 there was much cheering from the cleantech industry when cleantech venture investing became the third largest category, trailing information technology and biotechnology. Many wondered if it would ever hit the top spot. Well, we can now thank the recession and government funding for the category taking the lead for the first time: This morning the Cleantech Group has published numbers that say venture investments in cleantech startups are continuing to rebound and for the third quarter of 2009 have finally eclipsed biotech and IT investing in the U.S.

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If it seems like it’s been twice as hard to raise money for renewable projects this year compared with 2007, that’s because it has been. At the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, John Eber, managing director at investment bank JP Morgan, said tax-equity financing for renewable energy is expected to total $2.5-$2.6 billion this year, down from $3.6 billion last year and $6 billion in 2007. Tax-equity financing is based on the exchange of tax credits, so it’s no wonder it has plummeted in a market where profits — and therefore taxes high enough to make use of tax credits for renewable-energy projects — are harder to come by.

However, federal cash grants, which will enable renewable projects to get money in lieu of tax credits and were approved back in February, could definitely help fill the tax-equity gap. Eber said, “The vast majority of projects are going to [want to] use the grant.” However, there have been a variety of complications that have kept many clean power projects from being eligible for the grants.

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