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.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (D) explained why companies are flocking to the Centennial State:

Colorado’s robust renewable energy industry, skilled workforce, and rich natural resources have recently attracted several companies to Colorado, bringing good jobs and revenue to our urban and rural communities. They are helping us to be more energy, environmentally, and economically secure.

Congrats, Colorado!

Associated Press, via Forbes
Wind Energy Weekly

On a different note, this is my last post for the Green Options blog network. I’ve been a writer since its inception and it’s been an immensely fun, challenging and educational ride. I’m very proud of what my fellow writers have put together and very thankful for the thoughtful and dedicated readers! I’m continuing with my personal blog at Maria Energia and extend a hearty THANK YOU to everyone at Green Options (especially Jeff McIntire-Strasburg at sustainablog, who recruited me) for this fabulous life experience.

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.”

That is, some are asking “so, does this wind power thing really work?” while much of the world is blowing ahead of them.

Other report highlights from the report:

* Renewable energy represents 5 percent of global power capacity and 3.4 percent of global power generation.

* The largest portion of the renewable power capacity increase has been wind power.

* The fastest growing technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaics (PV), with an increase equal to 1.5 million PV-powered homes worldwide.

* Production of biodiesel is up more than 50 percent.

* Of the $71 billion invested in renewable energy, fuel, and heat, 47 percent was for wind power and 30 percent for solar PV.

* Policies to promote renewable energy have mushroomed. At least 60 countries — 37 developed nations and 23 developing ones — have some type of policy to promote renewable power.

The Sietch Blog
Renewables 2007 Global Status Report

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.

Britain has some of the best water power sources in the world from both tide and wave energy. In face, some think those technologies could eventually power 20 percent of the nation.

SeaGen will be placed near the mouth of Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough and will sit in tidal currents like an inverted wind turbine. Tides, rather than the wind, will turn it. Good tidal power sites are where the tides are forced to speed up because they are being forced through narrow channels.

The Independent

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.

While one could be argued that the name “Wege” doesn’t mean anything to people outside of Michigan therefore is bad branding, many clean energy supporters and business people alike predict this naming trend will continue. Andrew Winston, an environmental consultant and author, told the New York Times:

The demand for wind power and for R.E.C.’s is out pacing the supply, so I won’t be surprised to see more companies trying to lock up the renewable energy credits that become available.

Building a utility-scale wind farm isn’t cheap: Turbines are at least $1 million a piece, there are legal fees, permits, construction costs and coordination and planning with the utility and transmission arrangements. More money invested in exchange for naming rights may not be a bad idea, especially for smaller-scale projects in rural communities. Bradley W. Johnson, John Deere’s director for business development and the builder of the Wege Wind Energy Farm, sees the branding of wind farms as a good thing:

This is a new business model, and it could attract any brand that wants to be linked with sustainability. Imagine the G.M. wind farm, the Apple wind farm — it’s not unthinkable at all.

New York Times
Wind Energy Weekly
Photo credit: NREL

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.

One possible solution is to reclassify the oilsands from an alternative fuel to a conventional fuel so the global warming law doesn’t apply to it. From the National Post:

The rationale for classifying the oilsands as conventional oil is that, unlike alternative fuel sources, the deposits are well established, yielding more than one million barrels a day and likely to produce more than three million barrels a day by the middle of the next decade. As such, they are no longer “a science experiment,” as one source put it.

A U.S. working group is looking into the problem and will decide whether to classify the oilsands fuel as conventional or alternative this spring.

Climatebiz.com
National Post

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 use rich nations’ capital to fund cleantech in poorer nations. Specifically, the country calls on developed nations to allocate at least .5 percent of their annual GDP to help distribute cleantech beyond commercial interests.

The Access Fund idea was discussed at a forum about next steps after the Kyoto Protocol expires. We’ll see whether the developed nations bite on this idea whole-heartedly or even strike some sort of balance with assisting the devloping world grow sustainably while also making sure that they are investing in the necessary resources at home.

People’s Daily Online

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.

Buildings in North America emit about 2,200 megatons or 35 percent of the total global warming emissions on the continent. If building construction adopted the CEC’s recommendations quickly, that amount could be cut down to 1,700 megatons by 2030 compared to the business-as-usual approach.

So what’s stopping the change? The report found that capital and operating budgets are often kept separate, instead of a government or other institution taking into account the lifetime budget of a construction project. This separation creates a disincentive to build green.

The CEC recommended setting up task forces in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to set targets that will incentivize more green building. According to Science Daily, green building only accounts for 2 percent of the new non-residential building market and less than half of one percent of the residential market in the Canada and U.S., and even less than that in Mexico.

Reuters UK
Science Daily

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 gap for initiatives like renewable energy, water, building efficiency and transportation. Vivek Mehra, country head of Sustainable Investment Bank and Private Equity, Yes Bank India, told ThaiIndian News:

Australia has expertise on clean coal technology and India is going to rely on coal to meet its energy needs for a long time to come. The two countries can mutually benefit from sharing this clean and economically feasible technology.

Bridging the knowledge — and funding gaps — in our globalized economy will be critical in advancing a cleantech future, whether it’s in the developed or developing world. I suspect we’ll see even more collaboration between private investors and emerging economies as cleantech continues to boom and the money follows.

ThaiIndian.com

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 is still years away from commercialization and the amount of money the UK is investing in its research is small.

This sparring comes while Hutton’s department is considering an application to build the UK’s first new coal plant in 24 years.

The question the UK and the rest of us have to grapple with is: Is coal a part of our energy future at all? Should coal plants have to commit to carbon capture and storage in order to be approved?

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.

The suspension isn’t indefinite, but no loans will be issued this year and none are likely in 2009. That means at least four proposed coal plants in Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas and Missouri are out of luck unless they want to look into more expensive loans on the open market or private funding. Kansas and Wyoming have canceled coal plants in the last few months because of construction costs and global warming concerns.

This decision comes on the heels of banks announcing closer scrutiny of projects that involve global warming emissions and are thus likely to be risky when regulations and/or fines are imposed down the road. The head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association also said that the federal government is responding to “nervousness” among lenders over carbon legislation before Congress.

So if the global warming implications make building coal plants too risky, then the state (or the feds) need to also set policies to encourage the development of rural renewable energy and efficiency. Some states are doing this (like Minnesota, with rural community-owned wind power provisions) and there should be more out there. As we move to placing a higher cost on dirty power, so too must we also balance that demand with increased attention on renewables and (especially) energy efficiency.

Forbes.com

The utility is testing 20 such batteries with an 11-megawatt wind farm in southwestern Minnesota. There’s a test phase set for this spring and then the batteries are expected to go online in October.

The challenge with wind power, explained an Xcel Energy representative, isn’t that it blows and stops but that the speed of the wind varies. So the system will work like this: When the wind is blowing, the spinning turbines will help charge the batteries. When the wind slows, the batteries will help even out the flow of electricity to the grid. The batteries discharge one megawatt of power, which is enough energy to power about 1,000 homes. The Japanese-made batteries have a life expectancy of 15 years.

This is the first time a utility has used batteries in conjunction with a wind farm to help with peak power demands. By 2020, Xcel Energy is required by Minnesota to get 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

BusinessGreen
St. Paul Pioneer Press

NGA chairman, Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) launched a year-long initiative called, “Securing a Clean Energy Future,” that outlines how to diversify the U.S.’s energy sources. The Governors agree that more clean technology - like wind power and solar power - will have to be added to the energy mix, but oil and coal-producing states are worried about regulations that put a cost on the pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels. If states are going to regulate the pollution, governors like Governor Joe Manchin (D-WV) want help financing technologies that could make burning coal cleaner, or help exploring carbon capture and sequestration methods. Others, like Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS), took a harder line and called the option of a carbon tax “stupid.”

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt even made an appearance to address why business is taking action on global warming and why many corporations are asking for stronger national regulations of carbon dioxide. But that didn’t sway some governors: “I don’t think there’s any kind of consensus among the people that were in there; we’re almost 50 different opinions,” said Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R). Work continues to hammer out a joint NGA global warming policy.

Infozine.com

Oil minister Ali al-Nuaimi told French media that the oil-rich nation is researching how it can become a center for solar energy research and eventually become a “major megawatt” exporter in the next 30-50 years. He also said that Saudi Arabia is ready to invest in carbon capture and storage, even developing technology to extract carbon dioxide (CO2 - a major global warming pollutant) from the atmosphere and store it underground (I’ll admit, I haven’t heard of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere before).

This all comes on the heels of an agreement last November by Gulf OPEC members to invest three-quarters of a billion dollars US to fighting global warming and financing clean technologies. But is this just an attempt to be seen as a big player in the hot solar energy field — or could the Saudi government be concerned about peak oil and increasing regulations around the world that make fossil fuel use more expensive?

Forbes.com

Once it’s up and running in 2013, the it could generate enough power for about 45,000 homes. It’s a very small percentage of Australia’s total electricity generation, but it would cut about 396,000 tonnes of emissions from spewing into the air. The Victoria plant is also expected to be one of the most efficient solar power plants in existence because it will concentrate the solar power, using 112 curved mirrors to direct the sun’s rays onto photovoltaic (PV) cells.

This clean power plant will contribute to Australia’s goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. But we’ll have to wait and see how long it remains on top as the largest.

The Age
Earth Times
Financial Times

While fossil fuels aren’t going away tomorrow, there’s ‘lots the government can do to encourage their adoption and further innovation: Put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, set standards for a certain percentage of our energy to come from renewables, and provide subsidies to encourage cleantech. While clean energy supporters have been saying this for years, does this sentiment from big oil mean we’re starting to see some enlightenment?

CERA
Wall Street Journal blog

A new life-cycle assessment study from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York examined the four most common types of photovoltaic (PV) solar power cells — multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon and thin-film, if you were wondering — to find out how much energy and waste was involved in their creation.

“Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles” found that even when accounting for the metals required to build PV cells, the efficiency of the cells, and the waste produced, PV cells still emit less global warming pollution throughout their life cycle than the fossil fuels needed to produce the same amount of power. Actually, most of the pollution from the solar power comes from the indirect emissions of the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity of the PV manufacturing facilities.

The most energy-intensive type of PV cell to make — the monocrystalline silicate cells — only emits 1.8 ounces of global warming pollution per kilowatt hour, compared to 2.2 pounds by a coal-fired power plant. All told, the construction and use of PV power would cut air pollution about 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels.

The best-case scenario, of course, would be for solar manufacturing facilities to be powered by solar. Researchers concluded that 30 percent of the energy used to make PV cells could come from solar power installed on the roofs and parking lot of facilities.

While some people point out that the study only partly takes into consideration the transportation of PV components (most of which are made in China), the researchers want to broaden their work further to include end-of-life and recycling data of the PV cells. They believe this expansion could further improve overall emissions calculations.

Nanowerk
Scientific American
Treehugger

Bank of America may name carbon dioxide (CO2) - a major contributor to global warming - a potential liability when it considers financing utility sector projects.

You can listen to Lewis’ remarks to the forum here.

I just had two super-efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) burn out on me, which surprised me since they’re only about a year old. Then again, my husband does leave the bathroom light on a lot…. At any rate, the rest of my bulbs are still going strong, even after several years for most of them. Here’s a great video on CFL 101.

Tip of the hat to Dave over at e-Strategy blog.

One admirable entrepreneur explained how he’s trying sequestering the CO2 himself:

Spanish producer Miguel Torres told delegates he was pioneering “carbon capture and storage,” whereby harmful CO2 emissions are trapped and stored underground.

At the foot of the Cordilleras of the Andes in Chile, Torres has already set up the first recovery process for the CO2 produced by fermenting grapes, he said.

“We are trying to convert CO2 into something solid, which will remain in the ground, instead of being emitted into the air,” he said.

If the Chile project — which Torres admits is still a small pilot experiment — is successful, he intends to implement a much bigger programme in Spain, with co-financing from the regional government of Catalonia.

Harvest season is already ten days earlier in most wine regions, and scientists reported that global warming would likely lead to “harder” and less aromatic wines. In Spain, some vines have been moved to higher and cooler areas or further inland. But some countries, like New Zealand or the UK, could start producing a wider variety of wines than their cooler climes allowed before.

AFP.com
New York Times

Renewable energy businesses are booming, but they’re competing quite intensely for talented people. Writing for Renewable Energy Access, Dawn Dzurilla noted that the “triple bottom line” of People, Planet, and Profit are motivating job seekers to enter the industry. Its rapid growth and challenging opportunities are keeping people in this cutting-edge career.

There are several colleges and universities around the country offering cleantech-related programs, like wind turbine maintenance. The University of Oregon has become the first in the U.S. to offer a course in renewable energy law. It’s a part of its sustainable business certificate program to train students for careers in environmentally friendly industries. The state has identified cleantech and renewable energy as “vital” to the economic development of the state, so it’s taking steps to train its workforce in that field.

KTVZ.com (Portland, OR)
Renewable Energy Access