Europe still a solar hot-spot

Portugal’s solar market remains one of the hottest for investors able to build systems under the installations cap. The country’s internal rates of returns (IRR) for the 6 major solar technologies remained high in 2011 along with Cyprus and Greece, though the financial crisis in Europe could significantly hinder that market.

“Uncertainty surrounding Europe’s financial situation and its countries’ ability to pay out incentives will prevent wild growth – keeping that market relatively constant,” says Matt Feinstein, the Lux Research Analyst who led the Demand Forecast.

“However, a number of Asian markets have high returns going into 2012 – notably Malaysia at 24.1%, the Philippines at 22.6%, and Japan at 20.9%. They will push demand toward that region in 2012 and 2013.”

IRR is the discount rate at which the net present value (NPV) of future cash flows from a capital investment equals zero. Capital expenditure is the primary factor in determining a market’s IRR, along with incentives and operating expenses. Put simply, it provides an apples-to-apples metric for investors to compare demand and project growth for solar across disparate markets.

found at renewable energy focus here

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What's the future of energy, Mr.Slocum?

"The future of energy is renewables. The longer we wait to create domestic demand for these products, the farther we fall behind on cleantech development and manufacturing. Our energy infrastructure was designed to accomodate cheap access to fossil fuels, but those days are over. We must move towards a localized, distributed energy system anchored by renewables, investments in sustainable energy use, and regulations that end the ability of energy corporations to price-gouge families."
Tyson Slocum
director of Public Citizen's Energy Program

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What's in Store for 2012?

Amy Harder, an energy and environment reporter for National Journal, started a discussion to find out, what energy and environment issues President Obama and Congress should focus on this year?

Among others this discussion contains the statements of experts like Rhone Resch, President & CEO of SEIA (Solar Energy Industries Association), Danny Kennedy (President, Sungevity Solar Home Specialists) and Josh Freed (Vice President for Clean Energy, Third Way)

very interesting! 

http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/01/whats-in-store-for-2012.php

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Household electricity bills skyrocket

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity. Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That's the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s. Electricity is consuming a greater share of Americans' after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found.

Greater electricity use at home and higher prices per kilowatt hour are both driving the higher costs, in roughly equal measure:

•Residential demand for power dropped briefly in 2009 but rebounded strongly last year to a record high. Air-conditioners and household appliances use less power than ever. A new refrigerator consumes half the electricity as a similar one bought in 1990. But consumers have bigger houses, more air-conditioning and more electronics than before, outpacing gains in efficiency and conservation.

"People have made a lot of money selling weight loss programs. It's the same for energy. Behavior is hard to change," says Penni Conner, vice president of customer care at NSTAR, a Boston-based utility.

•Prices are climbing, too, hitting a record 11.8 cents per residential kilowatt hour so far this year, reports the Energy Information Administration. The increase reflects higher fuel prices and the expense of replacing old power plants, including heavily polluting — but cheap to operate — coal plants that don't meet federal clean air requirements.

Electricity cost varies widely depending on where you live. Cheapest: Northwest communities near hydropower dams — as low as 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Most expensive major utility: Consolidated Edison, supplier of New York City — 26 cents per kilowatt hour, according to EIA.

High taxes, limits on air-polluting fuels and the expense of maintaining an underground transmission system keep consumer costs high, says ConEd spokesman Chris Olert.

Find the USA Today here

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Surface Area Required to Power the Whole World With Solar

According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), the world consumption of energy in all of its forms (barrels of petroleum, cubic meters of natural gas, watts of hydro power, etc.) is projected to reach 678 quadrillion Btu (or 7.15 exajoules) by 2030 - a 44% increase over 2008 levels (levels for 1980 were 283 quadrillion Btu and we stand at around 500 quadrillion Btu today). [...]

Dividing the global yearly demand by 400 kW•h per square meter (198,721,800,000,000 / 400) and we arrive at 496,804,500,000 square meters or 496,805 square kilometers (191,817 square miles) as the area required to power the world with solar panels. [...]

If divided into 5,000 super-site installations around the world (average of 25 per country), it would measure less than 10km a side for each. The UAE has plans to construct 1,500MW of capacity by 2020 which will require a space of 3 km per side. If the UAE constructed the other 7 km per side of that area, it would be able to power itself as a nation completely with solar energy. The USA would require a much larger area and approximately 1,000 of these super-sites.

According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometers of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years.

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How hard the EU Is kicking our Clean energy A..

The EU signed Kyoto in 1997, and passed laws to lower emissions by 2005. Five years later it had double the wind power of the US, and ten times the solar power. I know that it has been customary to compare the metrics on renewable energy development within the US as a whole to just one nation within the European Union, but it is misleading, as a comparison of our relative progress, because the US has a bigger economy than any one EU nation such as Germany or Spain, that it is typically compared to. It is time for us to compare the US with the EU as a whole to get an accurate picture, because it is easier for a larger economy to beat a smaller one in anything. This applies in any metric, but especially when comparing things like numbers of wind farms or solar farms, because how many people there are in a given area, and how much electricity they need (to produce and consume what percent of the global GDP) needs to be comparable, or the comparison is nonsensical. A comparison of the size of the two economies, the population and geographic size suggests that we should be comparing US progress as a whole, not to a single country within the union, but to the whole European Union. Our total economies are similar in size. According to the IMF, the EU’s economy is $16 trillion and the US’ $14 trillion. The EU and the US combined represent about half the global economy. Each puts out between 20% and 25% of the global GDP. Our geographic spread is similar. The European Union is about 3.8 million square miles, and the US is a similar 3.6 million square miles.

And our numbers are comparable. The core of the EU, the EU 15 (that signed Kyoto, and implemented the renewable legislation) is 384 million people, and the US population is 313 million. These three similarities mean that comparing progress between the two unions – one of states, and one of nations – makes a lot more sense in comparing the US progress on solar, for example, than comparing it with that of one EU nation. There are only 46 million people in Spain, which has a GDP of $1 trillion, so its economy is hardly comparable with the entire $14 trillion US economy.

How does US progress look when compared to the entire EU? Not good.

The EU as a whole is far further along the clean economy road than the US, since signing Kyoto in 1997, and implementing feed in tariffs and cap and trade by 2005 to lower emissions. Five years later it had double the wind power of the US, and ten times the solar power. The EU has 84 GW of wind power capacity installed as of 2010, according to the AWEA. The US has about half that, at 43 GW. EU solar power capacity totaled 29 GW through 2010; ten times the cumulative grid-connected PV in the US of 3 GW as of 2010, according to a GTW report quoted at Earthtechling, or to be precise only 2.6 GW confirmed by SEIA figures – which includes all types of solar, not just PV, and counts residential, commercial, industrial and utility-scale installations.

While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) made a huge investment in utility-scale solar that is now beginning to break through the lengthy review process – so that there is at least 17 GW in the pipeline now as of mid-2011 – even this ‘Manhattan Project’ jump in the level of investment will only bring the US up to two thirds of what the EU had installed as of 2010.

This one-time heroic lift for renewables and climate action was accomplished in the rare few months of 2009 when the US had functional Democratic majorities big enough to overcome Republican obstruction. It is sad that voters in the US are not aware that that represents what could be accomplished again, and added to, if they could get those majorities in the House and Senate once more.

But US voters are increasingly so dismayed and baffled by what the media tells them is simply “congress” that now only 48% of US voters even bother to vote, far below the rates of the 1960s and 1970s, when the US passed the Clean Air Act. By contrast, most EU countries have over 80% voting participation, and their EU-wide energy legislation is much more 99%-friendly as a result. But just how far ahead they are was a shock to me in researching this.

Comparing wind and solar capacity as of the end of 2010, the EU had between twice and ten times the US amount. That is pretty sobering.

by Susan Kraemer, on EarthTechling

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Energy problems elsewhere

1.6 billion people on the planet don’t have access to electricity. That’s one quarter of the world’s population. This energy poverty has a female face which is often ignored - 70% of those without basic electricity access are women and girls for whom the darkness is quite literal.They rely on kerosene lanterns and candles for light. They spend hours each day collecting wood to burn for cooking and heat. They spend up to 40% of their family income on energy that is insufficient, hazardous and unhealthy.

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December 2011: record month for California rooftop solar

Another record in solar sales...

read more here
http://votesolar.org/2012/01/december-2011-record-month-for-california-rooftop-solar/

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How has NASA improved solar energy?

There are no electrical outlets in space. No gas stations, either. For space explorers hovering in the cold, airless regions beyond our atmosphere, power (or the lack thereof) is a matter of life and death. Thanks to our sun, however, solar power is readily available.

Solar technologies generate a majority of the power used during space missions, keeping life support and other vital spacecraft systems working. Solar power is so critical that NASA spends considerable time and money to make solar panels must more efficient, lightweight and affordable.

You don't have to look far to see how important solar power is to NASA. Just gaze skyward. One of humankind's most ambitious projects, the ISS (International Space Station) is dwarfed by the size of its eight 114-foot (35-meter) long solar array wings. Each wing contains around 33,000 solar cells, which convert about 14 percent of the sunlight that hits them into usable energy [source:NASA]. That may not sound very efficient, but even after life support and other vital functions have the power they need, there's still enough juice to power the equivalent of dozens of homes on Earth.

But the ISS features decades-old technology. Thanks to NASA's research and development teams, contemporary solar power designs are significantly better than those aboard the ISS. In fact, NASA has an entire division, called the Photovoltaic & Space Environments Branch, dedicated to addressing solar power and related challenges. This branch actively partners with private companies and shares scientific knowledge in the hopes of accelerating technological developments.

This knowledge-sharing strategy works. In 1989, NASA partnered with Iowa Thin Film Technologies, Inc. (now PowerFilm, Inc.). PowerFilm devised a way to incorporate paper-thin solar cells onto flexible sheets that can be rolled up for storage. The film is incredibly efficient, too, converting 90 percent of the light that strikes its surface into energy [source: NASA].

In other words, these are nothing like antiquated solar cells from the 1970s. Today's solar cells and associated products are getting better all the time. Keep reading to see how NASA's investments are improving solar power for space missions -- and for those of us stuck on the mother planet, too.

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12 Most Hopeful Trends to Build on in 2012

Happy New Year everyone! I wish you all the best in 2012... my first post/link this year is supposed to give an outlok on trends to come...read the Huffington Post article here

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What Free Market? Subsidies Have Always Been a Big Part of Energy Industry, New Report Shows

America’s support for energy innovation has helped drive U.S. growth for more than 200 years, yet government support for new energy sources is much lower today than it has been at any other point in U.S. history according to a new report analyzing U.S. energy incentives.

Every great expansion of the U.S. economy can be linked with the discovery of a new energy source. In every single case, the government, often at both the federal and state levels, heavily subsidized that new energy source according to the report, “What Would Jefferson Do? The Historical Role of Federal Subsidies in Shaping America’s Energy Future,” authored by Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner, DBL Investors and Ben Healey, a Yale University graduate student.

“All new energy industries – timber, coal, oil and gas, nuclear – have received substantial government support at a pivotal time in their early growth, creating millions of jobs and significant economic growth,” said Nancy Pfund. “Subsidies for these ‘traditional’ energy sources were many, many times what we are spending today on renewables.”

During the early years of what would become the U.S. oil and gas industries, federal subsidies for producers averaged half a percent of the federal budget. By contrast, the current support for renewables is barely a fifth that size, just one tenth of one percent of federal spending.

Among the report’s key findings:
• Energy industries have enjoyed a century of federal support. From 1918-2009, the oil and gas industry received $446.96 billion (adjusted for inflation) in cumulative energy subsidies. Renewable energy sources received $5.93 billion (adjusted for inflation) for a much shorter period from 1994-2009.
• Average annual support for the oil and gas industry has been $4.86 billion (1918-2009), compared to $3.50 billion for nuclear (1947-1999) and $0.37 billion (1994-2009) for renewable energy.
• There is a striking divergence in early federal incentives. For example, federal support for the nuclear industry overwhelms other subsidies as a percentage of federal budget, but equally striking is the support for oil and gas which was at least 25% higher than renewables, and in the most extreme years 10x as great.

“The take away from this history lesson is that government support has been and should continue to be an essential component in the growth of emerging energy sources, enabling U.S. technology innovation, job creation and economic expansion.” said Pfund.

 read on

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You heard America loses money on the Solar Industry?

I figured in the past, that the Solyndra mess leads to people thinking that the whole Solar Industry "sucks the money out of the taxpayers pocket". The opposite is the truth. After all, the Industry doesn't just consist out of the assembled panels. When looking at polysilicon production, equipment for manufacturing lines, power electronics, solar hot water tanks, and any number of other domestically-produced products, the U.S. actually offers a good-sized contribution to the global market.

Read the whole article here

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