Automakers said the new limits on emissions that state lawmakers were considering would hurt the economy and prevent consumers from buying sport-utility vehicles. Environmentalists said they would help curb global warming. Into the fray stepped Environmental Entrepreneurs, insisting that business and environmental interests are not at odds.

Last week's passage of the Assembly bill limiting greenhouse-gas emissions -- the first of its kind in the country -- was just what Nicole Lederer and Bob Epstein envisioned for Environmental Entrepreneurs, a 2-year-old group of business leaders who support environmental causes.

E2, as the group is known, presented undecided Assembly members with business leaders -- mostly Silicon Valley financiers and tech executives -- who supported the bill. That gave politicians a defense against the charge that they were anti-business.

``They were essential to the passage of the bill,'' said Anne Baker, a staff member for Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills, who created the bill. ``They wrote Op-Eds, they wrote to legislators, they came here and met with members of the state Assembly on a regular basis. They were relentless.''

The bill still awaits approval from Gov. Gray Davis, but it is E2's biggest victory in its brief history. With chapters in Los Angeles and New York, along with the Bay Area one started by Lederer and Epstein, the group has more than 200 members.

In March 2000, Lederer -- a Palo Alto homemaker, fundraiser and former medical researcher -- was looking for a new challenge. Epstein, a co-founder of the software maker Sybase, had just joined the board of directors of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a New York-based environmental advocacy group.

Lederer, who is married to venture capitalist Larry Orr, approached the NRDC with an offer to help ``raise its visibility in Silicon Valley.'' The NRDC connected her with Epstein, who wanted to reach out to his business colleagues.

``I was acutely aware of the philanthropic potential in the valley and how little of it was given to the environmental movement,'' Lederer said.

Billions of dollars have flowed from Silicon Valley business leaders to environmental causes, for things such as preserving open space and saving endangered animals. But in the political arena, where business and environmental policy is hammered out, Lederer and Epstein saw a vacuum of leadership and built E2 to fill it.

``E2 is certainly not the first of its kind'' to bring business leaders together for socially responsible action, said Dan Kalb, president of the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club. But E2's emergence on the environmental scene ``shows that being pro-business and being pro-environment are not at odds.''

It was clear to Epstein early on that he wanted to use his skills to further the environmental movement: ``Back when I started Sybase in 1984, I wondered, `What would I do if I became successful?' ''

Lederer and Epstein started E2 with a different approach: Rather than focus on charging up volunteers for time-intensive activities such as cleaning a creek, E2 would seek to exact the maximum influence from its members with the minimum time and effort.

It wasn't simply a matter of asking rich people for money, Epstein said. ``Lots of people are good at asking for money,'' he said. In Epstein's business parlance, it meant leveraging the brand names of E2's members.

Rick deGolia, chief executive of Fonelet Technology, a San Francisco start-up, appreciates the approach E2 takes, particularly how it makes presentations, called ``ecosalons,'' to members about environmental issues.

``They're professional, sophisticated, mature,'' said deGolia, who hosted one on the oceans last year at his home. ``They're helpful to me to gain expert knowledge from people who are really dedicating their lives to environmental issues and presenting them in a way that's very valuable to business leaders.''

A call to action from E2 often means clicking ``Yes'' in response to an e-mail asking for permission to use the member's name and professional status in literature supporting a legislative goal. To rally behind Pavley's emissions bill in March, E2 gathered 86 names over e-mail and submitted them to legislators as evidence that the business community was in favor of tougher environmental policy.

E2 is a select group. It requires a minimum contribution of $1,000 to the NRDC to join; so far E2 has raised $1.8 million.

Epstein also has started a pet project called E2 Venture Endowment -- a fund to support start-ups working on technology that helps the environment or makes another technology cleaner.

At $2 million, it's a tiny fund that invests in bigger funds run by other venture capital firms. But the idea is to be part of the capitalist process, Epstein says, just as its lobbying has put E2 in the political process in Sacramento.