Global warming isn't the only problem for glaciers.

Layered-on soot is increasing the rate that glaciers in the Himalayan plateau are melting, according to a new NASA study released at the American Geophysical Union taking place this week in San Francisco. Clouds of soot and particles that cling to glaciers in the region trap heat and thereby accelerate melting. Since the 1960s, the acreage covered by Himalayan glaciers has shrunk by 20 percent.

One of the persistent worries in Asia remains a deepening water crisis as high mountain glaciers shrink. Three nothern states in India have lost 17.7 cubic kilometers a year for the past decade. Typically, the glaciers act to refill water supplies in lowlying regions.

Toyota today announced that it would sell plug-in hybrids and short-range electric vehicles to consumers in 2011. It hopes to sell tens of thousands globally a year, executives said.

It's an interesting flip. Barely more than a year ago, Toyota executives talked about electric cars, but the enthusiasm was pretty tempered.

"Lithium-ion batteries will probably be used in vehicles, but we still have problems," said Masatami Takimoto, the executive vice president in charge of technology, citing cost, safety and energy density. He was a bit more enthusiastic about fuel cells and biofuels. Check out the PowerPoint slide on that link. "We at Toyota believe that plug-in hybrids are the most practical way for an ordinary vehicle to take advantage of electricity," he added.

So why the switch? Unlike some U.S. automakers, Toyota doesn't fight trends. The excitement surrounding the Nisan Leaf, the GM Volt and the Tesla Roadster all strongly indicate that consumers want electric cars. Toyota also did quite well with the Prius, which travels on electric power generated by the motor. Rather than sit back and lose the advantage, it is moving forward.

Brian Sager, the co-founder of thin film solar pioneer Nanosolar made a relatively rare appearance at a sold-out EBC panel I moderated in Mountain View, California last week.  The event ostensibly covered creative financing although we discussed a wide variety of greentech topics.

Other speakers included:

• Sempra's Manager of Technology Development - David Berokoff
• Physic Ventures Director Andrew Williamson
• The CEC's Matt Coldwell, Program Manager Small Grants Program and Norman Bourassa, Buildings End-Use Energy Efficiency Program

Nanosolar's message control and corporate code of omertà makes Karl Rove and the Corleones look like schoolboys.  Sager warned me before the panel that he would not be making any prognostications about Nanosolar's business.  Nor would he be willing to even answer questions about the future of the solar market.  He simply would not answer questions about the future, about things he did not know.  No forward looking questions.

So when it came to Nanosolar - it was all rear-view mirror.  It remains an interesting story.

According to Sager, when Nanosolar won it's initial venture funding - it was the first time Sand Hill Road invested in a solar company.  But before and after that precedent, Nanosolar has used every avenue of funding one could think of to fund their potentially disruptive thin film solar firm, now at about $500 million in funding to date.

• Angel funding - Sergey Brin, Reid Hoffman, Larry Page, Sunil Paul, et al.
• Government Grants - from the California Energy Commission, DOE, DARPA and DoD
• Traditional VC for their Round A - Benchmark Capital, USVP
• Greentech VC for their Round B - MDV
• Corporate Venture Funds - Swiss Re, Mitsui & Co.
• Niche VC - OnPoint Ventures (The US Army's venture fund)
• Private Equity - the Carlyle Group, Lone Pine Capital
• Strategics - Utilities EDF and AES Corporation
• Venture leasing - Western Technology Investment
• Regional subsidies - from San Jose, CA and local German governments

So, other than founder credit cards and bank robbery - that might exhaust the available avenues of start-up financing.

As mentioned - no new info about Nanosolar but a few facts of note:

• The founders and the founding investors weren't investing in the CIGS material system so much as they were investing in the roll-to-roll printing model.  In fact, the founders had looked at a number of other materials systems prior to settling on CIGS.
• Nanosolar has filed more than 350 patents

Eight years or so after their founding, 2010 is the year for Nanosolar to ramp production and prove they can meet their stated goal of low LCOE.

Wave and tidal power aren't easy, but PG&E is not giving up.

The Northern California utility has filed for a preliminary permit to study the feasibility of harvesting power from waves off of the coast near Vandenberg Air Force base. The study will take three years. If all goes well and the wave system is ultimately put in, it could produce 100 megawatts of power. California has a 745 mile coastline and, hypothetically, waves could produce 20 percent of the state's power. Disclosure: I'm a believer in wave and tidal.

Standing in the way is Neptune. Unlike solar or wind, wave power is somewhat constant and predictable. Tidal power is even more regular – researchers can predict with a relatively high degree of accuracy how much power a tidal turbine will produce for decades. However, sticking a mechanical object in rough seas and hoping it works flawlessly for 20 years or more is a daunting task. Many companies – such as Ireland's Open Hydro (tidal power) and WaveBob (wave power) have built devices that are the size of small docking stations or ships.

A few years ago, PG&E signed a deal to put a 2 megawatt wave farm off the coast with Finavera Renewables. The California Public Utilities Commission rejected it. Finavera also had an experimental buoy in Oregon sink below the waves. Pelamis, in Scotland, put a commercial-scale wave device off the coast of Portugal last year but then brought it back. Finances have ground it since. The company recently tossed its CEO overboard like a sack of soon-to-be flotsam.

Still, the hope is there. Open Hydro (check out this fine video of one of its test devices; it features a real captain by the way, not an actor paid to be salty) recently launched a 1-megawatt device in Canada's Bay of Fundy.

Some believe wave and tidal power could produce a gigawatt, if all goes well, in the coming years.

Being a CEO would be great. You'd get to lord over people, order ostentatiously expensive advisory services from McKinsey, and then receive a lavish exit package after screwing up. I could do that.

And if you want to hit those heights yourself, look at batteries and LEDs, says Shawn Oglesbee of recruiting firm On Search. Three of the top five jobs they've looked at are in LEDs and batteries. The company has placed six greentech CEOs to date this year. The firm interviewed 71 companies in compiling this list.

VC funds have been pouring into energy storage and several have received grants from the Department of Energy. Many lighting investments were made in 2008. But more imporant for the lighting industry is the fact that several countries – Australia, Canada, the EU, the U.S. – have imposed laws that will lead to the demise of the incandescent bulb. LEDs are primed to take that spot.

Next year has got to be better than 2009, right? That would seem to be the case, judging from recent announcements by solar companies that are planning some big factory expansion.

Neo Solar Power, headed by a former executive of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., Quincy Lin, plans to expand its annual factory capacity to 600 megawatts in 2010 from the current 240 megawatts of solar cells.

The expansion would cost around NT$2.7 billion, which the company said would come from its own coffer. Neo Solar had NT$3.5 billion in cash by the end of the third quarter this year.

The company makes crystalline silicon solar cells, which are then assembled into panels by its customers. Neo Solar expects to ship 400 megawatts to 50 megawatts of products in 2010, Neo Solar said. That'd double what it believed it would have shipped by the end of 2009 (200 megawatts).

A few months back, Neo Solar said it had begun shipping monocrystalline silicon cells that are square in shape. Most monocrystalline silicon cells made today look like square with the four corners cut off.

Being able to work with wafers to create full square cells would enable Neo Solar's customers to produce solar panels with a higher power output and efficiency. The new product, which the company dubbed Perfect Cell, can increase the active area of a solar panel by 3 percent, the company said back in October.

The average efficiency of this a Perfect Cell is 17.8 percent, the company said.

I visited Neo Solar's factory in Hsingchu, south of Taipei, in June this year and had a chance to interview Lin and others in the company (see Feed-In Tariff Comes to Taiwan).

By the way, another crystalline silicon solar cell maker in Taiwan, Gintech Energy, also recently announced an ambitious plan to boost its manufacturing capacity. Bloomberg reported that Gintech aims to reach an annual capacity of 1 gigawatt in 2011; it currently has 560 megawatts.

I caught up with Gintech's executives, J. M. Lee and Jason Hsieh, at Solar Power International in Anaheim two months ago. Lee and Hsieh outlined their strategies for tackling the U.S. market in a story here.

Trony Solar, maker of amorphous silicon solar panels, has opted to postpone its initial public offering.

The Chinese company was expected start trading its American depositary shares on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, but an underwriter told Reuters that the plan is to hold off until market conditions improve.

It was only earlier this week when Trony amended its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to set a price range for its shares. The company had planned to sell up to 15 million shares that would be priced between $9 to $11 per share.

Trony would offer another 2.9 million to its underwriters. The company's shareholders were going to offer 4.5 million shares.

Assuming the shares are priced at $10 per share, the company had anticipated to get $134.5 million in net proceeds from its offering, or $161.7 million if the underwriters decided to buy the additional shares.

Trony's plan was to use the $100 million of the proceeds to expanding its manufacturing, and another $30 million to pay off debt, the company said in its SEC filing.

Several key solar stocks in the U.S. market, such as First Solar, SunPower and Suntech, are seeing a share price decline so far today.

The company had 115 megawatts of annual production capacity by the end of August this year, and is expected to increase it to 145 megawatts by the end of 2009.