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Google’s for-profit foundation Google.org has given a $200,000 grant to CalCars.org, a group that advocates the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars.

Plug-in hybrids are cars you can plug into an electricity outlet to recharge their batteries, and national automakers have been slow to develop them. PG&E and GM plan to enter the market over the next couple of years.

CalCars’ Felix Kramer (left) is the guy you’ll see driving a car around Palo Alto, Calif. that he claims gets 100+ MPG. The Google grant comes seven months after plans by Google to support plug-in hybrids first leaked in a NYT story. However, that piece was speculative and didn’t provide too many details. We’re hearing Google doesn’t plan to get into the car business — just like it doesn’t plan to get into the hardware phone business. But it we’re hearing it wants to strongly support adoption of such cars — announcement to come. Google co-founders Larry and Sergey were both early buyers of the Prius, and are supporters of the all-electric Tesla.

Kramer manages a helpful news archive tracking the latest developments in this sector; and see his blog.

(Photo courtesy U.S. News and World Report)

Turns out, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, and other business folks helped tipped the balance on the landmark global warming bill passed last week.

The bill, AB 32, mandates that California reduce global warming emissions by 25 percent — to 1990 levels — by the year 2020. Major carbon-emitting industries will be forced to report emissions to the state Air Resources Board.

California Assembly Member Pavley, co-author of AB 32, apparently told the group, which also included Amy Christensen, of Google and Felix Kramer of CalCars (see his VentureBeat “contributor” column today), that their press conference a few weeks ago had helped tipped the scales. By arguing the legislation will help California’s economy, the group (pictured above) produced media coverage depicting California’s business community as divided on the legislation’s economic benefits — and thus, making it more than simply a battle between business and environmentalists. The Environmental Entrepreneurs group, based here in San Francisco, held a total of 124 individual meetings with members of the legislature, plus multiple other meetings — not to mention organizing letter and phone campaigns.

Why do we care? We’ve mentioned before California’s significant role in influencing global policy on the environment. Don’t want to overstate the point, nor do we want to overstate the role of this one group, but this latest example suggests how a few business leaders here in Silicon Valley can potentially have a very large impact on world policy by driving up to Sacramento and trying to move the needle a little bit.