Category: Energy Matters

At the Portland meeting on October 2, FERC officials stressed that for the pilot program to succeed, state and other federal agencies would have to be on board or the timetable wouldn’t work.

"We need other agencies to develop their own processes for this to work," said John Katz, an energy attorney in FERC’s office of general counsel.

During a morning panel, wave company officials wondered whether the 5 MW limit on the project is sufficient and suggested the license might be granted for a period longer than five years.

"A five-year term is not long enough to get a return on your investment," said Daniel Irwin, president and CEO of Free Flow Power Corporation, a company that designs and manufactures turbines mainly used to harness river energy. "Why not grant a longer-term license and make the investor or company take the risk. If anything meets this threshold it’ll get pulled."

Irwin also wondered "what thresholds will there be for it to be required to be pulled out?"

Kevin Bannister, vice president of business development for Finavera Renewables, agreed that the unknowns are a block to more investment in ocean energies. "The investment community looks at regulatory uncertainties as probably the primary barrier to getting involved in this."

Finavera lowered the first test buoy for wave energy off the Oregon Coast in late August and has a project in the planning process in Makah Bay in Washington. Bannister also wondered whether the same amount of work would be required of a developer for the pilot 5-year license as for a full 30-year commercial one. If that were the case "we’d obviously go for the commercial license."

Steve Kopf, a consultant with Ocean Power Technologies Inc. (OPT) asked if there would be a reward for positive results. "If there are problems, we take it out. But if not, do we get to build it out?"

OPT wants to put 14 buoys off the Oregon coast near Reedsport by 2009, which could expand to a wave park of 200 buoys in the area.

Finavera’s Bannister agreed. "What’s the reward once we’ve proven that our technologies are doing what they do? From our perspective it should be an expedited permitting process."

Following the meeting FERC’s Katz said he felt the proposal got a mixed reception, with Oregon state regulators more eager to move than Washington ones. "The Oregon folks say: Yeah we’re there. We absolutely want to do this. The Washington folks say there are a lot of problems here. We just don’t know."

Annie Szvetecz, the southwest regional assistance lead in the Washington Governor’s Office of Regulatory Assistance, mainly agreed with Katz’s assessment. In a phone conversation following the conference, Szvetecz said Washington is facing different challenges from Oregon.

Oregon is "being very pro-active about wanting the ocean technology," Szvetcz said. The feedback she’s getting from her agencies is that "the time frame for the permits doesn’t necessarily overlap with the six-month proposal.

Tim Stearns, senior energy policy specialist with the Washington Department of Community Trade and Economic Development said one key is that Oregon wants to put its projects in the Pacific Ocean while Washington is looking toward locating them in the Puget Sound "which has a lot of problems as is."

From FERC’s perspective, Katz said, it’s important that state agencies come on board. "It’s a large part of the battle if a relevant state agency or state government wants to help out because they have authority to make recommendations. They have the Coastal Zone Management Act. Input into all the other stuff. So if the state says, `We’re comfortable with all this stuff. We can do it,’—That really gives a big push, because they are a major player. Yes it’s a federal license, but the states are major players….It’s one of those things—if there’s a will there’s a way. And if there’s not, it won’t happen."

Miriam Widman has more than 20 years experience as a journalist and has covered the wave and solar industries for Off the Record Research, an investment research group. She also contributes to NPR and to the Willamette Week, a weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon.

In 2006, only 19 MW of wind power capacity were installed, and this year, installed wind capacity increased to a little under 140 MW.

There are ten wind farms—mainly on land—clustered together in the west of the country and in the Aegean region, including in Çanakkale, close to the site of ancient Troy, Çeþme, Akhisar and on the island of Bozcaada,

Tanay Sýdký Uyar, Vice President of the World Wind Energy Association and Associate Professor of Renewable Energy at Marmara University, said that Turkey had a huge potential for renewable electricity from wind, solar and geothermal sources. He estimated that Turkey could install a wind capacity of 100,000 MW of electricity.

Currently, Turkey has a total installed capacity of about 40,000 MW for electricity from all energy sources.

"Wind power could supply Turkey’s electricity needs twice over within five to ten years if the government had the political will to develop this sector," he told RenewableEnergyAccess.com.

However, Uyar said that the government was slow to give licences to build new wind parks.

A backlog of applications to build wind farms with a total operating capacity of 8,000 MW is still waiting for approval from the government. So far the government has issued about 40 licences for wind parks, each with an installed capacity of between 20 and 60 MW.

The country’s capacity for solar energy is also estimated to be huge, with an average of 7.2 hours of sunshine each day, according to the Research Institute for Electricity Affairs (EIEI) in Ankara.

Also, Uyar said that geothermal energy has the potential to supply 5 million households with heating.

In 2005, Turkey passed a new renewable energy law to bring it into line with European Union legislation to support renewable sources, including wind power, by giving a government guarantee to purchase electricity at a set price for a period of 7 years.

But the tariff of about 5 euro cents per kWh of electricity is much lower than in most other European countries, and economic studies say it discourages investment in the renewable energy sector.

"We have terrific geographic conditions for solar and wind power in Turkey. Exploiting it is already economically and technically possible, but the problem is that the government favors fossil fuels and nuclear energy," Uyar said.

Turkey is locked into long-term agreements to purchase natural gas at fixed prices and also nuclear energy technology and these agreements are a financial disincentive to developing renewable energy, Uyar said.

The government is planning to build 3 nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 4,500 MW by 2012.

Uyar also said that more needed to be done in Turkey to make energy use more efficient.

"There is a huge amount of energy waste. Turkey can cut its electricity needs by 50% if it uses more up-to-date energy efficient technology and so help keep down carbon emissions," he said.

The share of energy that comes from renewable energy sources in Turkey is tiny. In 2006, the country had an installed biomass capacity of 35 MW and 15 MW of geothermal energy.

In addition, Turkey had an installed capacity of 13,100 MW of hydro power, 38,867 MW of thermal power, 11,850 MW of natural gas, 7,491 MW of lignite, 1,845 MW of hard coal, 2,230 MW of oil.