Norway's last Oil and Energy Minister said her country could become "Europe's battery."
Now, Norway's new power chief is joining with the country's parliament to make the non-EU country a key component in continental renewable energy goals.
"Offshore wind energy may become the next adventure for the Norwegian industry and energy sector," Terje Riis-Johansen observed. As the world's #6 oil exporter and a key source of western European natural gas, Norwegians could play possum when it comes to overhauling the Scandinavian country's energy infrastructure.
Instead, officials in Oslo are aiming to make the country a hub of northern European offshore wind power activity.
Between Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems to the south, Scotland's joint wind farm projects led by Talisman Energy (NYSE:TLM) and ScottishPower to the west, and shipbuilding companies like Finland's Rautarukki now coming from the east with the goal of shifting shipbuilding operations into wind turbine tower production, Norway is at the heart of a transformational cold-water economy.
And the clean energy initiatives are coming from all over...
Norwegian oil and gas champion StatoilHydro (NYSE:STO) has teamed up with German infrastructure giant Siemens (NYSE:SI) to build the first floating wind turbines for deepwater use.
With centers of gravity deep below the surface and moorings tied to the seabed, these rigs would go farther offshore than any pylon-based wind turbine could. The first application for such a far-flung power generation system would actually be to help power oil and gas rigs that sit atop the North Sea's dwindling petroleum reserves.
And with Norway straddling the line between old North Sea energy and the new wave, legislators want to codify goals for getting a new industry off the ground and into the water.
With about $45 billion dollars in investment, Norway could build enough 5000-8000 megawatt wind power arrays to equal the output of 8 nuclear power plants.
The European Union, of which Norway is not a member, has set the goal of achieving a 20% renewable energy contribution to the EU's electricity generation by 2020. If Norway can harness its significant wind energy resources to deliver up to 40 terrawatt hours per year, it will also generate significant revenue from European customers to offset declining fossil fuel revenue.
Companies like Siemens and ABB (NYSE:ABB) are already hard at work addressing questions of transmission from offshore wind farms to onshore utilities, which of course presents a challenge of both minimizing loss and providing storage systems for off-peak generation times.
But the political will—for decades the missing component in Norwegian wind power—is now prominent.
Now let's see what the Norwegians do for themselves and the worldwide viability of offshore wind power when they put the money where their mouths are.
-Sam Hopkins
City officials announced today that they are kicking around the idea of building a wind farm off the Rockaway Peninsula. . .about 13 miles off the coast of New York City.
The offshore wind farm would be the largest in the United States, boasting 350 megawatts.
Here's what Kevin Burke, CEO of Con Edison had to say about it...
"If the technical, environmental, economic and social challenges can be met, and we have the support of government, energy and environmental leaders, I am confident this project will be built and produce enormous benefits for our region."
Of course, it's likely that the price tag will be the key.
Back in 2007, a proposal for a 140 megawatt wind farm off the shore of Jones Beach was canceled after project estimates came in at more than twice the initial estimate.
And this latest 350 megawatt project is estimated to run anywhere between $1.35 billion and $2.7 billion.
Still, a lot has changed in the past two years. Most importantly, a pro-renewables White House that is likely to get its national renewable porftolio standard approved this year.
I suppose we'll get a better handle on how this will work out later in the year. But I'm optimistic that at some point very soon, a big chunk of New York City's power is going to come from offshore wind.
Jeff
While attending the Renewable Energy Finance Forum Wall Street last week, I was almost surprised to see an entire discussion dedicated to how Big Oil plans on entering the cleantech business.
The talk was led by Don Paul, Executive Director of the University of Southern California Energy Institute.
In his former life, Mr. Paul was the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Chevron. He knows a thing or two about the oil business. And his presentation was right to the point.
The first bullet on his outline was: Why the global majors will be players in renewable energy. I'd like to share some of his insights here.
Why Big Oil Will Enter the Renewable Energy Market
Mr. Paul laid out five clear reasons why Big Oil will pursue clean energy opportunities.
They have global reach and scale
Strong balance sheets and cash flow
Technical, business, and market capabilities
Infrastructure, land, and supply chain management
Patience and longevity
In a sentence, Big Oil has enough cash, credit, know-how, and steel in place to pursue multiple clean technologies in numerous geographic markets—even if it takes years. And it probably will, because the majors need to walk a fine line between becoming cleantech companies and ensuring they exploit increasingly scarce oil for all it's worth.
That's why Big Oil's coming to cleantech.
How Big Oil Will Enter the Renewable Energy Market
This was another five bullet set.
First, of course, they're going to use renewable energy to produce oil, freeing up more natural gas to send to market. (Insight: this means Big Oil thinks nat gas will be more expensive than renewables.) The possibilities here have a broad range, from offshore solar powered platforms to wind turbines next to Texas oil rigs.
I guess there's no power like clean power to produce, well, oil.
Second is what Paul calls "adaptive re-use for production and manufacturing assets." In English that means putting wind turbines or utility scale solar on their dying, or soon to be dead, oil fields.
Third is by integrating power infrastructures. Read: We are salivating over the natural gas back-up opportunities (and that's why we're not going to burn it to produce oil).
Fourth should probably be number one. It's geothermal development, which is a natural fit for companies with decades of drilling experience and huge land holdings. In fact, oil companies are already involved in geothermal on a large scale.
Lastly is integrating infrastructures for biofuels, also a glove-fit for Big Oil. There are already increasing ethanol blend rates required by law. And though biofuels still make some people cringe, once we nail down successful enzymes for cellulosic and feedstocks for biodiesel (algae?), the market should blossom nicely once again.
Big Oil can leverage their infrastructure ownership and know-how to seamlessly enter this market. And they already are.
Real Life Examples
In the face of continued criticism of renewables by the uniformed, I find it reassuring to know that even the sworn enemy of cleantech is finally coming around. Big Oil's plan to enter these markets should be the final piece of tape on naysayer's mouths.
And it's not about carbon or altruism in any way, shape or form. It's about profits and a major energy transition—plain and simple.
It's why Valero is using clean energy to power a refinery. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Valero Energy Corp., which has the capacity to process more crude than any other U.S. refiner, recently installed 33 windmills to supply a refinery here with green electricity to produce gasoline and diesel."
The WSJ also pronounced, "The marriage is one of convenience."
It's also why Big Oil is scooping up biofuel assets that now have a recession discount.
Valero just bought seven Midwestern ethanol plants from now-bankrupt VeraSun. Marathon Oil has taken large stakes in two ethanol plants with a capacity of a million gallons each. Sunoco bought one, too. And just like that, Big Oil controls 7% of total U.S. ethanol capacity.
Yes, after a long abstention, Big Oil is finally coming to the cleantech party. It was only a matter of time, and it's a huge affirmation for those of us with skin in the game.
But be warned, they're going to do this Big Oil style, on their terms. That means employing patience, looking for high returns, and only pursuing projects with guaranteed payoffs—hence buying ethanol assets for pennies on the dollar.
So don't expect Big Oil to start producing thin film solar or trying to improve wind turbine design. But appreciate that they're finally coming to the table and the incredible validity it brings to clean energy.
—Nick
A new survey conducted by market research firm, Synovate has shown that about six in ten people would choose an environmentally-friendlier car over a gas-powered one.
The survey asked the 13,500 respondents to make their decision without thinking about cost. Here are some of the results...
40 percent of respondents said green would be their preferred purchase.
20 percent said green cars were their dream car.
More than 70 percent of Chinese respondents said they would buy a green car, compared to 42 percent of Americans.
At about 40 percent, it was the Chinese who were most likely to take public transportation more often in the next year. Americans were among the least, at 2 percent.
Germans were most likely to choose green cars over conventional gas-powered cars.
South Africans and Indians, who typically view cars as status symbols, were least likely to choose a green car.
The survey was conducted three months ago in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, and the U.S.
It should be noted that the survey targeted city-dwellers - where public transportation tends to be more readily available, and traffic congestion tends to be significantly worse than in rural areas.
Jeff
With unlimited natural resources and growing interest from Europe's biggest businesses, the Desertec plan for cultivating African and Middle Eastern solar power is gaining steam.
Steam's the thing, as it turns out, that will bring concentrating solar power from desert-based trough-shaped collectors that heat water, which turns turbines, which then feed to long high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines across the Mediterranean.
The goal is to bring a major energy option to top European energy consumers while stimulating economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
MENA solar resources could, according to the European Commission, fulfill all of Europe's electricity needs with just 0.3% of the sunny region's annual solar radiation.
And by focusing on concentrating solar power (CSP), which is already in use in U.S. states like California and Nevada, Desertec would not be reinventing the wheel, or the panel.
The question of utmost importance, with the world of renewable energy finance still reeling from the credit crunch, is where the money will come from to finance such a massive project...
To that end, international commercial mammoths like Siemens (NYSE:SI) and E.ON (OTC:EONGY) are leading a German consortium that can make Desertec a reality.
For them it's a matter of business sense, getting the jump on other European and global power players while pleasing European governments and the European Commission, all of which are eager for an alternative to Russian natural gas. Not only solar but wind, biomass, and geothermal will all be part of Desertec's Trans-Mediterranean energy mix.
In July, we'll see the first concrete steps by 20 top German companies to get the 400 billion-euro ($561 billion) project up and running. A meeting is set for July 13 in Munich.
You can read more about Desertec's geographic and political basis here on our sister site, Energy and Capital.
Sam Hopkins
The Canadian province of Ontario announced yesterday that it has suspended a plan to build two new nuclear reactors.
The reason?
According to government officials, concerns about pricing and uncertainty regarding the future of Atomic Energy Corporation (the favored bidder for the nuclear projects), prevented Ontario from continuing with the procurement.
But the Globe and Mail newspaper reported the following...
"Canadian nuclear safety regulators say they have underestimated the seriousness of a design feature at the country's electricity-producing reactors that would cause them to experience dangerous power pulses during a major accident.
If reactors are not shut down quickly, their ability to keep radioactivity from escaping would be put to the test, according to an internal commission document.
The document says Canada's seven nuclear stations, which all use Candu technology, have a feature known as 'positive reactivity feedback,' in which their atomic chain reactions automatically speed up if the water pumped into the reactors to cool them leaks, one of the worst accidents possible at a nuclear station. If reactors aren't immediately shut down during this type of incident, positive reactivity leads to a quick snowballing in the pace of nuclear reactions, which in turn could cause potentially damaging overheating.
The fear is that with a large loss of coolant, such overheating could put the nuclear facilities' containment features - the concrete domes and other protective mechanisms around reactors that are the last-ditch defences to stop the spread of radioactivity into the environment - to a dangerous test.
The commission is monitoring the problem closely because positive reactivity could lead to 'severe core damage and early challenge of containment integrity if not arrested in time' during a severe loss of coolant accident, the document said."
Now I'm not a nuclear engineer, and I don't pretend to understand much about nuclear power generation. But I am your typical consumer. And no matter how many times I hear from pro-nuclear types that nuclear is safe, it's stuff like this that makes me realize we're probably a lot better off spending our time and money expanding our renewable energy and smart grid infrastructure.
Of course, I'll probably get quite a few hostile comments to that statement. But the fact is, if a bunch of solar panels or wind turbines overheat - I don't need to be worried about radioactivity issues. And that makes all the difference.
Jeff
It may not have made as many waves as the Michael Jackson story, but last week, after the House passed the cap-and-trade bill, the media response was overwhelming. Not that anyone should be surprised. This is a huge issue.
However, it seemed that much of the earliest coverage stirred up an awful lot of hostility and opposition. And it was everywhere. From the most conservative blogs to the most liberal social media sites - those who oppose any kind of effective climate change legislation were not pacing back and forth in the waiting room. They were hitting up every possible media outlet to express their opinions and outrage.
Now I have no intention of opening up the global warming debate here. Those who believe global warming is some kind of scam are not going to change the minds of those who believe there's something to it. And vice-versa.
However, one thing that I'm finding increasingly frustrating is the amount of manipulated data that's being disseminated all over the internet...and mainstream media.
Let's first take a look at the data that was debunked earlier in the year - but was used as a rallying cry on Fox & Friends last Friday.
You've likely heard it before — that cap-and-trade will cost consumers an extra $3,100 a year. This is the figure that a handful of bureaucrats in D.C. came up with after massaging some data found in an MIT study.
John Reilly, one of the study's authors told House Minority Leader, John Boehner that the MIT study had been misrepresented in press releases distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Reilly stated that it was misleading and simplistic to only look at the impact on energy prices, as it didn't account for the proposals that have been designed to offset the energy cost impacts on middle and lower income households.
Of course, it wasn't just Boehner's office that pumped out the press releases about the supposed high costs associated with cap-and-trade.
The Heritage Foundation chimed in with their analysis of the bill which they claim adds little more than a massive energy tax in disguise that promises job losses, income cuts and a sharp left turn toward big government.
Their cost estimate is $1,500 a year.
On the other side of the coin, we have John Reilly's estimate of about $800 a year. . .an EPA analysis which estimates a cost of between $98 and $140 a year. . .and a Congressional Budget Office estimate that puts the total at $175 a year.
I suspect all of these numbers have already been run through the opposition's spin mill, rejected thoroughly, and blasted back out on the internet.
Either way, no matter how accurate or manipulated the data - the truth will only be realized in practice.
Listen: Certainly no one wants to spend more money for electricity. Especially during these rough economic times. And this is what opponents of climate change legislation are banking on - telling us that energy will cost more because it will cost more to produce. But isn't this really just an illusion - like the "cheap" energy we consume today?
I would argue that energy production would not cost more. The price we pay to the utilities for that energy, however, would. And there's a very important difference between the two.
What we're really talking about here is attaching an environmental cost to the production of electricity. But that cost has always been there. It's just that you and I never see that cost on our bill.
Bottom line: There is a definite environmental cost associated with the production and combustion of fossil fuels. And that cost is the deterioration of natural capital (water, minerals, fish, trees, oil, soil, air, and living systems, including wetlands, estuaries, coral reefs and rainforests)
Now before you write this off as some kind of random environmental agenda, hear me out...
As explained in the book Natural Capitalism (which is an absolute must-read for environmentalists, economists and business leaders), natural capital has never really been valued appropriately. Rather, it has constantly been liquidated, thereby further enabling the deterioration of ecosystem services that really represent the most important type of capital - things like the regulation of atmosphere and climate, the cycling of nutrients and water, pollination, control of pests and diseases, and the maintenance of biodiversity. While the value of these free, natural, and self-regulating services are worth trillions annually, this value has never really been reflected on balance sheets.
Instead, the costs associated with the loss of natural capital have long been externalized onto the environment. i.e.) you, me and every single thing that lives around us.
And the truth is, we're only talking about CO2 with this cap-and-trade bill. As far as I'm concerned, there's still the mercury issues associated with coal, the waste issues associated with nuclear, and the security issues associated with our reliance on oil. These aren't included in the bill. But throw those on your tab, and you'll see an even higher cost per kWh (or higher cost per gallon of gas when referring to oil being used primarily as a transportation fuel)
The price we pay for energy today does not reflect the true cost of producing that energy. An effective climate change bill could at least begin to enable a more accurate cost structure.
I know, I know. No one wants to shell out a penny more for anything. And I'm no different. But if we truly believe in a free market system, than we should not resist a fair and accurate cost analysis of energy. Because the truth is, it's never really existed.
Now understand, I'm not saying cap-and-trade is the answer. To be honest, this thing is so politically-motivated, it's hard to figure out the most effective, and honest solution. Seems to me, the best way to do this is simply to charge consumers the REAL price. I'm confident that if no subsidies existed (direct or indirect) for any kind of power generation (fossil fuel or renewable), and ALL natural capital costs were figured into the equation - the market would dictate the rapid expansion of renewable energy and smart grid development, which would thereby enable a decrease in fossil fuel consumption, and ultimately a decrease in CO2 emissions.
Jeff
Yesterday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced it had adopted a new regulation that will require all new cars sold in the state to have windows that reflect or absorb heat-producing rays from the sun.
The goal is to help keep cars cooler so less air conditioning will be needed. This will increase fuel efficiency and prevent about 700,000 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. That's the equivalent of taking 140,000 cars off the road for an entire year.
There are two types of glass technology that are likely to be used...
Infrared Reflective Glass - which uses a coated film placed between two pieces of glass.
Solar Absorbing Glass - which is laminated using a solar absorbing material that limits solar energy going into the vehicle.
Compared to the cars available today, these new windows will block 33% more heat-producing rays from the sun, thereby cooling the vehicle's cabin by about 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
As side benefits, these windows will also reduce upholstery fading and dashboard cracking.
The new regulation goes into effect in 2012.
CARB also announced another new regulation yesterday that requires more than a dozen landfills in the state to install equipment that captures methane gas.
I don't have the details, but I'm assuming that much of this methane will be used by waste management companies to generate electricity. This is actually becoming more and more of a common practice. In fact, according to the DOE, in 2005, there were roughly 400 operational landfill gas projects in the United States delivering 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity - or enough to power more than 725,000 homes, and heat close to 1.2 million homes.
In 2007, Waste Management, Inc. reported that there were 427 operational projects in the U.S. delivering 1,275 megawatts, as well as 550 candidate landfills identified by the EPA. Combined, these projects would amount to 2,595 megawatts, or enough to power more than 2.3 million homes.
To put that in perspective, based on the 2006 U.S. Census, which estimated housing units data, this is enough juice to power every housing unit in the states of Delaware, Wyoming, Vermont, South Dakota, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia, combined.
Methane (which is about 50 percent of landfill gas), is 23 times as potent as CO2, and has more than doubled its atmospheric concentrations over the last two centuries.
Jeff
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