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  • Energy entrepreneurs can plug the gap in our power supplies

     

     

    If we are serious about meeting our energy and climate targets we need to make sure that the market is fully opened up to support the legions of independent project developers, or energy entrepreneurs, who can seize this opportunity and help fill the void.

     

    The main problems with relying only on utilities to build the low-carbon solutions of the future are ones of size, speed, cost and diversity.

     

    In the case of renewable energy such as wind, utility companies are only really interested in investing in or developing projects of a particular size to achieve an economy of scale. These are very slow to get off the ground, take a long time for any decision to be reached within the organisation, and then a long time again to get through planning, order equipment supplies and so on. Large projects also carry a significant financial risk which, especially during a recession, even the most solid of utilities are unwilling to carry.

     

    Without a much higher price placed on carbon emissions or increased renewable subsidies, utilities argue they cannot make the investment necessary to meet renewable targets. We are already seeing large utilities deferring or even cancelling projects for this reason.

     

    By contrast, the independent developers are mostly focused on smaller projects, with lower financial risks, which are quicker to get through planning and buy the necessary equipment for. Each project may be smaller in output, but with a far higher number of potential developers, the aggregate results can plug a vital gap in our energy supplies – and do so far quicker than any company could build a nuclear power station.

     

    This brings us to the final point about the independent sector: diversity. Over the past year alone we have signed Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with developers covering wind, anaerobic digestion on agricultural sites, energy from waste, and small hydro, as well as corporate developers building on-site renewables.

     

    Each one of these project developers acts as an entrepreneur or small business outfit, generating not just electricity, but income and jobs too. They are a multiplier in the wider economy, helping to address two of the crises of our current age: recession and climate change.

     

    This decentralised model has the potential to grow exponentially if the UK corporate sector is given the right incentives and motivation to invest in their own generation capacity. While the government talks of providing these incentives, in reality policy and approach is still focused on the large utilities and centralised solutions, as the current push for nuclear shows.

    Larger utilities have dictated and monopolised the debate over energy policy for too long. No single company, developer or sector can tackle this energy gap alone. It will take a variety of solutions, including nuclear, from a variety of outlets.

     

    But to accelerate the decentralisation and decarbonisation of our energy supply, we will have to accelerate the decentralisation of ownership and generation first.

     

    • Jo Butlin is vice president of SmartestEnergy, a purchaser and supplier of electricity generated from renewable sources

  • Can we handle the truth

     

    If oil traders knew the truth about declining energy availability, the per-barrel price of oil would be $300 within a week. If stock traders knew the truth, we’d see capitulation of the markets shortly thereafter. If Americans knew the truth, they just might come to grips with reality, rally together, put their collective shoulders to the wheel, and start building a better world than the ominicidal culture of make believe to which we’ve all become accustomed.

    But we’ll never know, because the cabal of morally bankrupt bankers and politicians running this country — and also the industrialized world — will keep playing the shell game as long as they are allowed by the impotent media. Or, more likely, until the reality of oil priced in excess of $200 per barrel interferes with their imperial ambitions.

    The consequences of the shell game extend well beyond economic disaster and the likely extinction of our species. In the short term, they include hijacking the world’s marketplace, complete with child labor, hunger, and pollution (especially abroad), continued decline of intellectual “capital” in our universities, ratcheting up the war machine by attacking yet more countries (perhaps bringing a rapid demise to American Empire), further extending imperial overreach, continued shrinking of our credit-based economy, continued enrichment of the financially wealthy (including $100 billion for eight of Warren Buffett’s companies), continued profiteering by the insurance industry, and continued land grabs in poor countries by wealthy countries. All with a U.S. military on the verge of complete collapse and despite widespread acknowledgment that American-style capitalism is not working.

    To reiterate the choices facing us: (1) The economically dire truth and potential for chaos, now, or (2) Certain chaos and probable extinction, later. The moral certainty of the former choice is absolute. Perhaps that alone explains why we’re choosing door number two.

    Will reality intervene in time to save the living planet, including our own species? Is 2012 soon enough? Stay tuned.

    In the meantime, think about what you’d do. Let’s play King For A Day. Would you trust industrial humans with the truth? Or would you commit us to chaos and probable extinction in the name of politics? In your response, please wear two hats: first your own, then, to make the game realistic, the hat of your favorite billionaire.

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    Original article available here
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  • Rees govt spending $100m backing coal power future

    Rees govt spending $100m backing coal power future
     
    Media release: 11 November 2009
     
    The Rees government is squandering $100 million on a discredited
    technology to keep coal-fired electricity as the major source of the
    state’s energy, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.
     
    Dr Kaye said: “Former Howard government Resources Minister, Ian
    Macfarlane, has blown the whistle on carbon capture and storage.
     
    “He has publicly stated that such technology is at least 20 years away,
    and it will be 30 years before it will be financially viable.
     
    “Despite the urgent need to address carbon emissions, carbon capture
    and storage, or ‘clean coal’ as it is branded, is being used to justify
    up to three new coal-fired power stations in NSW.
     
    “The Rees government is throwing $100 million of taxpayers money at
    this marketing exercise for the coal mining industry.
     
    “The need to address carbon emission levels is too important for NSW
    Energy Minister John Robertson to play politics by hiding behind mining
    industry marketing rhetoric.
     
    “The community is demanding a transition to a low carbon future by
    embracing jobs-rich, ready to go renewable energy technology, such as
    solar thermal.
     
    “The Rees government should stop subsidising carbon-intensive
    industries. It should abandon plans to hand over generator trading and
    household electricity billing to the corporate sector.
     
    “A just transition will only be possible for the community if energy
    generation, distribution and retail remains in public hands,” Dr Kaye
    said.
     
    For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
     
     
    —
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  • Spain’s windfarms set new national record for electricity generation

     

     

    At one stage on Sunday morning, the country’s wind farms were able to cover 53% of total electricity demand – a new record in a country that boasts the world’s third largest array of wind turbines, after the United States and Germany.

     

    For more than five hours on Sunday morning output from wind power was providing more than half of the electricity being used. At their peak, wind farms were generating 11.5 gigawatts, or two-thirds of their theoretical maximum capacity of almost 18GW.

     

    The new record, which beat a 44 % level set earlier last week, came as strong winds battered the Iberian peninsula.

     

    The massive output of wind turbines meant the Spanish grid had more electricity than was needed over the weekend. In previous years similar weather has forced windfarms to turn turbines off but now the spare electricity is exported or used by hydroelectric plants to pump water back into their dams — effectively storing the electricity for future use.

     

    José Donoso, head of the Spanish Wind Energy Association, recalled that just five years ago critics had claimed the grid could never cope with more than 14% of its supply from wind.

     

    “We think that we can keep growing and go from the present 17GW megawatts to reach 40GW in 2020,” he told El País newspaper.

     

    Windfarms have this month outperformed other forms of electricity generation in Spain, beating gas into second place and producing 80% more than the country’s nuclear plants.

     

    Experts estimate that by the end of the year, Spain will have provided a quarter of its energy needs with renewables, with wind leading the way, followed by hydroelectric power and solar energy.

     

  • India ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers

     

     

    Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN agency which evaluates the risk from global warming, warned the glaciers were receding faster than in any other part of the world and could “disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner”.

     

    Today Ramesh denied any such risk existed: “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening in the Himalayan glaciers.” The minister added although some glaciers are receding they were doing so at a rate that was not “historically alarming”.

     

    However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”

     

     

     

    Ramesh said he was prepared to take on “the doomsday scenarios of Al Gore and the IPCC”.

     

    “My concern is that this comes from western scientists … it is high time India makes an investment in understanding what is happening in the Himalayan ecosystem,” he added.

     

    The government report, entitled Himalayan glaciers (pdf), looks at 150 years’ worth of data gathered from the Geological Survey of India from 25 glaciers. It claims to be the first comprehensive study on the region.

     

    Vijay Kumar Raina, the geologist who authored the report, admitted that some “Himalayan glaciers are retreating. But it is nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest as some have said that they will disappear.”

     

    Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not “peer reviewed” and had few “scientific citations”.

     

    “With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”

     

    In a remarkable finding, the report claims the Gangotri glacier, the main source of the River Ganges, actually receded fastest in 1977 – and is today “practically at a stand still”.

     

    Some scientists have warned that the river beds of the Gangetic Basin – which feed hundreds of millions in northern India – could run dry once glaciers go. However, such concerns are scotched by the report.

     

    According to Raina, the mistake made by “western scientists” is to apply the rate of glacial loss from other parts of the world to the Himalayas. “In the United States the highest glaciers in Alaska are still below the lowest level of Himalayan glaciers. Our 9,500 glaciers are located at very high altitudes. It is completely different system.”

     

    “As long as we have monsoons we will have glaciers. There are many factors to consider when we want to find out how quickly (glaciers melt) … rainfall, debris cover, relief and terrain,” said Raina.

     

    In response Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.

     

    “I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening.”

     

    Many environmentalists said they were also unconvinced by the minister’s arguments. Sunita Narain, a member of the Indian prime minister’s climate change council and director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said “the report would create a lot of confusion”.

     

    “The PM’s council has just received a comprehensive report which presents many studies which show clear fragmentation of the glaciers would lead to faster recession. I am not sure what Jairam (Ramesh) is doing.”

  • Clean coal unviable, says Macfarlane

     

    The Government is putting hundreds of millions of dollars towards championing the commercial use of carbon capture, regarded by many as a key to cutting greenhouse emissions from coal by storing the polluting gases deep below the surface.

    The technology was kicked off by the previous government but Mr McFarlane has gone cold on the idea and says there is mounting evidence to back his pessimism.

    The leadership of the Government and the Opposition are pulling out all stops to find enough common ground for the Senate to pass Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme later this month.

    Both want a deal and to remove the threat of a double dissolution election, but Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is doing his best to scuttle the bill.

    “Last night I launched an online petition,” he said.

    “In the first couple of hours I got 1,054 signatures on it. That is incredible. This fight will go down to the wire.”

    Mr Macfarlane is no longer sceptical about humans causing global warming but he is now sceptical about carbon capture and storage, something he championed as resources minister in the Howard government.

    “The Government’s incentive is just that,” he said as minister.

    “It is an aim to bring forward the introduction of this technology into commercial plants as soon as possible.”

    Just three years on, he doubts it will ever take off.

    “What happened was nothing happened and that is really the problem for Australia,” he said.

    “The clean coal option has passed us by. Twenty years to wait before the technology is available. Thirty years before it is commercial. We will need to move on to other options by then.”

     

    ‘Technology will solve problem’

     

    The Government is counting on locking up a lot of carbon to help cut Australia’s emissions growth from 2035.

    Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has been travelling the world, promoting Mr Rudd’s brainchild – the $100 million a year Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

    The Minister still thinks the technology will work if there is a carbon price to drive investment.

    “I actually think we are going to see a breakthrough on carbon capture and storage,” he said.

    “I think technology created the problem and technology will solve the problem in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. All the renewable options, including an initial growth in gas, we are gas rich.

    “So we don’t have all the eggs in one basket.”

    The two men see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Mr Ferguson is a nuclear energy enthusiast but the Government has ruled it out. The Minister now argues Australia does not need to go down that path.

    “Our Government is focused on examination of all clean-energy options,” he said.

    “It does not include nuclear. Perhaps Ian Macfarlane has actually now come clean about the Coalition policy for the next election. Perhaps he needs to say yes or no to that question today.”

    “In the short-to-medium term, obviously we will use gas,” Mr Macfarlane said.

    “We could burn gas at the same emissions as clean coal but half the price, because gas is so clean. But in the longer term Australia will, like all our other economic partners, need to consider nuclear.”

    Tags: business-economics-and-finance, industry, oil-and-gas, climate-change, government-and-politics, federal-government, coal, emissions-trading, australia