How to make your cleantech capitalist dreams resonate with the hicks and hawks of Washington, D.C.? In a perfect storm of liberal guilt and heartland pandering, former Secretary of the Navy and CIA director R. James Woolsey has become a domestic-energy sustainability convert. And he's just one of a number of red-blooded Americans who support the war in Iraq and investment in renewable energy, according to Mother Jones. Woolsey joined Henry Kissinger, who hasn't met a long-range bombing platform he didn't like, in endorsing John McCain, whom Woolsey compared to environmental steward Teddy Roosevelt. If cleantech startups want to drink from the fountain of defense spending that has traditionally irrigated the Valley, they need to pay attention.

Hollywood star Edward Norton gleefully shakes hands with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom at a hearing on green building practices today before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on Capitol Hill. Write your own caption, and the winner becomes the new headline. Yesterday's contest drew no winning entries, so do try harder, won't you? (Photo by AP/Lawrence Jackson)

BrightSource Energy, a renewable energy startup that wants to build solar thermal plants which use sunlight reflected from mirrors to heat water to steam and power electricity-generating turbines, has pulled in $115 million. The investment was led by Google.org, Google's quasi-nonprofit arm; VantagePoint; BP; Statoil Hydro; and Black River, and brings the Oakland-based startup's total funding to $160 million. The company has already signed a contract to supply local monopoly Pacific Gas & Electric with 900 megawatts of power by 2016.

On our hunky God-mayor's "Gavin Newsom for Governor" tour that included stops in donor-rich New York and Los Angeles, a stop in Israel got the excitable pol talking about Israeli startup Project Better Place. The company's plan is to build a network of charging stations for a fleet of electric vehicles in Israel. Of course, there's no actual money behind bringing the idea to our shores yet, so you can probably expect it to become a reality about the same time San Francisco turns on the free Wi-Fi network Gavvy-Gav promised. Can't get enough of the hair? Video after the jump.

As part of Neil Young's appearance at Sun's JavaOne conference, groups of hacks were herded into a conference room to ask questions of the aging rock legend, presumably about how awesome Java is, but I think the plan is that Java is just awesome because Young says so, and he trotted out an expansive interactive discography powered by the Java functionality built into Sony's Blu-ray hardware and a clean car project with telemetrics powered by Sun-sponsored software. Because I doubt there's anything baby boomer executives and the formerly flannel-shirted Gen-X set they spawned like more than getting the most out of their cars and home theater systems. Except maybe hearing Young pontificate on the virtues of an all-analog recording process.

A coterie of B-list celebritards including Jenny McCarthy and Darryl Hannah, as well as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, showed up to an opening party for the new Tesla Motors dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood last week. Why LA and not the Valley? "Because it's Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store," Tesla client services manager Jeremy Snyder told the AP. The next dealership will be built in San Carlos, home of Tesla Motors. The $2 million showroom is based on an Apple retail outlet, according to CEO Elon Musk. While the 400-strong waiting list, including the Governator, means you can't actually drive away in a new Tesla roadster until 2009 at the earliest, you can at least ogle the floor models and maybe convince one of the Tesla employees on hand to let you take one for a test drive. Better you behind the wheel than Musk — his driving record's not so clean. (Photo by AP/Mark J. Terrill)

Treehuggers proclaim the threat of environmental catastrophe with rapturous religiosity. The eyes of Valley capitalists bulge at the windfall that awaits who can find a renewable energy solution cheaper than fossil fuels. But East Bay community activist Van Jones is preaching the sermon of jobs, and that's what will win the popular and political will to build the kind of modern, clean-energy infrastructure California and the rest of the country so desperately need. Says Jones:

While taking risks is valuable, it's only those who can successfully commercialize their breakthrough ideas who will succeed, Google cofounder Larry Page told Fortune in a feature interview.

John Doerr has closed a half-billion dollars in capital for the new Kleiner Perkins cleantech growth fund, with buddy Al Gore kicking in some dough from his Generation Investment deal. [CNet] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Former U.S. vice president Al Gore will chair a new $683 million Climate Solutions Fund from Generation Investment Management. The money will be used to seed public and private companies in long-term investments in carbon markets, renewable energy and cleaner fossil fuel use. Generation includes Gore's BFF John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist, on its advisory board, and has partnered with Doerr's firm in the past. Doerr and Gore are currently raising another $400 million late-stage investment fund for Kleiner. Preaching climate-change end-times sermons can get the creative-capitalist congregation to dig deep when the collection plate comes around.

It's only a matter of time before the inanimate home of inventor Andy Stanford-Clark somehow pisses off TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington and feels the wrath of "@andy_house blocked." [Earth2Tech]

Details have emerged about the latest model of the Valley's most self-righteous ride, the 2009 Toyota Prius, which hasn't been significantly updated since 2004. It will reportedly be longer, faster and more fuel-efficient. Also, the range of available models is expected to grow — anything from a smaller coupe to a larger, Lexus-like luxury sedan. What's not mentioned?

John Doerr and Al Gore have been taking their pitch for a new $400 million environment-friendly venture fund to prospective limited partners, and have already hired a veteran investment manager from Goldman Sachs to run it. This fund, which would invest in late-stage — that is, larger — clean energy and carbon reduction projects, comes in addition to the money already reserved for cleantech in KP's $600 million early-stage investment warchest. Helping to scale electric car manufacturing comes to mind — KP just threw some money at Norway's Think Global. And existing ethanol distillers could also benefit. After all, that kind of money would certainly buy a whole lot of Brazilian slave labor. (Photo by AP/Graham Hughes)

Norwegian electronic car manufacturer Think Global will ship 50,000 units to American customers, reports Alarm Clock. How much will this cleantech toy with a top speed of 65 mph set you back? $30,000. But hey, think of all the money you won't be spending on gas when you plug the car into our coal-fired power grid. The news comes as Think also announced funding from Kleiner Perkins, which presumably set the VC firm back more than $30,000. Video of the twee coupe zipping around Paris and London after the jump.

Yahoo has indeed axed its San Francisco-to-Sunnyvale shuttles, a tipster tells us, confirming a longstanding rumor. Ah, but here's the twist: Yahoo has replaced earth-friendly biodiesel buses from Compass Transportation with vehicles from Bauer's Limo. No one told Yahoo's purchasing department that today is Earth day. Bauer's also supplies Google with shuttles, but according to our tipster, Yahoo is getting the dregs of its fleet:

In a blow to environmentally conscious socialists who espouse the frugal, sustainable sensibility of Cuban car culture, Salon's Pablo Päster has done the journalist math. It turns out that a brand-spanking-new Toyota Prius is more energy efficient over the expected lifetime of the vehicle than an old beater Mercedes from Daimler-Benz. What Päster doesn't take into account are alternative energy retrofits to classic cars, like MTV's pimping out of a Chevy Impala to run on biodiesel, like the one picture above. Because while a twee Prius might say "enviromentally conscious" to Stuff White People Like readers, Stuff White People Do readers (myself included) would much rather cruise El Camino Real in a biodiesel-fueled lowrider, mijo.

San Francisco's evil Board of Supervisors is standing in the way of hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom and his efforts to save the world by giving thousands of dollars to San Francisco home and business owners to install solar panels on their property, if you believe the San Francisco Chronicle. This should give Valley privateers a good idea of how to work with City Hall. Need to divert public money to the private sector, get a few laws changed, and at least win favor with our possible future governor? All it takes if five easy steps.

CNET editor-at-large Michael Kanellos is leaving for a post at the Oakland office of Greentech Media according to a tipster. Kanellos has been with the company for 12 years, and recently added cleantech stories to his beat. While no editorial staff were handed pink slips in the last round of CNET layoffs, Kanellos may have taken a look at the green tea leaves and left before the company had the chance. As for the promise of cleantech media? We suspect he's hedging his bets. Greentech is more an analyst shop than a publisher, and enviro-mad VCs who pay for research reports are a surer source of revenue than advertisers.

San Francisco cleantech startup Solazyme, which manufactures "Soladiesel" from genetically engineered algae grown in tanks warmed by solar heat, recently completed a successful test running heavy-duty vehicles on its homebrewed fuel, according to a press release. R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, arrived at the DESC Energy Conference in Arlington, Virginia in a Ford F-450 with a stock diesel engine powered entirely by Solazyme's B100 all-biodiesel blend. Which means that it can begin powering M1 Abrams tanks that measure fuel use in gallons-per-mile. The tests conducted by the Department of Defense concluded that Solazyme's concoction operates better than existing biofuels in cold temperatures. In other words, look out, Canada.