Staff analysis

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has vocally opposed the climate-change legislation that's now making its way through Congress.

The continued denial recently prompted Apple, Exelon, and PG&E to jump ship from the business lobby that claims to represent more than 3 million companies. But for a few minutes yesterday, it appeared that the chamber had given into pressure and reversed its opinion.

If you put a cleantech twist on the reality television show Amazing Race it would look something like the BioMotion Tour, which kicked off earlier this week in Paris running until Nov. 12 through seven countries and 35 cities in 31 days.

But instead of traveling by airplanes, taxis, rental cars, boats and on foot, the BioMotion Tour is, as the name implies, all about a fleet of cars zooming from one city to the next powered by different kinds of biofuels. The cars run on well-established fuels such as vegetable oil, biodiesel and ethanol, and also next-generation fuels including biogas (see Sainsbury's expands biogas-vehicle trial).

Two Calgary, Alberta-based companies, TransAlta (NYSE:TAC) and Canadian Hydro Developers (TYSX:KHD), appear to have made amends with a sweetened deal.

The companies jointly said today they have entered into a definitive pre-acquisition agreement. TransAlta plans to amend its existing share offer to acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of Canadian Hydro for C$5.25 per share in cash, for a total value of C$1.6 billion.

Risk aversion to investing in cleantech is starting to change and improve, but we’re not about to see a wave of IPOs in the sector anytime soon.

Or at least that was the consensus today from venture capital and private equity folks at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum-West conference in San Francisco. And while the primarily Silicon Valley-based panel had opinions that differed at times, they all agreed they have one thing in common: Their names are hard to pronounce.

The cleantech industry has a new anthem… if we want it. 

A group calling itself DCFreeBand posted a video on YouTube in mid-July that's been racking up hits in recent days. The track, "Clean Energy Song," sings the praises of wind, solar and natural gas powered-vehicles—proclaiming in the opening credits that it was written "In Support Of The T. Boone Picken's [sic] Plan."

With Watertown, Mass.-based A123Systems’ IPO bearing the weight of the watchful eyes of the cleantech world today, could this be the start of the boom that boosts the comp for executives in the energy storage space, as it did in the solar sector in 2008? (see Solar boom kicks salaries higher).

Vinod Khosla just might have let it slip which of his cleantech investments he thinks has the best chance at success.

When asked to pick the top company in the cleantech portfolio of Khosla Ventures, the firm's founder told the audience at the Always On Going Green Conference in Sausalito, Calif., that he couldn't choose (see Kleiner Perkins hints at plug-in car launch this week).

The European Union enacted its ban today on incandescent light bulbs, allowing shops to sell their current supply but not buy or import more of them.

The switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs and LEDs is expected to reduce the electricity used for lighting and help the region reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions, but the move is prompting vocal opposition from artists, parents, health advocates and even environmentalists.

The United States should take note, as its phasing-out of incandescents begins in 2012 (see Vu1 raises $5M for lighting tech).

Cleantech's most litigious startup Tesla Motors is likely celebrating today, after reports surfaced that a judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the company's former CEO.

Two new reports this week gave urgency to efforts to reduce water use in India's agriculture sector.

First, the Indian government's State of the Environment report warned: "Groundwater reserves are becoming more and more depleted even as surface water sources become too polluted for human use."

That was followed by a study in the journal Nature that presented unnerving data on groundwater depletion in India, as viewed by satellites orbiting the Earth as part of NASA's Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment. The satellites showed that the water table in India is falling 1.6 inches per year, losing 109 cubic kilometers (88.4 million acre-feet) from August 2002 to October 2008.