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Posts from the ‘Policy’ Category

May 14

Saudi Arabia targets 41GW of solar installations by 2032

Representatives from the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE), the government body directing alternative energy development, have announced the country’s ambitious long-term goals for solar power. The oil-rich kingdom aims to have installed 41GW of concentrated solar power (CSP) and solar PV projects by 2032, 25GW and 16GW respectively.

Plans to construct geothermal, biomass, wind and nuclear plants were also announced on at the Saudi Solar Energy Forum in Riyadh on May 8, 2012. The proposed framework would cost tens of billions of dollars and see Saudi Arabia producing almost 25% of its electricity from solar power installations. Solar PV projects will supply the country’s daytime electricity demand, while high-capacity CSP plants will provide the majority of solar power, while including thermal storage facilities.

If the plans come to fruition, Saudi Arabia will become one of the world’s largest solar power producers. The plans are currently under assessment from the KA-CARE board, though approval is expected to be granted for the scheme in the coming weeks.

via Saudi Arabia targets 41GW of solar installations by 2032 | PV-Tech.

May 14

Electric cars in China: Not yet

Look before you leapfrog

THE main road at the headquarters of BYD, a Chinese car and battery firm in Shenzhen, seems to go on for ever. It winds from gleaming offices past enormous factories and dormitories to a renewable-energy plant and test track. Visitors can take the E6, the firm’s new electric car, for a drive—but try to accelerate and the engineers get nervous. Like the firm, the car is sluggish.

BYD was once ballyhooed; Warren Buffett bought some of its stock. But sales are anaemic. BYD’s first-quarter profits plunged by 90% from a year ago, to 27m yuan ($4.3m).

Three years ago, the Chinese government unveiled policies to propel sales of all-electric vehicles (ie, ones that can’t use petrol at all) to 500,000 by 2015 and 5m by 2020. But barely 8,000 electric cars were sold last year, almost all going to government fleets.

via Electric cars in China: Not yet | The Economist.

May 2

EU officials to decide fate of biofuels

Top European Union officials will attempt to strike a deal on Wednesday on how to measure the full climate impact of crop-based fuels, in a debate that could wipe out large parts of the Europe’s biofuel industry.

The talks follow warnings from scientists that using biodiesel made from European rapeseed and imported palm oil and soybeans does nothing to prevent climate change and could actually accelerate it.

If, as expected, the bloc’s executive Commission recommends excluding some or all of these fuels from the EU’s climate targets, it would be a major blow to the green credentials of biofuels and to many growers and manufacturers around the world.

Such a proposal, if approved by EU governments and lawmakers, would also make it highly unlikely that the European Union could meet its current goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions from road transport by 2020.

The policy debate within the European Commission has dragged on for more than a year and centers on a relatively new concept known as indirect land use change (ILUC).

ILUC states that by diverting food-crops into fuel tanks, biofuel production increases overall global demand for agricultural land. If farmers meet that extra demand by cutting down rainforest and draining peatland, it results in the release of millions of tons of additional carbon emissions.

via EU officials to decide fate of biofuels | Reuters.

May 1

A Grim Portrait of Palm Oil Emissions

Indonesia ranks right behind the United States and China in the lineup of the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters. It’s not because of smokestacks or freeways, but massive deforestation starting in the 1990s — driven In large part by the expansion of plantations for palm oil, an edible vegetable oil used in cookies, crackers, soap and European diesel fuel.

In January, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding that biofuels derived from palm oil feedstocks failed to meet the standards set by the agency’s 2007 renewable fuels mandate. While they were found to have lower life-cycle emissions than conventional gasoline and diesel, palm oil came up short of the 20 percent reduction in related emissions that is required for inclusion in the new biofuel blends.

A public comment period on the finding ended last week after being extended by two months to accommodate the deluge of feedback. Many of the comments submitted came from the palm oil industry, which asserts that the E.P.A.’s estimates of palm oil-related emissions are seriously exaggerated.

Yet there is growing evidence that, if anything, the E.P.A.’s life-cycle emissions calculations for palm oil. were too conservative.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used socioeconomic surveys, high-resolution satellite imagery and carbon mapping to plot past and future patterns of land conversion for a representative region in Indonesia, the Ketapang district of West Kalimantan Province in Borneo.

via A Grim Portrait of Palm Oil Emissions – NYTimes.com.

Apr 28

US subsidy boom and bust is ‘a threat to green sector’

US federal support for clean energy in 2014 will fall 75% from its peak just three years ago and the sector may falter unless the policies behind this boom-and-bust cycle are reformed, claims new research.

Spending in 2011 was down more than 30% from its 2009 high of $44.3bn, but the end of some incentives, such as the production tax credit for wind and the economic stimulus programmes, will hit the sector even harder, says a joint report by the Brookings Institution, Breakthrough Institute and World Resources Institute.

The decline marks the end of an unprecedented era of US support for clean energy. Spending in 2009-14 is expected to exceed $150bn, more than three times the amount spent in 2002-08.

But in their analysis of 92 clean-technology projects supported by the federal government, the researchers predict that spending will fall to $16.1bn this year and to $11bn by 2014.

via US subsidy boom and bust is ‘a threat to green sector’ – Politics – Renewable energy news – Recharge – wind, solar, biomass, wave/tidal/hydro and geothermal.

Apr 28

Former TVA chief says nuclear program too costly

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Former Tennessee Valley Authority chairman S. David Freeman says the federal utility should “just stop” its nuclear reactor building program.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported Freeman’s comment came Thursday, the same day the TVA board voted to continue construction of Watts Bar Unit 2, despite a $2 million cost overrun.

Freeman said he thought he was having a bad dream when he first learned of cost overruns and construction delays at the reactor at Watts Bar, near Spring City, Tenn.

Current TVA board Chairman Bill Sansom defended the decision to go ahead at Watts Bar, saying the board has been kept apprised during the cost review.

Chattanooga native Freeman blames the new part-time TVA board, saying members never ask any penetrating questions.

via Former TVA chief says nuclear program too costly.

Apr 28

China’s dream of electric car domination elusive

China’s leaders are finding it a lot tougher to create a world-beating electric car industry than they hoped.

In 2009, they announced bold plans to cash in on demand for clean vehicles by making China a global power in electric car manufacturing. They pledged billions of dollars for research and called for annual sales of 500,000 cars by 2015.

Today, Beijing is scaling back its ambitions, chastened by technological hurdles and lack of buyer interest. Developers have yet to achieve breakthroughs and will be lucky to sell 2,000 cars this year, mostly taxis. The government has hedged its bets by broadening the industry’s official goals to include cleaner gasoline engines.

The government has repeatedly changed targets because the “technology isn’t advancing quite as fast as people had hoped, said Joe Hinrichs, Ford Motor Co.’s president for Asia, at this week’s Beijing auto show.

The government has yet to lower sales goals that ramp up to 5 million vehicles a year by 2020. But officials including Premier Wen Jiabao started acknowledging last year that progress was slow and developers need to improve quality instead of rushing models to market.

via China’s dream of electric car domination elusive | Firstpost.

Apr 28

Arizona’s Solar Market Could be Incentive-Free Next Year and Still Thrive

Arizona finished 2011 with 273 megawatts of installed solar capacity, third best in the U.S., driven by an ambitious renewable energy standard (RES).

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Lon Huber, Southwest Regional Policy Specialist for Suntech Corporation and SEIA’s Arizona Committee Chair, who knows the numbers. “The programs the utilities have put in place have been incredibly successful at getting megawatts in the ground.”

Solar in Arizona so far only provides about three percent of the state’s power but employs 4,786 people, more, Huber said, than Salt River Project (SRP), the state’s second largest utility, which provides 40 percent of the state’s power and employs 4,346.

“We are projected to have around 43 megawatts either installed or reserved in 2012 just for APS’s residential program,” Huber added. That “is larger than Colorado’s entire distributed generation [DG] market.”

And, he added, “the other market segments have all been robust. We had a standard offer, we have a small generation program, we have the AZ Sun Program and we have utility-scale procurement.”

via Arizona’s Solar Market Could be Incentive-Free Next Year and Still Thrive : Greentech Media.

Apr 28

US Grid Has $107B in Investment “Gaps” by 2020

The American Society of Civil Engineers finds that failing to spend on grid upgrades will end up costing U.S. homes and businesses nearly $200 billion by 2020.

Here’s another grim reminder that doing nothing to fix the United States’ power grid will be a lot more expensive in the long run than spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bring it up to 21st-century technological standards.

The American Society of Civil Engineers just released its latest “Failure to Act” report on the country’s deteriorating infrastructure, this one focused on the power delivery system. In simple terms, ASCE’s report finds a gap of $107 billion dollars between today’s trends on grid investment and what the country needs to invest between now and 2020.

If U.S. utilities and regulators don’t work to increase spending trends to make up that gap, the result will be a “combination of aging equipment and capacity bottlenecks that lead to the same general outcome — a greater incidence of electricity interruptions,” the report finds. Those may come as equipment failures, voltage surges and power quality irregularities, or blackouts and brownouts due to demand exceeding supply — and all of that carries costs.

ASCE’s estimates of current 2012 costs to such grid problems are about $6 billion for U.S. households and $10 billion for U.S. businesses. But by 2020, they add up to $71 billion for households and $126 billion for businesses, the report finds. Added up, that $197 billion in costs is nearly twice as much as the $107 billion in investment needed to fix the problem.

via US Grid Has $107B in Investment “Gaps” by 2020 : Greentech Media.

Apr 25

Solar Banking, Part 2: Five Key Considerations in Large-Scale Solar Financing

Bank money remains available for utility scale solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) projects, bank officers from CITI and Deutsche Bank agree, but not all the banks that participated in project financing in 2011 will return.

“I am somewhat afraid of what happens to these banks as we move into 2012,” said Deutsche Bank Director Vinod Mukani at the Smithers APEX San Diego solar event.

“Europe had a leg up because renewables had a head start there,” the German-based bank’s renewables authority said. “Investors were familiar with this asset class. Now, as they delve into the challenges that Basel III poses, they will have to curtail their activities. That is quite apparent if you look at Q4 of last year.”

Deutsche Bank (DB), Mukani said, “underwrote about a billion dollars’ worth of wind and solar assets in Q4, but the bank group that we started with was not the bank group that we ended with.”

And macroeconomic trends, he explained, such as “southern Europe in crisis, a slowdown of the economy in China, and Basel III regulation” will force banks to face “a very daunting task of deleveraging and meeting the requirements of capital ratios,” Mukani said.

But “large-scale solar assets continue to attract more and more capital,” he added, because of “attractive risk and reward profiles.” All in all, “it’s a good environment,” Mukani said. “There is a tremendous amount of capital that still is available. The question is, how do you get it?”

via Solar Banking, Part 2: Five Key Considerations in Large-Scale Solar Financing : Greentech Media.

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