San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is in talks with electric vehicle startup Project Better Place about building the infrastructure for a fleet of plug-in cars in the city, including parking meter charging stations and battery replacement stations.

Newsom traveled to Israel last week to meet with representatives of the company. The mayor’s office tells us that during a luncheon with Moshe Kaplinsky, CEO of Project Better Place Israel (pictured after the jump with the mayor), and Aliza Peleg, a rep from the startup’s U.S. offices, Newsom offered to work with Project Better Place if it would consider doing a test project in San Francisco. Newsom also met with the company’s chairman, Idan Offer, at a reception earlier.

The city is already in early talks with private companies that could potentially work with Project Better Place to build an electric vehicle infrastructure, according to the mayor’s office. Newsom was also said to be “very impressed” with the Project Better Place’s team in Israel.

If San Francisco does do a deal with Project Better Place, it would be the first city in the U.S. to get on board with Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure plan (with three cars, San Francisco currently has one of the largest plug-in hybrid fleets in the country). This is the first we’ve heard of Project Better Place being in serious discussions stateside; we’ve tried to contact them for comment and when we hear back, will update the post.

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Silicon Valley’s green car fisticuffs is going into round two this week. According to CNET, electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive, maker of the Karma, plans to file for arbitration today in an attempt to derail the suit filed by competitor Tesla, which accuses Fisker of stealing trade secrets. The report says that Fisker will attempt to move the case to Orange County and alleges that filing the suit in San Mateo, Calif., was a breach of contract.

Tesla says that when it hired Henrik Fisker, founder of Fisker Automotive, last year to work on the body of Tesla’s sedan, both the company and its COO, Bernhard Koehler, walked away from the $875,000 contract with trade secrets and launched their own competing car.

While fights among competitors in the Valley’s very small world aren’t uncommon, this one is particularly interesting because each startup is backed by competing venture firms. Tesla is backed by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and individual investors, among them the firm’s own Elon Musk, Jeff Skoll, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Fisker, on the other hand, is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and has KP’s Ray Lane on its board.

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While wind power has been growing by leaps and bounds — a record 45 percent last year — and is on track to set a new record this year with 1,400 megawatts of capacity installed in the first quarter, the Department of Energy thinks we can do better. Much better. In a matter-of-factly entitled report, “20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply,” the DOE concludes that 20 percent of America’s energy needs could be met by wind power by 2030 if the challenges outlined in the report are addressed.

The report estimates that more than 300 gigawatts of wind power capacity would be needed by 2030, up substantially from today’s 17 gigawatts. The DOE estimates that the wind industry will be able to add 16 gigawatts of capacity a year and do so sooner than needed to hit the trajectories outlined in the report. But significant challenges in regulation, transmission, technology, manufacturing and siting must be addressed.

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The future of biofuels belongs to biology, and startups are getting more and more funding to engineer alternative fuels. Synthetic biofuel startup Gevo has raised another $17 million in a Series C funding according to Pehub.com. Existing investors Khosla Ventures and Virgin Green Fund participated, as well as new investors Burrill & Co. and Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund.

Using technology developed at Caltech, the three-year-old Gevo is working on engineering enzymes that can convert waste and other cellulosic feedstocks into alternative fuels like butanol, which can be used in the existing petroleum supply chain. Butanol, when used as a fuel, is more similar to gasoline than ethanol. Like ethanol, butanol is an alcohol compound, but with four carbon atoms instead of two; the different chemical structure gives it characteristics that make it more compatible with existing infrastructure.

When Gevo raised its Series B last July, CEO Partick Gruber said those funds would be used to continue developing the technology. We’re waiting to hear back from Gevo’s execs on how these latest funds will be used.

Gevo competes with other synthetic biology firms like Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics. Synthetic Genomics Chief Financial Officer Chuck McBride told us back in April that the company was in the process of raising a round of funding in the “$100 million to $200 million range.”

Chinese solar cell wafer maker LDK Solar posted what appeared to be a pretty strong first quarter earnings report on Monday: a net income of $49.8 million, compared with $21.6 million from a year ago reports Reuters, and a raised revenue outlook for the year. But the company also said that the rising price of polysilicon meant a lower margin forecast and that sent the company’s stock down almost 6 percent.

Ah, the short polysilicon supply issue — the thorn in the side of solar manufacturers throughout the year. As Trader Mark put it: “the shortages of polysilicon continue to act as a dark cloud overhead.” LDK forecast its gross margins at 23 percent to 28 percent, which was down from its previous forecast of 26 percent to 31 percent.

To help combat high polysilicon costs, LDK is building a silicon plant, expanding its wafer production capacity and is raising hundred of millions to complete the task. While the polysilicon issue doesn’t seem to be easing soon, the industry is hoping 2009 will be better.

SF Green Cleantech Meeting Tonight: If you’re in the San Francisco area this evening you should swing by the SF Green event where the big shot cleantech entrepreneurs and VCs will be on hand, showing off their companies, their wares and their thoughts - VentureBeat.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Biofuels: As the food vs. fuel debate rages on, you’ve got to get savvier about which feedstocks are being used for biofuels. This handy chart is a great biofuel cheat sheet - Seattle Post-Intelligencer via Treehugger.

Spiraling Water Filter Uses No Membrane: Using centrifugal force instead of a troublesome membrane, researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center have developed a spiral concentrator that can continuously clean water powered by a solar panel with no messy filters to change - MIT Technology Review.

SF Should Consider Non-Fossil Peaker Alternatives: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will consider a proposed plan tomorrow to replace the Mirant power plant with three news fossil fuel-burning plants. We need to look at some alternatives but none have been put up - SFGate.

Turn CO2 Into Paper: Carbon Sciences is marketing their carbon capture process to the paper industry who can use calcium carbonate as an additive in paper manufacture - CNet News.

The Silicon Valley electric car startup Project Better Place showed off a prototype for its electric vehicle in Israel this weekend, and said partner Renault-Nissan (Renault is building the cars while Nissan, via an agreement with NEC Corp., is supplying the swappable batteries) would likely spend between $500 million and $1 billion into building them. We contacted Project Better Place and are waiting to hear more on the partners’ investment.

Project Better Place’s car just looks like a regular sedan according to reports and images on the company’s website, but with an electrical socket and a screen showing the battery power, instead of a gas gauge. The cars are said to have a range of 100 km in city driving and up to 160 km on the highway before needing to be recharged or swapped. The aim is to have a pilot of several hundred cars in Israel next year. The first vehicles should be available to the public in late 2010.

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The holy grail of building-integrated solar might be paint-on solar, but in the meantime there is a peel-n-stick option. The Lumeta Power-Ply 380 panel uses adhesive to stick 8′x4′ panels to your roof in a matter of minutes without any racking or mounting systems — and as a result, no holes in your roof. (Hat tip Triple Pundit)

Lumeta is the brand of panels made by solar installation company DRI Energy, a division of Irvine, Calif.-based roofing firm DRI Companies. DRI Energy says they’ve installed their solar product on more than 75 roofs; being a subsidiary of a roofing company that does work in both the commercial and residential sectors gives this installer an advantage when it comes to drumming up customers.

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The debate between massive solar thermal plants and distributed roof top solar projects continues to get more interesting every day. Duke Energy’s CEO Jim Rogers says the utility will build and operate solar power, and plans to invest $100 million in solar rooftops, both commercial and residential, according to the Charlotte Business Journal reports. Duke still needs to get permission from the North Carolina Utilities Commission.

This is part of an emerging trend of utilities throwing their considerable assets behind solar installations as a way to own solar power generation. Utilities are feeling pressure from their home states’ renewable portfolio standards to incorporate more renewable energy sources. (North Carolina has a renewable portfolio standard that goes into effect in 2012 and will require utilities to generate 12.5 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2021.) Utilities are able to leverage their balance sheets to get capital at far better rates than small startups, allowing them to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in solar development.

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PowerGenix, an eight-year-old startup based in San Diego, Calif., will be showing off its nickel-zinc battery in a retrofitted Prius this week at the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference. Yeah, that’s nickel-zinc, not the nickel metal hydride battery that the Prius has already made famous. But the company says its nickel-zinc battery is 35 percent smaller than the Prius’ nickel metal hydride battery, has a better energy density and also costs less.

While the company has just started shipping its batteries for the power tool and scooter market, this is one of the first times the company is displaying its battery pack for vehicles, which it hopes to sell into the hybrid market. PowerGenix’s CEO Dan Squiller thinks the electric vehicle market will segment when it comes to battery technology: all-electric vehicles will go with lithium-ion battery technology, while parallel hybrid vehicles like the Prius will end up with a lower cost but high energy density technology like PowerGenix’s.

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