The report, by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), representing Europe’s main renewable energy companies, is one of the most detailed to work out the nuts and bolts of a near-total shift to green energy such as wind or solar power. Such proposals often stop at wishful thinking.

The report said that global investments in energy would need to total $18 trillion by 2030 — almost five times the entire U.S. federal budget for next year — to set the world on a path to generating about 95 percent of electricity from non-polluting renewables by mid-century.

However, the International Energy Agency has estimated that investments of $11.3 trillion will be needed anyway by 2030, in all forms of energy, to cover the world’s growing needs. The IEA’s central scenario assumes fossil fuels will remain dominant.

Renewables now make up about 18 percent of electricity generation and governments want to raise the share.

This is partly to combat global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, and partly to diversify and guarantee energy supplies as fossil resources decline, and to combat other forms of pollution.

Sven Teske, lead author of the 260-page report at Greenpeace, said there would be long-term economic benefits from a phase-out of subsidies for fossil fuels and from the fact that inputs to renewable electricity — such as wind or geothermal energy — are free. The plan would also phase out nuclear power.

“The costs at the beginning are because renewables are more labor-intensive,” he said.

To pay the bill, the report suggests looking at historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and at ability to pay. That meant the United States would pay 36.3 percent of the annual bill in 2010, falling to 28.9 percent in 2030.

China, which recently overtook the United States as top greenhouse gas emitter, would pay only 4.3 percent of the bill in 2010, rising to 13.6 percent by 2030, since it is poorer and has a shorter history of industrialization.

The report said the shift would mean there were about 12 million jobs, including 8.5 million in the renewables sector, by 2030.

“Under business as usual, global renewable power jobs would be only 2.4 million of the global power sector’s 8.7 million jobs,” it said.

Negotiators from about 185 nations are meeting in Bonn from May 31 to June 11 to discuss a new U.N. climate deal after a summit in Copenhagen in December fell short of agreeing a binding treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

by Kevin Liffey – Reuters

Technorati Tags: electricity deregulation, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), geothermal energy, Greenpeace, International energy agency, renewable electricity, wind energy

Ohio House and Senate agree on new tax policy for power projects.

COLUMBUS — Negotiators for the Ohio House and Senate on Thursday, June 3, appeared to reach agreement on tax breaks aimed at bringing “green energy” projects to Ohio as the legislature worked to finish up and recess for the summer.

Also, the House approved a bill to overhaul how telephone companies are regulated and the Senate was expected to concur with the House version.

The Ohio Telecommunications Association and Communications Workers of America supported the bill but consumer groups said it would wipe out consumer protections and bring higher monthly bills.

Landline customers with bundled services will no longer have protections, such as an automatic month of credit if their phone is out for more than 72 hours or the guarantee that their service will be reconnected within 24 hours of paying a bill, said Marty Berkowitz, spokesman for the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

The bill also allows phone companies to hike basic service fees by up to $15 a year, he said.

Behind the scenes, Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, worked to find votes for a constitutional amendment to replace Ohio’s system for drawing new state legislative districts with a plan geared to creating fairer and more politically competitive districts.

In other action, the Democratic-controlled House approved legislation aimed at highlighting the wealth of GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, legislation that is expected to die in the GOP-controlled Senate.

The “green energy” tax breaks represented a rare bipartisan cooperation as partisan bickering heated up with the approach of the November elections.

Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was poised to sign the legislation, said Amanda Wurst, Strickland’s spokeswoman.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 12-5 on a modified version of Senate Bill 232, sponsored by Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield, and already approved by the Senate. The House and Senate were expected to approve the new bill later Thursday.

Widener said it could create up to 1,000 jobs.

One proposed wind farm is in Champaign County.

Under the legislation, projects that qualify would pay annual fees based on how much energy they generate instead of property taxes, both real and tangible.

Revenue from the taxes goes to school districts and local governments and a coalition representing these groups objected to the bill.

A statement from the coalition, which includes the Ohio School Boards Association and the Ohio Township Association, said it “falls woefully short in replacing losses in local tax revenues for schools and local governments.”

Widener has said the new system is necessary for Ohio to catch up with other states in attracting renewable energy projects that generate electricity from sources such as wind and solar power.

Ohio’s current effective tax rate is up to eight times higher than neighboring states, the Ohio Wind Energy Association has said. Also, the legislation will help the state comply with the energy bill passed in 2008 that requires 12.5 percent of Ohio’s electric energy to be generated by renewable sources 2025, Widener has said.

County approval would be required for companies to receive the tax breaks and counties could increase the per megawatt fee to $9,000. Otherwise, the top fee would be $8,000, depending on the project.

By William Hershey and Laura A. Bischoff

Dayton Daily News

Technorati Tags: geothermal, green energy, Ohio Wind Energy Association, photovoltaic, solar energy, wind energy

“If key changes can be made to standard operating procedures, our research shows that large amounts of wind and solar can be incorporated onto the grid without a lot of backup generation,” said Dr. Debra Lew, NREL project manager for the study. “When you coordinate the operations between utilities across a large geographic area, you decrease the effect of the variability of wind and solar energy sources, mitigating the unpredictability of Mother Nature.”

The study focuses on the operational impacts of wind, photovoltaics, and concentrating solar power on the power system operated by the WestConnect group of utilities in the mountain and southwest states. WestConnect is a group of transmission providers, which includes Arizona Public Service, El Paso Electric Co., NV Energy, Public Service of New Mexico, Salt River Project, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Cooperative, Tucson Electric Power, Western Area Power Administration, and Xcel Energy. Though wind and solar output vary over time, the technical analysis performed in this study shows that it is operationally possible to accommodate 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar energy penetration. To accomplish such an increase, utilities will have to substantially increase their coordination of operations over wider geographic areas and schedule their generation deliveries, or sales, on a more frequent basis. Currently generators provide a schedule for a specific amount of power they will provide in the next hour. More frequent scheduling would allow generators to adjust that amount of power based on changes in system conditions such as increases or decreases in wind or solar generation.

The study also finds that if utilities generate 27 percent of their electricity from wind and solar energy across the Western Interconnection grid, it would lower carbon emissions by 25 to 45 percent. It would also decrease fuel and emissions costs by 40 percent, depending on the future price of natural gas.

Other key findings from the study include:

• Existing transmission capacity can be more fully utilized to reduce the amount of new transmission that needs to be built.
• To facilitate the integration of wind and solar energy, coordinating the operations of utilities can provide substantial savings by reducing the need for additional back-up generation, such as natural gas-burning plants.
• Use of wind and solar forecasts in utility operations to predict when and where it will be windy and sunny is essential for cost-effectively integrating these renewable energy sources.

The study was undertaken by a team of wind, solar and power systems experts across both the private and public sectors. The study complements the recently released Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study, which examines the feasibility of integrating up to 30 percent wind in the eastern states.

The report released today is an important first step in assessing the impact of solar and wind energy on the electrical grid. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Department of Energy is investing more than $26 million to further study the Western transmission interconnection, which will help states, utilities, and grid operators prepare for future growth in energy demand, renewable energy resources, and Smart Grid technologies.

The study can be downloaded at www.nrel.gov/wwsis.  

By: TES Staff

Technorati Tags: green energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, photovoltaic solar plant, renewable energy, solar power, wind energy

Many U.S. investors were reluctant to plough money into big solar, wind, and other clean-energy sectors until they knew what technologies the U.S. government policy was going to favor, he said.

“There’s too much capital sitting on the sidelines for lack of an energy policy,” Locke said during a stop at a U.S. and Chinese joint venture project to build batteries for electric vehicles.

“The longer we wait, the more that others, whether it’s China, Germany, and other countries, will be moving ahead.”

While legislation to fight global warming and provide stronger economic incentives for renewables energy still faces an uncertain fate in Congress, China is pushing clean-energy projects on a number of fronts.

“The opportunities are stunning in China because China has enormous economic growth and that economic growth has led to enormous demands for energy,” said Locke, who headed a group of 24 U.S. clean-energy companies on a trade mission to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing this week.

The joint venture between California-based company Coda and its Chinese partner, Tianjin Lishen Battery, was a model of how cooperation in the clean-energy sector could create jobs in both countries, Locke said.

Lishen builds the batteries for an electric vehicle that Coda plans to sell in the United States. The Chinese state-owned oil company, CNOOC, is also an investor in the project.

Locke also visited the Tianjin facility of a joint venture between United Solar Ovonic, a subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, and Tianjin Jinneng Investment Company to convert U.S.-made solar cells into solar modules for the Chinese market.

“We do about 75 percent of the manufacturing in Michigan and then we roll it up and we ship it to Tianjin, where they finish it, cut it up into the sizes that they need,” said Uni-Solar Vice President Martha Duggan.

Uni-Solar signed an agreement during Locke’s trip to sell 500 kilowatts of its thin-film solar laminates to NYKE Solar Integrators, a Chinese company, for a demonstration project.

“Our theory is that by doing this particular business model, we’re creating and sustaining jobs in Michigan and in China,” Duggan said.

by Reuters

Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: clean energy, renwable energy, solar energy, wind energy

The bill, known as the Renewable Resource Credits bill, would allow energy generation produced from waste such as garbage to be classified as renewable and qualify that electricity for the state’s renewable power mandate.

The bill was drafted to grant renewable status to the Apollo light pipe, a a small glass skylight dome that, when mounted in a roof, reflects daylight inside to help cut energy use. The light pipe is a technology developed by Orion Energy Systems Inc. of Manitowoc, a maker of high-efficiency lighting systems.

Environmental and renewable energy groups had called on Doyle to veto the bill after it was amended to allow garbage-to-energy projects to be classified as renewable as well.

Doyle said he was torn on whether to sign the bill but said that, ultimately, Orion is the kind of business the state wants to see grow and succeed.

“I certainly didn’t want to be in the position I was in. To me the (state) Senate’s refusal to go ahead with the Clean Energy Jobs Act put everybody in a very difficult spot on this bill,” he said.

Doyle conceded that there would be some effect on the wind industry from the new law but said it would be so slight as to be negligible.

A waste-to-energy process known as plasma gasification is being envisioned by Alliance Federated Energy, which announced a plan in February to build a waste-to-energy plant in Milwaukee that would create up to 250 construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs.

The bill’s signing came after Doyle vetoed a bill that would have required the state to make its buildings greener, saying the measure was laudable but unworkable.

The bill “will result in all current maintenance projects being delayed indefinitely,” Doyle said in a letter to lawmakers explaining his veto. “In the future, the commitment of all these funds for this single purpose will also sharply curtail the state’s ability to build new buildings or maintain its existing facilities.”

The bill would have required buildings to take steps to make improvements in accordance with green-building standards adopted by the U.S. Green Building Council. It was supported by the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance.

Doyle said he is a proponent of energy efficiency who has directed state agencies to cut energy use, but said the bill would have created “chaos” for the state’s building construction program.

Wisconsin lags other states in making a big commitment to developing sustainable public buildings that lower energy costs, said Sue Loomans, executive director of the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance.

“Obviously state agencies didn’t feel ready or able to do this,” she said.

Loomans said the bill’s adoption by the Legislature is a “good first step” and that the alliance hoped to work with stakeholders to develop other measures to advance construction of energy-efficient public buildings.

By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel

Jason Stein, reporting from Madison, contributed to this report.

Technorati Tags: green energy, renewable energy, Renewable Resource Credits bill, wind energy, wind power

The measure by House Speaker Chris Benge of Tulsa creates the Oklahoma Energy Security Act. It seeks to reduce dependence on foreign oil and increase domestic energy and renewable energy production in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

It also creates a renewable energy standard for Oklahoma, a goal for efficient use of the state’s natural resources.

It calls for 15 percent of all electricity generated in Oklahoma by 2015 be produced from renewable energy like wind, solar and geothermal sources as well as conservation efforts.

The bill passed 91-2 Monday and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

About 35 states have some form of renewable portfolio standard.

The Associated Press

Technorati Tags: geothermal, green energy, photovoltaic, solar energy, wind energy

Western wind turbine manufacturers are losing ground in China, the world’s fastest-growing green energy market.

The combined market share for companies such as General Electric and its European rivals, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens, fell to 14 percent last year from 71 percent in 2005, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Sales are being eroded by local companies including Sinovel Wind and Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology.

“It’s a tough market,” said Jesus Zaldua, president of Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica’s Chinese subsidiary, which has four wind-turbine factories in Tianjin. “Some companies will have to leave China in the next five years.”

To get back in the game, the foreign companies are introducing newer technology. Siemens, based in Munich, Germany, expects to open an $80 million plant this year in Shanghai to build 3.6-megawatt turbines — bigger than anything made by a Chinese company.

Gamesa plans to retrofit its existing plants to build 2-megawatt turbines and will open its fifth Chinese factory next year. The Spanish company’s machines cost a third more and are more reliable than Chinese models, according to Beijing-based consultancy Mint Research.

“Competing on cost isn’t the way to go,” said Jens Tommerup, president of the Chinese business unit of Vestas, which is based in Denmark. “It’s about quality.”

Chinese manufacturers say they are improving their quality. Goldwind and Sino­vel plan to introduce higher-output turbines next year.

“We already have 2.5-megawatt and 3-megawatt products” under development, said Thomas Yao, Goldwind’s public relations director. “We are going to produce some 2.5-megawatt, and they will be put into mass production early next year.”

The head start in technology may pay off for Western companies, particularly as the Chinese venture abroad, said Keith Hays, global wind research director at Emerging Energy Research.

Western bankers, who would finance the majority of projects outside China, have more faith in U.S. and European turbine makers because of the companies’ experience, he said.

“For now, the West has an advantage in quality,” said Hays, an industry consultant in Barcelona and Cambridge, Mass. “But the Chinese are catching up fast.”

Buoyed by $47 billion in stimulus spending for environmentally friendly power over two years, China installed more than double the number of wind turbines in 2009 than in the previous year. This year, the country plans to add 18 gigawatts of wind capacity, the equivalent of 15 nuclear power plants. That’s double what’s expected in the U.S., the No. 2 market, according to estimates from New Energy Finance.

Germany and Spain, Europe’s largest wind energy markets, will add 1.8 gigawatts and 1 gigawatt in 2010, respectively.

Vestas, the top foreign wind turbine maker in China, installed turbines with a total capacity of 620 megawatts on the mainland last year, New Energy Finance said. Despite losing market share, Western turbine makers still are selling more units in China, UBS estimates.

“The very explicit growth targets for wind energy in China have spurred the growth and emergence of many new competitors, which has driven down the prices of wind turbines,” Tommerup said.

The biggest domestic competitor, Beijing-based Sino­vel, sold turbines with a capacity of 3,523 megawatts.

Sinovel and Goldwind, the second-biggest Chinese wind-turbine maker, are among the top five global turbine manufacturers, even with almost no sales overseas, according to the Danish wind advisory firm MAKE Consulting.

Vestas and GE were respectively the first and second- largest suppliers of turbines worldwide in 2009, according to MAKE Consulting. Sinovel was third, followed by Germany’s Enercon. Goldwind was fifth.

By MARK SCOTT
Bloomberg News

Technorati Tags: department of energy, green energy, renewable energy, wind energy, wind power

Chevron’s proposal beat out bids from three other firms. It plans to finance the site work and turbine construction without funding from the town or state, Carcieri’s office said.

Current plans call for the turbines to be built on four sites owned by either the town or the state. The first turbine could be finished by the end of next year, said Department of Environmental Management director W. Michael Sullivan.

“They were from an economic analysis both the strongest company, and they put more money for the state and the community on the table than anyone else,” Sullivan said.

Each turbine is expected to cost between $3 million to $3.5 million, Sullivan said.

The precise number of turbines hasn’t been determined. The state initially selected five sites in Narragansett — a coastal town in southeastern Rhode Island — but withdrew one after determining it wouldn’t be feasible. The remaining four properties include a wastewater treatment facility near Scarborough State Beach and a Department of Public Works site.

Representatives from Chevron Energy Solutions, a clean energy company and a subsidiary of energy giant Chevron Corp., did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In a statement, Carcieri called Chevron a “proven leader in renewable energy” and said wind was the proven best source available for renewable energy.

The turbines are separate from a larger wind farm that Carcieri has proposed building miles off Block Island and that could be capable of generating about 15 percent of the state’s electricity.

Last summer, the town and state sent surveys to around 800 randomly selected Narragansett residents to gauge public reaction to the proposal. More than three-quarters reacted favorably to the proposed turbines, Sullivan said.

John Torgan, of the environmental group Save the Bay, said his organization embraced wind energy but wanted to make sure that sites for turbines were selected in as transparent a method as possible.

“In many ways, we’re pioneering this for Rhode Island and for coastal areas. We don’t have a lot of precedent, at least in Rhode Island, how to go on to develop these facilities. That’s been part of the challenge,” Torgan said.

By ERIC TUCKER (AP)

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: green energy, wind energy