Green Options

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Can you have state envy? I do. Colorado is one of those states really forging ahead with smart clean energy policies that will not only cut global warming pollution and promote local energy sources, but help build a cleantech business sector as well. In fact, it’s already begun.

Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems, one of the largest wind turbine manufacturers in the world, recently opened a turbine-blade manufacturing plant there. Renewable Energy Systems America, a wind farm developer, just moved its headquarters from Austin, Texas to Broomfield, Colorado. It plans to expand and double the number of employees at HQ in the next year. ConocoPhillips will open a renewable energy research hub and corporate learning center in the state too.

Every year the Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) and the Worldwatch Institute put together a profile and report card of the world’s renewable energy sector.

The REN21 Renewables 2007 Global Status Report found that last year, wind power capacity increased about 28 percent and solar power capacity went up 52 percent. Renewable energy employs 2.4 million people and 65 countries now have national standards for accelerating the use of renewables. Investors and businesses of all sizes have followed suit. And while that’s impressive, Mohamed El-Ashr, Chair of Ren21, had this interesting comment:

“So much has happened in the renewable energy sector during the past five years that the perceptions of some politicians and energy-sector analysts lag far behind the reality of where the renewables industry is today … This leadership has never been more important, as renewable energy has now reached the top of the international policy agenda under the United Nations and the G8.”

Tidal power isn’t really talked about a lot here in the U.S., but it’s always exciting when a fresh renewable energy technology enters the equation. To wit: Britain just launched a first-of-its-kind contraption that will generate tide power for the Isles.

This past weekend, a 122-foot, 1.2 megawatt upside-down-windmill-looking-thing headed out to sea from the same dock that built the Titanic. The device, called SeaGen, will make enough energy from tidal power to feed about 1,140 homes and is the world’s first commercial-scale system for making electricity from marine currents, according to the Independent.

An eight-turbine wind farm will open in Panhandle, Texas in May. But instead of referring to it as “that Panhandle wind farm,” it will be have a branded, corporate name: “The Wege Wind Energy Farm, provided by Steelcase.”

Huh?

Steelcase, a large furniture company out of Michigan, has agreed ahead of time to buy all of the wind farm’s renewable energy credits (RECs) for the first five years it’s in operation. Steelcase also paid a premium to name the farm after Peter Wege, the son of the founder of Steelcase and a big environmentalist.

Going greener isn’t new for the company, which aims to cut its carbon footprint 25 percent by 2012. The RECs from the Wege Wind Energy Farm will offset the equivalent of about 20 percent of the company’s power.

When the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act last December, the bill included a passage that could effect Canada’s oilsands, and that has the Canadian government nervous.

The law prohibits federal procurement of fuels that produce more global warming emissions than conventional sources. Canada is concerned because the fuel taken from the oilsands is considered alternative fuel under the new energy act and it produces more global warming emissions than other sources. It complicates things because U.S. firms have major investments in the oilsands and the U.S. government currently gets a lot of fuel from there, so the U.S. essentially passed a law that could jeopardize this arrangement. In the province of Alberta, the oilsands represent the second largest oil reserve on the planet after Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps China’s been peering over India’s shoulder, watching the deals it’s worked out with Australia to fund its burgeoning cleantech market; and it wants some of the same.

Like China, many emerging economies need and want to cut their global warming emissions but don’t have the money to purchase the latest technologies. So China’s come up with the idea of a Multilateral Technology Access Fund to […]

A North American organization of energy experts issued a report that found that building more green buildings is the best way to cut carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), one of the major contributors to global warming. In fact, green buildings could cut emissions more deeply, quickly and more cheaply than any other global warming mitigation effort.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) was set up by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to address environmental concerns raised over NAFTA. A representative of the CEC told Reuters:

The investments made for climate change benefit in buildings have direct payback, generally from the point of view of reduced energy costs and water costs as well the indoor health environment and increased productivity of the inhabitants of those buildings.

American and European venture capitalists invested more than $3.5 billion in clean technologies — a 13 percent increase over 2006.

But other nations want a piece of the pie; so Indian banks are going to provide Australian companies access to their energy markets in order to grow India’s cleantech sector. Equity funding for development projects is lacking on the subcontinent, but money from Australian investors can help bridge that […]

John Hutton, a business Secretary and cabinet minister in the UK, recently said that coal must remain a part of his nation’s energy system.

Although he wants the UK to lead the world in renewable energy, he argues that some form of coal will be needed to work with renewables. The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, argue that coal cannot be clean without carbon capture and storage. The problem is that technology […]

Wow — the feds are suspending a major loan program for rural coal power plants, citing the risks of global warming regulations and rising construction costs at the rate of 30 percent a year. Coal plants are a big source of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major contributor to global warming and the electricity source for rural utilities is about 60 percent coal.

Abigail Dillen with EarthJustice — a law group that sued to to block the loan program because of the reasons above — put it this way:

This is a big decision. It says new coal plants can’t go to the federal government for money at least for the next couple years, and these are critical times for companies to get these plants built.