Just as an FYI, here is a link to comments from President Bush while he attended an energy panel at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. Perhaps most interesting is his clear support for the idea of plug-in hybrids:

“The new technological breakthrough, however, is going to be when we develop batteries that are able to enable an automobile to drive, say, the first 40 miles on electricity alone,” said Bush, adding that “if you’re living in a big city, that’s probably all you’re going to need for that day’s driving. And then you can get home and plug your car right into the outlet in your house. This is coming. I mean, we’re close to this.”

You might recall back in October a post I had about Ballard Power chairman John Sheridan temporarily taking on the job of CEO after the resignation of Dennis Campbell. At the time I speculated that Ballard, after conducting an executive search for a permanent CEO, would likely ask Sheridan to stay on. After that post I got a polite e-mail from Ballard telling me that my speculation was unfounded and that Sheridan had no intention of staying on permanently.

So it was with great delight when Ballard announced today that Sheridan will indeed be staying on as permanent CEO and president. I wonder if there’s a finder’s fee in it for me?

If you want to learn a bit about one of clean energy’s brightest champions, check out this piece in Discover magazine. Basically the magazine asks Lovins, co-founder of environmental think-tank Rocky Mountain Institute, to offer his views on a number of issues, including energy/electricity, oil, new plastics, hydrogen and wind.

Lovins, I should point out, is also co-author of the book Natural Capitalism – a must read for anyone interested in this area. I’ve got an Amazon.com link at the lower right corner of this site for anyone interested in the book.

My Clean Break column today touches on rumours that Ford is planning to come out with a hybrid-hydraulic version of its popular F-150 pickup truck in 2008. The speculation, which first surfaced on NewTechSpy.com, claims the truck will have the same mileage as a Toyota Prius. While I have my doubts about the specifics of that claim, I do know that Ford and others are working closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on hydraulic technology as a rival approach to battery-powered hybrid-electric cars. My column takes a look at some of the work being done, and gets an update from the head of the EPA’s transportation lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bottom line: Cool hybrid-hydraulic designs are indeed on the way but I wouldn’t count on Ford to be first out of the gate. Also, the technology is aimed at bigger vehicles, so I wouldn’t bet that we’re ever going to see a hybrid-hydraulic Ford Escort. Delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, and other fleet-type workhorses are the more likely candidates.

Rob Day over at Cleantech Investing has some great tidbits today so I’ll start by encouraging you to drop by the site. But one I’d like to focus on is the announcement that Kleiner Perkins plans to spend $100 million on cleantech investments out of three new funds totalling $900 million. “In so doing, they become one of the highest-profile firms to officially set aside capital for funding cleantech firms,” writes Day, who then draws our attention to a great quote from Kleiner’s John Doerr that appeared in a Red Herring article: ”Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

Cowabunga! Now that’s an endorsement. Of course, we all know Kleiner Perkins are the folks who gave Google, Amazon.com, Compaq Computer, Sun Microsystems and Symantec their early financial kickstart. More recent investments in the clean energy space include fuel-cell maker Ion America and next-gen battery wonder EEStor — the latter having tremendous potential to, well, completely turn the world on its head.

I had a nice conversation today with Chris Grundler, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ll save most of his comments for another day, but one thing he did say seems relevant in the larger discussion about heightened interest in cleantech: “We don’t have a technology problem… what we had up until recently is a marketplace malfunction. What we need to do is design policies that will move this technology to the marketplace in numbers that matter. That’s the trick that people like me and others are thinking about day and night. How do we create the right conditions so these technologies show up in the right numbers.”

The reason I included that quote is because it seems to me you’ve got a number of things happening right now that makes VCs like Kleiner Perkins take notice of the fantastic opportunities in the cleantech space. You’ve got high fossil fuel prices. You’ve got increased consumer awareness and desire for cleaner, greener, more efficient products and processes. You’ve got companies competing for that consumer attention. You’ve political concerns dealing with domestic energy security. And you’ve got guys like Grundler trying to design public policy that draws scientists and researchers out of the labs and gets technologies in the marketplace. In other words, policy that creates certainty — something investors, like VCs, like a lot.

So while Kleiner Perkins’ growing interest in cleantech should come as no surprise, consider it a positive sign that things are heading in the right direction and the stars continue to align for all things clean.