San Mateo County looks to ditch PG&E, jump into renewable energy movement
Aaron Kinney for Mercury News: In the latest sign that a Bay Area renewable energy trend is picking up steam, San Mateo County is taking a close look at buying its own power on the open market, instead of relying on PG&E, in a bid to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.
The county is exploring whether to establish a community choice aggregation program, which allows local governments to create their own energy portfolios that rely more on alternative sources like wind and solar and less on fossil fuels. On Tuesday, the board of supervisors will vote on allocating $300,000 toward a technical study of the proposal.
Marin County pioneered the community choice aggregation model in California. Since launching in 2010, Marin Clean Energy has grown to serve roughly 125,000 customers. The nonprofit claims it delivers more than twice as much renewable energy as PG&E at a slightly reduced cost to consumers.
Sonoma County followed suit last year with Sonoma Clean Power, and numerous jurisdictions are now looking into the model, including Alameda County and the South Bay cities of Cupertino, Mountain View and Sunnyvale.
Can Wind Energy Be Counted On To Help Meet Obama's Carbon Goals?
Ken Silverstein for Forbes: The wind energy sector is perpetually facing headwinds. But despite the challenges, those producers say that they are well prepared to help the country meet carbon reduction goals under the White House’s Clean Power Plan.
That plan, which was unveiled last summer and which will be finalized this June, will require a reduction in heat-trapping emissions of 30 percent by 2030. Such a goal is attainable given the shift from the heavily pollutive coal to natural gas-fired electric generation, which releases about half the carbon dioxide as coal. Nevertheless, the wind sector says that it can up the ante even more — if the current transmission system could be expanded to accommodate more electrons.
In an conference call, the American Wind Energy Association said that wind power has already exceeded the 2020 threshold that the Obama administration has outlined in its Clean Power Plan — and that it could blow past its 2030 goals, if the grid were expanded to the remote locations where many wind farms are getting built.
Moreover, “Some people think we need a battery attached to the wind,” says Michael Goggin, the association’s senior director of research. “All resources are backed up by all other resources on the power system. Changes in wind output are nothing new to grid operators.
UK approves world's biggest offshore wind farm
From Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent for the Financial Times: The world’s biggest offshore wind scheme has been given the go-ahead off the coast of Yorkshire, in a move the government said was likely to create hundreds of jobs.
The Dogger Bank Creyke Beck project is expected to be one of the UK’s biggest power stations, second only to the Drax coal-fired plant in North Yorkshire and capable of supplying about 2.5 per cent of the country’s electricity.
The scheme’s developers have yet to take a final investment decision and the project will almost certainly have to secure backing under the government’s renewable energy subsidy system.
But the government’s planning consent for such a large development was welcomed by the industry.
“This is an awesome project,” said Nick Medic, director of offshore renewables at RenewableUK, the wind industry trade body. “It will surely be considered as one of the most significant infrastructure projects ever undertaken by the wind industry.”
If built, the scheme will dwarf the London Array in the outer Thames Estuary, currently the largest operating offshore wind farm, with 175 turbines.
U.S. Department of Energy's Wave Energy Prize
The Department of Energy is investing in renewable energy through the Wave Energy Prize and is offering an opportunity for both seed funding and prize purses totaling more than $1 million for qualified prize participants.
The Solar Industry Is a Friend, Not a Frenemy
Fossil-fuel industries are boom and bust. Renewables don't have to be.
Amyris-Total Renewable Jet Fuel
Amyris' innovative bioscience technology directly converts plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules to create the renewable fuel, and the technology enables the operations of the Amyris-Total partnership to deliver the fuel from "field to wing."
Thunder Bay Generating Station Now Fuelled by Advanced Biomass
Ontario's Thunder Bay 150-megawatt generating station is now fully operational using clean-burning advanced biomass fuel - sawdust pellets from the province's lumber industry.
Europe Wind Power Booms on German Demand as 2015 Set for Record
Developers installed 11.8 gigawatts of wind turbines in Europe last year, accounting for almost half the power-generation capacity added, as the region continues to shift away from fossil fuels, according to the European Wind Energy Association.
Germany was the top wind market with about 45 percent of the total, the Brussels-based trade group said Tuesday in a statement. It was followed by the U.K., Sweden and France, with the four countries accounting for more than three-quarters of the industry.
Wind power in southern Europe will “continue to struggle in the face of erratic and harsh changes in the policy arena,” Thomas Becker, EWEA’s chief executive officer, said by e-mail. “We expect this concentration to continue into 2015.”
Wind power made up 43.7 percent of all new capacity in Europe last year. Turbine installations this year may reach a record 15.6 gigawatts as developers seek to qualify for government incentives, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. A gigawatt of capacaity is about as much as one nuclear reactor.
What Apple's $848 Million Solar Energy Deal Really Means
From Todd Woody for TakePart: Apple will spend $848 million over 25 years to purchase carbon-free electricity from developer First Solar in the largest commercial solar deal to date. It was widely reported that the energy would power the company’s California operations, including its new spaceship-like Silicon Valley headquarters.
Not quite.
The electricity generated by the project is the equivalent of the energy consumed by Apple’s operations. But that electricity will flow into the power grid and out to millions of Californians’ homes, not directly to the company’s offices, stores, and data centers.
But the solar electricity generated by the power plant will offset any fossil-fuel use by the company—and more important, Apple’s investment most likely guaranteed that the California Flats Solar Project is being built. Such deals by big, private companies have become crucial for the expansion of renewable energy to fight climate change at a time when utilities’ interest has lagged. Cheap natural gas has made solar and wind enegy less attractive to power providers in recent years.
Google, for instance, has poured more than $1.5 billion into solar and wind projects, sometimes inking power-purchase agreements, like Apple has, and sometimes buying a piece of a project as an investment.
Bottom line: That means more clean, green energy for everyone.
Bionic Leaf Uses Bacteria To Convert Solar Energy Into Liquid Fuel
From Science 2.0: Harvesting sunlight is old technology for plants but it's a level of efficiency in solar energy we would love to be within a billion years of - artificial photosynthesis is needed if we want to go beyond the energy density of things like combustion engines.
Solar energy, using electricity from photovoltaic cells to yield hydrogen that can be later used in fuel cells, would be terrific but has technological obstacles. Now scientists have created a system that uses bacteria to convert solar energy into a liquid fuel. Their work integrates an "artificial leaf," which uses a catalyst to make sunlight split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a bacterium engineered to convert carbon dioxide plus hydrogen into the liquid fuel isopropanol.
Pamela Silver, the Elliott T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at HMS and an author of the paper, calls the system a bionic leaf, a nod to the artificial leaf invented by the paper's senior author, Daniel Nocera, the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University.
An Israeli Company is building a 20-hour-per-day solar power plant
Israel's Brenmiller Energy said on Monday it will build a 300 million shekel ($77.27 million) solar power field using an energy storage technology that will generate electricity for about 20 hours a day.
The 10-megawatt field, to be built on about 110 acres (45 hectares) in the desert town of Dimona in southern Israel, will combine existing solar thermal technology with an underground system that stores heat for use at night.
Brenmiller Energy said it hopes to complete the field in early 2017, and will then sell electricity through the grid. During the four hours of the day that solar energy is insufficient, the company said it will use biomass to produce power.
The company already has a working proof-of-concept for the storage system.
A spokesman said Brenmiller Energy will fund the 10-megawatt project itself, in part to help promote the system to clients worldwide.
Apple is building a solar-powered data "command center" in Arizona
From Quartz: Apple’s sapphire plant project in Arizona didn’t work out, so Apple is investing another $2 billion to convert the facility into a massive data center, the Wall Street Journal’s Daisuke Wakabayashi reports:
The company plans to employ 150 full-time Apple staff at the Mesa, Arizona, facility, which will serve as a command center for its global network of data centers. In addition to the investment for the data center, Apple plans to build a solar farm capable of producing 70-megawatts of energy to power the facility.
For context of what a 70-megawatt solar facility entails, one Arizona solar plant, Solana, says its output is 280 megawatts, supplying some 70,000 houses with clean energy. Apple boasts that it is “the only company in our industry whose data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.”
The announcement comes after Apple’s sapphire partner, GT Advanced Technologies, filed for bankruptcy last year. The facility was to “produce 30 times as much sapphire as any other plant in the world,” Wakabayashi wrote last year. At the time, Apple was already consuming “one-fourth of the world’s supply of sapphire to cover the iPhone’s camera lens and fingerprint reader.”
Canadian Solar to Acquire Recurrent Energy from Sharp Corporation for $265 Million
Canadian Solar Inc. (the “Company”, or “Canadian Solar”) (NASDAQ: CSIQ), one of the world’s largest solar power companies, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Sharp Corporation (TSE: 6753) to acquire Recurrent Energy, LLC (“Recurrent”), a leading North American solar energy developer, for approximately $265 million.
Once completed, the acquisition of Recurrent will increase Canadian Solar’s total solar project pipeline by approximately 4.0 GW to 8.5 GW, and its late-stage project pipeline by approximately 1.0 GW to 2.4 GW. Located in California and Texas, Recurrent’s 1.0 GW late-stage pipeline is one of the largest utility-scale project portfolios scheduled to be built prior to the ITC expiration in 2016, and represents an estimated revenue opportunity of at least $2.3 billion for Canadian Solar under a build and sell business model.
The transaction further expands Canadian Solar’s position as a leading solar energy developer, with a globally diversified project pipeline in low risk geographies. In addition, this transaction broadens Canadian Solar’s project development and financing capabilities, and enhances the Company’s position for creating its own Yield-Co in the quarters ahead.
"The acquisition of Recurrent is an important milestone for us as it significantly expands and strengthens our position in the North American market, and places Canadian Solar firmly among the leading global solar energy companies," said Dr. Shawn Qu, Canadian Solar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "By combining Canadian Solar’s global reach and experience with Recurrent’s proven solar energy development track record in the US and Canada, we are significantly expanding the scale of our solar energy development platform. At the same time, this transaction broadens our strategic options to extend our business model from development and construction into potential ownership and operation of solar power plants as we work to create additional value for our shareholders."
Super Grid - Renewable Energy from Remote Sites to Cities (Projects and Challenges)
Just imagine, a super grid will allow Norway's hydro-power to light up a restaurant in Italy, Belgium's wind farms to provide power to a home in U.K., and Saharan solar power plants to run a factory in Germany.
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