Apple also says it plans to build a massive fuel cell farm at its data center that will use biogas (gas captured from decomposing biomass), which is an even more rare move for an Internet company. Apple’s planned fuel cell farm will be 5 MW when it goes online later in 2012, and Apple calls the project “the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country.” Apple notes that it already has a small 500 kilowatt biogas-powered fuel cell at its Cupertino facility.

When he recently was procuring 30 high-tech battery packs — the crucial 1,300-pound lithium units that sit under electric-van frames — he had to buy from suppliers in China for lack of local capacity. “We are absolutely at risk, if we don’t get on the idea that we’re going to be driving electric vehicles,” Brown said. “Build them here. If we don’t start doing that, within 30 years, we’ll all be driving Chinese electric vehicles.”

Consumer electronics giant Kyocera is working with battery system developer Nichicon Corporation to package up Kyocera’s solar rooftop gear and its energy management system, with Nichicon’s lithium ion home battery systems, to sell an all-in-one product to Japanese home owners.