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Big Solar is on a roll in California.

For the second time in seven weeks, the California Energy Commission has voted to accept an application for a massive megawatt solar power plant. The commission on Wednesday certified as "data adequate" Silicon Valley startup Ausra's application to build a 177-megawatt solar on the state's central coast. That means Ausra's Carrizo Energy Solar Farm has cleared a significant regulatory hurdle and the commission will begin a year-long review process. If all goes well, construction will begin in 2009 and the plant will start producing electricity in 2010. (To get an idea of the complexity of the California licensing process and why the acceptance of an application is a big deal, you just need to scan Aura's 1,000-page application package.

The Ausra move follows the commission's Oct. 31 vote to greenlight for review BrightSource Energy's planned 400-megawatt power station complex to be built in the Mojave Desert on the Nevada border.

Ausra, backed by A-list venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with utility giant PG&E (PCG) for the greenhouse gas-free electricity generated by the Carrizo plant in eastern San Luis Obispo County. BrightSource (backed by Morgan Stanley (MS) and VantagePoint Venture Partners), meanwhile, continues to negotiate with the utility for a 500-megawatt power purchase deal.

An offshore wave farm will supply Californians with clean green electricity generated by the ocean under a first-of-its-kind power purchase agreement that utility PG&E will announce Tuesday morning.

The giant San Francisco-based utility has signed a long-term contract to buy 2-megawatts of electricity from Finavera Renewables' wave-energy power plant to be built off the Northern California coast. The Vancouver company intends to eventually expand the Humboldt County project into a 100-megawatt "wave park." It is likely to be the first of a score of floating power stations dotting California's 1,100-mile coastline in the coming years, judging by the stack of applications for such wave farms on file at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"This power purchase agreement is extremely significant and reflects the massive potential for wave power as a renewable source of energy in the future," says PG&E spokesman Keely Wachs. Like the Golden State's other big investor-owned utilities -- Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) -- PG&E (PCG) must obtain 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020.

"The California market is huge for wave energy," Finavera CEO Jason Bak told Fortune's Green Wombat. "This is the first power purchase agreement with a large utility, and we see this as being one of the key components to commercializing wave energy technology."

The ocean as potential source of greenhouse gas-free power is tremendous: the energy locked up in the surf rolling toward the California coast is equivalent to some 37 gigawatts -- enough to light nearly 30 million homes -- according to PG&E. And unlike the sun and wind, waves can generate electricity 24/7. But the technology to tap all that water-borne power and deliver it at competitive prices remains in the startup phase.

PG&E and Finavera would not disclose the terms of the power purchase agreement. But Bak acknowledged that the key challenge he and other wave-energy companies face is "advancing the technology to the stage where we have a near-commercial technology."

Finavera plans to deploy strings of connected wave-energy converters that it calls AquaBuoys. As waves roll past an array of AquaBuoys connected to an onshore station by an undersea cable, two-stroke hose pumps convert their energy into pressurized seawater that drives electricity-generating turbines. According to filings Finavera has made with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a fully built-out 100 megawatt Humboldt wave farm would consist of 200 to 300 AquaBuoys floating on a two-square-mile site about two to three miles off the town of Trinidad. The initial phase of the project is expected to go online in 2012 and will use eight AquaBuoys.

While PG&E is merely dipping its corporate toe in the wave-energy waters with a relatively small 2-megawatt power purchase agreement, the deal with Finavera is likely to intensify efforts to stake claims on the best stretches of coast.

PG&E itself earlier this year unveiled its WaveConnect project to build two 40-megawatt wave farms, one off Humboldt and the other off the Mendocino County coast. Chevron (CVX) dived in last July with a plan for a Humboldt wave farm to be built by Scotland's Ocean Power Delivery -- now called Pelamis Wave Power -- before abruptly pulling its application a month later.

Over the past two months there's been a new flurry of applications. New Jersey's Ocean Power Technologies (OPTT) in November filed for a FERC permit for a 20-megawatt "wave energy park" to be located off the Humboldt coast. And a newcomer to the wave energy business called GreenWave Energy Solutions has filed permit applications for wave farms off Mendocino and the Central Coast town of Moro Bay in San Luis Obispo County. (The Thousand Oaks, Calif., company lists a San Francisco attorney as its president and it was registered by a Southern California developer.)

Before Finavera can begin construction of the Humboldt wave farm it must first spend two to three years completing environmental impact studies and negotiating with local, state and federal regulators. While obtaining financing for wave-energy projects using untried technology is difficult, Finavera will have one advantage over its competitors: a long-term power purchase agreement with one of the United States 'largest utilities.

"This PPA is a vote of confidence from PG&E that we can do get the project done," says Bak.

Just about every business has an electricity meter and a water meter. But what about a greenhouse gas meter?

In the years ahead, a growing number of companies will need one. A national U.S. greenhouse gas cap is all but inevitable and global warming-driven limits on greenhouse gas emissions already imposed by Europe and California require certain industries to calculate and report their emissions. Emerging carbon trading markets, meanwhile, offer the opportunity to profit from cutting CO2. Even companies unlikely to full under the purview of the carbon regulators -- such as (GOOG) and Sun Microsystems (JAVA) -- are measuring their carbon footprints as an act of good corporate citizenship to show customers employees their green bona fides.

As Green Wombat has written previously, IBM (IBM) sees a big business in carbon consulting. Now Big Blue has collaborated with Evergreen Energy (EEE) to create what they call the GreenCert greenhouse gas meter. Rather than a hunk of hardware, it's an Internet-based software program designed to collect real-time emissions data from sensors and other sources. It calculates the volume of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere by a company and certifies any reductions as credits that can be traded on carbon markets. GreenCert's engine was developed by C-Lock Technology, a subsidiary of Evergreen, a "clean coal" technology company. IBM is providing the database and Internet software to allow GreenCert to rolled out across across industries and be accessible to regulators and other parties.

The project was born out of Evergreen's efforts to quantify emissions reductions from its technology that transforms the dirtiest coal into a cleaner-burning fuel.

The GreenCert gas meter is an attempt to standardize what is now largely a one-off customized task. Companies that want to calculate their carbon footprint face myriad choices, according to Larry Vertal, senior strategist at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which annually tabulates and discloses its greenhouse emissions as part of its global climate protection plan. Among them: what to measure, how to measure and what scientific protocols to use. If those protocols change or new legislation or regulations alter the way emissions are calculated, a company must go back and tweak its customized carbon footprint program.

GreenCert, on the other hand, automatically incorporates such changes, according to C-Lock chief technology officer Patrick Zimmerman, who led the team that developed the greenhouse gas meter. "The system was designed to very efficiently and accurately quantify greenhouse gas emissions in a way that is transparent, reproducible and easily automated," he says.

The program starts with a database profiling a particular industry then collects emissions data from a specific company. Evergreen is first focusing on agriculture and the utility industry.

GreenCert allows farmers to quantify and document changes in agricultural practices that result in more carbon being stored in the soil and then sell those carbon credits, theoretically, on carbon trading markets to companies that fail to meet their greenhouse gas emission quotas.

"For agriculture, there is a geographic information system that stores high-resolution relevant geographic information that affects and controls carbon sequestration in the soil," says Zimmerman. "Then we have provided an Internet portal where farmer can go online and sign up their land."

"We have algorithms built into the system that guarantee data quality," he adds. "If a farmer says, `I grew 80 bushes of corn an acre' and GreenCert knows that the historical average is 60, it’ll flag it. And then we’ll go to the warehouse and do an audit. We have four levels of verification and make sure models are regionally calibrated. We only certify carbon that is there at a very high level of confidence level."

For utilities, GreenCert installs sensors and conducts an audit to establish an emissions baseline and then delivers software over the Internet so power plant managers can document changes in, say, boiler efficiency.

Evergreen spokesman Paul Jacobson said GreenCert is in its pilot project phase and it has yet to be decided whether the company will license GreenCert to customers or provide the greenhouse gas meter in exchange for a percentage of the revenue from trading carbon credits.

The carrot for installing greenhouse gas meters -- besides complying with any global warming legislation -- is the prospect of selling certified carbon emission reduction credits on carbon trading markets. Some analysts claim that will be a trillion-dollar opportunity in the coming years, but currently there's only a few voluntary markets, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange and various informal purchases by companies wishing to offset their greenhouse gas emissions

Evergreen has its eye on government-regulated carbon markets, like the European market and the one being considered by California. In such cap-and-trade markets, companies' emissions are limited; if they exceed their caps they must buy emission credits from those that have reduced their carbon output.

That said, there's no guarantee at this point that such markets will accept credits generated by GreenCert.

"Our goal is that no carbon offset will be generated that doesn’t make a difference in atmosphere," says Zimmerman. "For a cap and trade program to really work, carbon offsets have to be valuable. Rather than churn out cheap credits for the voluntary market, we wanted it stringent enough for regulated markets."

For its part, IBM sees GreenCert as the type of greenware with a significant potential payoff.

"Right now there’s a lot of legislation going on around the world and there’s a need to be open and nimble so that as changes occur and new legislation is put into place, carbon offsets reflect those changes," says Tim Kounadis, IBM's director of worldwide channel marketing for Lotus software. "The whole greenhouse gas market is one we’re looking at seriously. We see a big business opportunity because it matters to business."

Here's another sign that Big Solar's time has come: Silicon Valley startup Ausra is building the U.S.'s first solar power plant factory.

When the 130,000-square-foot facility goes online in April outside Las Vegas, robots will assemble mirror arrays and other equipment that will then be trucked to solar power plant building sites in California and the Southwest. Ausra, backed by venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, signed a deal with utility PG&E (PCG) in November to supply electricity generated by a 177-megawatt solar thermal power station to be built on California's central coast.

"Steel, flat glass and standard boiler pipe flows into the factory and completed solar fields come out ready for installation," John O'Donnell, Ausra's executive vice president, told Fortune's Green Wombat from Nevada over the din of construction noise. "We wound up working with one of Australia’s leading builders of car production systems to develop robotic assembly, weld, bond and paint systems for the mirror units."

Ausra will deploy large arrays of long mirrors that concentrate sunlight on water-filled pipes that hang over the reflectors. As the water is heated to 545 degrees Fahrenheit the resulting steam drives a standard turbine to generate electricity. O'Donnell says the Las Vegas factory, located near McCarran International Airport, will employ about 50 people and be able to produce 70 megawatts worth of solar equipment a month -- implying Ausra has many more big power deals on the table.

The facility marks the emergence of Nevada as a player in the solar power industry. "We see Nevada as one of the best markets for solar power," says O'Donnell. "It has the business climate, the solar resource and a rapidly growing market for electric power. The main reason for being here is the combination of a transportation center, a workforce and a central location for where we think all the power plants will be. We looked at locations in California, Phoenix and here. Taking the five-year view, we would like to build a lot of power plants in the Southwest so we asked, Where is the best location? What are the transportation options?"

Nevada's proximity to California means that solar power plants can be built on the its side of the border to ship electricity to densely populated Southern California as well as the booming Las Vegas region. O'Donnell says Nevada offered Ausra a standard package of tax incentives but nothing extra to locate the factory in the Silver State.

“As the world transitions to clean energy, Nevada will be a leader in building and delivering clean power to our state, to our region, and to our country," said Nevada Development Authority CEO Somer Hollingsworth in a statement.

Nevada will get a run for its money from sun-drenched Arizona, where Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems plans to build factories to manufacture Stirling dishes for solar power plants that will supply electricity to Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE).

Amid the upheaval at Tesla Motors last week, a milestone in the annals of the electric car went largely unnoticed. At Think Global’s factory in the Norwegian countryside, the first of the company’s battery-powered City urban runabouts rolled off the assembly line.

A canary-yellow two-seater sporting baby-seal-eye headlights and a bumper-to-roof glass hatch, this first production Think City will go about 112 miles (180 kilometers) on a single charge. It’s zippy, fun to drive and could well be the Honda Civic for the age of global warming.

No, Green Wombat hasn’t drunk the electric-car Kool-Aid. (Or the aquavit, in this case.)

Consider: Though ubiquitous now, the Honda Civic arrived on U.S. shores some three decades ago as a tiny, under-powered hatchback from a little-known foreign automaker in the era of the Detroit land yacht. Timing, of course, is everything. The Civic made its debut as the oil embargoes of the 1970s drove Americans from their gas-guzzling Chevys and Fords; and as an entire generation turned to the Japanese for economical well-made models, Tokyo gained a foothold in the U.S. market. In time the Civic morphed into a full range of vehicles and cemented Honda’s (HMC) hold on car buyers even as Americans returned to their profligate ways with the advent of the SUV.

Think -- and other electric car companies -- finds itself at a similar inflection point. Gas prices are at historical highs and global pressure to cut greenhouse gases will inevitably fall heavy on one of the biggest carbon culprits, the internal combustion engine. The success of the Toyota (TM) Prius gasoline-electric hybrid is just a harbinger of the market for all-electric cars.

Last May Green Wombat spent some time at Think in Norway and had a chance to test-drive a couple of the City prototypes.

You can read my Business 2.0 magazine feature story on Think here but the capsule version goes like this: A Norwegian startup, the company was acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 when the automaker faced a California mandate to begin producing electric cars. Ford poured some $150 million into Think to develop an EV for the U.S. market then sold the startup once the regulation was killed. (A few hundred of the first-generation City were available for lease in California -- Google (GOOG) founder Sergey Brin was one owner -- and old-style Thinks can still be spotted on the streets of Oslo.)

Last year Norwegian renewable energy entrepreneur Jan-Olaf Willums (center in photo above) and his investment group acquired Think and revived plans to produce a next-generation City with a next-generation business model. The Internet-enabled car will be sold online and seeded through car-sharing services like Zipcar. Buyers will purchase the car but lease the battery as part of a mobility fee that could include insurance and WiFi access. (The City will sell for about $34,000 in Norway and Willums is shooting for a U.S. sticker price of $15,000 to $17,000 plus $100 to $200 a month for the mobility fee.) Willums has raised nearly $80 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists and European investors to get the production line up and running.

Green Wombat caught up with Willums over the weekend via e-mail to get an update on Think’s plans. According to Willums, General Electric (GE) is now an investor in Think and the company struck a deal with GE to collaborate on battery technology. The cars now coming off the assembly line will be put through their paces in the harsh Norwegian winter -- a trial that bodes well for an eventual entry into the U.S. northeastern market -- and will go on sale in Norway in the first six months of 2008.

Those cars will be powered by a Zebra sodium nickel chloride battery. Earlier this year Think struck a deal with Tesla to buy a version of its high-powered lithium-ion battery packs that give its Roadster its zero-to-60 mph-in-four-seconds vroom. But Tesla put its battery business on hold as it focuses on getting the Roadster on the road. Willums says Think now will obtain lithium-ion batteries from A123 (which is working with General Motors (GM) on its Volt electric hybrid) and EnerDel. Think will begin testing those batteries in the City in the first half of next year. In 2009, Think will begin selling the City in other European countries.

“In 2009 we plan to have a "face lift" i.e. introduce a number of additional features,” says Willums. “The plan is to have a stronger engine and some increased battery capacity at that time.”

The cars sold in Norway carry a Web-enabled black box that transmits battery performance data to Think. Tbe ’09 model will be fully Internet-capable so drivers can communicate with their City and the car can ping its owner when, for instance, it needs maintenance.

Alas, for American electric car enthusiasts, the City will probably not make it to the U.S. for another couple years. To pave the way, Willums says Think will open a Silicon Valley office in early 2008. (Willums is a familiar figure on Sand Hill Road and held the initial brainstorming sessions for the new Think at the Googleplex in 2006.)

To have a chance to even crack the urban U.S. market, Think will need to increase the City’s top speed from 62 mph and give it more drive time. Inventor Dean Kamen of Segway fame invested in Think and has developed a Stirling heat engine that would extend the City’s range by trickle-charging the battery. (For Green Wombat’s wild ride with Kamen click here.)

“We have recently started discussions with other partners (not in the automotive industry) to explore if one can make a development consortium to make the engine mass producible,” Willums says. “That would be a multiyear project, and we would like to be one partner in such a consortium that would look at many applications of the Stirling engine.”

The road for Think is a long one and many unforeseen obstacles could crash its ambitious plans, which include introducing a family sedan. But like the Honda Civic of 1972, the 2008 Think City may be well just be the prototype of a new automotive model.

After a 6-month hiatus brought about by the sinking of the B2 ship, this blog is resurfacing with a new name and address – Printed Antimatter, at http://printedantimatter.typepad.com/. Update your bookmarks and your feeds! No ads, no corporate sponsorship, nothing but pure, uncut design-blog goodness. Come on by. There will be cake.

For Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard, getting news of his ouster was like glancing at the review mirror and seeing one of his electric Roadster supercars approaching at 130 miles an hour without a sound.

In other words, he was blindsided. "Somebody in the company asked me if I would be leaving at a certain date and I said, `I don’t think so,' but that turned out to be the case," Eberhard told Fortune’s Green Wombat.

The date was last Friday and Tesla left Eberhard by the side of the road just months before the Silicon Valley electric car company rolls its hotly-anticipated Roadster off the production line and into the hands of celebrity customers like the Google founders and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Green Wombat spoke to Eberhard and Tesla chairman Elon Musk Monday afternoon about the changes at Tesla and the company's plans for the future.

Eberhard, long the public face of Tesla, stepped down as president of technology and gave up his board seat in a move that is -- depending on who's talking -- either part of a planned transition or a hit-and-run take-out of the founder following the appointment of a new chief executive last week. The shakeup comes as Tesla wrestles with a transmission problem that has delayed production of the $100,000 all-electric car that does zero-to-60 in four seconds and can go 245 miles on a single charge.

In August, Eberhard, who started Tesla five years ago with the financial backing of PayPal alum Musk, relinquished his CEO spot so the San Carlos, Calif., startup could hire a top executive with experience in large-scale manufacturing. Former Flextronics chief Michael Marks took over as interim CEO, but Eberhard says he never expected to be booted from the company.

"I truthfully thought I’d be spending quite a few more years at Tesla Motors," says Eberhard before boarding a flight in Burbank to San Francisco. "The only surprise was that the board no longer wanted me as part of the company. There wasn’t any major disagreement going on, not that I know of anyway."

As Eberhard recounts it, Musk told him about a month ago that he wanted him to leave at some unspecified future date. "I thought it was a strange notion to kick the founder out of the company anyway, where there wasn’t a big ideological difference on the board where we wanted to go," Eberhad says. "For all Elon’s character and personality, he’s trying to solve same problem as I am. "

The end came suddenly last week. On Wednesday, Tesla announced the replacement of Marks with a permanent CEO, tech veteran Ze'ev Drori, founder of chip company Monolithic Memories. Two days later Eberhard was packing up his office. "Elon did talk to me about leaving the company without having a [board] vote," Eberhard says. "I left voluntarily when it was clear that I wasn’t going to win a vote anyway." Eberhard, who will serve on a Tesla advisory board, says Musk explained why he was being ousted "only in the vaguest terms."

When I reach Musk on his cell phone and put the question to him, he pauses and laughs a bit nervously. "I don’t know what to say without being negative," says Musk, whose other post-PayPal ventures include rocket company SpaceX and solar systems installer Solar City. "It did not make sense for him to be at the company. Of course, if the board thought if it would be better for him to stay he would still be there."

"I don’t think its ideological, it was more operational, I suppose," he adds. "There wasn’t an obvious role for Martin."

That rankles some at Tesla, acknowledges Darryl Siry, the company's vice president of sales, marketing and service. "I think for a lot of people who have identified with Martin for many years and who are emotionally connected to Martin as a leader at Tesla, this transition is a bit jarring," he says. "But we have to all adapt and move on. "

As CEO, Eberhard used Tesla's blogs to interact with electric car enthusiasts and customers, giving them an unusually detailed look at the development of the Roadster. As his final act he posted a farewell on a Tesla fan site. "I am also not going to lie about it. I am not at all happy with the way I was treated," he wrote, "and I do not think this was the very best way to handle a transition -- not the best for Tesla Motors, not the best for Tesla's customers (to whom I still feel a strong sense of responsibility), and not for Tesla's investors. " (Tesla has attracted a roster of investors that include Google (GOOG) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as well as venture capital firms VantagePoint Venture Partners, Technology Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.)

Some Tesla insiders tell Green Wombat they believe Eberhard's departure is more the result of personality clash with Musk rather than the speed bumps Telsa has hit as it gears up to get the Roadster on the road to meet the expectations of the tech titans, Hollywood celebs and others who have have plunked down six figures for the car. Telsa put plans to sell electric car batteries to other manufacturers on hold while it focuses on the two-seater's transmission, which hasn't met the company's durability standards.

"It’s our biggest issue," says Musk. "Unfortunately the company picked the wrong supplier, not once but twice, and now we’re on to our third. I feel pretty confident the way things are going but I personally had to take a hand in getting us there." He says in recent months he's spent up to a third of his time at Tesla.

"The first production cars should be out in the next few months," Musk says. "It’s going to be a fairly slow stream until we clear up the production issues. We need to work on production costs as well."

Musk offered a preview of what's next for Tesla, saying that early next year the company will unveil its second model, a sports sedan code-named WhiteStar. Tesla also is developing a next-generation transmission, battery and drive train, which it expects to be production-ready in a couple years. "What we’re working on in the shop is a significant advance," he claims.

Rather than just sell batteries to other electric car manufacturers, Musk says Tesla aims to provide the complete drive train package -- motor, transmission, battery and software.

"I think the right path for Tesla is as an independent company," he says. "As soon as the timing is right we’ll take the company public and use that capital to fund additional product development. We see Tesla as being one of the great car companies of the 21st century and not as a nameplate of some big auto company. We really want Tesla to branch out and have a wide range of models. Our primary interest is how do we get as many electric miles as possible."

Eberhard says it'll be difficult to watch from the sidelines. "I wish things were different, for sure. I still feel a strong sense of loyalty to the company. It’s been my life for the past five years. It's not just a business. It’s a company I started for ideological reasons as well as business reasons -- to deal with climate change, oil dependence."

Under Eberhard Tesla almost single-handedly revived the electric car just a few years after it was declared dead, pushing General Motors (GM) to develop its own EV, the Volt. (GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz acknowledged as much in a recent interview with U.S News & World Report. "When Tesla announced they were building a car, that kind of tore it for me. I thought, 'If some little West Coast outfit can do this, we can no longer stand by.' ")

Eberhard says he'll take a few months to figure out his next step. In the meantime, he still has his Roadster to look forward to.

He's No. 2 on the waiting list, right behind Musk.

First Solar, the solar panel maker with the Googlicious stock price, announced Friday afternoon that it had acquired a solar installer backed by media mogul and environmentalist Ted Turner.

The price First Solar (FSLR) paid for Turner Renewable Energy -- to be renamed First Solar Electric -- was decidedly un-Google-like: a mere $34.3 million in stock and cash. But the deal is more important for what it says about the state of the solar industry. Increasingly, solar energy companies want to be able to deliver the complete package to customers. That means solar panel makers like First Solar -- a Phoenix-based company whose largest shareholders are the Walton heirs -- want to be able control and cash in on the booming market to install solar arrays on commercial and residential rooftops. Vertical integration, as they say. Silicon Valley solar cell maker SunPower (SPWR), for instance, bought solar installer PowerLight last year and has seen business grow as its panels appear everywhere from Palo Alto rooftops to Portuguese solar power plants. In China, meanwhile, solar company Trina Solar (TSL) makes silicon ingots, wafers, and modules. It recently announced it will begin producing its own polysilicon, the raw material of solar cells.

• First Solar: The Google of green tech?

With the acquisition of Turner, First Solar also gets the financing relationships the company has forged that let it sell massive megawatt solar arrays to Fortune 500 firms. Turner, for examples, works with MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) of San Francisco on deals. (Just this week SunPower announced the formation of a jointly owned holding company with Morgan Stanley (MS) to finance solar arrays for customers.) For Ted Turner, it was a fast turnaround -- he made his investment in the company then known as DT Solar just last January.