Its mission is to “drive the mass-market adoption of residential solar.”  CPF provides a business-to-business marketplace that connects professionals in the solar industry with people looking to invest in it. The platform also offers white-labeled software-as-a-service tools to create proposals, and drive sales and customer engagement.

The solar sector has had (and caused) some headaches over the past few years. Some companies have struggled to become gain market traction and generate revenue, while other publicly traded companies saw their share value drop as global oversupply and decreased production costs pushed down the price for panels. With people like President Obama and Warren Buffett emphasizing the future of the space (and the impending doom of climate change), the solar industry clearly isn’t going anywhere.  The challenge is to find sustainable business models that make solar technology cost-effective for both businesses and consumers, while also lucrative for the companies behind it.

CPF describes itself as a “familiar enterprise software and financial services company” with a marketplace that is “capital-light, high-scale, and high-margin.” Solar companies provide opportunities for distributed solar financing on the site and CPF connects them with interested investors. It has three sources of revenue- transaction fees for marketing and underwriting services, software licensing fees for the tools, and assets management fees for the people investing in the projects.

“Our investor partners earn favorable returns on stable investments with managed risk,” the company said on the site. “Our solar partners gain access to solar leases power purchase agreements (PPAs) that they can brand and sell to homeowners who want the benefits of solar without the cost and hassle of owning and maintaining a system.”

The marketplace currently has more than 100 solar partners and manages more than $500 million on behalf of its invest partners. It has experienced 325% revenue growth, and thus also provides desirable opportunities for venture capital firms and utility holding companies. Existing investors Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Claremont Creek Ventures, and Sand Hill Angels participating in this round, along with new investors Edison International and Hennessey Capital. There are also two more utility holding companies that invested, which do not want to be public at this time.

The fact that utility holding companies are becoming increasingly interested in solar could provide a boost for this market, which at the moment has seen a decline in deal activity. CPF’s platform helps them come into the solar market. With this $37 million, CPF will continue to accelerate development of software products and services.

CPF was founded in 2006 by Match.com founder Gary Kremen. It is based in San Francisco and has raised more than $65 million to date. Read the press release.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Not content with completely reshaping the way you get information and navigate the world, Google wants to change the way you consume power, too.

The company announced on Monday that it has donated $2.65 million to the Energy Foundation, an organization focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Google energy counsel Michael Terrell said the organization is essential to updating our aging energy grid. “The challenge is that the rules governing electricity distribution were written for last century’s grid,” he wrote on the Google Green Blog.

Many of these rules prevent consumers from easily accessing their personal energy usage metrics — something that Google is heavily invested in changing.

Terrell says the investment will focus on three key areas, all of which are aimed at, above all else, freeing up information:

• Smarter electricity rates that encourage consumers to be more efficient, shift their electricity use to times when it’s cheaper, and produce their own on-site energy;
• Access to electricity markets for consumers and other businesses so they can be compensated for cutting energy use at key times; and
• Open data policies that give customers access to their own energy data, which they can use or share with third parties they select, promoting better energy management tools and services.

This has been a busy month for Google on the energy-investment front. Last week it made a $200 million investment in a 161-megawatt Texas wind farm. To date, Google has invested over $1 billion in clean energy, and it hasn’t given any signs it plans to slow that investment anytime soon.

Google announced today that it closed an investment in Spinning Spur Wind Project, a West Texas wind farm than can generate enough power for, on the average, 60,000 U.S. homes.

Source: Siemens

A Siemens turbine

The 161 megawatt facility is 35 miles from Amarillo, Texas, and brings the total amount of renewable energy that Google has invested in to a fairly staggering 2 gigawatts. That’s enough, it says, to power 500,000 American homes for an entire year or for a car to travel around the world 190,000 times.

Spinning Spur is new, a facility EDF Renewable Energy finished before the end of 2012, with 70 2.3 megawatt Siemens wind turbines. If you’re wondering whether you’re going to be using any renewable energy from the project, SPS buys the the power from Spinning Spur. SPS is a subsidiary of Xcel Energy that primarily serves Texas and New Mexico.

Google says it invests in wind projects for ecological reasons as well as financial: They’re good investments. The company has invested over $1 billion in renewable energy projects and has a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy.

Its largest wind project is the Shepherds Flat wind farm, which is about four times the size of Spinning Spur, at 845 megawatts.

photo credit: Sebastiano Pitruzzello (aka gorillaradio) via photopin cc

Renewable energy, especially solar, is making inroads into the U.S. power grid, but it’s a very slow process.

And especially in the wake of the Solyndra collapse, it’s one fraught with political wrangling.

But there’s another country that plans to invest heavily in solar power, hoping to provide fully 30 percent of its energy needs from the sun in just 20 years.

That country is…Saudi Arabia.

Yes, the conservative kingdom and longtime U.S. ally wants to cut its own oil use.

Today, Saudi Arabia burns 850 million barrels of oil a year. That represents almost a third of its total production.

Later this year, the nation is expected to approve very ambitious plans for a massive array of renewable energy projects. The first installations should be completed next year.

The goal within two decades is for the country to have 25,000 megawatts of electricity coming rom solar-thermal plants, which use huge mirror arrays to focus sunshine into a concentrated ray that heats fluid into steam to drive turbine generators.

It also expects to create 16,000 megawatts of capacity using large arrays of photovoltaic solar cells, which are slowly but consistently falling in price as more production capacity comes online–particularly in China, which has made the industry a government priority.

Saudi Arabia also plans to add an additional 21,000 megawatts from other non-oil sources, including geothermal, wind, and nuclear plants.

The entire plan is expected to cost $109 billion, for which the country is seeking investment partners.

Industry analysts say the country can earn a healthy return on the investment by displacing a third of the oil it now consumes and selling that on the open market.

In other words, one of our major sources of imported oil thinks that spending more than $100 billion to cut its own oil consumption is a good deal–because we’ll pay them more than that for the oil they don’t use.

The next time U.S. drivers pay $4 a gallon or more for gasoline, that may be worth keeping in mind.

This story originally appeared on GreenCarReports.com, one of VentureBeat’s syndication partners.

Solar panels photo via Shutterstock

Scientists from Bio Architecture Lab, Inc (BAL) and the University of Washington in Seattle have found a way to turn seaweed into fuel with the use of genetically modified Escherichia coli, most commonly known as E. coli, the Scientific American reported. E. coli is a bacteria that can show up in food and make humans ill.

In the last few decades, there has been a push to create biofuels — fuels derived from plants and grasses — to replace fossil fuels. For a while, corn was a major biofuel player. It could be transformed into corn ethanol, a fuel that could be use in flex-fuel vehicles such as the Ford Fusion and the Dodge Ram Pickup. While corn ethanol seemed like an obvious solution, it’s not as environmentally friendly as it was once touted to be due to amount of land needed to grow the crop and its impact on food production.

This is where seaweed comes in. Because seaweed grows rampantly in the world’s oceans, it takes up no land space and doesn’t affect food production like corn does. Seaweed also grows without any help from humans; relying on ocean water for nutrients with no need for fertilizers or pesticides.

The team of scientists genetically modified a strain of E. coli to digest the sugars found in kombu — an edible kelp often found in miso soup — and turn it into ethanol. Once modified, the team tested the new E. coli by adding it to a solution of water and ground up kombu and letting it sit for a few days.

After sitting for two days, the E. coli had broken down the kombu into a solution of ethanol and water. The entire process took place at a relatively low temperature; around 30 degrees Celsius or around 86 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning excessive heat would not be needed to covert seaweed into fuel on a larger scale. The full study was published in the January 20 edition of the journal Science.

Yasuo Yoshikuni, the co-founder of BAL and one of the researchers for the project assured that this new strain of E coli wouldn’t be able to get loose and consume all of the seaweed already growing in the oceans. ”E. coli loves the human gut, it doesn’t like the ocean environment,” Yoshikuni told Scientific American, “I can hardly imagine it would do something. It would just be dead.”

While the prospect of moving away from fossil fuels and corn ethanol seems appealing and environmentally friendly, turning seaweed into fuel does open up the possibility of the oceans being exploited. It’s no secret that overfishing is a major problem plaguing our oceans, with too many fish being caught for human consumption. If scientists move forward with creating ethanol from seaweed, hopefully it won’t be at the sacrifice of the world’s oceans.

E. Coli image via Shutterstock

GMZ Energy specializes in renewable and economically viable energy. “We have a solid state material that lets you generate electricity from heat. There are huge amounts of waste heat, and if that can be harnessed it can be used to generate tons of electricity,” GMZ CEO Aaron Bent told VentureBeat.

Essentially, instead of creating electricity from burning fossil fuels, the company uses a renewable thermoelectric (heat-electricic) material to convert heat to electricity using the sun and wasted heat from industrial and automotive sources.

The material, which developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College, works by generating an electrical current from temperature changes. A heat source is placed on one side of the material, creating an electrical current.

GMZ Energy is currently developing its first product for launch in 2012; a solar hot-water collector that will generate electricity for homeowners.

“The funding will be used for two major things; to complete the release of our new product and move in it to production, and to accelerate our other waste heat recovery projects,” said Bent.

GMZ Energy was founded in 2007. GMZ Energy has been funded by BP Alternative Energy, Energy Technology Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mitsui Ventures, I2BF Global Ventures and strategic corporate partners.

Nuclear Plant photo via Shutterstock

Clean Power Finance connects solar panel providers and installers with investors looking to drop money into residential solar providers. Those investors provide financing to home owners, who are then able to purchase or lease out solar panels at a more reasonable cost. There are some major companies that provide financing options, but Clean Power Finance could be more attractive for smaller installers that don’t have a large market share and can’t price their systems as competitively as companies like SolarCity and SunRun.

It’s a web-based interface that streamlines the connection process between installers and investors. The installer builds the photovoltaic panel system, the investor owns that system, and homeowners make monthly payments to the investor until they completely own it.

Google made the announcement at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco, Calif., today. This is the company’s second investment in a residential solar provider. The search giant recently created a $280 million fund for residential solar power projects run by SolarCity. The fund gives SolarCity the capital it needs to create more reasonable financing options for homeowners who are interested in installing solar panels on their roofs but don’t have the cash to buy panels outright.

So far, Google has skirted around tying up with SunRun, another large provider of residential solar panels. SunRun has a market share of around 28 percent, though it fluctuates between 26 and 28 percent depending on the month, SunRun founder Ed Fenster told VentureBeat. That means that 28 of every 100 homes installing solar panels on their roofs are leasing panels from SunRun.

“We certainly think residential solar financing is compelling and are interested in good investments — in residential solar, or elsewhere in renewable energy,” Google clean energy spokesperson Parag Chokshi told VentureBeat.

A study done by the University of California at Berkeley found that home values increase when solar panels are installed. The study found that homes with solar panels sold for an extra $5.50 per watt of solar power installed, for an average of $17,000 more per house.

Google’s $75 million investment today brings its total residential solar investment to $355 million and its total clean energy investments — which includes investments in wind power — to $850 million.

Emerging solar markets like those in New Jersey, and third-party residential solar installers such as SolarCity and SunRun, have put the U.S. on track to double its solar capacity growth this year when compared to 2010. New Jersey overtook California as the largest commercial solar market last year. More than half of all residential solar panel installations are now done by those third-party leasers and installers, as well.

The solar industry experienced a black eye when solar panel provider Solyndra, the now-controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. That company was one of the first to receive a federal stimulus grant. But after raising $1 billion the company was forced to slash costs, close a factory and cancel an initial public offering as photovoltaic panel prices collapsed amid the economic recession that began in 2008.

Solyndra specialized in cylindrical solar panels that are not made out of polysilicon, a key component in crystalline solar panels. Solyndra was safe in the solar market when polysilicon prices were at their peak, but they fell rapidly as the U.S. entered a recession. That, along with a collapsing solar panel market in Spain, left Solyndra unable to compete with other manufacturers like SunPower, SEIA chief executive Rhone Resch told VentureBeat.

“What we saw occurring over the last several years was a decline in module prices much more rapid than anybody anticipated,” he said. “Solyndra couldn’t compete, Solyndra’s investors and officials assumed the price of polysilicon would continue to rise or maintain the high levels we experienced in 2008.”

Many governments are offering incentives for solar panel manufacturers, but the market is shifting in favor of higher-efficiency photovoltaic manufacturers because the incentives favor rooftop solar installations with smaller surface areas, senior director of global product marketing Jim Cushing of Applied Materials, a company that sells solar panel manufacturing equipment, told us. But even that market isn’t insulated from a glut of solar panels on the market.

Those incentives could expire by the end of the year, driving solar installation expansion down in 2012, GTM Research managing director Shayle Kann said in an interview. While the U.S. solar market is expected to double this year, it might only grow by around 50 percent next year, thanks to a lack of federal funding he said.

Despite pricing woes, solar panel manufacturing in the United States has some advantages over international manufacturers, Kann said. The U.S. solar panel market expanded by 314 megawatts worth of installations, up 69 percent from the same period last year. The U.S. solar market typically sees most of its growth in the fourth quarter of the year as well, Kann said. There are 7 gigawatts worth of installations already planned for construction in the United States.

“What’s happening, Solyndra is the exception to the rule rather than what’s happening across the board,” Kann said. “The US market remains a rare bright spot, I would say and I don’t think this is an exaggeration, every global solar player is currently developing or has developed a strategy to invest in the U.S. market.”

“We have to put this partisan bulls–t behind us,” Doerr said at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference on Wednesday. “We need new leadership and public pressure, it will not happen with business as usual.”

Clean technology investing has hit a few hiccups lately, with investments in cleantech companies slowing in the second quarter this year. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said clean technology was a “disaster” on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 on Monday. The slowing is partly due to dropping subsidies and support for clean technology, he said. That’s fed misinformation and a lack of understanding of the science behind new energy technologies.

One culprit of internal governmental dispute is Solyndra, a cylindrical solar rooftop systems company that filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. Solyndra was a controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. That company was one of the first to receive a federal stimulus grant. Solyndra’s failure raised questions about the future of the loan guarantee program, which would further stifle innovation in clean technology — the same way other industries would have been stifled without government support.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the lone entrepreneur in the garage creating an industry,” he said. “We have this myth that the IT industry got started on its own — no, there was federal funding, just like what we need for clean technology.”

Doerr is a strong proponent of clean technology for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which had an extended stint focusing on investing in clean technology. The company has invested in electric car manufacturer Fisker Automotive and electric bus maker Proterra.

“The thing that scares me the most about America at the moment is the anti-science movement is gaining ground,” he said. “If we don’t have presidents or an informed electorate that can make decisions based on science, we’re gonna be in a bad situation.”

[Photo credit: Matthew Lynley]

The company makes cylindrical solar rooftop systems and is a now-controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy — one of the first of its kind as part of the U.S. government’s federal stimulus program. After raising $1 billion, the company was forced to slash costs, close a factory and cancel an initial public offering as photovoltaic panel prices collapsed amid the economic recession that began in 2008.

“The price drops outpaced market growth and put pressure on solar panel manufacturer revenues,” Lux Research analyst Matt Feinstein told VentureBeat. “Eventually, the market growth begins to then outpace the price decline, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

As a result, the company has closed its factory in Fremont, Calif. The company grew from $6 million in revenue in its first year of operations to $140 million in revenue. Its solar panels cost an average of around $2 per watt to produce — which is high compared to many manufacturers in China and First Solar, which can produce solar panels for less than $1.20 per watt.

“I wish we would target more U.S. companies, but the solar manufacturing market is in Asia,” senior director of global product marketing Jim Cushing of Applied Materials, a company that sells solar panel manufacturing equipment, told VentureBeat. “China in particular has been extremely aggressive investing in building up a photovoltaic infrastructure and a photovoltaic capacity, and they’ve been able to drive their costs down.”

Dropping demand for solar panels that capture between 16 and 17 percent of the sunlight shining on them has also taken its toll on solar cell manufacturers. Many governments are offering incentives for solar panel manufacturers, but the market is shifting in favor of higher-efficiency photovoltaic manufacturers because the incentives favor rooftop solar installations with smaller surface areas, Cushing said.

The loan guarantees are one of the financial engines powering many cleantech investments in Silicon Valley. But concerns about burgeoning debt in the United States have raised questions about whether the program will continue to exist. The program will likely continue to exist in its current form for electric car manufacturers, but other cleantech sectors could be in jeopardy, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Ray Lane told VentureBeat. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has a large presence in the cleantech space with investments in Fisker Automotive and electric bus manufacturer Proterra.

The U.S. government has allotted an enormous amount of money to companies like solar panel manufacturer First Solar. The program has issued conditional guarantees valued at around $16 billion to solar power projects and $38 billion to clean technology projects. Other countries stimulate cleantech expansion by other means, like feed-in tariffs.

“I don’t think (cutting the loan program) will ever not be on the table,” Feinstein said. “Newer technologies, unproven technologies are the ones that would suffer most because they rely on those loan guarantee programs.

Solyndra’s annual revenues topped $140 million last year amid growth in U.S. and European markets. Solyndra had shipped nearly 100 megawatts of panels and expected to reach an installed system cost-of-goods-sold price of about $2 per watt in the first quarter of 2013 as of February.

Record Hill Wind will also build an eight-mile transmission line between the farm and transmission equipment in a nearby town. A study by the U.S. Department of Energy found that building transmission lines to move the power once the turbine starts running is one of the major hurdles wind energy faces. It was one of the reasons wind energy production fell last year, according to a report by the Department of Energy.

“In the last 5 years, the cost of utility-scale wind had actually been going up because of those transmission costs,” Pike Research analyst Peter Asmus told VentureBeat. “But that looks like it’s reversing, my sense is that the market is leveling off, the costs are starting to decline.”

Maine previously hosted a fight between Vinalhaven Island residents and a wind power provider over noise pollution generated by the turbines. Wind power providers typically face “not-in-my-backyard” complaints from residents in rural areas. Residents argue sounds from the wind turbines are disruptive and that the turbines make for flickering lights because they block out the sun.

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found the noise from the wind turbines on Vinalhaven registered somewhere between 46 and 47 decibels. The night-time noise pollution limit for areas in Maine is 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area, according to the report.

A loan guarantee from the Department of Energy helps companies attract buyers and investors for new renewable energy projects. It means the government will foot part of the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to produce some kind of return for investors. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government is promoting renewable energy — though they are more important for less-certain projects.

“I think the loan guarantees are more critical for projects like concentrated solar projects than for large wind farms,” Asmus said. “If the loan guarantee program were to fade away — I think that’s possible — I think that would have a larger impact on other technologies than large wind.”

The loan guarantees are one of the financial engines powering many cleantech investments in Silicon Valley. The U.S. Department has invested more than $40 billion in clean technology projects like wind and solar power farms. Yale University Endowment also invested an undisclosed sum in the wind power project.

The company is finalizing its term sheets for the remaining $10 million of the round, which should be closed sometime later this week, Aquion Energy’s vice president of business and market development Ted Wiley told VentureBeat. He confirmed that Foundation Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participated in the round.

“Everybody is just going through term sheets,” he said. “It’s not a question of if, just when it clears all the legal hurdles.”

The company creates batteries that can operate at a wide range of temperatures (between -10° C and 60° C) and use sodium ions rather than lithium ions to carry a current. The batteries cost less than $300 per kilowatt-hour of electricity stored, compared to between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour of electricity found in most modern lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are designed to last for more than 5,000 cycles — running from a full charge to a full discharge.

Aquion Energy strings the batteries together into arrays of 8 or more batteries that carry 15 volts. The company can also stack those arrays together in a circuit in series or parallel configurations to create a battery fixture that carries 100 volts. Aquion Energy plans to introduce strings that can carry 1,000 volts by the fall.

Batteries like those produced by Aquion Energy are useful because they can store electricity generated by non-conventional sources — such as wind turbines or solar panels — and release the electricity gradually. That helps alleviate strain on a power grid that might be overloaded if too many sources of energy feed electricity into the grid all at once. The batteries can also release additional electricity in peak-demand times, such as hot days or in the future when there are thousands of electric car chargers on the grid.

“We are electron source agnostic, these are batteries for any kind of grid, any stationary energy storage,” Wiley said. “We would be interested in telecom backup markets, off-grid renewables, all the way up to peak shaving and grid-level services.”

The company has raised $5 million from a mix of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a loan from the Department of Energy. It has a production plant in Pittsburgh, Pa., that is producing demonstration models of the batteries. The company plans to create a high-volume production facility sometime next year that will produce enough batteries to store 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The average cost of installing new wind power held steady in 2010, while the cost of other forms of electricity fell, according to the report.

The cost of installing wind turbines and transmission lines also hasn’t yet caught up with the declining prices of wind turbines. Most wind turbines produced today use a three-blade design, but a number of companies are experimenting with two-blade designs and other designs that are cheaper to manufacture and generate an equivalent amount of electricity.

“Over time everybody coalesced around the same design, but we’re starting to see a lot of diversity again,” said Peter Asmus, a senior analyst with clean technology research firm Pike Research. “We’re seeing lots of vertical axis machines, which a lot of people are skeptical of, and we’re also starting to see some two-bladed machines coming back in.”

The key problems remain building and maintaining new transmission lines, according to the report. It’s easy enough to generate electricity from a wind turbine, but more difficult to move it from point A to point B. It’s a problem that all new types of renewable energy face, Asmus said.

Wind power providers also face concerns about “not-in-my-backyard” complaints from residents in rural areas. There are concerns from a lot of rural residents that the sounds from the wind turbines are disruptive, and that the turbines make for flickering lights because they block out the sun. That has a lot to do with the location of the turbine, because on paper the turbines should not generate that much noise, Asmus said.

“Generally what I’ve heard is that the sound of the wind itself drowns out the sound of the turbine,” Asmus said. “It’s about terrain, the residents get reflections of sound, or they live in something like a valley where the sound ricochets off rocks.”

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found the noise from the wind turbines on Vinalhaven registered somewhere between 46 and 47 decibels. The night-time noise pollution limit for areas in Maine is 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy  showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area. Recent complaints show that wind power companies are not doing a good enough job showing the overall impact of wind power turbines on local property taxes.

The United States fell far behind China in terms of wind power added last year as well. China added 18,928 megawatts worth of wind power last year, compared to 5,113 megawatts worth of wind power in the U.S. That means China now generates more electricity from wind power than the United States as of the end of last year. China now generates 44,781 megawatts worth of wind power, compared to 40,267 megawatts worth of wind power generated in the United States.

Typical wells extract oil by flooding the well with water to increase pressure and push the oil out of the well. Glori Energy is able to extract an extra 30 to 45 percent of oil left over in existing oil wells by flooding the wells with nutrients that encourage microbes to grow in the wells. Those microbes alter the flow of the oil temporarily, making it easier to extract oil from the wells.

That removes the risk of having to drill additional wells to capture more oil. Oil drilling — particularly offshore drilling — came under fire last year after an explosion destroyed an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the well to spew millions of barrels worth of oil into the Gulf.

Energy Technology Ventures is a financial venture-backed by General Electric, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips. All three companies are known for investing in clean technology projects and providing the technology for renewable energy sources like wind and solar power projects. For example, GE is the top supplier of wind turbines for some of the nation’s largest wind power farms. But the three companies are still also investing in traditional energy sources like oil and natural gas.

There are subsidies that bring the cost of electricity produced from renewable energy sources closer to that produced by fossil fuels. But energy generated by fossil-fuel burning methods is still cheaper than energy from renewable sources like solar and wind power.

SolarCity leases residential solar panels for a 15-year period, handling all the maintenance during the life of the lease. The electricity generated by the panels powers homes directly, taking some load off the electric grid. The company works in the “distributed solar” space, which is designed to help reduce some of the strain on power grids during peak usage hours when homes are drawing more electricity for air conditioning or, in the future, electric car charging.

Google recently created a $280 million fund for residential solar power projects run by SolarCity. The fund gives SolarCity the capital it needs to create more reasonable financing options for homeowners who are interested in installing solar panels on their roofs but don’t necessarily have the cash to buy panels outright.

SolarCity is currently the second-largest provider of residential solar panels behind SunRun. SolarCity has a market share of around 14 percent of the leasable solar panel market, while SunRun has a market share of around 28 percent.

A study done by the University of California at Berkeley found that home values increase when solar panels are installed. The study found that homes with solar panels sold for an extra $5.50 per watt of solar power installed, for an average of $17,000 more per house. That goes against a lot of not-in-my-backyard arguments that have been plaguing clean energy providers because some homeowners see solar panels and wind turbines as an eyesore.

SoloPower manufactures photovoltaic cells, which capture sunlight and convert it to electricity on a flexible surface that can be bent and placed just about anywhere. They’re called thin-film solar panels, but they are typically less efficient at capturing sunlight and converting it to electricity than hard wafer-style photovoltaic cells. Thin-film solar panels are usually able to convert about 15 to 20 percent of the light shining on the panel into energy.

The company filed a form with the SEC that indicated it has raised $13.5 million but only planned to raise around $20 million in March. The new filing indicates a much higher target for fundraising in its fifth round of funding.

SoloPower recently snagged a $197 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a thin-film solar panel factory in Wilsonville, Ore. It also raised $51 million in its fourth round of funding and a $20 million loan from Oregon’s state government.

Crosslink Capital and Hudson Clean Energy Partner participated in this round of funding, according to the filing.

Aggressive spending and expansion in clean technology would generate 1.1 million new jobs by 2030 and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent, according to a new report by Google. If the U.S. employs more federal mandates and provides funding for clean technology projects, those projects will generate 1.9 million jobs and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent, the report states.

By 2050, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 55 percent without federal mandates and funding for clean technology projects. The U.S. will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 63 percent if the government introduces aggressive clean technology policies.

Google’s report focuses on two ways to increase the funding for clean technology projects. The first is a model in which the U.S. government aggressively expands its clean technology policies and increases the amount of nuclear power deployed. That model also assumes that there are additional carbon-capture projects deployed in the U.S.

The second model, which would have less of an impact than government intervention, involves taxing carbon emissions at $30 per ton. That would bring up the cost of power produced by plants that use coal, natural gas and other types of fossil fuels. It would bring the cost of electricity and power from those plants to something comparable with renewable energy sources like wind power and solar power.

With government intervention, clean technology spending would increase the United States’ GDP by around $244 billion per year and reduce household costs by $995 annually. With carbon taxes, the United States’ GDP would increase by $155 billion per year and U.S. consumers would save $942 annually.

Google has thus far invested $780 million in clean energy projects, $700 million this year alone. Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google uses the renewable energy to power its own data centers.

France will also commit €1.3 billion to renewable energy projects. Sarkozy said that the moratorium on nuclear power did not make any sense and that there were no alternatives to nuclear power that were cleaner than fossil fuels available today.

Germany recently announced that it would shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. But that country is also one of the countries most advanced in deploying solar and wind power. Germany was the largest investor in clean technology projects in Europe in 2010, investing $41.2 billion in clean technology startups, double what it invested in 2009. Switzerland, too, has said it does not plan to replace its nuclear power plants when they are no longer functional, according to The Guardian.

Concerns about nuclear power hit a crisis point when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan in March. The quake cut off power to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and a tsunami that followed took out diesel generators designed to keep power going to the plant. That meant clean water was no longer pumped into the reactor, causing the whole system to overheat.

The crisis in Japan also did not change the investing thesis about clean technology, according to a number of leading venture capitalists and researchers. Fears of a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan sparked a rally in clean-energy stocks — particularly solar power stocks. But that brief surge quickly waned and never touched the private investment community, because venture capitalists typically focus on longer-term plays.

Despite the Fukushima situation, the US government plans to continue funding nuclear power projects as part of a push to promote energy that is cleaner than that produced by fossil-fuel-burning plants. President Barack Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu have also lobbied hard to bring nuclear power to the forefront as a potential alternative to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

[Photo: Guillaume Paumier]

Astrum, one of the largest residential solar panel providers on the East Coast, will install systems on around 2,000 homes this year. The average price for a home solar system is around $30,000 for an array that generates 10 kilowatts of power, based on a dozen or so quotes made through the site’s price calculator.

Solar panels on homes can help reduce some of the strain on power grids during peak usage hours, as when homes draw more electricity for air conditioning or electric car charging. It’s part of a “distributed solar” power strategy designed to reduce electricity demands on local power grids.

Interest has also been growing in companies that lease out and maintain home solar panels. Google recently invested $280 million in SolarCity, a provider of residential solar panels. SunRun, the largest provider of home solar panels, also won General Electric’s Ecomagination Challenge. That award came with an investment, though the company wouldn’t specify how much funding it received from GE.

A study done by the University of California at Berkeley found that home values increase an average of $17,000 more per house when solar panels are installed.

The AMP Project will install around 733 megawatts worth of solar panels on the rooftops of warehouses owned by Prologis. The electricity generated by the solar panels will then be sold to utility companies and distributed across the grid. It’s one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest loan guarantee commitments, though the department didn’t specify how much of the loan it would guarantee for the project.

NRG Energy will fund the first phase of the project, which will create a 15.4 megawatt array of solar panels in southern California. The company will create a power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison. When completed, Project Amp should generate enough electricity to power 88,000 homes, the Department of Energy said.

The Department of Energy offers loan guarantees to help companies attract buyers and investors for renewable energy projects. Under the guarantee, the federal government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for investors.

The U.S. Department of Energy has committed a total of $33 billion in conditional loan guarantees to clean technology projects across the country. The department has committed $12 billion of that money to solar power projects.

Rice has some experience dealing with petroleum companies and biofuel companies, having served on the board of directors of Chevron. That is probably good enough for KiOR, which focuses on transportation fuel for cars, jets and the like.

KiOR seems to have brought on Rice more for her business expertise than her experience with biofuels. She has served on the board of directors of Charles Schwab and Transamerica and also served on the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan. KiOR said Rice would provide “expertise in global business as we pursue our international strategy” in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

The company wants to produce gasoline that costs around $1.80 per gallon when produced from renewable petroleum. KiOR’s technology converts wood chips into a substance that behaves similarly to typical petroleum. That price will come with a plant capable of processing 1,500 tons of feedstock every day. The KiOR demonstration plant currently in operation can only process 10 tons per day today.

Futures for light, sweet crude oil cost more than $90 as of this morning — which will inevitably send up the price of just about everything that uses petroleum as a production component. Algae-produced oil from companies like Solazyme, however, might become more popular in the chemical space, since they have set a target of between $60 to $80 per barrel.

KiOR filed to go public in April and is looking to close out a $1 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. The company, like many other high-profile companies filing for initial public offerings this year, has not been profitable in the past 3 years and lost $46 million last year.

Clean technology market research firm Lux Research said biomaterials production will grow faster than biofuels, with 17.7 percent growth each year. That growth would be driven by major deals like this one, according to the firm. The biochemical industry was also worth $11.7 billion last year, up 7 percent from 2009. That’s because about 95 percent of plastics use some petroleum in some way — and most companies are looking for a cheaper alternative.

KiOR raised $1.4 million from Khosla Ventures after being spun out of BIOeCON. The company is located in Pasadena, Texas.

Rice, of course, isn’t the only high-profile political official to jump into the clean technology space. Former Vice President Al Gore joined investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007 to help promote more clean technology investments.

[Photo: World Economic Forum]

Google previously invested in the Alta IV project, which would generate 102 megawatts of power. This time the company is investing in the Alta V project, which will generate an unannounced amount of power. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete, and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power.

Google has thus far invested $780 million in clean energy projects, $700 million this year alone. Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google is the company that is using the renewable energy to power its data centers.

Google and Citi are purchasing the Alta V site from Terra-Gen, the original manufacturer of the project, and will lease it back to Terra-Gen as part of the deal. Terra-Gen will operate and manage the wind farm under a long-term agreement.

This wind farm might bring California more in line with other states in terms of wind energy usage. Though the state is known for its leaning toward renewable energy, it only harnesses the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Iowa is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The Alta wind farm will be one of the largest of its size, generating a gigawatt of power when all scheduled projects are completed by the end of the year. The Alta Wind Energy Center will generate 1.55 gigawatts of power when every project is completed and the wind power farm is fully online.

The wind farm will be located in northern New Hampshire, a rural area around 110 miles north of Concord. The project could generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, but it could also draw resistance from local residents.

Other wind power projects have been slowed or killed after nearby residents complained that the turbines generated noise pollution and hurt property values. In Wisconsin, regulators delayed a proposed wind power project long enough to compel the operating company to back down. Connecticut killed a 3.2-megawatt wind farm after complaints about noise and flickering lights compelled state regulators to strike down the plan. And a wind farm in Maine may soon shut down because of a similar argument.

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found that noise from wind turbines on Vinalhaven, a rural island off the state’s coast, registered between 46 and 47 decibels, just above the nightime noise pollution limit of 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California, Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values in general didn’t decline when wind power farms were installed near homes, although it noted that individual home prices could be affected.

While some states are fighting tooth and nail to keep wind farms away from populated areas, others are welcoming them as a source of renewable energy. California produces the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Ohio is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The Energy Department offers loan guarantees to help companies attract buyers and investors for renewable energy projects. Under the guarantee, the federal government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for investors.

The projects will range from ones that will generate 5 megawatts worth of power to more than 100 megawatts. The firm is hoping to invest in projects that will generate around 1 gigawatt worth of power by 2016. Most of the projects the company will invest in will generate between 5 and 20 megawatts of power, CleanPath said.

CleanPath will invest money from the new fund in North America primarily. The companies that receive an investment will receive capital, lines of credit and mentorship from the advisors at CleanPath.

Once the solar panel plant comes online, CleanPath can sell its stake in the company and use the funds to invest in a new solar power project. Firms like CleanPath can provide critical funding necessary for startups and other solar panel manufacturers to bring a panel manufacturing plant online so they can start making money producing the panels.

The firm is based in San Francisco, Calif. The firm has invested in solar power projects that generate more than 50 megawatts worth of power and biomass renewable energy projects that produce 100 megawatts worth of power. It has financed, owned and operated more than $300 million worth of solar power assets, the firm said.

The amount of solar energy hitting the earth is around 100 petawatts, or 100 million gigawatts, according to the IEEE. Solar panels only need to generate around 15,000 gigawatts of power to provide enough energy for every household and business on the planet, the IEEE said. The average home in the U.S. uses around 920 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month. So solar panels would have to capture around 0.2 percent of the total amount of solar energy hitting the surface of the earth, according to the IEEE.

A report by the United Nations called the “Renewables Bible” indicated that there’s enough potential for six renewable energy sources to grow 20-fold over the next decade. That means renewable energy sources could outpace fossil fuels in around 20 years, according to the report. Those renewable energy sources include geothermal power, biomass fuel, hydropower and power harnessed from oceanic waves, and energy generated from solar panels.

The amount of power generated by solar has been increasing by around 40 percent each year, according to the International Energy Association (IEA). By 2050, around 11 percent of all energy in the world — which will amount to around 3,000 gigawatts of power — will come from solar panels, according to the IEA. That’s enough energy to power around 253 million homes, the association said.

Only around 2.5 percent of that potential growth will happen based on the current growth trajectory for renewable energy, according to the U.N. report. That’s because a complete shift to renewable energy sources would cost global markets around $12.3 trillion by 2030. Global markets would have to invest around $5.1 trillion over the next decade and an as much as an extra $7.1 trillion between 2020 and 2030 to complete the shift.

Most of the scenarios examined by the United Nations still point to a substantial increase in the amount of renewable energy deployed by 2020 and 2030. Global markets added around 140 gigawatts of power from renewable sources between 2008 and 2009, bringing the world total up to around 300 gigawatts. That’s dominated by biomass energy sources, which account for around 10 percent of renewable energy generation.

The Paris-based IEA said that a total of $20 trillion needs to be spent on energy infrastructure to expand it and meet demand by 2030. Right now, renewable energy sources account for around 13 percent of global energy usage. In some of the best scenarios, renewable energy would account for up to 77 percent of global energy usage by 2050.

The farm is located in Tehachapi, Calif., “where the Mojave sands meet the Tehachapi Mountains,” according to a blog post by Google’s renewable energy guru Rick Needham. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power.

This wind farm might bring California more in line with other states in terms of wind energy usage. Though the state is known for its leaning toward renewable energy, it only harnesses the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Iowa is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google is the company that is using the renewable energy to power its data centers.

“It’s from the founders, they have a keen interest in clean energy and making sure we’re moving toward a clean energy future,” Needham aid. “It bubbles up from the bottom too, there are a lot of people at Google sensitive to resource use — it’s part of our ‘don’t be evil’ strategy.”

Google is specifically investing in the Alta IV project — which will generate 102 megawatts as part of the Alta Wind Energy Project — as part of the deal. Google and Citi are purchasing the Alta IV Terra-Gen, the original manufacturer of the project, and will lease it back to Terra-Gen as part of the deal. Terra-Gen will operate and manage the wind farm under a long-term agreement.

The company uses a huge array of mirrors to focus heat on a point on a large tower. The heat from the focused sunlight is used to boil water, creating steam that moves conventional turbines to generate electricity. It’s an alternative to traditional solar power projects that use large arrays of photovoltaic cells to capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. The idea is reminiscent of the Archimedes Death Ray, an oft-used trope in popular culture.

SolarReserve was able to secure a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. A loan guarantee helps companies attract buyers and investors for new renewable energy projects. Basically, it means the government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for the investors. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government is promoting renewable energy sources.

The new project will be built around 220 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev., and will generate 110 megawatts of power. The mirrors heat molten salt to around 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit, which then heats up water that powers a traditional steam turbine. The salt takes a while to cool down, so the solar power tower is able to continue producing heat and electricity into the evening even after the sun has set.

BrightSource, the other major solar power tower developer, filed to go public Friday to raise up to $250 million. Search giant Google also invested $168 million in the company’s massive Ivanpah solar power tower plant. One of the largest risk factors cited was whether the company could effectively wash and clean those mirrors every two weeks. The company lists the mirror cleaning technology as “largely unproven,” and said it may perform well below expectations.

While solar power towers are largely unproven sources of renewable energy, there are a few proof-of-concept projects. Two solar power towers deployed in California already show that the technology worked. The two towers generated 38,000 megawatt hours of electricity while they were active between 1982 and 1988. The average home in the U.S. uses around 920 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month. There are also a few active solar power towers in Spain, which generate around 50 megawatts.

Many solar panel manufacturers live and die by the cost of polysilicon. Polysilicon prices crashed — along with almost everything else — when the United States and the rest of the world experienced one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression in late 2008. The falling prices were a boon for manufacturers like First Solar, whose profit margins rose because manufacturing costs fell. Polysilicon prices were as high as $500 per kilogram in early 2008 but have fallen to around $70 per kilogram in recent months.

SunPower, one of the larger solar panel manufacturers, creates crystalline silicon-based solar panels and faced shrinking profit margins as a result of rising polysilicon prices. Polysilicon cells can account for up to 45 percent of the manufacturing cost of a solar panel. SunPower eventually sold a majority stake in its company to French oil giant Total. That’s left First Solar as one of the last major solar panel manufacturers in the United States that is still independent. Smaller solar panel manufacturers could face similar pressure to either fold or sell their assets to larger energy conglomerates in order to survive.

First Solar uses a different manufacturing process to create its thin-film solar panels, which are usually cheaper than other solar panels and are made with Cadmium Telluride rather than crystalline silicon. That means that First Solar’s performance also relies on polysilicon prices — when prices are high, distributors and countries interested in solar panels might be more likely to turn to a company like First Solar to sate their renewable energy demands.

“First Solar did really well when (polysilicon) prices were high, and now those prices have stabilized,” said Matt Feinstein, an analyst with clean technology research firm Lux Research. “Crystalline silicon is still bankable, and it still remains the best value proposition.”

The price of monocrystalline cell prices fell to $1.14 per watt and multicrystalline cells fell to $1.09 per watt. Crystalline silicon cells still haven’t hit $1 per watt — a target First Solar first reached with its thin-film solar panels that showed solar power could scale to ravenous demand from Europe, China and the United States. Crystalline silicon-based solar panel cells are still more efficient at generating electricity and can capture up to 24 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel, compared to around 11.7 percent of the sunlight shining on a thin-film solar panel manufactured by First Solar.

[Update: Representatives from First Solar reached out to us to clarify that the efficiency rating of their Cadmium-Telluride solar panels is actually 11.7 percent, rather than 11 percent.]

This is a familiar argument for wind power companies — many residents complain that the large wind turbines can be an eyesore and will bring down property taxes. The Connecticut residents complained the noise from the turbines and the flickering sunlight as a result of the turbines blocking out light would end up damaging property values. Connecticut is the latest addition to a group of states that have summarily killed proposed wind power projects due to “not-in-my-backyard” complaints.

In reality, those complaints are more ethereal. A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area.

Instead of facing regulators head on, wind power providers might have to alter their strategy to be able to combat the “NIMBY” argument. That could include making the impact on local property values much more obvious when lobbying local regulators to install wind turbines. The land that wind turbines occupy can also be used for agricultural purposes, such as for crops or grazing land. Wind turbines are also a bit of an iconic image for renewable energy — that’s something that these companies can stress when proposing the plans to local residents.

Most of these local governments still want wind power, which includes the Connecticut Siting Council that just rejected the project. Each new wind farm creates jobs for the area because they are mammoth turbines that require some effort to install and maintain.

BNE Energy, the company that proposed the wind farm, also has another proposal on the table for a wind farm in Connecticut that will be decided on in June.

[Photo: Rural Learning Center]

The U.S. government is still flexing loan guarantees as a way to promote renewable energy research stateside — which faces the constant threat of being out-produced and out-gunned by foreign solar panel manufacturers. SunTech Power, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, for example already has a massive presence in the United States and accounts for around 28 percent of all new residential home solar panels installed, said Ed Fenster, chief executive of SunRun, a company that leases out and handles maintenance for residential solar panels.

First Solar became the last major U.S.-based independent solar panel manufacturer after French oil company Total bought a majority stake in SunPower. But it also struggled to grow in its most recent operating quarter, and the company had a lukewarm outlook for the remainder of the year. It’s essentially the last major player on the solar panel manufacturing stage — and potentially one of the last holdouts before foreign solar panel manufacturers gain control over the U.S. market, which generates a lot of demand for renewable energy like solar power.

A loan guarantee from the Department of Energy helps companies like First Solar attract buyers and investors for new renewable energy projects. Basically it means the government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for the investors. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government is promoting renewable energy sources. Other countries like Germany offer feed-in tariffs, which means the government sets the rate for each kilowatt-hour produced and utilities purchase the power at premium rates. Germany’s solar power market has exploded as a result.

“The U.S. is certainly funding companies within its borders with different technologies that are less bankable to date,” said Matt Feinstein, an analyst with clean technology research firm Lux Research. “Everybody’s doing something different, it’s kind of tough to say which is an advantage — but you can look at Germany and say obviously they’re doing it right.”

It isn’t clear whether the loan guarantee program run by the U.S. government is enough to keep up with foreign competitors. China is already the largest investor in clean technology, according to a report by Pew. Investors in China dropped $54.4 billion into clean technology ventures in 2010, while the United States only invested $34 billion into clean technology ventures. There’s also still an enormous amount of room to improve the ways solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, said Dallas Kachan, managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech analysis and consulting firm.

First Solar was the first company to bring the cost of solar power down below $1 per watt. That’s a critical threshold that proved to regulators, lawmakers and consumers everywhere that renewable energy can scale. And First Solar still produces some of the cheapest solar panels in the world. But it isn’t clear whether loan guarantees and funding will be enough to ensure U.S. solar panel companies like First Solar can effectively compete with international players because local and state regulations are usually mercilessly complicated and can get in the way of creating renewable energy sources, Feinstein said.

“Many installers and project developers cite the numerous regulatory and electrical codes – local, state, and national – that projects must meet, in addition to utility requirements, for the inflated cost of solar systems relative to equipment costs and margins alone,” Feinstein said. “Though many agree with SunRun’s findings that creating a more uniform, sensible structure would bring down these ‘soft costs,’ few among them are optimistic that it will actually happen.”

First Solar also announced that one of the projects that might be eligible for a Department of Energy loan guarantee, its 550 megawatt Topaz Solar Farm, was approved by the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission.