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“This GM soy is responsible for massive use of pesticides, as well as deforestation and driving small farmers from their lands”, they say in response to the WWF’s claim that it can exert more influence inside the RTRS than if it were to abandon the process.
To make the point, WWF Holland suffered the ignominy of being picketed last week by its peers for their controversial stand.
According to a report in the English edition of China’s “Digitimes” on December 8th, 2008, there were 350 Chinese PV companies doing business in mid-2008, but at least 200 of those companies had stopped production or folded altogether by the end of the year.
By introducing subsidies and a raft of other incentives to develop a domestic solar market, China’s government is now giving its home-grown industry a much-needed shot in the arm.
Subsidies for solar modules on buildings of at least 50 kW were announced in March. These could be as high as 20 Renminbi Yuan (RMB; around US $3.00) per watt capacity according to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. That is enough to cover the entire production costs of solar modules in China, leaving only the installation costs to be met.
Solar modules will, however, have to measure up when it comes to efficiency standards: monocrystalline solar cells will need to have an efficiency of at least 16 percent; polycrystalline solar cells an efficiency of 14 percent; and thin film of 6 percent.
Solar energy to power hospitals and schools and government buildings will get special incentives under the government scheme.
Furthermore, rural households in remote regions will be helped to harness energy from the sun. A total of 80,000 solar panel “micro systems” are to be installed in remote villages in the southwest province of Sichuan, and many people will have a supply of electricity to light up their homes, cook their meals and power electric devices for the first time. Canadian Solar won the contract in April 2009. A total of 1.6 MW is to be installed.
The Chinese government has been slow to introduce solar energy subsidies, but has entered the fray after a fall in the price of polycrystalline silicon. Though the subsidies for 2009 are modest in scale at just US $60 million and there is an initial cap of 20 MW, the amount will be reviewed every year and experts say that it may be substantially increased.
However, China’s solar energy industry has signaled the subsidies are just a stepping stone to reaching its strategic goal of producing lost cost, reliable solar energy that can compete with conventional sources. According to a report in China.org.cn, leading Chinese companies aim to reduce the cost of producing solar energy to 1 RMB or about US $0.15 per kWh by 2012.
However, two companies, Yingli Green Energy and SDIC Huajing Power, have submitted a bid to build a 10-MW solar power plant to provide electricity to the national grid at a price of RMB 0.69 per kWh or US $0.10 cents per kWh. At that price, solar energy will be just about as cheap as coal when it comes to producing electricity in China.
To achieve their ambitious solar goals, Chinese companies are partnering with German ones. In April, Germany’s Q Cells and China’s solar wafer manufacturer Solar LDK announced a joint venture partnership to develop large-scale solar power plants in Europe and China. The first projects, including a 40-MW power plant, are already in the pipeline.
The scale of the funds that the Chinese government is investing in clean energy and in upgrading its national electricity grid for renewable energy has taken the world by surprise. According to a report by the Center for American Progress, China’s green stimulus spending is six times higher than the equivalent amount that the U.S. government is investing as a percentage of their respective economies.
However, China has a lot of catching up to do.
About 50 MW of installed solar capacity was added in 2008, more than double the 20 MW in 2007, but still a relatively small amount. According to some studies, the demand in China for new solar modules could be as high as 232 MW each year from now on until 2012. The government has announced plans to expand the installed capacity to 1,800 MW by 2020.
By way of comparison, 3,800 MW of solar capacity are estimated to have been installed in Germany in 2007.
If Chinese companies manage to develop low cost, reliable solar modules, then the sky is the limit for a country that is desperate to reduce its dependence on coal and oil imports as well as the pressure on its environment by using clean, renewable energy.
Jane Burgermeister is a RenewableEnergyWorld.com European Correspondent based in Austria.
FACTBOX
How many m2 of collector area are installed?
85 collectors at 10.5 m2 (113 ft2 each)
= collector area of 892.5 m2 (9605 ft2)
Which type of collector was installed?
Gluatmugl GS 10.5 m2 flat plate collectors
Size of the tanks?
Buffer tank = 37.9 m2 (10,000 gal. U.S.)
Type of control system?
As with all SOLID installations, the visualization system allows access via an internet connection which is an important factor for system optimization and support.
The new plant is providing hot water for a leading sports drink manufacturing plant that produces a well-known sports drink. The solar plant in Phoenix is expected to supply over a million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year of heat energy to the soft drinks factory — each one of the 892.5 square meters (9605 ft²) of panels producing 1200 kWh/year. The manufacturer also installed a 500-kW solar PV plant on its distribution plant at Tolleson, Arizona at the start of this year and now the two solar plants will be making large savings in conventional energy and make a strong statement for integrating renewables in the brand’s production processes.
The new solar thermal plant serves to preheat the water that is processed into the soft drink process — bringing it from mains water temperature up to a maximum of 35°C (95°F). The system designers have had to build in a number of safety features to guarantee that this maximum temperature is not exceeded, since a higher temperature could damage the membrane in the reverse osmosis water purification system that the heated water passes through in the next stage.
The solar system at the plant went live at the end of December 2008, but because remaining work such as insulation measures still had to be done, the performance monitoring could not start immediately. It will be completed mid-2010 and the team from SOLID expects the numbers to confirm their estimates. There are two reasons behind the optimism — first, Arizona has an outstanding solar resource; second, the efficiency of the thermal collector increases as the temperature is lowered.
The Installation
SOLID is an Austrian company (now with U.S. and Asian subsidiaries) that specializes in large-scale solar installations for a range of applications. Since 1992, SOLID has been planning, building, delivering, assembling and operating solar plants in excess of 100 m² around the world, providing hot water, heating rooms and supplying process heat, including district heating. SOLID also designs and builds solar-chilled water plants, including the largest commercial solar cooling projects currently in operating.
The plant uses 85, 10.5 m² Gluatmugl solar panels, manufactured in Austria by OEKOTECH. While this is a separate company from SOLID, ownership of the two companies is in the same hands and they work together on their two specialties of manufacture and installation. Gluatmugl is the company’s flagship product and has already won several awards
In Europe, SOLID’s preferred panel size in large plants is 14.3 m². The dimensions of that panel have been optimized for transport by truck. International shipping presents different constraints, so the 10.5 m² panel is designed to fit exactly inside a standard shipping container. This means that installations outside Europe can benefit from the considerable advantages of using large panels.
SOLID’s Harald Blazek, responsible for business and project development outside Europe, explains why large panels are preferable. “It’s partly for the solar efficiency, but mostly for the improvement in the hydraulic conditions, providing more stable results when the system is being run. Large panels make the system more tolerant.”
Being able to lift large areas of module “with one movement of the crane” also has benefits in terms of speed and installation cost. When it comes to the actual collector installation, Blazek says that in Europe, when the larger collectors are in use, it’s quite usual to install up to 600 m² in a day.
All the technical control equipment is assembled in Austria in a standard shipping container with prefabrication and pre-testing performed at the manufacturer’s site. When the container arrives on the erection site, it is simply placed on the prepared foundations and connected to the local interfaces. This “plug and play” approach guarantees a high level of reliability and shortens the erection period on site, says SOLID.
Naturally there’s much more to an installation than simply putting in place the solar collectors. In the case of the Arizona plant, a steel structure had to be placed on the roof to avoid putting pressure on certain parts of the roof. There was also the extensive pipework and installation of the substantial buffer storage tank. Overall, the work took about 3 months, which Harald Blazek says is typical on an installation of this size.
Phoenix, Arizona, is not only the place for the realization of this landmark project but also the headquarters location of SOLID USA. All local coordination was in the hands of SOLID’s U.S. team, led by John Ellers, while the technical background was represented by an experienced technician from the Austria office.
The Arizona project was carried out with the support from U.S. federal solar tax credits and equity finance, with support of the local authorities in Arizona and with excellent co-operation with the Salt River Project (SRP), the local energy provider, explains Harald Blazek. Return on investment is expected in less than 5 years.
Large Is Beautiful
This is one of the first process hot water installations that SOLID has delivered in the United States, and is typical in size — many process hot water installations the company has worked on are about 900 m² in scale. But it depends on the need: in Boston, at Harvard University, the company is working on two schemes to supply hot water to university residences that are 95 m² and 50 m². In Europe, several of the schemes that SOLID is working on, or has in the pipeline, are far larger. For instance, very close to home in Austria a new solar plant supplying energy to Graz District Heating and will provide space heating for the buildings occupied by the water agency of Graz AG. This plant includes 3800 m² (40,000 ft²) of collector area.
“The sector is growing exponentially” says Blazek, “and project sizes are going up all the time.”
Process Heat – A Sector with Great Potential
SOLID CEO, Christian Holter, believes there is huge potential in industrial process hot water, and that this form of onsite energy could rapidly overtake household-scale installations in terms of overall installations worldwide and in terms of the CO2 savings it offers. (To see an interview with Christian Holter, watch the video here.)
Little attention is paid to the heat that goes into industrial processes. Uses include heating of process fluids, washing detergents, heating processes, drying processes and cooling of technical processes. One of the industries with a huge and ongoing demand for industrial process heat (and chilling) is the food and beverage industry. Solar thermal hardly features in this field today, yet a study on solar process heating from an IEA task force calculated that between 3% and 4% of the world’s total industrial heat demand could be met by solar process heat. Even that small percentage of process heat offers higher potential than the whole domestic hot water market.
SOLID will be exhibiting at Intersolar in Munich, May 27th -29th. (Hall B1/stand 443)
Jackie Jones is Chief Editor of Renewable Energy World magazine.
Mr Turnbull said that Labor’s scheme should meanwhile be subject to another inquiry, this time by the Productivity Commission. But the Government flatly rejected the call and said it would put its scheme to a vote in June as scheduled.
A double dissolution can only take place if a bill is rejected twice by the Senate, three months apart.
If the bill is defeated or deferred next month, it will count as the first rejection. Labor could put the bill up again in October, and if it were again defeated or deferred, the Government would have a trigger for an election.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, accused Mr Turnbull of a failure of leadership by constantly putting off a decision on whether to placate right-wing Liberals and the National Party .
“What we have here is a series of excuses to underpin the fact that the Leader of the Opposition has not had the courage to take on the climate change sceptics in his party,” Mr Rudd said. The same attitude had cost Brendan Nelson the leadership of the Liberal Party, he said.
Mr Turnbull said Labor’s scheme was flawed and would cost jobs. Given its start date had been delayed a year until 2011, there was no urgent need to pass the legislation before the Copenhagen conference in December, when other nations would state their intentions and the US model would be highly influential, he said.
“For the sake of six months let’s get this right. Let’s not sacrifice jobs on the altar of Kevin Rudd’s vanity.”
Labor’s scheme aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to between 5 and 25 per cent below their 2000 levels.
As compromises for delay, Mr Turnbull offered the Coalition’s support for those targets to give the Government some bargaining power at Copenhagen. He also proposed a voluntary carbon trading scheme to start in January, in which companies and individuals could start trading permits. Any offsets could be banked against a future emissions trading scheme.
Mr Turnbull said the Coalition would vote against Labor’s scheme in June if its push for a deferral was defeated.
That was the most likely scenario yesterday after the independent senator Nick Xenophon, whose vote is crucial, refused to back the Coalition’s deferral.
Senator Xenophon also opposes the scheme but said he supported a delay only until August, when Parliament returns from the winter break. That was enough time for parties to negotiate changes, he said.
Senator Xenophon said he would vote down Labor’s scheme in June if his deferral option was defeated. “I don’t think we can justify a delay until after Copenhagen,” he said. Nor did he support the Coalition push for Australia to adopt the US model because the two nations had different economies.
The Family First senator, Steve Fielding, backed the Coalition, but the Greens opposed a delay – they want to vote against the scheme as soon as possible because they believe it does not cut emissions hard enough. “[It] is dead in the water and it will not pass this year,” a Greens senator, Christine Milne, said.
The prospect of an early election was discussed in the Coalition party room yesterday but it was decided to call the Government’s bluff.
A report by the Productivity Commission has found spending on government programs tackling climate change will amount to $23.6 billion over the next five years.
“Due to the feed-in tariff in Spain and a few schemes in the US, this technology is actually taking off and we wanted to highlight that we have a third big technology to fight climate change — wind, photovoltaics and now CSP,” said Teske.
Spain is leading the field on CSP: more than 50 solar projects in the country have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, it will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. Spanish companies are also exporting their technology around the world.
Environmentalists argue that many countries in the “sun-belt” around the equator would benefit from CSP technology — including desert regions in the southern United States, north Africa, Mexico, China and India.
The new study, carried out by Greenpeace International, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association and the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) SolarPACES group, looked at three scenarios of future growth in CSP. The first was business-as-usual reference scenario that assumed no increases at all in CSP; the second continued the CSP investments seen in recent years in places such as Spain and the US; while the advanced scenario was most optimistic, removing all political and investment barriers to give figures for the true potential of CSP.
Under the third, most optimistic, scenario there could be a giant surge in investments to €21bn a year by 2015 and €174bn a year by 2050, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. In this case, solar plants would have installed capacity of 1,500GW by 2050 and provide 25% of the world’s electricity capacity. Even in the second scenario, which sees only modest increases, the world’s combined CSP capacity could reach 830GW by 2050, representing up to 12% of the world’s energy generation needs.
Teske acknowledged that these estimates were far higher than official figures from the IEA. It says that by 2050, CSP would provide only0.2% of global power generation. But Teske added that the IEA analysis does not assume any increases in production capacity in the next few decades, hence CSP forms a very small part of the overall energy mix.
The new report also said that CSP technology was improving rapidly, with many new power plants fitted with storage systems for steam so that they could continue to operate at night. In addition it said the cost of the electricity produced , currently at €0.15 to €0.23 a kilowatt, would fall to €0.10-€0.14 by 2020 if governments continued to support the technology with incentives such as feed-in tarriffs.
“While the National Clean Coal Fund is set to receive $366 million over the next four years, support for local government transformation is to be abruptly slashed at the end of next month.
“No account has been made for the long term benefits of a program that allows councils to model low carbon footprint behaviour to their community.
“Based on the flimsiest of evidence, the program has been deemed to not be cost effective.
“The Rudd government has failed to acknowledged that the Cities for Climate Protection program enables councils to provide leadership to their community.
“With the federal government’s carbon trading scheme going nowhere and the Rees government fixated on burning more coal, councils had become the best chance of leading the community to lower carbon footprints.
“Municipalities around NSW will be left without the support to complete their milestones.
“Ending the program now is wasteful and damaging to the future of climate change mitigation.
“The Rees government should not sit on its hands while Cities for Climate Protection folds.
“For less than $1.5 million a year, they could ensure that communities around NSW continue to benefit from local government action on climate change,” Dr Kaye said.
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
See http://www.smh.com.au/environment/funding-for-climate-change-initiative-axed-20090526-bm7u.html for the full story.