It took a financial crisis, but the U.S. Congress has finally extended the investment and production tax credits that are so vital for the cleantech industry. Congress had long fought over how to pay for the renewable energy tax credits and voted against them eight times this year, but with a $700 billion bailout going to Wall Street, what’s another $18 billion for clean energy? The tax breaks bundled into the bailout include incentives for solar, wind, clean coal, cellulosic biofuels, plug-in hybrids, geothermal, carbon sequestration, marine renewables, fuel cells, and energy efficiency and conservation.

The renewable energy industry has been quick to voice its support of the House’s vote. But the American Wind Energy Association, for example, while acknowledging that the credits will boost energy security and fight global warming, said it’s already thinking about “working next year with a new Congress and Administration to fashion a serious long-term clean energy policy,” since the bailout only extends the production tax credit for wind for one year.

The solar industry was luckier and eked out an 8-year extension for the investment tax credit. Roger Efird, Solar Energy Industries Association chairman and president of Suntech America said in a statement: “By passing this bill, Congress has finally given the solar energy industry ‘policy certainty’ that will attract investment, expand manufacturing and lower the cost of solar energy to consumers.”

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Auto shows can be like fashion shows, where the designers bring out both their bread-and-butter designs, as well as things more fanciful. Debuting at the Paris Auto Show that starts this weekend, Renault’s Z.E. Concept car seems to be a little of both.

The Z.E., which stands for Zero Emissions, is a hatchback design, and, surprisingly for a French car, not all that disturbingly quirky. Based on Renault’s Kangoo be bop, the Z.E. Concept is powered by a 70kW electric motor that puts out 226Nm of torque from the now-ubiquitous/fashionable lithium-ion batteries.

Renault does some interesting things, design-wise, to help put as little load as possible on those lithium-ion batteries. All the things that people expect in their cars — radios, heaters, air conditioning, headlights — drain power that could be used to move an electric car a few more clicks down the road.

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The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed the Senate-amended bailout package — the final tally, announced over applause and cheers in the chamber, was 263 to 171 in favor (we’ve been glued to CSPAN all morning). The big difference between this bill and the bailout package that failed to pass in the House on Monday is a bundle of tax breaks for individuals and businesses, including extensions of renewable energy credits. The bill now heads to president Bush for signing. Update: President Bush signed the bill into law this afternoon.

During debate, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sited the renewable energy tax credit extensions as a vital part of the bailout package. The bill extends the production and investment tax credits which were set to expire at the end of this year and are vital to cleantech project development. Half a million green collar jobs would be saved and created by this legislation, Pelosi said. The American Wind Energy Association has estimated that the expiration of the tax credits would have cost the solar and wind industries a combined $19 billion and roughly 116,000 jobs in just one year.

Looks like the Senate’s plan of adding tax breaks to “sweeten” the bill for House Republicans actually worked. Some are calling it a “pork-filled bailout,” but the amended bill gained support from both Republicans and Democrats. 32 more Democrats and 26 more Republicans voted for the bailout today than did on Monday.

New Jersey is one step closer to bringing an offshore wind farm to the coasts of the U.S. Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE), a joint venture between utility Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was selected by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities today to build an offshore wind farm far off the Jersey coastline. The proposed 350-megawatt wind farm would consist of 96 turbines nearly 20 miles offshore. GSOE will receive a $4 million state grant to help cover permitting costs and spur project financing though the final project, to be completed by 2012, will likely cost well over $1 billion, according to the state.

This is the second large offshore wind contract Deepwater Wind has won. Just last week Deepwater was chosen by the Rhode Island Governor for a $2 billion offshore wind project. The New Jersey-based firm is backed by First Wind, DE Shaw & Co. and Ospraie Management.

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PetroSun, a company that has been building an algae-to-fuel farm in Texas, said this week that it plans to establish an algae farm in China that will produce algae to be converted into biofuels. The company says it has an agreement with the Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Technology Development Co., which will commit $40 million to fund the initial construction of the farm. The profits of the venture will be split between PetroSun’s China subsidiary and Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Tech.

PetroSun’s algae farm in Texas is building out 1,100 acres of ponds that it hopes will produce 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass per year. We’re not sure how big the operations in China will be, but $40 million can create a sizable farm.

Algae is the next-generation biofuel for which everyone has been waiting. Its advocates say it can be more sustainable and more efficient than the first generation of biofuels being created now, which are based on corn and soybeans. Algae fuel is also getting a ton of investment — in the third quarter the sector brought in a record $95 million. About half of that went to Sapphire Energy and half to Solazyme.

So neither of the vice presidential candidates hit a homerun nor failed miserably in the first and only vice presidential debate, but at one point the candidates plainly stated their positions on what they thought is the cause of climate change. Obama’s VP pick Joe Biden emphasized that he believes climate change is caused by man, while McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin said, once again, that she doesn’t fully attribute global warming to man.

Palin said: “I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.”

Biden said: “Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. . . . If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade.”

Old Wind Turbines Get Second Life on the Farm: Massachusetts-based Aeronautica Windpower recycles mid-sized wind turbines from aging wind farms by refurbishing them and selling them to farmers - Press Release.

Redwood Systems Raises $4M for Building Energy Conservation: The Danville, Calif.-based startup has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Battery Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. We don’t know much about the company but it’s reportedly focused on commercial building energy conservation and is run by former Cisco executive Dave Leonard - PEHub.

EcoMotors Raises $5.25M for Fuel-Efficient Diesels: Troy, Mich.-based EcoMotors, developer of next-gen diesel engine technology, has raised $5.25 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures - PEHub

ConocoPhillips CTO Talks Cleantech: ConocoPhillips has doubled annual technology spending in the last few years. So what does the oil giant have up its sleeve for renewable energy? - Cleantech Blog.

Ocean Power Technologies Receives $2M DOE Award: The New Jersey-based startup has gotten $2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy which it will use to build a PowerBuoy, a wave energy generator, to be installed off the coast of Reedsport, Ore. in the second half of 2009 - Press Release.

The Paris Auto Show is set to kick off at the end of this week and with it comes hot anticipation for a number of new, next-gen vehicles. Venturi Automobiles has taken the wraps off its latest car, the Volage, jointly developed with Michelin. The Monaco-based electric-car maker and French tire giant Michelin have created a two-seat roadster with a curvaceous, carbon-fiber body and individual in-wheel motors.

Venturi and Michelin promised big technical and design innovations with their new car and the Volage looks to be an automobile of the digital age. The dashboard will feature a touchscreen that allows the driver to select settings that reign in speed to extend the car’s polymer lithium batteries to their estimated 200-mile range, or vice versa. More pics and details below the fold.

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We worried last week that the credit crunch would hurt cleantech, and especially ethanol. Now this week there are two more additions to our ethanol death watch map, Visions Fuels in Iowa and Oklahoma Sustainable Energy, embedded below. In both cases the financial crisis on Wall Street was blamed for drying up investments.

View Larger Map The capital-intensive business of ethanol production is getting hit hard as project financing slows to a trickle, and we expect to add more pins to our map. This could be the end for Vision Fuels, which announced today it had to cancel its Des Moines plant and lose a nearly $1 million deposit. Vision Fuels had originally planned on building three plants but abandoned plans for the two other plants in July.

Unfortunately, it’s not as if the developers who moved earlier and got funding before the collapse are fairing much better. Record corn prices and tumbling oil prices are squeezing already thin margins for grain-ethanol producers. Citigroup thinks three-quarters of all U.S. ethanol plants are at risk of closing.

In a separate twist, nepotism, conflict-of-interest laws and Missouri state politics have stalled incentives for an ethanol plant in Missouri.

General Motor’s vice chairman Bob Lutz is an outspoken guy — he’s not afraid of voicing is opinion on issues like how he doesn’t agree with the carbon theory of climate change (fun). Lutz also isn’t shy at offering his opinion on electric vehicle companies, specifically Shai Agassi’s startup Better Place — he told the Toronto Star’s Tyler Hamilton that he doesn’t like the Better Place model for a variety of reasons.

Lutz says GM’s batteries are purpose-built for the vehicle (not standardized), and he can’t wait for Agassi to standardize batteries. He also says he’s worried about the risks of Better Places’ networks and says “Frankly, we’d have to be very much assured that all of these connections, the disconnect, the reconnect, and everything, that it all works well without any risk or without any danger.” In addition Lutz says he doesn’t see how the math of Better Place’s business model would work. OK, that last one we can understand, but read the quote Hamilton got in all its glory:

I’m also somewhat troubled by the situation where a company becomes the equivalent of a cellular provider, and here is Mr. Agassi, who buys the electricity in bulk and resells it to you at a tremendous profit in the form of charged batteries. And he would have to charge a lot, because when you start thinking about the upfront investment in a dense network of charging stations all over the country . . . I don’t see how the business equation could possibly work. Unless he resells it to you at a tremendous mark-up. Which wouldn’t be profiteering.