Sen. Reid Says Obama Will Push Green Jobs

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he is sure that President Barack Obama will discuss proposals for supporting energy-related green jobs during his jobs speech next week, reports the National Journal.

The Nevada Democrat said during his annual Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas that he is encouraging Obama to make a serious push for green jobs. John Podesta, president of the liberal group Center for American Progress, has urged the same.

Podesta told the National Journal that he met with Obama and urged the president to back short-term initiatives, including an Energy Department-run rebate program for investment in energy-efficient homes. The proposal, which has been referred to as “cash for caulkers,” reportedly would create construction and manufacturing jobs.

“Get those retrofits going, get those home products rolling out the door,” Podesta said. “I think there will be a lot of the support for this in Home Depots and Walmarts — 90 percent of that content is made domestically.”

Podesta clarified that he is not endorsing sweeping energy policies, such as Obama’s potential clean electricity mandate, because those would be unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled House. Moreover, he believes that type of massive legislation would take years to have any noticeable impact on job creation.

US photovoltaics to power Australia’s first utility-scale solar power farm

AUSTRALIA’s first utility-scale solar power project, the Greenough River Solar Farm, is now underway, but will use photovoltaic modules from the US.

The solar farm is scoped to be 10 times larger than any other operating solar project in the country. It is expected to be fully operational mid 2012.

Financially, WA power utility Verve Energy and GE Energy Financial Services will each own 50 percent of the solar project. The WA state government will provide $20 million, including $10 million from the WA Royalties for Regions program.

All of the solar farm’s energy output will be purchased by the WA Water Corporation, for powering the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant.

Significantly, the 150, 000 advanced thin film photovoltaic modules at the core of the solar farm will be supplied by First Solar, who will also provide engineering, procurement and construction services, in addition to operations and maintenance support once the solar farm is operational.

First Solar is a US-based company, with manufacturing facilities in Germany, Malaysia and in Ohio, US. Electronics News understands no Australian photovoltaic  manufacturers will be involved in this project.

According to Verve Energy’s Peter Winner, the tendering process was open to the industry and market players.

“It was an open process. All the big boys took part, and First Solar came out better,” Winner said.
Spokesperson for First Solar, Peri Muddle, said the company was focused on building a team in Australia to pursue opportunities in what the firm viewed as a burgeoning market (especially given the region's solar reception), and there would be the chance for local manufacturers and supply chain players to participate in future projects.
For GE Energy Financial Services, the project represents its first renewable energy investment in Australia.

Providing clean, affordable and sustainable energy to partially power the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant, near the town of Binningup, the solar project is expected to create more than 50 construction jobs.

The project will produce energy during the day, and will displace 25,000 tonnes per year of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of taking 5,000 cars off the road.

Suntech To Supply 23-MW Solar Farm Near US-Mexico Border

Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP, K3ND.SG) has signed a contract to supply the solar panels for a 23-megawatt solar farm planned for the California desert near the Mexico border.
The company was expected to announce Wednesday that it will provide about 100,000 solar panels using new manufacturing technology that boosts the amount of sunlight the panels can convert into electricity.
Privately held SunPeak Solar LLC is developing the project on 123 acres of land in Imperial County, Calif., owned by the Imperial Irrigation District, a municipal utility. The district will lease the property to the developer and buy the solar power generated from the project.
The North American Development Bank has agreed to provide $77.4 million in financing for the project.
The bank, backed by the U.S. and Mexican governments, provides loans for infrastructure projects on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The North American Development Bank may provide loans for additional renewable energy projects throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region in Arizona, California, Texas, and the Mexican states of Baja California, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, said Juan Antonio Flores, a spokesman for the bank.
In particular, the bank is considering providing financing for two solar farms being developed in Arizona, and a wind farm proposed for Tamaulipas, with loans that together could total $262 million, Flores said.
China-based Suntech plans to use its Vd SuperPoly solar panels to supply the project.
California utilities are required, under state law, to use solar, wind or other renewable power generation for one-third of the electricity they sell by 2020.

Japan renewable energy push clears key hurdle

A lower house committee of Japan's parliament passed a bill on Tuesday to promote investment in solar and other renewable energy sources, marking an important step toward the country's goal of reducing its reliance on nuclear power.
The radiation crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has shattered the public's confidence in the safety of atomic power, prompting an overhaul of energy policy centered on boosting generation from solar and wind.
The bill, which will require utilities to buy electricity from solar and other renewable sources, is now in line to be approved by the upper house as early as later this week. Related laws are due to take effect in July, 2012.
The bill's passage follows weeks of intense deliberations between ruling and opposition parties, and paves the way for the resignation of unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had designated its passage as a condition of his departure.
"It is for certain that we are steering our wheels toward the promotion of the renewable sector," Yasutoshi Nishimura, a lawmaker in the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party who helped negotiate the bill, told Reuters in a recent interview.
The bill leaves key details unresolved that could ultimately dilute its impact on energy policy. These include the price to be paid by utilities for green energy, which will be decided by a parliament-appointed panel not set to meet until next year.
Japan's revolving-door governments is another concern given the mandatory review of the scheme after 3 years.
The new laws will require utilities to buy any amount of electricity generated from solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and small-sized hydro power plants at preset rates for up to 20 years, and allow utilities to pass the cost to end-users.
The bill includes provisions for energy-intensive industries, such as electric furnace steel makers, that will trim extra costs by at least 80 percent in a bid to cushion the impact on the world's third-biggest economy.
The government has said it wants the feed-in tariff scheme to boost capacity of the five renewable energy types by more than 30,000 megawatts (MW) over a decade. That would add over 12 percent to Japan's total generation capacity before the nuclear disaster of 240,000 MW.
But critics of the bill have argued that the mandatory review after 3 years may prevent companies and individuals from taking the risk of investing in renewable energy projects, some of which can take much longer to generate profits.

Solar energy powerhouse born

A Melbourne-based company hopes to build one of the nation's largest solar electricity generating operations on thousands of Florida acres.
While National Solar Power Partners LLC has signed an agreement with Progress Energy, funding for the $1.6 billion project will include tax credits that polluting industries can buy to compensate for emissions.
The company proposes to build about 20 separate solar arrays. Each will be on 200 acres of leased or purchased land and will generate 20 megawatts of electricity.
"They prefer to have us in a distributed fashion so that we're spread out throughout their service area," CEO James Scrivener said.
Forty-year-old Scrivener is one of three founders of the 3-year-old Brevard company, all of whom graduated from Florida Tech.
Gadsden, Hardee, Osceola and Suwannee counties are being considered to host the project, which will employ 400 during construction and about 120 during operation. Some 4,000 acres will include 20 sites that generate an estimated 400 total megawatts of electricity, enough power for the needs of 32,000 homes. Scrivener said the first arrays could be working by the end of 2012.
Brevard did not have adequate sites for the project. However, the company could bring attention to Brevard as a center of solar energy innovation.
The sale of renewable energy certificates will generate 2 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, in addition to approximately 5 cents per kilowatt hour for the sale of electricity.
"That allows us to be effectively competitive with fossil fuel energy generation," Scrivener said.
While the company has a business plan, James Fenton, director of the Florida Solar Energy Center, said solar power technology might not yet be profitable.
"It's a good plan," said Fenton, who fears that producing electricity from the sun could cost more than National Solar can earn from its sales of electricity and tax credits. "The devil's in the details," he said.
Progress Energy spokesman Tim Leljedal said state law requires his company to buy electric power from the clean energy producers, but Progress only has to pay National Solar what amounts to a wholesale price, which is now about 4 cents per kilowatt hour.
The solar panels, which will be most efficient during midday, won't help Progress Energy handle peak energy demand, which comes in the evening during the summer and early morning in the winter, Leljedal said.

Solar will force coal and nuclear out of the energy business

A solar energy revolution is brewing that will put the coal and nuclear industries out of business. Solar is already reaching price parity with coal in many parts of Australia. In contrast to coal and nuclear, solar is fully sustainable and safe. Solar is now an established industry that is growing very rapidly.
The CO₂ emissions from a modest four-star house with modern efficient appliances are about 6 tonnes per year. Emissions from a typical car driving 10,000 km per year are 1.5 tonnes per year. Installing a 5 kilowatt photovoltaic panel will fully offset these amounts of CO₂ by reducing the need to operate a coal fired power station.

We’re well on the way to grid parity

Photovoltaic power has reached retail grid parity for three out of four Australians – everywhere except Victoria, Tasmania and Canberra. Retail grid parity means that it’s cheaper to get electricity from photovoltaic panels on your house roof than to buy it from the grid.
In Adelaide, photovoltaic power is only two-thirds the price of retail grid electricity. By 2015, grid parity will be achieved in all of Australia, as well as in nearly every temperate country in the world – about 6 billion people.
Eliminating CO2 emissions from electricity production will be easier, cheaper and faster than most pundits predict. The faster that the solar energy industry develops, the less damage from greenhouse gas warming will occur.

Solar or clean coal?

At the moment, the only large scale energy sources are fossil, nuclear and solar energy (both photovoltaics and solar thermal). Other sources such as wind, hydro, biomass, geothermal and ocean energy can make large regional contributions, but cannot provide a global energy solution.

One of the biggest solar plants in France produces 36 megawattes of electricity (AFP Photo/Boris Horvat)

Currently, electricity in Australia comes mostly from coal, which produces lots of greenhouse gas emissions. So called “clean coal” technology with carbon capture and storage doesn’t exist on a commercial scale. It will be much more expensive than dirty coal, and is in competition with falling solar power costs.
Solar and wind already dominate new generation technology in many countries. Indeed, it could be that no new coal fired power stations will ever be built in Australia.

Is nuclear an option?

It is difficult to see how the nuclear power industry will cope with falling solar prices and increased perceptions of risk following the Fukushima accident. Solar and wind power will soon put the nuclear power construction industry out of business.
Solar energy is vast, ubiquitous and indefinitely sustainable. There will never be a major solar accident, there’s minimal waste disposal issues, and we will never go to war over solar energy. Solar energy systems utilise only very common materials that we could never run out of and there’s minimal need for mining (about 1% of that needed for an equivalent fossil or nuclear power plant).
Australia receives 30,000 times more solar energy each year than all fossil fuel use combined. Australia’s electricity consumption could be met from roof-mounted photovoltaic panels. About 0.2% of the world’s land area would be required to provide all of the world’s electricity from solar – much of it on building roofs and in deserts.

Solar industry is booming

Worldwide solar sales are 100 times larger than in the year 2000, and the industry turnover now approaches one hundred billion dollars per year. In Australia, industry sales have grown from 10 megawatts in 2007 to 350 megawatts last year.
Sustained expansion is rapidly driving down costs – they have halved since 2007. Further large cost reductions are in train, through both technical innovation and mass-production learning curves.

Technical innovations are reducing the costs of solar, making it more appealing. (AAP Image/Ray Strange)

It’s possible to estimate the cost of subsidising and accelerating solar technology to provide most of the world’s electricity. We add up the declining price difference year by year between solar and wholesale fossil energy, until it reaches zero. It would cost about a trillion dollars, spread over the next 20 years. That works out at $1 per week for each of the billion citizens of rich countries like Australia.

How do we store solar energy?

As the solar industry grows it will eventually be necessary to store energy. By far the largest energy storage today is pumped hydro – about three times larger than Australia’s entire electricity capacity.
During the day, water can be pumped up a 500 metre high hill with solar power, and released at night through a turbine to generate electricity. Pumped hydro doesn’t need to be located on a river, since the same water goes round and round a circle. Since storage is needed only for a day, the water store can be quite small.
The area of lake required to provide one day’s storage of Australia’s entire electricity production is 5 m2 per person. There are thousands of suitable sites in Australia.

Japan's Green Energy

With the nuclear power station disaster in Japan still fresh in the minds, the Japanese demand for renewable energy is on the increase, however, a country that was once the world's solar cell manufacturing leader, the Japanese now trail the US and China. To improve green energy take up, the Government has started deliberating on legislation to create a system that would make power utility companies buy all the power that is produced by renewable means at a fixed price.


This new system could ensure stable power resources and promote industrial development, however, the prices at which companies buy electricity must be appropriate; High prices could lead to complacency and the sector may not need to innovate and improve turbines and solar panels to get better prices. Too low and newcomers to the generation market may not see the financial benefits.


Thermal power generation is increasing being used to make up for the falling use of nuclear power in Japan but this option is expensive and dirty. Whilst the opposition agree with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan that Japan should be using more renewable energy, currently it only accounts for 1% of power generated in the country. With the proposal purchasing system this could make a significant contribution to the renewable energy market.


The new purchasing system is expected to increase demand for both solar and wind, which will help manufacturers cut prices in line with the US and China thanks to high production and this new electricity market could even grow to the size of the car industry in Japan. Natural energy use should be promoted to help change this nation's industrial profile and take a positive step away from nuclear power.