Despite booking $11.3 billion in profit and $348.7 billion in revenue over 2007, Wal-Mart has decided investing in greentech isn't worth the pain. So today they've launched a "gateway between solution providers and Wal-Mart" for you - the solution provider - to tell Wal-Mart how to reduce it's carbon footprint. I wonder what PR wizard thought this up. Wal-Mart's "Cleantech Accelerator Project" is helpfully hosted by the Cleantech Group, who were more than willing to help Wal-Mart steal your ideas. But have no fear. Wal-Mart will soon pay the price as they are inundated with thousands of "innovative" ideas for composting, fart offsetting, and back to nature survivalism. Even Treehugger would be proud.

The Valley Transportation Authority's long, strange trip with hydrogen fuel cell buses looks like it could (should) crash. Three years ago the VTA dropped $18 million on the three buses, pushed by a state mandate requiring use of the consummate "five year technology". But a new VTA report out this week "raises troubling questions" about both the technology and cost of the program, according to Gary Richards from the San Jose Mercury News. The biggest troubling question? VTA's hydrogen buses cost $51.66 per mile for fuel, operation and maintenance, compared with $1.61 for the standard 40 foot diesel bus. Ouch. The $2.5 million hydrogen buses (diesel's cost around $400,000) also traveled an average of 1,100 miles between repairs, compared with 6,000 for standard diesels. Good thing they're not planning on refunding this progr... Oh. What's that?

I guess we don't need to ask what he was smoking...

• LDK Solar's earnings moved up 18 percent from 3Q to 4Q in 2007, with sales nearly tripling in that time year over year. The solar company reported they locked in nine long-term wafer supply contracts in the final quarter of 2007. In a striking sign of the effect the poly shortage is having on producers, LDK's margins moved down from 42.9 percent to 30.1 percent. This figure may bounce when LDK's new poly plant comes online next year.


• Having run out of non-performing PPAs to swoop up, PG&E has decided to take a page out of Treehugger's playbook (I know - it hurts on the inside). The California utility will buy 214,000 CO2-derived emissions credits, worth about $2 million annually, to offset 1 percent of the company's yearly emissions. The credits will come mostly from a 23,780 acre forest in Mendocino County, CA to be guarded by Conservation Fund stormtroopers. None Shall Pass


• Greek Environment Minister George Souflias approved the country's National Allocation Plan for Emissions Trading in 2008-2012 today. The plan calls for a 16.6 percent emissions reduction among 152 enterprises, including 33 power plants, 14 paper factories, 4 gyro huts, and a baklava. The aggressive target is a boon for Greece's solar industry, which is on track to build 700 MW in capacity by 2020, up from 6 MW in late 2007. A 40-45 eurocent/kWh feed-in tariff was set in 2006 to help the industry develop.


• California has 835 alternative fuel stations, of which 379 are for electricity, 215 are for liquefied petroleum gas, and 174 are for compress natural gas. On the other side of that list, the state has seven E85 ethanol stations, only three of which are available to the public. Despite the California Air Resources Board setting aside a few million dollars to expand this number to 34, it will probably never happen. And I laugh and laugh and laugh.


• And finally today... Greenpeace messes up their protest schedule.