Here's a factual nugget you can throw out the next time you want to impress someone that's stuck sitting next to you on a crowded train. Approximately 1 percent of the world's fuel is consumed in making chemical fertilizers, according to Jay Keasling, a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering at UC Berkeley speaking at the Global Technology Leaders Conference at the university. Keasling, who is also one of the recognized leaders of synthetic biology, pointed out that bit about fertilizer to demonstrate the need for things like self-fertilizing plants. The world population is expected to increase by about 50 percent to 9 billion by midcentury as well, so expect the amount of food matter -- and hence the need for fertilizer absent a better solution -- to increase. Unfortunately, the quest for self-fertilizing plants over the last 35 years hasn't yielded very good results. Synthetic biology, a sophisticated form of genetic engineering that attempts to harness genetic and metabolic capabilities from several species, could help. Keasling is one of the founders of Amyris, a nearby startup in Emeryville that has come up with genetically enhanced yeast that can turn sugars into medicines or fuels. Keasling also noted that biofuels will likely play a large role in certain segments of the energy market. Cars might go electric, but batteries won't work in every market. "There are no batteries for jet engines," he said. "Therefore you need biofuels."

Tom Siebel, who made a big pile of money in the '90s by founding Siebel Systems, is trying to squeeze into green. Siebel is trying to put together a contest that will encourage companies to come up with HVAC systems and other technologies for relatively affordable, zero-energy homes. "They will be grid connected, but after 365 days the meter should read zero," he said during the Global Technology Leadership Conference taking place at UC Berkeley today. The contest, which is still under construction, will come with a few rules. For one thing, the homes have to be something the average American would want to live in. "You can't solve the problem by sitting in the dark and freezing to death," he said. Second, they have to be cheap. Green homes now are generally bought by rich people in communities like Woodside, California. "They cost $1,000 a square foot" and are generally huge, he argued. Builders have also been reluctant to get into the market although that has been changing. (In a conference earlier this month, for instance, I learned that Webcor, the largest builder in California, earned more revenue from LEED buildings in its most recent quarter than traditional construction. Imagine that.) Siebel figures the prize can be broken up in a couple of ways. In a first segment, $5 million could be given to companies and investors that come up with an interesting appliance or technology. A second $5 million prize could go to someone who designs the best green home. A third phase could award $10 million to any group that actually then builds some green homes with technology from the first two rounds. Does the world need this kind of contest? Honestly, probably not. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are moving into green building. Here's a greatest hits list of green building companies: Integrity Block, Navitas Capital, Serious Materials, Photosolar, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, Zeta Communities, Cal-Star Cement, Calera and SG Blocks. The homes are also moving from the rarefied luxury level Siebel mentioned. Still, $20 mil is $20 mil. I can't see anyone walking away from a good contest. Siebel's push into green makes him the latest member of the Internet era good ol' boys club to do so. Others include Gary Winnick (the Global Crossing founder who has a green cement company called iCrete), Shai Agassi (SAP sales guy turned electric car advocate) and Andy Grove (a former Intel employee teaching about hybrids at Stanford).

Project Better Place, the organization that wants to set up chains of electric charging stations and seems to generate a new press release every 20 minutes, will make an announcement today in San Francisco City Hall with Mayor Gavin Newsom. What to expect? Probably that BP will insert charging stations in San Francisco. Newsom, who once owned a General Motors EV-1, is determined to make San Francisco a green city. San Jose already has a deal with Coloumb Technologies to put electric charging station in San Jose. Shai Agassi, the former SAP exec who founded BP, has said that it will take around $1.5 billion to electrify California. He gives a great speech too, but several doubters exist. For one thing, BP wants to create a system that will let car buyers swap their batteries at charge stations. Batteries take several hours to charge; swapping allows you to get on the road quicker. But are consumers going to put a stranger's battery in their car. Consumers have accepted swapping propane tanks for barbecues, but cars could be another matter. Electric cars only go around 150 miles before conking out. BP is putting stations in Israel where it makes sense. You can't go 150 miles without hitting the ocean or enemy territory. The system might work in Australia too, where most people live in coastal cities. But in California? Are consumers really going to buy a car in the $30,000 to $40,000 range that isn't as functional as their cheaper gas car? It's going to take work. Oh, and then there's the cost of the stations. Will gas stations put these in? They had to be forced to start making it easier to sell ethanol. All of these factors are one of the reasons that many people, at least the ones I talk to, are skeptical.

Mark my words. At the Vanity FaIr Oscar Party this year, the number one topic will be zinc. Maybe I'm getting my parties confused. But in any event, engineers in green technology are increasingly finding ways to exploit the metal with an atomic weight of 30 for energy storage. Zinc rechargeable batteries have been around for decades actually, but they degrade quickly. Technical advances are now making them practical for commercial purposes. Solar equipment maker Oerlikon earlier this month said it has come up with a new line of manufacturing equipment that lets solar companies add a layer of zinc oxide to their modules. This increases the efficiency of thin-film amorphous solar modules from 6 percent to 7 percent. Meanwhile, PowerAir, a Lawrence Livermore National Labs spin-out, has created a BlackBerry-sized device that holds a zinc solution, according to CNET. When the solution is exposed to air, electricity is produced, allowing the device to function as a generator or a battery. And earlier this year, PowerGenix showed us its rechargeable zinc-based batteries. Power tool makers already use the company's batteries. Soon, a major battery maker will sell PowerGenix's batteries under its own names as replacement for ordinary cell batteries you buy today. Cahiers du Cinema ranked this film on zinc the third best ever on the element, right behind "The Groove Tube" and that episode of "The Simpsons"  on zinc. Car and scooter makers are also looking at zinc batteries, according to PowerGenix CEO Dan Squiller. And finally, some researchers believe it can be used to store energy at solar thermal farms. Heat from the sun can be collected and concentrated on a tower filled with a zinc solution. When the concentrated heat turns zinc into zinc oxide, it effectively stores energy for later use. Unlike molten salt, the energy won't dissipate. Energy storage, of course, is the new "Google" opportunity in greentech. I'm telling you. It's the Rat Pack of soft metals.

There is a water crisis in developing nations and in some not-so-developing nations. Additionally, there is a looming water crisis for everyone else on the globe as populations rise, as pollution increases and as climate and weather patterns change.

But VC lore has it that there’s not much opportunity for an early stage investor in the water market.

Yet opportunities in the water market seem obvious. The water market is:

• Huge and expanding

• In a crisis that cries out for innovation and efficiency

• Not experiencing a bubble

• Deeply enmeshed with energy usage

• Needing a variety of new technology approaches

Peter Nieh, a partner at VC investment firm Lightspeed Venture Partners said via email, �Water is an alluring market because the need is clearly there and the opportunity is large.  [There is] some great technology out there. The issue for us is that economically attractive distribution is hard to achieve because the market is so fragmented.�

“[I] definitely agree that water is a challenging sector... and as such, it's sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of cleantech investments,� observed Steve Vassallo of Foundation Capital.�

“That said, we have invested in this area (PurFresh was one of Foundation’s first cleantech investments) and are actively looking for opportunities to invest in capital efficient businesses that address the needs of commercial, industrial, and agricultural users of water.�

Water technology firm, Energy Recovery Inc is growing vertically and remains one of the few recent cleantech IPOs actually trading at or around its IPO price.

Will Coleman of VC firm Mohr Davidow Ventures is also looking carefully at water deals and states. “As for water, yes, we have had an interest in water for quite a while, but it has always been hard to identity venture opportunities in the space.  The market is huge. The "water" market in the US alone is over $100 billion annually, but a significant portion of that is in earthworks and pipes. When you slice it a little finer you find that a third of the market is driven by residential, where the cost of water to the end customer is really not a driver.�

Rachel Sheinbein was a water expert at Intel, dealing with the flood of waste-water produced in the fabrication of Intel’s semiconductor products. Today she’s an associate at CMEA Ventures and part of the investment firm's Energy & Materials team. She vets the VC firm’s cleantech deals but has a particular thirst for water start-ups and states, “I believe there’s an opportunity in water but I haven’t found the investment yet.�

Sheinbein added, “We’re good at materials and membranes,� and, “We would look to get to market through the commercial and industrial space first, as opposed to the conservative municipal water channel.�

Coleman of MDV agrees, “We do look at POU (Point of Use) filtration and production systems. On the agricultural and industrial side scarcity is becoming an increasing problem. We are very interested in technologies that address industrial process water or industrial waste-water cleanup, particularly technologies that can be applied to multiple sectors. The challenge is to identify the beachhead applications that can be leveraged into the largest market segments quickly because many of the industrial markets are not significant alone. In agriculture, water management and treatment are both interesting areas as we anticipate droughts to be increasing problems. Monitoring and controls are also interesting, particularly where they can be sold into non-muni customers.�

“The Munis can be big centralized customers, but they are all pretty unique beasts in their decision making. As they say, never negotiate with a king,� added Coleman

There are a “scary number� of pollutants in our water supply, said Gayle Pergamit, the CEO and founder of Agua Via, an early stage membrane developer. These pollutants include “natural� poisons like boron and arsenic, nitrogenous wastes from humans and farm animals, and “other goodies� like hydrocodone and estrogen disruptors. “There can be any of 500,000 different interesting and entertaining chemicals in the water supply,� she said.

“Nanotechnology-based water �ltration could deliver completely pure water from any source at vastly reduced energy usage and lower total costs,� added Pergamit.

Others working on membranes for water applications include the industrial plumbing giant Danfoss, while Novozymes and a startup called Aquaporin are doing similar work. These companies have produced samples and hope to be in the market by 2010 or 2011. The challenge, said Aquaporin CEO Peter Jensen to Greentech Media, isn’t so much in creating artificial proteins. It is making the membrane durable.

�The discouraging thing about this is that [VCs] really don’t understand that we (the U.S.) are entering an era of water scarcity (as opposed to large chunks of the rest of the world who are already in the midst of water scarcity),� said Pergamit of AguaVia in an email. “Maybe they don’t buy the concept of climate change – anthropogenic or otherwise. But it also means that they don’t understand aquifer exhaustion and the fact that even if there wasn’t one whit of climate change, we are still going to run out of water.�

For more on water start-ups and water technology – check out the first in a series of articles on water from Michael “King� Kanellos.

The current issue of Forbes, titled "Energy & Genius," offers an interesting glimpse at how a less progressive administration might be thinking about our energy future. Nowhere to be found are the now ubiquitous images of wind turbines and/or photovoltaic panels. The only mention of the burgeoning solar industry, in fact, is in a small piece entitled “A Brief History of Energy Boondoggles. " In their stead, you will find discussions of clean coal, nuclear energy and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia actually plays the starring role in the genius issue. One feature cheerleads Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, noting this is “easily the most profitable company on the planet� while displaying James Bond-ish photos of “next generation� oil wells. Meanwhile another article applauds the Kingdom’s vision of an uber-modern zero-carbon future city (which ironically would be entirely funded by petro profits).  Further articles speak of "the Saudi Arabia of Wind" and "the Sauidi Arabia of Lithium";  it seems in order to be significant in Forbes’ view, one ought to be the Saudi Arabia of something. While we can argue all day long about the merits of clean coal, the effects of carbon pricing on the economy, and the proper role of government subsidies, there seems to be little “genius� in continuing to promote dirty, non-renewable sources of energy.

Cellulosic ethanol maker Mascoma cut about five to 10 jobs as it finds itself between a rock and the credit crunch. Although it is hitting its technological milestones and has raised around $61 million, Mascoma has to cautiously watch its cash, CEO Bruce Jamerson told Martin Lamonica at News.com. "I'm trying to get ahead of this," Jamerson said. "I don't want to find out that in six months, things are more challenging. Then when you make cost reductions, it's even harder." Jamerson said that the grants from Michigan to develop a prototype facility are not in danger. Mascoma emerged from Dartmouth College. It is trying to develop microbes that can convert wood chips, grasses and other plant matter into ethanol. It says it differs from other ethanol companies in that its microbes can perform two tasks in creating cellulosic ethanol: The microbes can turn cellulose into sugar, and then sugar into alcohol. The company is also trying to increase the microbe's tolerance for alcohol (which, this being a Dartmouth project, somehow seems appropriate). Most microbes die when alcohol concentration gets up to 50 percent or so; that's why beer and wine aren't as strong as vodka.