The future is looking greener for investors as ambitious government targets for generating renewable energy are providing fund managers with new opportunities.
More than 30 per cent of the UK’s electricity could eventually be derived from renewable sources, according to the latest estimates, compared with just 5.5 per cent today. This would be twice the government’s legally-binding target of 15 per cent by 2020.
Much of this is expected to come from wind power but other sources, including biomass and tidal power, will also increasingly be drawn upon. The government plans to invest £100bn in the renewable energy sector, which could involve the creation of as many as 500,000 jobs. It has also set out new plans for reducing carbon emissions to help tackle climate change.
Fund managers say this increased commitment, together with a similar focus from the US, plus stronger moves towards clean energy from China, is welcome news for an industry that has been slow to take off – and has suffered more than others in the recent downturn.
Edward Guinness, one of the managers of Guinness Asset Management’s Alternative Energy Fund, says green energy companies were trading at a premium to the market before the downturn but were hit hard last year, particularly as funding dried up.
His fund lost 40 per cent in the year to the end of June, according to total return figures from Lipper.
A number of other renewable energy funds, most of which have been set up in the past couple of years, have had an equally difficult run. Lipper’s rankings show that, over the same period, BlackRock’s New Energy Investment Trust, the Premier Renewable Energy trust and the Jupiter Green Investment Trust all saw negative returns of at least 30 per cent.
But new opportunities now look to be arising, particularly in wind power .
“The area where government policy is really having an impact on our investing is on the wind side,” says Guinness. “The UK has much better resources in this area than in solar, and the government wants to make it easier to get planning permission.”
His fund typically invests in companies that derive at least 50 per cent of their business from either the manufacture and development of renewable energy generation or the improvement of energy efficiency.
Guinness says solar stocks performed well last month as demand started to pick up following a difficult 18 months, in which the prices for solar panels halved. The lower prices should trigger stronger growth, he says, while providers should also receive a boost from cheaper raw materials, lower manufacturing costs and improved subsidies.
Luciano Diana, portfolio manager of the Pictet Clean Energy fund, says wind power is more attractive than solar because it is much cheaper. He claims that, for the first time, there is a real push to new energy around the world.
“For a long time, it has just been Europe supporting it but now there is a big push from the US and also Chinese packages dedicated to cleaner energy,” he says.
Fund managers say much of the new government investment will be captured by the large utilities.
The Association of Investment Companies argues that moves to combat climate change should prove beneficial to some of the big utility and infrastructure investment companies.
John Murray, chairman of Ecofin, which invests in the utility and infrastructure sectors, says utilities have been largely oversold in recent months as investors have moved back into cyclical and recovery stocks. As a result, some companies in the sector are looking the cheapest they have been since 2003.
But, he points out: “Unlike in 2003, the fundamentals of the global utility sector are generally sound. Balance sheets are in relatively good shape and the utilities are proving that they are able to access long-term capital markets.”
Source - Financial Times
Showing posts with label clean energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clean energy. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Solar Electricity Goes Mainstream
David Egles, one of Canada's leading authorities on the solar industry, applauds the Green Energy Act passed in Ontario.
"This could be the beginning of solar electricity going mainstream," says Egles, founder and President of Canada's foremost provider of home solar systems, Home Energy Solutions
"Solar electricity has the potential to provide significant amounts of clean energy to power Ontario homes, simply by using existing roofs," says Egles.
"The Green Energy Act will promote the growth of the solar industry, resulting in lower costs and cheaper energy in the long run."
Through the Green Energy Act's solar feed-in tariffs, homeowners installing up to 10-kilowatt solar systems are eligible to receive $0.80 for each kilowatt of excess energy their systems deliver for the next 20 years. A complete 10-kilowatt system costs approximately $100,000; on a south-facing roof, it would generate approximately $9,600 each year in income.
"An investment in solar has a strong financial yield while being a green, ethical investment," says Egles. "Over two decades, homeowners can recoup twice their initial cost - and then continue to reap all the benefits of an environment-friendly energy system."
Source - Solar Daily
"This could be the beginning of solar electricity going mainstream," says Egles, founder and President of Canada's foremost provider of home solar systems, Home Energy Solutions
"Solar electricity has the potential to provide significant amounts of clean energy to power Ontario homes, simply by using existing roofs," says Egles.
"The Green Energy Act will promote the growth of the solar industry, resulting in lower costs and cheaper energy in the long run."
Through the Green Energy Act's solar feed-in tariffs, homeowners installing up to 10-kilowatt solar systems are eligible to receive $0.80 for each kilowatt of excess energy their systems deliver for the next 20 years. A complete 10-kilowatt system costs approximately $100,000; on a south-facing roof, it would generate approximately $9,600 each year in income.
"An investment in solar has a strong financial yield while being a green, ethical investment," says Egles. "Over two decades, homeowners can recoup twice their initial cost - and then continue to reap all the benefits of an environment-friendly energy system."
Source - Solar Daily
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
UK slow to benefit from solar panels
The amount of money pouring into clean energy technology has now overtaken investment in fossil fuels according to United Nations figures - a clear signal of which way the wind is blowing in terms of the world’s future energy generation.
And as governments around the world continue to crank up legislation in the area, investors are being drawn to the opportunities on offer in both the renewable energy generation and energy efficiency markets.
Environmental legislation has mushroomed over the last couple of years and this year is set to be no exception as the world builds up to December’s UN convention on climate change in Copenhagen from which the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is likely to emerge.
Catalyst Corporate Finance partner Mark Wilson said the intensification in new legislation was being driven by two key issues.
“One of them is climate change, which is indisputable now, and the second is energy security.
“This means there is an increased sense of urgency and a political will that we have to change the way we operate.”
In terms of energy security, the global market has seen huge volatility in the prices of oil and gas recently.
Combined with the fact that the UK’s current generating capacity is set to shrink in the next decade as a generation of coal-fired power stations start to come offline and a number of nuclear power stations are decommissioned, this means there is an urgent need to find alternatives if the UK is to avoid becoming increasingly dependent on fossil-fuel rich states in the Middle East and Russia.
Last year saw the introduction of the Energy Act which brought in measures such as a feed-in tariff to encourage small-scale renewable energy generation and a renewable heat incentive.
At the same time as the Energy Act was passed, the Climate Change Act also came into force which introduced the world’s first long-term legally binding framework to tackle the dangers of climate change. The act committed the UK to reducing greenhouse emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050.
This year will see the publication of the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy which sets out the details of how it plans to meet the UK’s EU targets of 15 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020.
And the Government has just finished consulting on the Heat and Energy Saving Strategy which sets out
an aim for emissions from existing buildings to be approaching zero by 2050.
Later this year world leaders will meet in Copenhagen to thrash out the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which will undoubtedly unleash another round of targets which should increase expansion in the low-carbon sector.
Mr Wilson said in terms of the renewables sector, the UK had two key areas of strength - wind energy and energy from waste.
“There is, we believe about £82 billion worth of investment to be invested up to 2020 in offshore and onshore wind.
“However there are issues with wind as it’s not constant. Therefore you can expect 35 per cent efficiency in certain circumstances whereas for a coal-fired power station you can probably expect 90 to 95 per cent.
“The area of investment that sits alongside that is energy from waste. There are already very established and well-proven commercial technologies in this area.”
Although at the moment most of the energy from waste plants are traditional mass burn incineration fitted with energy recovery systems, there are a number of other technologies that can address different aspects of the waste industry.
“The problem with mass burn incineration is that it is high capital but there are other technologies which are more modular and are employable on a smaller scale and can be used for microgeneration.”
One of these is anaerobic digestion - a process where micro-organisms break down biodegradable material such as wastewater sludges and organic wastes to provide a source of renewable energy.
Mr Wilson said: “What’s really exciting about this industry is the possibilities are quite substantial - we are seeing waste businesses transform themselves into energy businesses and we are seeing others coming into the sector who are traditionally not investors into it.
“There is a lot of government support and that has become attractive to investors because of some of the incentives that the government has put into place.”
Bioenergy benefits from the Renewables Obligation, the Government mechanism to support renewable energy by requiring electricity suppliers to source a proportion of their electricity from renewable sources.
Renewable energy generators receive Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) for each MWh of electricity generated which can then be sold to electricity suppliers who need to make up their shortfall.
Mr Wilson said that many technologies in the waste-to-energy sector were eligible for double ROCS
“That really makes the economics of this sector very attractive,” he said.
Mr Wilson pointed to the strength of the Midlands in this area, citing companies such as Monsal, an environmental technology company specialising in digestion technology and Enpure, a process engineering business in the environmental sector, which is working on the Greater Manchester waste PFI, one of the largest waste PFI projects in Europe.
Advantage West Midlands business development manager, environmental technologies cluster Ralph Hepworth said that owing to the region’s status as a large generator of waste, energy from waste very important in the West Midlands.
“If you go to Germany and stand on a car park and look in both directions like I did recently the first thing you will see is an indecent amount of wind turbines and also in the other direction the factory that makes the wind turbines.”
Mr Hepworth said the West Midlands had a similar potential for a closed-loop system in terms of energy from waste, where waste generated in the region can be converted to energy locally which can then be used in the region.
Another division of the cleantech market which holds potential for companies in the West Midlands is the supply of components to the wind industry.
Advantage West Midlands (AWM) has been helping the region’s engineering firms use their expertise gained from more traditional sectors by reapplying it to the cleantech sector.
Mr Hepworth said there was a wealth of smaller engineering firms, many of which supply the oil and gas sector and electrical engineering market, who are repositioning themselves as suppliers to the environmental technology companies.
“A wind turbine has four tonnes of bolts in it and they are not the sort of bolts you buy at B&Q. There are four or five companies that come to mind in the Black Country that supply this area.”
He pointed to companies such as nuts and bolts manufacturer Doran Engineering in Willenhall and bolted joint solutions and machining services firm Hydratight in Walsall.
However Mr Wilson said that the UK had been slow to move into this area and the region’s firms were playing catch-up with their European counterparts.
“In terms of the wind sector the Midlands should be a great starting point for a lot of the components that go into wind farms.
“But the problem has been that we are so far behind the eight ball in the UK that there are European companies already have an established hold on supplying into renewable sector. There’s a lot of catch up to do.”
Hugh Goulbourne, an environmental campaigner and solicitor at Cobbetts, said that although Germany had done a good job in supporting its solar and wind sector, the UK should look to different technologies to expand its cleantech sector.
“Yes we need to catch up but do we want to catch up with the same technologies? Possibly not.”
“The UK is second behind Portugal in terms of wave technology and that’s something the renewable energy strategy is currently proposing some ambitious targets on.
“Then if you look at energy efficiency it’s probably is Denmark that is the leading nation in Europe. I think that the Heat and Energy Saving Strategy will put us on a pretty good footing for that.”
Source - Birmingham Post
And as governments around the world continue to crank up legislation in the area, investors are being drawn to the opportunities on offer in both the renewable energy generation and energy efficiency markets.
Environmental legislation has mushroomed over the last couple of years and this year is set to be no exception as the world builds up to December’s UN convention on climate change in Copenhagen from which the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is likely to emerge.
Catalyst Corporate Finance partner Mark Wilson said the intensification in new legislation was being driven by two key issues.
“One of them is climate change, which is indisputable now, and the second is energy security.
“This means there is an increased sense of urgency and a political will that we have to change the way we operate.”
In terms of energy security, the global market has seen huge volatility in the prices of oil and gas recently.
Combined with the fact that the UK’s current generating capacity is set to shrink in the next decade as a generation of coal-fired power stations start to come offline and a number of nuclear power stations are decommissioned, this means there is an urgent need to find alternatives if the UK is to avoid becoming increasingly dependent on fossil-fuel rich states in the Middle East and Russia.
Last year saw the introduction of the Energy Act which brought in measures such as a feed-in tariff to encourage small-scale renewable energy generation and a renewable heat incentive.
At the same time as the Energy Act was passed, the Climate Change Act also came into force which introduced the world’s first long-term legally binding framework to tackle the dangers of climate change. The act committed the UK to reducing greenhouse emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050.
This year will see the publication of the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy which sets out the details of how it plans to meet the UK’s EU targets of 15 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020.
And the Government has just finished consulting on the Heat and Energy Saving Strategy which sets out
an aim for emissions from existing buildings to be approaching zero by 2050.
Later this year world leaders will meet in Copenhagen to thrash out the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which will undoubtedly unleash another round of targets which should increase expansion in the low-carbon sector.
Mr Wilson said in terms of the renewables sector, the UK had two key areas of strength - wind energy and energy from waste.
“There is, we believe about £82 billion worth of investment to be invested up to 2020 in offshore and onshore wind.
“However there are issues with wind as it’s not constant. Therefore you can expect 35 per cent efficiency in certain circumstances whereas for a coal-fired power station you can probably expect 90 to 95 per cent.
“The area of investment that sits alongside that is energy from waste. There are already very established and well-proven commercial technologies in this area.”
Although at the moment most of the energy from waste plants are traditional mass burn incineration fitted with energy recovery systems, there are a number of other technologies that can address different aspects of the waste industry.
“The problem with mass burn incineration is that it is high capital but there are other technologies which are more modular and are employable on a smaller scale and can be used for microgeneration.”
One of these is anaerobic digestion - a process where micro-organisms break down biodegradable material such as wastewater sludges and organic wastes to provide a source of renewable energy.
Mr Wilson said: “What’s really exciting about this industry is the possibilities are quite substantial - we are seeing waste businesses transform themselves into energy businesses and we are seeing others coming into the sector who are traditionally not investors into it.
“There is a lot of government support and that has become attractive to investors because of some of the incentives that the government has put into place.”
Bioenergy benefits from the Renewables Obligation, the Government mechanism to support renewable energy by requiring electricity suppliers to source a proportion of their electricity from renewable sources.
Renewable energy generators receive Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) for each MWh of electricity generated which can then be sold to electricity suppliers who need to make up their shortfall.
Mr Wilson said that many technologies in the waste-to-energy sector were eligible for double ROCS
“That really makes the economics of this sector very attractive,” he said.
Mr Wilson pointed to the strength of the Midlands in this area, citing companies such as Monsal, an environmental technology company specialising in digestion technology and Enpure, a process engineering business in the environmental sector, which is working on the Greater Manchester waste PFI, one of the largest waste PFI projects in Europe.
Advantage West Midlands business development manager, environmental technologies cluster Ralph Hepworth said that owing to the region’s status as a large generator of waste, energy from waste very important in the West Midlands.
“If you go to Germany and stand on a car park and look in both directions like I did recently the first thing you will see is an indecent amount of wind turbines and also in the other direction the factory that makes the wind turbines.”
Mr Hepworth said the West Midlands had a similar potential for a closed-loop system in terms of energy from waste, where waste generated in the region can be converted to energy locally which can then be used in the region.
Another division of the cleantech market which holds potential for companies in the West Midlands is the supply of components to the wind industry.
Advantage West Midlands (AWM) has been helping the region’s engineering firms use their expertise gained from more traditional sectors by reapplying it to the cleantech sector.
Mr Hepworth said there was a wealth of smaller engineering firms, many of which supply the oil and gas sector and electrical engineering market, who are repositioning themselves as suppliers to the environmental technology companies.
“A wind turbine has four tonnes of bolts in it and they are not the sort of bolts you buy at B&Q. There are four or five companies that come to mind in the Black Country that supply this area.”
He pointed to companies such as nuts and bolts manufacturer Doran Engineering in Willenhall and bolted joint solutions and machining services firm Hydratight in Walsall.
However Mr Wilson said that the UK had been slow to move into this area and the region’s firms were playing catch-up with their European counterparts.
“In terms of the wind sector the Midlands should be a great starting point for a lot of the components that go into wind farms.
“But the problem has been that we are so far behind the eight ball in the UK that there are European companies already have an established hold on supplying into renewable sector. There’s a lot of catch up to do.”
Hugh Goulbourne, an environmental campaigner and solicitor at Cobbetts, said that although Germany had done a good job in supporting its solar and wind sector, the UK should look to different technologies to expand its cleantech sector.
“Yes we need to catch up but do we want to catch up with the same technologies? Possibly not.”
“The UK is second behind Portugal in terms of wave technology and that’s something the renewable energy strategy is currently proposing some ambitious targets on.
“Then if you look at energy efficiency it’s probably is Denmark that is the leading nation in Europe. I think that the Heat and Energy Saving Strategy will put us on a pretty good footing for that.”
Source - Birmingham Post
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
State intervention vital if Britain is to meet its green energy targets, says former BP boss
Article by Alan Rusbridger and David Adam from the guardian
Britain must revert to greater state control of energy markets to hit ambitious targets on renewable energy and climate change, according to the former head of BP.
Lord Browne of Madingley warns that market mechanisms are failing to deliver the necessary growth in clean energy. Crucial offshore wind projects could be cancelled unless there is an urgent rethink of energy policy, he says.
In a speech tonight at Cardiff University, Browne will say: "Competition has been the guiding star of UK energy policy since the 1980s and it worked well while there was a surplus of energy infrastructure capacity. But price competition is now failing to deliver the new, more diversified infrastructure that we urgently need to bolster energy security and meet our climate change targets.
"I remain convinced that the market is the most effective delivery unit available to society. But the market will need a new strategic direction and a new framework of rules, laid down by government."
Under EU efforts to combat global warming, Britain must generate 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. The bulk of this is expected to be met by the electricity sector, and ministers have announced plans to build thousands of offshore wind turbines off the UK coast.
In an interview with the Guardian in advance of the speech, Browne, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said there was a real risk that many of these windfarms would not be built, because of high costs, falling power prices and more expensive credit. His words echo the concerns of others in the industry.
"We must fundamentally rethink the objective of energy policy in this country," Browne said. He compared the current need for urgent investment and new infrastructure with efforts to develop North Sea oil and gas fields in the 1970s and 1980s. "High oil prices provided a strong market pull. But governments also gave industry a helping hand, creating generous tax incentives and regulations, and helping to build strategic infrastructure," he said. "There's even more cause for government intervention today. That's because energy security and climate change mitigation are public goods. They would not otherwise be recognised by the free market."
One option, he suggested, would be for the government to direct state-controlled banks to lend money for green infrastructure projects, as is being done in Ireland. "Policymakers must be frank - the cost of supporting renewable energy will be borne by consumers who pay a little more for their delivered energy."
Browne said the UK risked being left behind in the global race to develop a low-carbon industry if ministers relied on market mechanisms such as carbon trading to drive change. "A lot of people say carbon trading, the European emissions trading scheme, will take care of this. In theory it can, but in practice it won't."
The scheme is supposed to encourage companies to trade the rights to emit carbon dioxide, with cleaner firms selling pollution permits to dirtier rivals - thereby setting a price on the emission of carbon. It has been dogged by a surplus of permits, the price of which has fallen to near €10 from €30 last summer.
Analysts say the price drop reflects a slowing demand for permits as recession-hit companies scale back production and cut their carbon emissions. But it could also indicate companies have sold large amounts of surplus permits to raise cash.
Browne said of the scheme: "Eventually I'm sure it will be terrific. Right now it needs to work side by side with simple regulations and simple incentives to get investors to invest in the right way."
He said the recent decision by Shell to stop investments in wind, solar and hydro-electric power reflected a move "back to basics" for oil and gas companies. "I read it as a pure business decision," he said. "Oil companies have a tremendous number of things they've got to do in developing oil and gas. That's where their expertise is and that's probably where they're focused."
He said the large utility companies and independent firms might be better placed to develop renewables. "It's about focus. When telephones went from landlines to mobiles, the people who did the best in mobile telephones were not the people who did best in landlines. A new breed of people came up and dominated that industry. It may be the case with renewables too."
On the controversial plans by E.ON to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, Browne said that the pragmatic need for a diverse energy supply should triumph over environmental concerns. "I think there's a practical reality here. From everything I've seen it looks like it does need to be done."
He said the price of carbon would need to be much higher than today to realise carbon capture and storage, where pollution could be trapped and piped to underneath the North Sea. "It is expensive, it is very expensive. In the long term we may find a way of capturing the carbon and putting it back in the ground. Right now that looks like a really big challenge with no solution. But it may have a solution."
He said it was vital that environmental policy was at the heart of government. "It's essential that we do not compartmentalise climate change as an issue. Environmental integrity should be made a tangible part of other social priorities, such as economic prosperity and national security. This will require a new approach to policy across all levels of government and all government departments."
Risky investment
The financial crisis has hit numerous firms in the renewable power sector:
Shell pulled out of the British wind sector last year. It believes only biofuels, and carbon capture and storage make sense, alongside oil and gas.
E.ON The economics of the world's biggest offshore wind farm project are "on a knife edge", warned the chief executive of one of the companies behind it.
Centrica planned to invest in 1,500MW of offshore wind capacity but is now reviewing its investment plans.
BT is trying to develop renewable energy projects to generate its own green power, but it says government rules for on-site renewables are threatening its schemes and it may not go ahead without a change in regulation.
Source - The Guardian
Britain must revert to greater state control of energy markets to hit ambitious targets on renewable energy and climate change, according to the former head of BP.
Lord Browne of Madingley warns that market mechanisms are failing to deliver the necessary growth in clean energy. Crucial offshore wind projects could be cancelled unless there is an urgent rethink of energy policy, he says.
In a speech tonight at Cardiff University, Browne will say: "Competition has been the guiding star of UK energy policy since the 1980s and it worked well while there was a surplus of energy infrastructure capacity. But price competition is now failing to deliver the new, more diversified infrastructure that we urgently need to bolster energy security and meet our climate change targets.
"I remain convinced that the market is the most effective delivery unit available to society. But the market will need a new strategic direction and a new framework of rules, laid down by government."
Under EU efforts to combat global warming, Britain must generate 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. The bulk of this is expected to be met by the electricity sector, and ministers have announced plans to build thousands of offshore wind turbines off the UK coast.
In an interview with the Guardian in advance of the speech, Browne, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said there was a real risk that many of these windfarms would not be built, because of high costs, falling power prices and more expensive credit. His words echo the concerns of others in the industry.
"We must fundamentally rethink the objective of energy policy in this country," Browne said. He compared the current need for urgent investment and new infrastructure with efforts to develop North Sea oil and gas fields in the 1970s and 1980s. "High oil prices provided a strong market pull. But governments also gave industry a helping hand, creating generous tax incentives and regulations, and helping to build strategic infrastructure," he said. "There's even more cause for government intervention today. That's because energy security and climate change mitigation are public goods. They would not otherwise be recognised by the free market."
One option, he suggested, would be for the government to direct state-controlled banks to lend money for green infrastructure projects, as is being done in Ireland. "Policymakers must be frank - the cost of supporting renewable energy will be borne by consumers who pay a little more for their delivered energy."
Browne said the UK risked being left behind in the global race to develop a low-carbon industry if ministers relied on market mechanisms such as carbon trading to drive change. "A lot of people say carbon trading, the European emissions trading scheme, will take care of this. In theory it can, but in practice it won't."
The scheme is supposed to encourage companies to trade the rights to emit carbon dioxide, with cleaner firms selling pollution permits to dirtier rivals - thereby setting a price on the emission of carbon. It has been dogged by a surplus of permits, the price of which has fallen to near €10 from €30 last summer.
Analysts say the price drop reflects a slowing demand for permits as recession-hit companies scale back production and cut their carbon emissions. But it could also indicate companies have sold large amounts of surplus permits to raise cash.
Browne said of the scheme: "Eventually I'm sure it will be terrific. Right now it needs to work side by side with simple regulations and simple incentives to get investors to invest in the right way."
He said the recent decision by Shell to stop investments in wind, solar and hydro-electric power reflected a move "back to basics" for oil and gas companies. "I read it as a pure business decision," he said. "Oil companies have a tremendous number of things they've got to do in developing oil and gas. That's where their expertise is and that's probably where they're focused."
He said the large utility companies and independent firms might be better placed to develop renewables. "It's about focus. When telephones went from landlines to mobiles, the people who did the best in mobile telephones were not the people who did best in landlines. A new breed of people came up and dominated that industry. It may be the case with renewables too."
On the controversial plans by E.ON to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, Browne said that the pragmatic need for a diverse energy supply should triumph over environmental concerns. "I think there's a practical reality here. From everything I've seen it looks like it does need to be done."
He said the price of carbon would need to be much higher than today to realise carbon capture and storage, where pollution could be trapped and piped to underneath the North Sea. "It is expensive, it is very expensive. In the long term we may find a way of capturing the carbon and putting it back in the ground. Right now that looks like a really big challenge with no solution. But it may have a solution."
He said it was vital that environmental policy was at the heart of government. "It's essential that we do not compartmentalise climate change as an issue. Environmental integrity should be made a tangible part of other social priorities, such as economic prosperity and national security. This will require a new approach to policy across all levels of government and all government departments."
Risky investment
The financial crisis has hit numerous firms in the renewable power sector:
Shell pulled out of the British wind sector last year. It believes only biofuels, and carbon capture and storage make sense, alongside oil and gas.
E.ON The economics of the world's biggest offshore wind farm project are "on a knife edge", warned the chief executive of one of the companies behind it.
Centrica planned to invest in 1,500MW of offshore wind capacity but is now reviewing its investment plans.
BT is trying to develop renewable energy projects to generate its own green power, but it says government rules for on-site renewables are threatening its schemes and it may not go ahead without a change in regulation.
Source - The Guardian
Friday, 6 February 2009
Obama urges higher efficiency standards for household appliances
Barack Obama urged the energy department to adopt higher efficiency standards for household appliances that had been blocked for years by George Bush.
In a presidential memo, issued during a visit to the energy department meant to showcase Obama's commitment to the greening of the economy, the president called for new higher standards to be issued as early as next August.
The first round of higher standards would cover nine appliances, including ovens, lamps, micrwoaves, dishwashers and air conditioners. The directive applies to some 30 household and commercial electrical items.
"This will save consumers money. This will spur innovation and this will conserve tremendous amounts of energy," Obama said.
He was flanked by Steven Chu, the energy secretary who has long seen energy efficiency as a crucial part of the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The push for household energy efficiency was seen as a further sign of Obama's determination to break with Bush policy on the environment.
In another development, the Obama administration showed it would take a far more robust approach to enforcing environmental protection. A lawsuit filed by the justice department charged the Westar power company of Kansas with failing to meet its legal obligation to install the best available pollution controls on its coal-fired plant.
Obama also used the visit to try and sell his economic rescue plan, saying the package, now approaching $900bn, would help spur the growth of clean energy, with new well-paying jobs in the wind and solar power industries.
Obama set aside some $30bn for energy efficiency measures in the economic rescue package now making its way through Congress, mainly modernising buildings.
The presidential memo on efficiency would seek to end a logjam at the energy department. The new energy standards demanded by Obama today were long overdue.
Congress has been pushing for nearly three decades for higher standards on household products such as water heaters and refrigerators. But the energy department has regularly missed deadlines for imposing the new standards.
It was not immediately clear whether Obama's directive would also lead to a review and possible tightening of the standards under consideration by the energy department.
The president said he asked the energy department to move ahead on those appliances that would produce the biggest savings for consumers.
The White House said the energy savings from the changes would save Americans $500bn on their electricity bills, or the equivalent of two years worth of emissions from all of America's coal-fired power plants over the course of 30 years.
In the justice department law suit, the Environmental Protection Agency notified Westar Power that it was in violation of pollution control requirements five years ago. However, under Bush, the EPA rarely followed up on enforcement.
The justice department said its suit was "part of a national initiative to stop illegal pollution from coal-fired power plants".
The move stoked expectations of similar actions against a number of other coal-fired plants.
Source - The guardian
In a presidential memo, issued during a visit to the energy department meant to showcase Obama's commitment to the greening of the economy, the president called for new higher standards to be issued as early as next August.
The first round of higher standards would cover nine appliances, including ovens, lamps, micrwoaves, dishwashers and air conditioners. The directive applies to some 30 household and commercial electrical items.
"This will save consumers money. This will spur innovation and this will conserve tremendous amounts of energy," Obama said.
He was flanked by Steven Chu, the energy secretary who has long seen energy efficiency as a crucial part of the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The push for household energy efficiency was seen as a further sign of Obama's determination to break with Bush policy on the environment.
In another development, the Obama administration showed it would take a far more robust approach to enforcing environmental protection. A lawsuit filed by the justice department charged the Westar power company of Kansas with failing to meet its legal obligation to install the best available pollution controls on its coal-fired plant.
Obama also used the visit to try and sell his economic rescue plan, saying the package, now approaching $900bn, would help spur the growth of clean energy, with new well-paying jobs in the wind and solar power industries.
Obama set aside some $30bn for energy efficiency measures in the economic rescue package now making its way through Congress, mainly modernising buildings.
The presidential memo on efficiency would seek to end a logjam at the energy department. The new energy standards demanded by Obama today were long overdue.
Congress has been pushing for nearly three decades for higher standards on household products such as water heaters and refrigerators. But the energy department has regularly missed deadlines for imposing the new standards.
It was not immediately clear whether Obama's directive would also lead to a review and possible tightening of the standards under consideration by the energy department.
The president said he asked the energy department to move ahead on those appliances that would produce the biggest savings for consumers.
The White House said the energy savings from the changes would save Americans $500bn on their electricity bills, or the equivalent of two years worth of emissions from all of America's coal-fired power plants over the course of 30 years.
In the justice department law suit, the Environmental Protection Agency notified Westar Power that it was in violation of pollution control requirements five years ago. However, under Bush, the EPA rarely followed up on enforcement.
The justice department said its suit was "part of a national initiative to stop illegal pollution from coal-fired power plants".
The move stoked expectations of similar actions against a number of other coal-fired plants.
Source - The guardian
Obama surges ahead in the race to be green
The green race is on. Did you notice? Barack Obama fired the starting gun a week ago, but most Europeans were looking the other way. Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, is on the track, but has no one to hand his baton to - his colleagues in the Government are off expanding Heathrow and coal power. Coming up behind him are people who saw dollar signs flashing in President Obama's strident words about oil last week.
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
Source - The times
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
Source - The times
Monday, 5 January 2009
OWL POWER ANNOUNCES INSTALLATION AND OPERATION OF WORLD’S FIRST CLEAN ENERGY SYSTEM FOR RESTAURANTS
Boylston, MA, January 5, 2009 – Owl Power Company, developer and manufacturer of clean energy cogeneration systems, has announced Vegawatt™, an innovative new cogeneration system for restaurants and food service facilities. Vegawatt™ uses waste vegetable oil from any food service operation as a fuel to generate on-site electricity and hot water, saving the restaurant thousands of dollars as well as providing a clean, renewable source of energy. Vegawatt is installed and has been running since early December at Finz Seafood & Grill (www.hipfinz.com).
“As a restaurant operator I am constantly looking for more efficient methods, and especially for costs-saving measures,” said George Carey, owner of Finz Seafood & Grill in Dedham, Massachusetts, the first establishment to install the Vegawatt™ system. “My largest line-item expense is runaway utility costs. The Vegawatt™ system enables me to significantly reduce my energy costs, generate clean energy on-site, and very importantly, reduce the heavy energy footprint of my restaurant.”
The Vegawatt™ utilizes waste vegetable oil (WVO) from a restaurant deep fryer to prepare a non-toxic fuel. This fuel is used to produce electricity and hot water, which reduces electricity and natural gas purchases. Any food service location with fryers can use the Vegawatt™ system to save $800 monthly. It is a fully automated system that requires no intervention or maintenance by restaurant staff, no additional chemicals, and produces no liquid byproducts.
“The Vegawatt™ is quite impressive,” stated Peter Christie, President of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. “It is a breakthrough in technology that will allow for a better environment while making use of oil that would normally be thrown out.”
Most restaurants pay to dispose of their used cooking oil. Some owners have begun to receive compensation for this oil, typically $0.10 to $0.25 per gallon. Vegawatt™ owners will achieve a value of $2.55 per gallon. New green energy incentives and Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) will increase the payback to the restaurant.
“As businesses everywhere are taking a hard look at their energy costs and their environmental impact, Vegawatt™ enables restaurant owners to help themselves and the planet at the same time,” stated James Peret, President and CEO of Owl Power Company.
About Owl Power Company
Owl Power Company is a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures, installs, and operates clean energy cogeneration systems. The company’s flagship product, Vegawatt™, is an automated, combined heat and power (CHP) system that utilizes waste vegetable oil as its feedstock.
Source - Vegawatt
“As a restaurant operator I am constantly looking for more efficient methods, and especially for costs-saving measures,” said George Carey, owner of Finz Seafood & Grill in Dedham, Massachusetts, the first establishment to install the Vegawatt™ system. “My largest line-item expense is runaway utility costs. The Vegawatt™ system enables me to significantly reduce my energy costs, generate clean energy on-site, and very importantly, reduce the heavy energy footprint of my restaurant.”
The Vegawatt™ utilizes waste vegetable oil (WVO) from a restaurant deep fryer to prepare a non-toxic fuel. This fuel is used to produce electricity and hot water, which reduces electricity and natural gas purchases. Any food service location with fryers can use the Vegawatt™ system to save $800 monthly. It is a fully automated system that requires no intervention or maintenance by restaurant staff, no additional chemicals, and produces no liquid byproducts.
“The Vegawatt™ is quite impressive,” stated Peter Christie, President of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. “It is a breakthrough in technology that will allow for a better environment while making use of oil that would normally be thrown out.”
Most restaurants pay to dispose of their used cooking oil. Some owners have begun to receive compensation for this oil, typically $0.10 to $0.25 per gallon. Vegawatt™ owners will achieve a value of $2.55 per gallon. New green energy incentives and Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) will increase the payback to the restaurant.
“As businesses everywhere are taking a hard look at their energy costs and their environmental impact, Vegawatt™ enables restaurant owners to help themselves and the planet at the same time,” stated James Peret, President and CEO of Owl Power Company.
About Owl Power Company
Owl Power Company is a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures, installs, and operates clean energy cogeneration systems. The company’s flagship product, Vegawatt™, is an automated, combined heat and power (CHP) system that utilizes waste vegetable oil as its feedstock.
Source - Vegawatt
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Solar plant yields water and crops from the desert
Vast greenhouses that use sea water for crop cultivation could be combined with solar power plants to provide food, fresh water and clean energy in deserts, under an ambitious proposal from a team of architects and engineers.
The Sahara Forest Project, which is already running demonstration plants in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, envisages huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP), a technology that uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays, creating steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.
The installations would turn deserts into lush patches of vegetation, according to its designers, and do away with the need to dig wells for fresh water, an activity that has depleted aquifers across the world.
Charlie Paton, a member of the team, and the inventor of the Seawater Greenhouse, said the scheme was a proven way to transform arid environments. "Plants need light for growth but they don't like heat beyond a certain point," he said.
Above certain temperatures the amount of water lost through leaves' stomata rises so much plants stop their photosynthesis and do not grow. The solar farm planned by the project runs seawater evaporators, pumping damp, cool air through the greenhouses. This reduces the warmth inside by about 15C, compared with the temperature outside.
At the other end of the greenhouse from the evaporators, water vapour is condensed. Some of this fresh water is used to water the crops, some for cleaning the solar mirrors.
"So we've got conditions in the greenhouse of high humidity and lower temperature," said Paton. "The crops sitting in this slightly steamy, humid condition can grow fantastically well."
The designers said that virtually any vegetables could be grown in the greenhouses. The demonstration plants already produce lettuces, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The nutrients to grow the plants could come from local seaweed or be extracted from the seawater.
Michael Pawlyn, of Exploration Architecture, based in London, worked on the Eden Project for seven years and is now part of the Sahara Forest team. He said that the Seawater Greenhouse and CSP provided substantial synergies for each other. "Both technologies work extremely well in hot, dry, desert locations. CSP produces a lot of waste heat and we'd be able to use that to evaporate more seawater from the greenhouse. And CSP needs a supply of clean, de-mineralised water in order for the [electricity generating] turbines to function and to keep the mirrors at peak output. It just so happens the Seawater Greenhouse produces large quantities of this."
Paton said the greenhouse produced more than five times the fresh water needed to water the plants inside, so some of the water could be released to the outside, creating a microclimate for hardier plants such as jatropha, a crop that can be turned into biofuel.
The cost of the Sahara Forest Project could be relatively low as both CSP and Seawater Greenhouses are proven technologies. The designers estimate that building 20 hectares (nearly 50 acres) of greenhouses combined with a 10MW CSP scheme would cost about €80m (£65m).
Paton said groups in countries across the Middle East, including in UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, have expressed interest in possibly funding demonstration projects.
He said use of Seawater Greenhouses could reverse the environmental damage done by the glasshouses already built in places such as the desert region of Almeria, southern Spain, where, constructed over the past 20 years to grow salad crops, they now covered more than 40,000 hectares.
Paton said: "They take water out of the ground something like five times faster than it comes in, so the water table drops and becomes more saline. The whole of Spain is being sucked dry. If one were to convert them all to the Seawater Greenhouse concept it would turn an unsustainable solution into a more sustainable one."
Pawlyn said: "In places like Oman they've effectively sterilised large areas of land by using groundwater that's become increasingly saline. The beauty of the Sahara Forest scheme is that you can reverse that process and turn barren land into biologically productive land."
Neil Crumpton, an energy specialist at Friends of the Earth, said the potential of these desert technologies was huge. "Concentrated solar power mirror arrays covering just 1% of the Earth's deserts could supply a fifth of all current global energy consumption. And 1 million tonnes of sea water could be evaporated every day from just 20,000ha of greenhouses."
Governments should invest in the technologies and "not be distracted by lobbyists promoting dangerous nuclear power or nuclear-powered desalination schemes", Crumpton added.
The International Energy Agency estimates that the world needs to invest more than $45 trillion (£22.5 trillion) in new energy systems over the next 30 years.
Source - The guardian
The Sahara Forest Project, which is already running demonstration plants in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, envisages huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP), a technology that uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays, creating steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.
The installations would turn deserts into lush patches of vegetation, according to its designers, and do away with the need to dig wells for fresh water, an activity that has depleted aquifers across the world.
Charlie Paton, a member of the team, and the inventor of the Seawater Greenhouse, said the scheme was a proven way to transform arid environments. "Plants need light for growth but they don't like heat beyond a certain point," he said.
Above certain temperatures the amount of water lost through leaves' stomata rises so much plants stop their photosynthesis and do not grow. The solar farm planned by the project runs seawater evaporators, pumping damp, cool air through the greenhouses. This reduces the warmth inside by about 15C, compared with the temperature outside.
At the other end of the greenhouse from the evaporators, water vapour is condensed. Some of this fresh water is used to water the crops, some for cleaning the solar mirrors.
"So we've got conditions in the greenhouse of high humidity and lower temperature," said Paton. "The crops sitting in this slightly steamy, humid condition can grow fantastically well."
The designers said that virtually any vegetables could be grown in the greenhouses. The demonstration plants already produce lettuces, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The nutrients to grow the plants could come from local seaweed or be extracted from the seawater.
Michael Pawlyn, of Exploration Architecture, based in London, worked on the Eden Project for seven years and is now part of the Sahara Forest team. He said that the Seawater Greenhouse and CSP provided substantial synergies for each other. "Both technologies work extremely well in hot, dry, desert locations. CSP produces a lot of waste heat and we'd be able to use that to evaporate more seawater from the greenhouse. And CSP needs a supply of clean, de-mineralised water in order for the [electricity generating] turbines to function and to keep the mirrors at peak output. It just so happens the Seawater Greenhouse produces large quantities of this."
Paton said the greenhouse produced more than five times the fresh water needed to water the plants inside, so some of the water could be released to the outside, creating a microclimate for hardier plants such as jatropha, a crop that can be turned into biofuel.
The cost of the Sahara Forest Project could be relatively low as both CSP and Seawater Greenhouses are proven technologies. The designers estimate that building 20 hectares (nearly 50 acres) of greenhouses combined with a 10MW CSP scheme would cost about €80m (£65m).
Paton said groups in countries across the Middle East, including in UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, have expressed interest in possibly funding demonstration projects.
He said use of Seawater Greenhouses could reverse the environmental damage done by the glasshouses already built in places such as the desert region of Almeria, southern Spain, where, constructed over the past 20 years to grow salad crops, they now covered more than 40,000 hectares.
Paton said: "They take water out of the ground something like five times faster than it comes in, so the water table drops and becomes more saline. The whole of Spain is being sucked dry. If one were to convert them all to the Seawater Greenhouse concept it would turn an unsustainable solution into a more sustainable one."
Pawlyn said: "In places like Oman they've effectively sterilised large areas of land by using groundwater that's become increasingly saline. The beauty of the Sahara Forest scheme is that you can reverse that process and turn barren land into biologically productive land."
Neil Crumpton, an energy specialist at Friends of the Earth, said the potential of these desert technologies was huge. "Concentrated solar power mirror arrays covering just 1% of the Earth's deserts could supply a fifth of all current global energy consumption. And 1 million tonnes of sea water could be evaporated every day from just 20,000ha of greenhouses."
Governments should invest in the technologies and "not be distracted by lobbyists promoting dangerous nuclear power or nuclear-powered desalination schemes", Crumpton added.
The International Energy Agency estimates that the world needs to invest more than $45 trillion (£22.5 trillion) in new energy systems over the next 30 years.
Source - The guardian
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Micro generation - Real green energy
Ministers could avoid building nuclear reactors by encouraging families to fit solar panels and other renewable energy equipment to their homes, a startling official report concludes.
The government-backed report, to be published tomorrow, says that, with changed policies, the number of British homes producing their own clean energy could multiply to one million – about one in every three – within 12 years.
These would produce enough power to replace five large nuclear power stations, tellingly at about the same time as the first of the much-touted new generation of reactors is likely to come on stream.
And, it adds, by 2030, such “microgeneration” would save the same amount of emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – as taking all Britain’s lorries and buses off the road.
The conclusions of the report – approved and partly financed by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) – sharply contrast with initiatives hurriedly launched by Gordon Brown last week in reaction to the lorry drivers’ fuel-price protests.
In his most pro-nuclear announcement to date, the Prime Minister indicated that he wanted greatly to increase the number of atomic power stations to be built in Britain. And he met oil executives in Scotland to urge them to pump more of the black gold from the North Sea’s fast-declining fields – even though his own energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, admitted that this would do nothing to reduce the price of fuel.
Even more embarrassingly for the embattled Mr Brown, the report closely mirrors policies announced by the Conservative Party six months ago to start “a decentralised energy revolution” by “enabling every small business, every local school, every local hospital, and every household in the country to generate electricity”.
Yesterday Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, said: “We have found that there are huge economic, social and environmental gains to be made by doing this. It is good that, at last, part of the Government seems belatedly to be coming to the same conclusion, and we can only hope that the Prime Minister can rise above his panic-stricken clutching at old technologies and grasp the opportunities microgeneration offers for clean and more secure energy supplies.”
The 130-page report, due to be launched by Mr Wicks, has been produced by a consultancy, Element Energy, after a wide-ranging survey of public attitudes on installing household renewable energy systems. It has been financed, and steered by, 14 official and other bodies including DBERR, the official Energy Savings Trust, five regional development agencies, British Gas, the Micropower Council and the Ashden Trust.
The department’s approval marks something of a revolution in itself, since its predecessor, the Department of Trade and Industry, was for decades hostile to renewable energy and microgeneration. Its mandarins hated the thought of allowing millions of ordinary people to affect energy supplies by generating their own heat and power.
As a result, Britain is almost bottom of the European league for exploiting renewables – above only Luxembourg and Malta – despite having the best resources in the entire continent. Though ministers claim their efforts have been “highly successful” in boosting these clean sources of energy, they now account for only about 4 per cent of electricity – compared, for example, with 14 per cent in Germany.
Ministers also boast that 100,000 British homes now have microgeneration, mainly solar thermal panels that heat water – but in Germany they adorn more than a million roofs.
Last year just 270 solar photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity, were put on Britain’s homes, compared with 130,000 in Germany. At this rate, David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation told MPs last month, it would take the UK 1,500 years to equal the number Germany has. Britain’s only manufacturer of the panels, Sharp, calculates that less than a week of its year-round production actually gets installed in this country, with the rest exported to the continent.
The new report shows that, unlike in Germany, government incentives to householders fail to persuade them to invest in renewable energy. It concludes that they are daunted by the high initial cost of buying and installing them and want to see returns within three years.
The Government gives grants to help with the initial costs, but these are too small and too restricted to be effective. Indeed, ministers deliberately cut them back at the very point when they looked as if they were inspiring a rooftop revolution.
When first launched two years ago, the grants – which, for example offered up to £7,500 to install photovoltaic panels – were an instant hit. Payments soared to £1.4m in November 2006 alone, exceeding expectations more than four times over. But instead of welcoming it, ministers determined to dampen down the soaring demand. First they rationed payments to just £500,000 a month – with the result that, in February 2007, this entire allocation was used up in just two hours.
When this was ridiculed, they suspended the scheme altogether, relaunching it with the grant for photovoltaic panels slashed by two-thirds, and the one for wind turbines cut in half. Demand duly slumped.
For the past year, payments have been running at just £200,000 a month, far beneath the original target. But in April ministers rejected pleas from environmentalists and the renewable energy industry to increase the grants. Statistics to be released tomorrow will show that, partly as a result, only 18,000 new microgeneration installations have been completed over the past four years.
The new report instead suggests that Britain adopt the same approach as has been successful in Germany, which pays householders for feeding the electricity they produce from microgeneration into the national grid; the rate of these “feed-in tariffs” for photovoltaic panels is especially generous, fuelling their rapid expansion. At least 15 other European countries have also adopted them.
Last November, Gordon Brown appeared to back them, indicating that it should be “made easier for people to generate their own energy through microgeneration, and sell it on to the grid”. But little has happened since, with ministers promising only to “look” at feed-in tariffs. They failed to include them in the Government’s Energy Bill, sparking the biggest rebellion of Mr Brown’s premiership, when 33 Labour MPs last month defied the whips.
A staggering 278 MPs have now signed an early-day motion calling on the Government to adopt them. Yet, last Wednesday, speaking for the Government in a House of Lords debate, Lord Jones, a junior DBERR minister, called feed-in tariffs “a regulatory nightmare and extremely expensive”. He added: “If we were to change now we would destroy the consistency and stability that business craves and private sector investors need.”
The report also gives a fair wind to a proposal by the Micropower Council to set statutory targets for household renewables, to give the industry the certainty it needs to expand.
The confusion in Government over micropower echoes the chaos of its entire energy policy on display last week. Ministers panicked at the fuel price protests, which blocked the A40 on Wednesday, just as they did seven years ago when larger protests paralysed the country.
Then Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, rapidly backed away from green taxes, despite having promised to put “the environment at the core of the Government’s objectives for the tax system”. Last week he and his ministers were scrambling over themselves to react to the new protests, contradicting each other over whether they would perform U-turns over plans to raise fuel duty by 2p, and increase road tax disproportionately on bigger cars.
The Prime Minister also increased his backing for nuclear power. Previously he had only suggested that new reactors should be built to in place of old ones as they were closed down. But on Wednesday he said he would be “more ambitious”, adding: “We are pretty clear that we will have to do more than simply replace existing nuclear capacity in Britain.”
The report offers a very different future, as do the Tories, who see microgeneration as central to their philosophy of redirecting power to individuals. David Cameron sees “decentralised energy” as “a key part of our political vision, energy for the post-bureaucratic age”. He believes microgeneration could make Britain, and individual communities, “self-sufficient in energy”.
Source - The Independent
The government-backed report, to be published tomorrow, says that, with changed policies, the number of British homes producing their own clean energy could multiply to one million – about one in every three – within 12 years.
These would produce enough power to replace five large nuclear power stations, tellingly at about the same time as the first of the much-touted new generation of reactors is likely to come on stream.
And, it adds, by 2030, such “microgeneration” would save the same amount of emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – as taking all Britain’s lorries and buses off the road.
The conclusions of the report – approved and partly financed by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) – sharply contrast with initiatives hurriedly launched by Gordon Brown last week in reaction to the lorry drivers’ fuel-price protests.
In his most pro-nuclear announcement to date, the Prime Minister indicated that he wanted greatly to increase the number of atomic power stations to be built in Britain. And he met oil executives in Scotland to urge them to pump more of the black gold from the North Sea’s fast-declining fields – even though his own energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, admitted that this would do nothing to reduce the price of fuel.
Even more embarrassingly for the embattled Mr Brown, the report closely mirrors policies announced by the Conservative Party six months ago to start “a decentralised energy revolution” by “enabling every small business, every local school, every local hospital, and every household in the country to generate electricity”.
Yesterday Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, said: “We have found that there are huge economic, social and environmental gains to be made by doing this. It is good that, at last, part of the Government seems belatedly to be coming to the same conclusion, and we can only hope that the Prime Minister can rise above his panic-stricken clutching at old technologies and grasp the opportunities microgeneration offers for clean and more secure energy supplies.”
The 130-page report, due to be launched by Mr Wicks, has been produced by a consultancy, Element Energy, after a wide-ranging survey of public attitudes on installing household renewable energy systems. It has been financed, and steered by, 14 official and other bodies including DBERR, the official Energy Savings Trust, five regional development agencies, British Gas, the Micropower Council and the Ashden Trust.
The department’s approval marks something of a revolution in itself, since its predecessor, the Department of Trade and Industry, was for decades hostile to renewable energy and microgeneration. Its mandarins hated the thought of allowing millions of ordinary people to affect energy supplies by generating their own heat and power.
As a result, Britain is almost bottom of the European league for exploiting renewables – above only Luxembourg and Malta – despite having the best resources in the entire continent. Though ministers claim their efforts have been “highly successful” in boosting these clean sources of energy, they now account for only about 4 per cent of electricity – compared, for example, with 14 per cent in Germany.
Ministers also boast that 100,000 British homes now have microgeneration, mainly solar thermal panels that heat water – but in Germany they adorn more than a million roofs.
Last year just 270 solar photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity, were put on Britain’s homes, compared with 130,000 in Germany. At this rate, David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation told MPs last month, it would take the UK 1,500 years to equal the number Germany has. Britain’s only manufacturer of the panels, Sharp, calculates that less than a week of its year-round production actually gets installed in this country, with the rest exported to the continent.
The new report shows that, unlike in Germany, government incentives to householders fail to persuade them to invest in renewable energy. It concludes that they are daunted by the high initial cost of buying and installing them and want to see returns within three years.
The Government gives grants to help with the initial costs, but these are too small and too restricted to be effective. Indeed, ministers deliberately cut them back at the very point when they looked as if they were inspiring a rooftop revolution.
When first launched two years ago, the grants – which, for example offered up to £7,500 to install photovoltaic panels – were an instant hit. Payments soared to £1.4m in November 2006 alone, exceeding expectations more than four times over. But instead of welcoming it, ministers determined to dampen down the soaring demand. First they rationed payments to just £500,000 a month – with the result that, in February 2007, this entire allocation was used up in just two hours.
When this was ridiculed, they suspended the scheme altogether, relaunching it with the grant for photovoltaic panels slashed by two-thirds, and the one for wind turbines cut in half. Demand duly slumped.
For the past year, payments have been running at just £200,000 a month, far beneath the original target. But in April ministers rejected pleas from environmentalists and the renewable energy industry to increase the grants. Statistics to be released tomorrow will show that, partly as a result, only 18,000 new microgeneration installations have been completed over the past four years.
The new report instead suggests that Britain adopt the same approach as has been successful in Germany, which pays householders for feeding the electricity they produce from microgeneration into the national grid; the rate of these “feed-in tariffs” for photovoltaic panels is especially generous, fuelling their rapid expansion. At least 15 other European countries have also adopted them.
Last November, Gordon Brown appeared to back them, indicating that it should be “made easier for people to generate their own energy through microgeneration, and sell it on to the grid”. But little has happened since, with ministers promising only to “look” at feed-in tariffs. They failed to include them in the Government’s Energy Bill, sparking the biggest rebellion of Mr Brown’s premiership, when 33 Labour MPs last month defied the whips.
A staggering 278 MPs have now signed an early-day motion calling on the Government to adopt them. Yet, last Wednesday, speaking for the Government in a House of Lords debate, Lord Jones, a junior DBERR minister, called feed-in tariffs “a regulatory nightmare and extremely expensive”. He added: “If we were to change now we would destroy the consistency and stability that business craves and private sector investors need.”
The report also gives a fair wind to a proposal by the Micropower Council to set statutory targets for household renewables, to give the industry the certainty it needs to expand.
The confusion in Government over micropower echoes the chaos of its entire energy policy on display last week. Ministers panicked at the fuel price protests, which blocked the A40 on Wednesday, just as they did seven years ago when larger protests paralysed the country.
Then Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, rapidly backed away from green taxes, despite having promised to put “the environment at the core of the Government’s objectives for the tax system”. Last week he and his ministers were scrambling over themselves to react to the new protests, contradicting each other over whether they would perform U-turns over plans to raise fuel duty by 2p, and increase road tax disproportionately on bigger cars.
The Prime Minister also increased his backing for nuclear power. Previously he had only suggested that new reactors should be built to in place of old ones as they were closed down. But on Wednesday he said he would be “more ambitious”, adding: “We are pretty clear that we will have to do more than simply replace existing nuclear capacity in Britain.”
The report offers a very different future, as do the Tories, who see microgeneration as central to their philosophy of redirecting power to individuals. David Cameron sees “decentralised energy” as “a key part of our political vision, energy for the post-bureaucratic age”. He believes microgeneration could make Britain, and individual communities, “self-sufficient in energy”.
Source - The Independent
Monday, 19 May 2008
Five Ways to Reduce Global Warming
1. Methods are emerging for cost-effectively turning waste streams into energy. This addresses both the pollution issue as well as the energy issue. Every municipality should implement one of these myriad of approaches as soon as possible.
2.There are thousands of proven methods for significantly increasing fuel economy and decreasing emissions, which are being implemented on a grassroots level on existing vehicles.The auto industry should implement these from the factory. The shift toward hybrids and all-electric vehicles should also be encouraged and supported, which can be powered from renewable energy sources.
3.Clean energy technologies are arising that can replace fossil-fuel-based energy. Because these are increasingly cost effective, the market is likely to help expedite their emergence, first on the utility scale, then to a distributed level, then to a residential level, and eventually to an individual appliance level.
4.An earth stewardship consciousness is increasing, which helps foster the right awareness and motivation to help these emerging solutions move forward expeditiously.Foremost among the attitude shifts needs to be a dramatic reduction in the consumerism mentality.
5.In as much as a significant degree of global warming is caused by natural mega cycles that we happen to be in, while we might intercede with large scale deflection approaches, an awareness that cycles of death and rejuvenation are natural should be held in perspective. While we should cut back and reverse our contribution to greenhouse gases, and we might even deflect some of the effects of natural greenhouse emissions, we shouldn’t become too fixated on changing what may be a natural phenomenon.
Source - Ways to reduce global warming
2.There are thousands of proven methods for significantly increasing fuel economy and decreasing emissions, which are being implemented on a grassroots level on existing vehicles.The auto industry should implement these from the factory. The shift toward hybrids and all-electric vehicles should also be encouraged and supported, which can be powered from renewable energy sources.
3.Clean energy technologies are arising that can replace fossil-fuel-based energy. Because these are increasingly cost effective, the market is likely to help expedite their emergence, first on the utility scale, then to a distributed level, then to a residential level, and eventually to an individual appliance level.
4.An earth stewardship consciousness is increasing, which helps foster the right awareness and motivation to help these emerging solutions move forward expeditiously.Foremost among the attitude shifts needs to be a dramatic reduction in the consumerism mentality.
5.In as much as a significant degree of global warming is caused by natural mega cycles that we happen to be in, while we might intercede with large scale deflection approaches, an awareness that cycles of death and rejuvenation are natural should be held in perspective. While we should cut back and reverse our contribution to greenhouse gases, and we might even deflect some of the effects of natural greenhouse emissions, we shouldn’t become too fixated on changing what may be a natural phenomenon.
Source - Ways to reduce global warming
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