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Wind turbines and solar panels could be put up without planning permission.

Changes to the planning system would also make it easier for new solar roofs to go up on stadiums, schools and railway stations or for offices to be re-clad in solar panels, the Department for Communities and Local Government said.

But the new rules, which would also allow councils and electric car drivers to install charging points on streets and in car parks without a planning application, would come with strict caveats about size, noise levels and visual impacts on an area, the government said.

Installation of renewables ranging from ground and water source heat pumps, biomass boilers, anaerobic digestion system, solar panels and wind turbines could go ahead without planning permission in areas where they would be appropriate, with limits which would vary according to their location.

The overhaul of the planning system, which is being put out to consultation for three months, aims to help people cut their carbon emissions to fight climate change and deliver government commitments to boost renewables.

Housing minister John Healey said: “The people who want to greenproof their homes should get a helping hand, not a stop sign. At the same time we need tough rules so that permitted development does not become a nuisance, so I’m putting in place strong safeguards in relation to noise levels, size, location and the potential impact on an area.”

Energy minister Lord Hunt, added: “Our clean energy cashback scheme coming next year will mean people get paid to produce their own renewable energy. We can’t allow the planning system to get in the way of tackling climate change.”

Currently many householders wanting to add solar panels or wind turbines to their homes have to apply for planning permission with their local authority, despite government reforms of planning laws in 2008 (pdf) designed to make such “microgeneration” installations easier..

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas this summer also blamed the closure of the UK’s only major turbine plant partly on UK planning laws. “It is clear there is a need for reviewing [planning laws] in the UK,” said Ditlev Engel, the company’s chief executive. “Nimbyism is also an issue.” In October, the British Wind Energy Association revealed (pdf) approvals by local authorities for small onshore wind farms are down to 25%, a record low and down from 63% in 2007.

Last week, the energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband announced plans to fast-track larger scale new energy developments such as nuclear power stations and wind farms

Thin-film’s share of Solar Panel Market to double by 2013

“The market viability of thin-film has been solidly established by First Solar Inc. as it rockets to become the world’s top solar panel maker this year, with more than a gigawatt of production,” said Greg Sheppard, chief research officer for iSuppli. “At the same time, the company has driven its cost of production to less than 90 cents per watt, keeping its costs at approximately half the level of crystalline module producers.”

Most solar panels are made of crystalline wafers with 180 to 230 microns of polysilicon. In contrast, thin-film panels are made by depositing multiple layers of other materials a few micrometers in thickness on a substrate.

The main tradeoff between the two technologies is efficiency versus cost per watt of electricity generation. Thin-film panels are less efficient at converting sunlight to electricity, but they also cost significantly less to make.

At the same time thin-film is at a disadvantage when installation space is limited, such as on a residential rooftop. A thin-film installation can take 15 percent to 40 percent more space to achieve the same total system wattage output as crystalline. This tends to limit its appeal in certain applications.

The average thin-film solar panel price is expected to decline to US $1.40 in 2010, down 17.6 percent from $1.70 in 2009. Average prices for crystalline panels are expected to drop to $2.00 in 2010, down 20 percent from $2.50 this year. Through 2012, crystalline prices will continue to close the thin-film pricing gap to some degree because its purveyors collectively have deeper pockets and keep pouring on capital spending, technology R&D developments and manufacturing refinements, iSuppli expects.

Another accelerator of thin-film technology is the rising availability of turn-key production lines from companies such as Applied Materials, Oerlikon, and Centrotherm.

Rudd wind farm launch pure spin until RET fixed

Canberra, Wednesday 18 November 2009

The Capital Wind Farm at Bungendore opened by Prime Minister Rudd today
may be amongst the last significant renewable energy developments in
Australia if the Government fails to fix the flawed renewable energy
target legislation.

As the Greens had repeatedly warned would happen, the inclusion of solar
hot water, heat pumps and multiplied rooftop solar credits in the
renewable energy target is undermining the scheme by crashing the price
of renewable energy certificates (RECs), meaning commercial-scale
renewable energy developments such as wind farms worth $20 billion
cannot get off the ground.

“Hundreds of jobs, a flourishing climate friendly industry and the Rudd
Government’s climate credibility are all on the line if the Renewable
Energy Target is not urgently fixed,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader,
Senator Christine Milne said.

“Mr Rudd is clearly keen to look green in the week that his failure of
an emissions trading scheme enters the Senate, but standing up in front
of a wind farm when his own policy will destroy investment in new wind
farms is no way to achieve that.

“I hope he enjoyed the photo opportunity as it might well be his last in
front of new investment in renewables unless his Government acknowledges
and fixes its mistake.

“The Rudd Government’s spin-over-substance approach to the climate
crisis is disintegrating”

Alongside the evidence that large-scale renewable energy developments
are stalling, there are now fears that the rooftop solar industry may
hit the wall early next year due to the crashed REC price. The scheme
must be urgently fixed by making the hot water technologies additional
to the target if the industry is to avoid dislocation in early 2010.

The Greens moved amendments to the legislation when it was debated in
August to prevent this problem from arising. It was a point that was
pressed in negotiations with Minister Wong, but was rejected by both the
Government and Opposition at the time. A Greens motion calling on the
Government to bring the legislation back and fix it immediately was
defeated by Labor, the Coalition and Family First last month.

“The Government bends over backwards to protect the profits of coal
corporations, but they won’t lift a finger when clean and clever
renewable energy jobs are on the line.

“The Government failed a critical test in rejecting the motion to bring
the renewable energy target legislation back. Jobs will be lost thanks
to this decision.”

Note: The Greens’ preferred position is to take solar hot water and heat
pumps out of the renewable energy target and placed in a parallel energy
efficiency target scheme, however what was proposed, adding these RECs
to the top of the target, was a compromise position which can easily be
immediately implemented to save jobs at risk.

Tim Hollo
Media Adviser
Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate
Change Spokesperson
Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437
587 562
http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

PROTECTING THE CLIMATE IS A JOB FOR EVERYONE

SolarReserve’s 24/7 solar plant

The company was in the news last week when it filed an application with California regulators to build a 150-megawatt solar power plant in the Sonoran Desert east of Palm Springs. The Rice Solar Energy Project will be able to store seven hours of the sun’s heat so it can be released when it’s cloudy or at night to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. Future versions of the solar farm will be able to store up to 16 hours of solar energy. Other solar power companies are using energy storage but SolarReserve’s technology is a potential game-changer (more on that in a bit).

SolarReserve has kept a low-profile. Not surprising for a company founded by executives who previously needed government security clearances to get into their offices. (I only found out about the Rice project when I noticed SolarReserve had filed an application with the California Energy Commission.)

The company first caught my attention when a day after Lehman Brothers collapsed last September—setting off the global economic meltdown—the startup issued one of its rare press releases, announcing it had raised $140 million from a blue-chip roster of big players, including Citigroup and Credit Suisse.

A few weeks later I flew to Los Angeles to meet SolarReserve president Terry Murphy and his team, headquartered somewhat incongruously around the corner from Geffen Records, Lionsgate, and other outposts of the entertainment-industrial complex.

The SolarReserve execs were affable and eager to discuss their technology but close-mouthed about the dozens of deals they said were in the works for Big Solar power plants to be built in the desert Southwest and overseas. (One tantalizing hint they dropped was the interest of an unnamed utility in a massive complex of 10 SolarReserve power towers that would generate 1,000 megawatts.)

I’ve kept in touch with Murphy and even as the credit crunched worsened and the solar industry began to consolidate as startups ran out of money, he remained confident that SolarReserve would remain on track.

“We’re capable of riding this out,” Murphy told me a few months ago.

That’s because as investors run away from financing billion-dollar solar power plants using untried technology, SolarReserve’s ace in the hole is Rocketdyne and United Technologies.

The company that guaranteed Neil Armstrong made it to the moon will guarantee the performance of SolarReserve’s solar power plants. In these tough times, that’s what it takes to raise money on Wall Street or from well-capitalized utilities.

“SolarReserve has a very credit-worthy backer—United Technologies—which has said it will stand behind that technology and which gives them an edge,” said Tom Glascock, a global finance partner at the San Francisco law firm Orrick, at a recent seminar for green tech movers and shakers.

Rocketdyne’s molten salt technology was proven a decade ago at the 10-megawatt Solar Two demonstration project in the desert outside Barstow, Calif.

Solar Reserve’s planned Rice solar power plant will dwarf Solar Two. More than 17,000 heliostats—each mirror is 24 feet by 28 feet—will form a circle around a 538-foot-tall concrete tower. Atop the tower will sit a 100-foot receiver filled with 4.4 million gallons of liquefied salt.

When the sun rises each morning, the heliostats will focus their rays on the receiver, heating the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot salt will flow into a steam generation system that will drive a conventional turbine housed in a power block. After the sun sets, the salt will retain heat which can be used to generate electricity when demand spikes.

“The California utilities have peak demand from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m. so we are designed to run at 100 percent capacity during the full peak period into the evening,” Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message. “In addition, because of the storage capabilities, the facility is flexible enough to accommodate other requests from the utility after the sun goes down provided we understand the requests in advance.”

By being able to tap solar electricity on demand, utilities—at least those in the Southwest—could forgo spending billions of dollars on fossil fuel power plants that are fired up only a few times a year to prevent blackouts when everyone turns on their air conditioners on a hot day.

The Rice project is to be built on private land that is the site of a World War II-era Army airfield near the desert ghost town of Rice.

I happened to visit the site in late 2007 with an executive from Silicon Valley solar startup Ausra, which was shopping for land for solar power plants. Old artillery shell casings litter the desert scrub and you can still see the outlines of old runways. A massive concrete tarmac now serves as a parking spot for snowbirds’ RVs.

Ausra, an early player in the solar power plant business, has since dropped out, electing to focus on supplying solar thermal technology to developers rather than building its own projects.

With the Rice Solar Energy Project, SolarReserve is on the launch pad. Now it just needs to prove its salt.

The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it

If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise, if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. But nothing the whistle-blowers said has scared me as much as the conversation I had last week with a Pembrokeshire farmer.

Wyn Evans, who runs a mixed farm of 170 acres, has been trying to reduce his dependency on fossil fuels since 1977. He has installed an anaerobic digester, a wind turbine, solar panels and a ground-sourced heat pump. He has sought wherever possible to replace diesel with his own electricity. Instead of using his tractor to spread slurry, he pumps it from the digester on to nearby fields. He’s replaced his tractor-driven irrigation system with an electric one, and set up a new system for drying hay indoors, which means he has to turn it in the field only once. Whatever else he does is likely to produce smaller savings. But these innovations have reduced his use of diesel by only around 25%.

According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel. The amazing productivity of modern farm labour has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. Unless farmers can change the way it’s grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world’s people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got.

Instead, most of them delegate this job to the International Energy Agency. I’ve been bellyaching about the British government’s refusal to make contingency plans for the possibility that oil might peak by 2020 for the past two years, and I’m beginning to feel like a madman with a sandwich board. Perhaps I am, but how lucky do you feel? The new World Energy Outlook published by the IEA last week expects the global demand for oil to rise from 85m barrels a day in 2008 to 105m in 2030. Oil production will rise to 103m barrels, it says, and biofuels will make up the shortfall. If we want the oil, it will materialise.

The agency does caution that conventional oil is likely to “approach a plateau” towards the end of this period, but there’s no hint of the graver warning that the IEA’s chief economist issued when I interviewed him last year: “We still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau … I think time is not on our side here.” Almost every year the agency has been forced to downgrade its forecast for the daily supply of oil in 2030: from 123m barrels in 2004, to 120m in 2005, 116m in 2007, 106m in 2008 and 103m this year. But according to one of the whistleblowers, “even today’s number is much higher than can be justified, and the International Energy Agency knows this”.

The Uppsala report, published in the journal Energy Policy, anticipates that maximum global production of all kinds of oil in 2030 will be 76m barrels per day. Analysing the IEA’s figures, it finds that to meet its forecasts for supply, the world’s new and undiscovered oilfields would have to be developed at a rate “never before seen in history”. As many of them are in politically or physically difficult places, and as capital is short, this looks impossible. Assessing existing fields, the likely rate of discovery and the use of new techniques for extraction, the researchers find that “the peak of world oil production is probably occurring now”.

Are they right? Who knows? Last month the UK Energy Research Centre published a massive review of all the available evidence on global oil supplies. It found that the date of peak oil will be determined not by the total size of the global resource but by the rate at which it can be exploited. New discoveries would have to be implausibly large to make a significant difference: even if a field the size of all the oil reserves ever struck in the US were miraculously discovered, it would delay the date of peaking by only four years. As global discoveries peaked in the 1960s, a find like this doesn’t seem very likely.

Regional oil supplies have peaked when about one third of the total resource has been extracted: this is because the rate of production falls as the remaining oil becomes harder to shift when the fields are depleted. So the assumption in the IEA’s new report, that oil production will hold steady when the global resource has fallen “to around one half by 2030” looks unsafe. The UK Energy Research Centre’s review finds that, just to keep oil supply at present levels, “more than two thirds of current crude oil production capacity may need to be replaced by 2030 … At best, this is likely to prove extremely challenging.” There is, it says “a significant risk of a peak in conventional oil production before 2020”. Unconventional oil won’t save us: even a crash programme to develop the Canadian tar sands could deliver only 5m barrels a day by 2030.

As a report commissioned by the US Department of Energy shows, an emergency programme to replace current energy supplies or equipment to anticipate peak oil would need about 20 years to take effect. It seems unlikely that we have it. The world economy is probably knackered, whatever we might do now. But at least we could save farming. There are two possible options: either the mass replacement of farm machinery or the development of new farming systems that don’t need much labour or energy.

There are no obvious barriers to the mass production of electric tractors and combine harvesters: the weight of the batteries and an electric vehicle’s low-end torque are both advantages for tractors. A switch to forest gardening and other forms of permaculture is trickier, especially for producing grain; but such is the scale of the creeping emergency that we can’t afford to rule anything out.

The challenge of feeding seven or eight billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen.

The European emissions Trading Scheme is now a success

You report: “FoE says that to date cap-and-trade carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions… [and are] unfit for purpose.” They are misinformed. Markets do not reduce emissions and were not created for that purpose. Technology, energy efficiency and behavioural changes deliver reductions. Markets incentivise and finance these by putting a cost-effective price on the carbon that is most cost-effective.

“FoE claims that the first phase of the European emissions trading scheme between 2005 and 2007 failed. And the second phase, from 2008 to2012, is likely to fail too.” It was not the market that failed in the first phase, but the policies that governed how the market worked. The EU designed a system in which a large proportion of emissions allowances were given away, to defray costs for industry. Phase one was the test phase and, lacking precise data, they gave away too many allowances that could not be carried over into phase two. These two design elements caused the price crash in 2007.

But the second phase was designed much more prudently. Studies note that emissions fell in year one, and analysts agree that they continue to fall. Phase two is a success. It is important to look at the markets in the longer term, just as targets are set with a 2020 goal.

Misguidedly, FoE calls for governments to use more “reliable instruments”, such as a tax to replace a market-based scheme. Yet a tax is anything but reliable; it does not allow for visible target-setting, and it does not guarantee that emissions will be reduced. A carbon tax is simply another cost of doing business; as production and profits grow, the tax is paid while emissions rise. By contrast, an emissions cap allows for a clear environmental goal and a measurable target, and incentivises further reductions.

You report the FoE’s fears that markets could be “hijacked by speculators and financial markets”. This fear displays a failure to understand that financial institutions participate in the market largely on behalf of businesses that do not have the capacity or expertise to do so themselves. Furthermore, there are no “complex” instruments creating “shadow finance” – carbon trading uses essentially the same simple market instruments as trading in gold, wheat and coal. They have been used over decades and during recent and historical financial cycles without causing crises.

Yet a carbon market is only as good as the cap. The more ambitious the emissions reduction targets, the more visibly and effectively a market performs its function. Market nay-sayers would make better use of their time by increasing the political pressure to set ambitious reduction targets and recognise that markets help with the cost of achieving them. To criticise those who share their objective is to risk political inaction.