By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

Investors and executives who thrived during the Internet boom are now looking to Washington for help to cash in on alternatives to gasoline.

Take Alix Burns, a Silicon Valley trade group manager in a previous life. She now represents a tony investment house that sees future growth and profits in turning waste and tall grasses into fuel for cars and planes.

With Congress considering additional tax breaks and subsidies to encourage alternatives to imported oil such as ethanol and other fuels made from recycled animal waste or switchgrass, miscanthus and sorghum, Burns’ client and other investors are turning money into lobbying clout and campaign contributions for their cause.

“It’s not your father’s ethanol industry,” said Burns.

Burns spent six years with TechNet and was a finance director of the 2000 presidential campaign of former Vice President Al Gore. Last fall, she started a lobbying firm with one main client, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested in new ethanol companies, fuel cells, solar and wind power.

Kleiner Perkins’ interest in alternative fuels got a burst of publicity Nov. 12, when Gore came aboard as a partner in the firm.

Alternative energy startups backed by Kleiner Perkins would be potential beneficiaries of incentives in the pending farm bill (HR 2419) and a stalled energy policy package (HR 6). The tax title of the Senate’s farm bill would provide a 67-cents-per-gallon excise tax credit for ethanol produced from cellulose, atop the 51-cent credit ethanol receives under a 2005 law (PL 109-58).

With government support seen as necessary to make alternative fuels competitive in the marketplace, investors are making sure they have lawmakers’ attention.

Kleiner Perkins employees have contributed $128,000 to congressional candidates this year, with 92 percent of the money going to Democrats, according to campaign finance data compiled by CQ MoneyLine.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the political arm of the House Democratic majority, has received $48,500 of that money, while $14,250 has gone to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

A new player brought into Washington politics by the growing interest in alternative energy is Vinod Khosla, a Sun Microsystems founder who is now an ethanol investor. He has donated $94,000 to Democrats this year, including $28,500 apiece to the DSCC and DCCC.

Khosla, who has been advising Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and other Democrats on energy policy, runs Khosla Ventures and is an affiliated partner of Kleiner Perkins.

Gore and David Blood, his partner in a British firm, have a stake in the Spanish parent of Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas, one of six companies that will split $385 million in Energy Department grants awarded in February for factories that will produce ethanol from inedible cellulose derived from materials such as corn cobs, corn stalks and switchgrass.

Blood, a former chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, donated $28,500 to an arm of the Democratic National Committee in June.

“I do not know whether the ethanol industry is favoring either party. But its reach is growing,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Because President Bush mentioned switchgrass in a State of the Union address and has backed production of alternative fuels, Cole said the GOP deserves credit for supporting renewable fuels.

But his DCCC counterpart, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, said his party has the inside track. “We think it is a good issue for us,’’ Van Hollen said.

Joining the Fray

Some ethanol investors now courting congressional backing come from other energy-related businesses.

Dennis Langley, a former Senate aide and Kansas state Democratic chairman, became chief executive officer of E3 Biofuels after selling a natural gas business, the Kansas Pipeline Co., in 1999.

His company’s prototype plant in Mead, Neb., is intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane by using methane derived from cow manure and other animal waste to fuel ethanol production.

Langley contributed $10,000 to the DCCC two days after his factory opened. His wife, Lynette K. Shaw, E3’s senior vice president of governmental affairs, gave $28,500 to the DSCC and $5,000 to Van Hollen’s Victory Now leadership political action committee.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin , D-S.D., an architect of the Democratic agenda on alternative fuels, said Langley hosted a fundraiser for her last year that attracted industry investors.

And earlier this month, the Langleys hosted a fundraiser for Rep. Nancy Boyda , D-Kan., attended by Kansas women prominent in business and government. Pelosi spoke to the group via telephone.

To increase its profile in Washington even more, E3 Biofuels has hired the Gephardt Group, a lobbying firm run by former House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo. (1977-2005).

The list goes on of high-tech executives who now have a stake in alternative fuels. Mitch Mandich, a former Apple Computer executive, is now chief executive officer of ethanol producer Range Fuels. The company, founded by Khosla, won an Energy Department grant to build a cellulosic ethanol factory in Soperton, Ga.

Mandich and his wife, Rebecca, gave $33,000 to Democratic candidates during the 2004 and 2006 election cycles and have chipped in $6,900 this year.

Some other ethanol executives and investors have supported candidates in both parties.

Maintaining the Playing Field

While alternative fuels investors and traditional ethanol backers including grain companies seek additional federal incentives for renewable fuels, they are also working to defend the help already on the books.

Joe L. Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has called for repeal of a requirement for the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol in reformulated gasoline by 2012. “It’s not the big guy vs. the little guy anymore,” Barton said.

But supporters of ethanol and other biofuels, including Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, argue that continued and increased government aid is justified as a way to reduce the need for oil imports.

“Ethanol makes up 3 percent of the total energy supply,” Grassley said. “That certainly doesn’t seem like it’s big when almost all of the rest comes from petroleum.”

Emily Cadei of CQ MoneyLine contributed to this story.