I'm always interested to see what happens to the projects we blog about at Matter. There is so much news associated with the clean tech boom that it's easy to report and move on. Two topics I posted on over the months have resurfaced. Here's an update.

Back in March, I blogged about the SeaGen project, Britain's planned 1.2 MW tidal generator. For the first time, a commercial-scale tidal turbine provided energy to the grid, marking the beginning of the system's commissioning process. Although it only generated 150 kw during the trial, it's a promising first step to its official launch at the end of the summer.

Just last month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law a bill setting a 20% renewable energy goal for the year 2020. Now, the state has passed an effort to integrate cellulosic ethanol into MA's fuel mix. The legislation exempts the biofuel from state gasoline taxes and requires diesel transport and heating oils to be 5% cellusolic by 2013 creates a target of 5%.

Good news. But I'm not even going to try finding out how the Cape Wind debacle is going.