For Colorado State University spinoff Solix Biofuels, the promise of its algae fuel has drawn the interest of some atypical investors: a massive oil refinery operator and the investment arm of a Native American tribe. This morning the three-year-old algae fuel producer said it has raised $10.5 million — with an additional commitment of $5 million — in its first round of outside funding from I2BF Venture Capital; Bohemian Investments; Infield Capital; Southern Ute Alternative Energy, which manages clean power investments for the Southern Ute Indian tribe; and Valero Energy, the largest U.S. oil refinery operator.

Solix Biofuels and Southern Ute Alternative Energy will jointly develop a pilot plant on a 10-acre site on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Southwest Colorado, which will use algae to produce biofuels and feedstocks for the chemical industry. The first portion — four acres of photo-bioreactors and one acre of lab space — will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months; Solix will add on another five acres, which the company says will put it at commercial-scale.

Solix uses closed photobioreactors — often clear tanks — to produce its algae. Companies that use closed algae growing systems do so to control the environment in the tank and also to be able to distribute the tanks in a variety of locations. Open algae-growing systems are cheaper but need to be able to combat outside contaminants and are reliant on the environment.

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California utilities have been asking the state’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for years to allow them to buy renewable energy credits (RECs) without having to purchase the actual energy generated from renewable sources in order to meet California’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). In late October, the commission moved one giant step closer to allowing just that with the release of a draft decision to allow the use of tradable (unbundled) RECS (or TRECs) for compliance with the RPS. RECs assign a value to the environmental benefit of producing renewable energy instead of, say, coal-fired power.

Currently, California utilities can purchase RECs to help meet the RPS, but those RECs must be bundled with an energy purchase. Unbundling them would essentially allow the state’s utilities to buy up RECs (including from other states, provided they are registered within the Western Region Electricity Generation Information System) without purchasing the energy associated with those RECs.

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Solar stocks continue to have a rough time. In stark contrast to 2007, when the bigger names in the sector were rallying month after month on the promise of solar power, there is no clear sign of where the bottom is.

Just when it looks like old concerns have been priced into solar shares, a new glitch emerges to push them even lower. Positive earnings surprises or expectations of falling polysilicon prices will lift stocks for a bit, only to have new problems - cheaper oil curtailing demand for solar energy and tightened credit - drag them back down.

Take Suntech Power (STP), which started 2008 at $82 a share and then fell to $11.95 in late October, before bouncing back above $20 last week. But it soon tumbled back to $12 a share on a warning of a new threat - an unexpectedly resurgent dollar. Rival SunPower (SPWRA) said the strong dollar would hurt its earnings next year. The news pulled down the whole sector, including Suntech, which relies on a weak European market for sales.

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Cheap Concentrating Solar Aimed at Developing World: Morgan Solar is developing what it says is a super-cheap concentrating solar system that could be deployed in the developing world - The Star.

“The Secret Life of Quercus Trust”: David Gelbaum’s stealthy cleantech fund has funded dozens of startups but unlike other prolific cleantech investors, like Vinod Khosla, Gelbaum has kept quiet about his various green energy plays - Greentech Media.

Fisker to Open R&D Office Near Detroit: Green car startup Fisker Automotive says it plans to open a new Engineering and Development Center in Pontiac, Michigan which will employee 200 engineers and help support the company’s first car, the plug-in hybrid Karma - Press Release.

Carbon Investor Sees Recession Pushing Carbon Caps Down: A global recession could make carbon mitigation even cheaper, allowing governments to mandate deep carbon cuts, according to carbon credit investors - Bloomberg.

Solar-Powered Football Goes Prime Time: Tonight’s Monday night football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals will be played at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale which will be powered by entirely by solar power - Arizona Republic.

In order to meet the Renewable Portfolio Standards of states, utilities will need to add an aggregate of nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030. And to get all that power to customers, a total investment of as much as $2 trillion into transmission and distribution networks will be required, according to a report released today by energy consultancy The Brattle Group.

To maintain grid reliability with so much new, intermittent and far-flung renewable energy generation, our national electricity grid needs a serious upgrade. In fact, the Brattle report estimates that more money might have to be invested in the grid than in actual renewable energy generation.

Another report released today by the energy regulatory group North American Electric Reliability (NERC), identified the lack of investment in transmission infrastructure as a major obstacle for green energy deployment. “Inadequate attention to the transmission grid will undermine all efforts to address climate change while endangering our electric reliability, and thereby our national security,” Michael Heyeck, senior V-P of transmission at utility American Electric Power, says in the report.

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SunPower, whose shares took a hit last week after it cut its fourth-quarter outlook, said today it’s inked a 4-year deal to supply its solar panels to Italy’s Ecoware. Under the contract, SunPower will ship at least 130 megawatts of its high-efficiency solar panels to Ecoware, a solar power plant integrator, starting in the first quarter of 2009. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

But the good news may not be enough to bolster SunPower’s faltering stock. It was dealt a blow today by Deutsche Securities, which downgraded the shares to hold from buy. At last check , shares of SunPower had fallen as much as 4.9 percent to change hands for $32.20.

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Second Rotation, a startup whose service Gazelle offers an online gadget buyback program, said today that it has raised $6 million in second-round funds. Gazelle buys old gizmos from consumers and then sells them on eBay. The round was led by RockPort Capital Partners and also included return investors Venrock and angel investors Austin Ligon, Ashton Peery and Henry Vogel formerly of eBay. The company says it will use the money to continue its branding and marketing campaign.

The Gazelle service accepts old phones, laptops, satellite radios, MP3 players, external hard drives, cameras and even old movie and video game discs.

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Swedish electric utility Vattenfall said today that it has acquired what will be one of the largest offshore wind farms in Britain, the Thanet Offshore Wind project, for 35 million pounds ($55 million). Vattenfall, which is owned by the Swedish government, bought the 300-megawatt Thanet project from Christofferson Robb & Co., a money management fund. The wind farm is expected to be operational by the end of 2009.

But Vattenfall isn’t stopping with Thanet, which the company said will cost $1.23 billion to finish building. The company said today that it’s also teaming up with ScottishPower Renewables to make joint bids on the third round of offshore wind farm development in the UK. Vattenfall and ScottishPower Renewables, part of Spain’s Iberdrola, said they plan to build 6,000 megawatts of installed wind power capacity, enough to power four million homes by 2020.

The announcements are a big boost for the UK wind market, which suffered a blow last week when London-based oil firm BP said it was shifting its wind investments to the U.S., pulling out of developments in the UK, China, India and Turkey.

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Data storage systems — computers that enable companies to store and access large amounts of data — might be a bit of a dry topic for a Monday morning. But this morning, computing company Sun Microsystems is launching a new set of data storage products that use open source and solid-state memory drives to cut their energy consumption to one quarter that of traditional data storage systems.

Solid state drives have no moving parts and require less power to operate than mechanical disk drives. While solid state drives aren’t used as commonly in current storage systems, Sun says that a smaller energy bill, combined with standard hardware and an open source system, means the storage product — dubbed the 7000 or Amber Road family — can offer cost savings of 75 percent compared with competing storage technology.

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While Al Gore was rallying the Web 2.0 troops to fight climate change on Friday, this weekend the former V-P and Nobel Peace laureate now turned green VC set his sights on the New York Times op-ed page, where he laid out five steps needed to achieve his ambitious (if not unrealistic) U.S. clean energy plan.

Gore is calling for 100 percent of U.S. electricity to be from renewable power within 10 years. How on earth is that achievable? Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has a similar plan, but closer to a 20-year time frame. Gore says the answer is federal incentives and Obama needs to help ASAP, though he gives very few details on what each step would actually entail. What do you think?:

1). Large-scale federal incentives for constructing solar thermal, wind and advanced geothermal power plants. No word from Gore on how big those incentives should be.

2). Spend $400 billion over 10 years to build out a national smart grid that can connect renewable energy in remote locations to the cities where people will use it.

3). Help out not only Detroit but the struggling electric vehicle startups, and build a national fleet of plug-in hybrids that can help with storing energy for the grid.

4). Implement a national green retrofit plan for buildings, which can be combined with the congressional mortgage proposal.

5). Put a price on carbon and lead the way beyond Kyoto in the international community.