Last August, Governor Paterson signed a series of bills to allow commercial net metering installations across New York State. Previously, only residential users were allowed to generate their own electricity from renewable sources and sell it back into the grid. The first such commercial installation in New York City was recently commissioned at 925 Bergen Street in Brooklyn by solar power installer Solar Energy Systems (SES) for Big Sue LLC, a general contracting and consulting firm that specializes in green design-build projects, which owns and operates the property. The installation is a 40 kilowatt solar array and, according to SES, is the largest commercial net-metered photovoltaic system in the entire country. According to Big Sue co-owner Susan Boyle, the company investigated a number of alternative power sources for 925 Bergen before opting for the solar array because of “the simplicity afforded by net metering.”

Never mind falling oil prices. Bill Gates and the Rockefellers think they know a better way to fill up your gas tank: algae (Yes, we mean pond scum).

In one of the most memorable moments in cinema, a middle-aged businessman whispers to a young and perplexed Dustin Hoffman one word of advice: “Plastics.”

In a 21st-century remake, the word might one day be algae.

Plastic was the new gold when The Graduate was filmed in the 1960s. In the summer of 2008, as oil prices soared to frightening levels, dozens of little companies managed to bring in a sudden gusher of funding for a technology that has long been relegated to the fringe of alternative energy: turning the green scum that grows in ponds and waterways into fuel.

In just six months, investors pledged more than $1 billion to 30 or 40 algae-fuel companies, many of them new. Now with oil prices less than half of what they were in the summer, the fledgling algae industry isn’t likely to see more big investments anytime soon, and the credit squeeze will also hamper development. But the companies hope they’ve raised enough cash to move the technology to the next step and prove that the watery weed can be a viable alternative to petroleum.