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There’s government funding out there for clean technology start-ups, but knowing where to look can be challenging. That’s why Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a firm that provides legal services to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises, and the Cleantech Group, which provides market research to the clean technology community, have joined to launch the Clean Technology Resource Center. This site lets clean technology entrepreneurs search for federal and state funding opportunities, and offers advice on how to apply.

The site’s database is made up of grants, loan guarantees, tax credits, and other programs offered by federal and state governments. The site also includes articles on how to take advantage of government funding, links to useful federal and state Web sites, and additional reports and press releases.

Made public in the recent days, the latest Cool IT report by environmental group Greenpeace called upon a few high-profile companies to speak up for climate action in the IT industry. Greenpeace notes that the IT industry has a lot to gain from releasing energy efficient technologies, but continue to remain silent when it comes to supporting environmental policies being pushed for approval. According to the organization, some companies “continue to fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s regressive and destructive stance on climate issues, even when unaligned with their own climate policies.”

Specifically, Google, Microsoft and IBM are called out for their inaction, contrasting their lack of effort to Apple’s decision of withdrawing their support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “IT companies can and should publicly and demonstratively call for a change in the Chamber’s position on climate or leave the Chamber altogether,” Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International’s IT industry analyst says. Greenpeace even launched a campaign to get people to sign a petition in order to convince these three particular companies. In spite of being included among the list of companies called out for their inaction though, IBM still leads the Cool IT report company list because of its climate solution programs and its efforts in reducing company-wide emissions.

Engineering solutions can often be found by looking to nature, and that’s what the designers at Green Wavelength did when creating their bumblebee-inspired wind turbine, the xBee Alpha Wind. A 19-foot prototype of the turbine was shown this week at the Perfect Pitch 2009 entrepreneur conference in Marina del Rey, California.

Seeing that traditional wind turbines are, they say, at best 30 percent efficient, the team at Green Wavelength looked for efficiency in the movements of bumblebees, hummingbirds, and dragonflies. The result is a turbine that moves in a back-and-fourth wing-like way. Check out this YouTube clip to see it in action.

“Breakthrough ideas are often the result of the convergence of seemingly disparate concepts,” noted Sabri Sansoy, the CEO of Green Wavelength and aerospace veteran. “We are committed to finding ways of applying nature’s solutions to our man-made energy problems.”

VW is known for its diesels–and, lately, so-called clean diesels–but the company is also experimenting with compressed natural gas here and there. But now VW is taking the idea very public: it plans to launch a series of races next year specifically for cars that burn bio-CNG, according to Autopia.

The new series, called the Scirocco Cup, will feature CNG-powered, turbocharged four-cylinder versions of the redesigned VW coupe making 220 horsepower and 202 lb-ft of torque, and will run on some of Europe’s most challenging race tracks, according to the report.

VW is focusing on bio-compressed natural gas, made from renewable sources like grass and biological waste. The report said that energy produced from a ton of organic residue equates to about 15 gallons of fuel oil, or 200 kilowatt-hours of electrical power.

Solar? Wind? Geothermal? When it comes to green energy, don’t forget people power. The team at Easy Energy didn’t when they created the YoGen, a mobile charger just introduced at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.

The YoGen is a palm-size device that lets you generate energy by repeatedly pulling a ripcord. The internal alternator creates enough power to charge everything from cell phones and iPods to gaming and GPS devices.

The YoGen is already available for pre-order at www.YoGenStore.com for a reasonable $39.99. I like the clear version, which shows the inner workings. You can choose between models with Apple and miniUSB tips or LG, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and microUSB tips. The official product launch is scheduled for CES in January. Look for it in the Sustainable Products Pavilion.

President Barack Obama yesterday committed $3.4 billion in government grants for 100 renewable energy projects, in an effort to modernize the nation’s aging–and at times unreliable–electric power grid, according to EarthTimes.

Among the initiatives discussed were automating utility substations to take advantage of peak and off-peak scheduling, as well as installing smart meters in consumers’ homes, the report said.

The goal of a modern power grid, Obama said, is to give consumers control over energy usage and costs–and drive wind power and solar energy development. The money will come from the $787 billion stimulus measure approved back in February.

In a first for a technology manufacturer and distributor, Other World Computing of Woodstock, Illinois, now generates all its energy with an on-site turbine. A single Vestas V39-500kW turbine is projected to generate 1,250,000 kilowatt hours per year, more than double the company’s current needs. Excess energy will be sold back to the local utility.

The turbine was designed to produce power at winds as low at 9 miles per hour, since the site’s average wind speed is between 10 and 15 miles per hour. The tower is 131 feet high, with blades that extend the total height to 194 feet. The blade housing rotates to face winds, and it work with winds up to 150 miles per hour. After that, the blades go “flat,” with the narrowest point facing the winds, until it’s safe to continue. The company should see a 100 percent return on its investment in 10 to 14 years.

At the Hong Kong Electronics Fair two weeks ago, what could possibly be the first commercialized dye-sensitized solar cell product was showcased. A UK-based company called G24 Innovations displayed backpacks equipped with lightweight and flexible dye-sensitized solar cells. The company uses a roll-to-roll process to manufacture the flexible modules at an affordable rate. Under direct sunlight, the G24 modules can produce 0.5 watts of power at over 12 percent conversion efficiency. These modules use iodide-containing nonvolatile electrolyte and titanium dioxide nanocrystal components coated with ruthenium dyes.

According to Technology Review, there is only one other company that has even come close to coming up with dye-sensitized solar cell products for commercial release. The company, called Dyesol, opened a plant in Australia to manufacture tiles with dye-sensitized solar cells as a building-integrated photovoltaic product. G24′s subsequent plans include coming up with solar cell modules that could be attached to a multitude of things including tents, awnings, billboards, windows and even clothes. The first shipment of G24′s dye-sensitized solar cells was made last week to the company that manufactures the backpacks in Hong Kong, so official release of the product is expected to be soon.

Detroit routinely insisted throughout the past few decades that their consumer studies proved the American buying public wasn’t interested in fuel efficient vehicles, and preferred big, profitable SUVs and pickups, as reason for Detroit’s truck-heavy product lineups.

Now former GM economist Walter McManus, now a professor and chief of the Automotive Analysis division of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan, said that the opposite was true–and he, along with others, helped fudge all the data.