Free cash from the feds for clean energy, up front — not enough to cover a whole project, but enough to get investors to pony up more. That’s the basic idea of a new stimulus program that the Department of Energy and the Treasury Department have outlined today and which could potentially provide about $3 billion in grants for some 5,000 projects. Rather than waiting around for a tax credit, clean energy developers can apply for grants for up to 30 percent of their project costs (some technologies like geothermal heat pumps and microturbines will qualify for only up to 10 percent of eligible costs), encouraging investors to finance the remainder.

Congress drafted the general framework of this program, described in official language as “cash assistance in lieu of tax credits,” in the Recovery Act. What’s new today is 20 pages worth of guidelines and a sample application form that project developers can use to figure out if they might qualify for the grants, although the feds won’t start actually accepting applications until next month. The Treasury Department’s Michael Mundaca, Acting Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, said in a call with reporters today, “We’re trying to get as much information out as quickly as possible.” But according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, that hasn’t been quick enough.

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The Department of Energy just opened up $346 million in stimulus funds for boosting the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings — but ultimately the agency’s chief, Steven Chu, wants energy efficiency, and other elements of green building, to be incorporated into structure designs from the get-go by way of an open-source software platform.

In other words, in addition to funding tech investments and retrofits with tax dollars in the near term, he wants the DOE to provide advanced design tools at affordable prices or for free so companies can implement them at a relatively low cost.

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Developing Countries Eye Efficiency: “Emerging markets are waking up to the fact that using energy more wisely puts money in consumer wallets, can help smooth out trade deficits and is better for the planet in terms of reducing carbon emissions.” — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

Nitrogen Dioxide Crackdown: The EPA has just proposed the first adjustment to nitrogen dioxide air quality standards since 1971, reflecting research on health problems caused by exposure to the gas, which is formed by emissions from vehicles, power plants and industrial facilities. — Green Car Congress

GM Sizes Up Volt Competition: The time has come GM’s Chevy Volt team to hammer out details that will directly affect ride and handling. For the chassis, they’re trying to go “much more sporty” than the Toyota Prius or Honda Insight. — AutoblogGreen

Step Forward for Solar on Public Lands: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced plans Monday to assess 24 tracts of land in six Western states to see if they can support large solar arrays. By the end of next year, he expects 13 commercial-scale solar projects to be under construction on public lands. — NYT’s Green Inc.

Wells Fargo to Invest $100M in SunPower Projects: Wells Fargo has agreed to finance up to $100 million for solar projects to be built and maintained by SunPower, entitling the bank to a 30 percent tax credit or the equivalent in federal grants. — Greentech Media

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 has just cleared its biggest hurdle yet, winning approval from the House of Representatives in a close 219-212 vote late on Friday. The bill has already had a long and bumpy ride since a draft began circulating nearly three months ago — but while today’s victory may help build momentum for the bill, it’s far from a done deal.

At this point, the Senate still has to negotiate and vote on its own version of the climate and energy bill, which some environmental groups say falls short. After the Senate vote, the two chambers have to come up with a compromise version of the proposal to create mandates for increased reliance on renewable energy and the country’s first comprehensive regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, through a cap-and-trade system or marketplace for buying and trading pollution credits.

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So much for the “rapid restart” that Department of Energy Chief Steven Chu had in mind for the FutureGen project, a controversial public-private initiative to test experimental carbon capture and storage technology at a new 275 MW coal plant. Less than two weeks after Chu announced plans to contribute more than $1 billion to the project, which had stalled since the Bush administration pulled funding last year, two coal-burning utility partners have backed out of the deal — signaling a still-cloudy future for the project and increasing pressure for private-sector partners to expand their ranks.

Secretary Chu — who envisioned FutureGen as a vehicle for the $1 billion allocated in the stimulus package for “fossil energy research and development” and part of a larger collaboration with foreign energy ministers to create an international surge of research into carbon-management technologies — now sees high hurdles ahead for FutureGen. Late yesterday at the Edison Electric Institute’s conference in San Francisco, he said that while the DOE has put FutureGen “back on the table,” the Alliance still has to get a partner or two, especially a utility partner. “I’m hopeful that they can do this, but it’s not a guarantee,” he said, emphasizing that his agency’s support for the project was conditional to begin with.

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Farm Groups Win Battle for Offset Oversight: In a major victory for agriculture groups and defeat for environmental organizations that hoped the EPA would win authority to set rules for agriculture-based carbon offsets, lawmakers agreed last night to give the lead oversight role to the Agriculture Department. — ClimateWire via NYT

Solar En Route to Mainstream: A new study from the European Photovoltaic Industry Association finds solar power is on track to become a significant and competitive supplier to the electricity market by 2020. — Clean Edge

UN Turns to Social Media for Climate Deal: The UN has launched a web site called Hopenhagen to collect Twitter-like messages to pressure negotiators to adopt a strong climate treaty in Copenhagen this December. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

Adaptec Taps Supercaps: Adaptec, which makes hardware and software for the data storage industry, with some products that can help manage power use, has unveiled a new family of controllers that use supercapacitors instead of lithium-ion batteries for back-up. — Cleantech Group

Utility Execs Jumping Ship for Startups: In a growing trend, executives are leaving utilities, as well as some big energy companies, to work at smart grid startups. — Greentech Media

Quest for Corn-Free Gas: Some SUV and boat owners in Florida are more than willing to drive out of their way to fill up at stations that sell biofuel-free gasoline, looking for “the extra mpgs that come from ditching ethanol.”Autobloggreen, Florida Today

Co-Ops Strike Out Against Climate Bill: Some 930 rural customer-owned utilities that are more dependent on coal than many other generators have pitted themselves against supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill and the Edison Electric Institute. — ClimateWire via NYT

Energy Prices in the Tank: Gasoline futures started falling midweek after a government report showed a huge surplus, showing some of the first signs that an extended rally in pump prices is nearing an end after 52 straight days on the rise. — Associated Press

Duke for Nuke: Duke Energy, Usec and other energy companies have teamed up to evaluate a Department of Energy site in Piketon, Ohio, as a potential location for a new nuclear power plant. — Press Release

Electrovaya on Deck: ExxonMobil has been working with Electrovaya on technology for electric cars, and next week the company Electrovaya will discuss its plans for the Maya 300, an all-electric vehicle slated for 2011. — Greentech Media

DOE Details More Funding Opps: The Department of Energy today detailed some of how more than $300 million in investments funded by the stimulus package and the agency’s annual appropriations will be divvied up among clean energy technologies including carbon capture from coal, solar power and high-efficiency cars and trucks. — Press Release

IBM Researching Efficient Batteries: IBM is all over the smart grid and bringing IT to the energy industry, but looks like it’s got its eyes on batteries, too. The MIT Tech Review profiles IBM’s work to commercialize batteries “that store 10 times as much energy as today’s within the next five years.” — MIT Tech Review.

China Wants U.S. Cleantech: China wants the U.S. to offer up “top of the line” clean energy technologies as part of the next climate agreement. A U.S. envoy says there’s room for agreement. — Associated Press

Chromasun Hot for Solar A/C: Startup Chromasun plans to apply concentrating solar power techniques used in utility-scale power plants on a small scale to cool commercial buildings. — CNET’s Green Tech

Wind Turbines Out to Sea, Way Out: StatoilHydro and Siemens are installing what they say is the world’s first large-scale floating turbine to exploit the potential of the technology in deep waters. — NYT’s Green Inc.

It wasn’t so long ago that U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced $256 million in stimulus funding for industrial energy-efficiency initiatives, $50 million of which will go to research, development and demonstration projects aimed at helping cut the energy used by information and communication technologies. But just a week later, the Department of Energy released the results of an energy audit of its own IT practices (PDF) — and the picture wasn’t a pretty one.

Auditors noted that the DOE could save more than $23 million annually at the seven facilities surveyed, just by adopting the same technology and policies it recommends to U.S. businesses, the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog reported Monday. But as anyone who’s tried to diet, quit smoking or exercise more knows, there’s a big difference between knowing what you should do and doing it. So, for the DOE, we offer a few tips for it to lead the way for companies and other government agencies that are ready to take the next steps and break free of their energy addiction.

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The last report we covered from nonprofit policy group Next 10 suggested that if the rest of the country had followed California’s lead in supporting clean energy, improving efficiency and creating green jobs, it might have avoided the economic doldrums that the U.S. was sinking into at the time. That was in January. Today California is staring down a multibillion-dollar deficit.

Can the state — already the largest solar market in the country — really afford to maintain, and even increase investment in, clean energy projects and incentives? According to the latest Next 10 report, which will be presented at the California Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday: yes. The state has no better choice when it comes to energy and its economy, says the report.

UC Berkeley professor David Roland-Holst and his research team at the university’s Agricultural & Resource Economics department, who were commissioned by Next 10 to conduct the report released today, have found that “continuing on a business-as-usual energy path risks greater economic insecurity, while aggressive acceleration of clean energy assures faster and more sustained economic growth.” Roland-Holst’s research indicates that if California generates 50 percent of its electric power from renewable sources and increases energy efficiency by 1.5 percent per year — the most ambitious of five scenarios evaluated by the Berkeley team — it will result in 500,000 new jobs and with cumulative payrolls of more than $100 billion over the next four decades.

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