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Renewable Energy Bankruptcy Threatens Spanish Banks

December 7, 2015

Renewable Energy Bankruptcy Threatens Spanish Banks

In another sign of the turbulent times for the renewable energy sector, Spain’s Abengoa has declared bankruptcy. The bankruptcy is notable for several reasons. First, it suggests how difficult the transition from conventional energy firms to solvent and stable renewable energy companies will be. Second, it shows how connected the economy is and how turbulence in the energy sector could easily spread to other sectors of the economy creating a broader economic slowdown at any point going forward.

Abengoa’s problems today stem from overly aggressive decisions made during the years of heavy expansion that renewable power saw in Spain. Abengoa’s bankruptcy is significant given the size of the company; the firm employs 24,000 people and is involved in a range of renewables businesses from biomass conversion to seawater desalinization. U.S. investment bank Citi led a secondary shares offering earlier this year which looks like a major embarrassment for the firm as this point. While Abengoa’s shares have had a tough year thus far, investors still appeared to be caught by surprise to some extent by the bankruptcy filing as its Spanish shares plunged by more than half after the filing.

Abengoa’s financing has been something of a black box according to analysts and that certainly has led to greater confusion among investors. Still, the firm is not alone in that approach to its capital structure as a number of other companies in the renewable sector follow the same pattern. Broadly speaking Abengoa’s bankruptcy suggests the renewables space is still more dependent on subsidies than many firms would like to admit. It’s unclear what it will take to get many firms operating on their own in a stable and solvent fashion. Renewables in general tend to require large amounts of upfront investment and hence often require significant amounts of debt investment. The problem is that debt becomes an anchor anytime a subsector becomes oversupplied with output or when demand falls due to recessions or secular changes in energy consumption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fossil Fuel Companies Dominate EU Meetings on Climate and Energy Policy, Report Shows

November 10, 2015

Fossil Fuel Companies Dominate EU Meetings on Climate and Energy Policy, Report Shows

Big energy and fossil fuel companies are enjoying privileged access to the EU’s top climate policy decision makers in the run-up to December’s Paris climate conference a new report reveals.

The report by transparency research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) looks at all meetings held by Commissioners Miguel Arias Cañete and Maros Šefčovič during their first year in office. In total, energy companies make up 30 per cent of all lobby encounters with the commissioners and their cabinets.

When it comes to discussing climate and energy policy, three-quarters of the European Commission’s encounters with the energy industry were with fossil fuel companies including BP, Statoil, and Shell.

Renewables vs Fossil Fuels

At the same time, specialist renewable energy companies have not enjoyed a single one-to-one meeting with the Commissioners. Meanwhile, only six renewable energy associations had meeting.

In fact, for every meeting with the renewables sector, Cañete – a former director of two oil companies now responsible for energy and climate action – had 22 meetings with the fossil fuel industry. Šefčovič, who is in charge of the Energy Union, had just one meeting with renewables compared to 29 with the fossil fuel industry.
Graphs via CEO report

CEO researcher and campaigner Belén Balanyá said: “This data is extremely worrying given the sensitive topics these Commissioners have been in charge of over the past year. Industry-friendly policies on car emissions, Energy Union, the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the upcoming COP21 UN climate negotiations clearly reflect the disturbing level of access to decision-makers enjoyed by dirty energy.

“While the science says we must urgently and drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost renewables, and dramatically increase energy efficiency, the Commission is sadly moving in the opposite direction.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The stuff problem

September 30, 2015

‘Yes to renewables!’ Hundreds rallied outside the Victorian Parliament House, Melbourne, 10 December 2013. Takver under a Creative Commons Licence

How much mined material will we need to build a 100-per-cent renewable world? Danny Chivers works it out.

The problem with wind turbines, solar panels, ground-source heat pumps and electric cars is that they’re all made of stuff. When people like me make grand announcements (and interactive infographics) explaining how we don’t need to burn fossil fuels because fairly shared renewable energy could give everyone on the planet a good quality of life, this is the bit of the story that often gets missed out. We can’t just pull all this sustainable technology out of the air – it’s made from annoyingly solid materials that need to come from somewhere.

So how much material would we need to transition to a 100-per-cent renewable world? For my new NoNonsense book, Renewable Energy: cleaner, fairer ways to power the planet, I realized I needed to find an answer to this question. It’s irresponsible to advocate a renewably powered planet without being open and honest about what the real-world impacts of such a transition might be.

In this online article, I make a stab at coming up with an answer – but first I need to lay down a quick proviso. All the numbers in this piece are rough, ball-park figures, that simply aim to give us a sense of the scale of materials we’re talking about. Nothing in this piece is meant to be a vision of the ‘correct’ way to build a 100-per-cent renewably powered world. There is no single path to a clean-energy future; we need a democratic energy transition led by a mass global movement creating solutions to suit people’s specific communities and situations, not some kind of top-down model imposed from above. This article just presents one scenario, with the sole aim of helping us to understand the challenge.

– See more at: http://newint.org/blog/2015/08/15/material-requirements/#sthash.FQbbzNu7.dpuf

 

Germany Now Faced With Thousands Of Aging Wind Farms

September 29, 2015

Germany Now Faced With Thousands Of Aging Wind Farms

Germany has long been a pioneer in the field of renewable energy, generating a record 78 percent of its power consumption from renewables in July of this year. In fact, Germany is one of the very few countries in the world that is actually struggling with too much renewable energy. The latest testimony to this fact is the new issue of decommissioning its old wind farms.

2011 was a turning point for the European giant as it started moving away from nuclear energy (post Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster) and began to replace it with renewables. However, wind energy made its foray in Germany well before 2011. Germany started building wind turbines in the mid-1990s and now there are almost 25,000 wind turbines in the country.

However, the problem now is that a large number of the 25,000 odd turbines have become too old. Close to 7,000 of those turbines will complete more than 15 years of operation by next year. Although these turbines can continue running, with some minor repairs and modifications, the question is whether it makes any economic sense to maintain them?

Related: Winners And Losers Of Iran’s Return To The Oil And Gas Markets

GermanyRenewable

(Click Image To Enlarge)

Image source: TriplePundit.com

Efficiency is the key

Beyond a period of 20 years, the guaranteed tariffs that are set for wind power are terminated, thereby making them unprofitable. “Today, there are entirely different technologies than there were a decade ago. The performance of the turbines have multiplied, the turbines are also more efficient than before”, said Dirk Briese of market research company called Wind- Research. It therefore makes sense to replace old turbines with newer ones. However, it is not very easy to dismantle an existing turbine and, while there are companies like PSM that specialize in dismantling of wind turbines, the costs of decommissioning can run upwards of $33,500 per turbine.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will Renewables Replace Fossil Fuels?

September 28, 2015

Wind+Solar

Will Renewables Replace Fossil Fuels?

Renewable energy development has taken off in the United States over the past decade.  Solar, wind, and other renewable technologies are projected to continue to grow rapidly. But renewables still have a long way to go to replace oil, coal, and natural gas as primary sources of energy.  What will it take to reach that threshold and what obstacles and limits do we need to understand as we transition to a truly sustainable energy economy?

We’ll examine these and other key questions regarding the outlook for renewable energy and what it means for America’s future.

Guests:

Key Questions:

Cost: What are the important factors driving the total cost of different renewable technologies—e.g. equipment vs. soft costs? How far will costs continue to decline? Will costs be affordable enough to deploy at very large scale?

Density/Scale: Renewables are generally diffuse and distributed energy sources, how does that aid or hinder their prospects to become a primary source of energy?

Energy Quality/Substitutability: Renewable energy is most commonly used to make electricity, how does that affect its substitutability for uses that are currently non-electric—i.e. thermal heating and transportation?

Storage: How important is storage to the future of renewable energy? Are the oft-cited issues about storage overstated?

Takeaways:

Bullets below summarize remarks by featured guests; they are not definitive statements by The Energy Xchange. In the spirit of discourse, this information may be revised through continued discussion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nuclear Lies About Renewable Energy

September 24, 2015

Nuclear Lies About Renewable Energy

solar_panels

London.

There’s no doubt about it. The British Government is spreading untruths about the price of renewable energy.

Is it deliberate? One can only assume so owing to the consistency of the pattern and the equally consistent refusal to explain or correct its misleading statements.

The context is also significant: it’s always in the context of supporting nuclear power over renewable energy sources.

One example came a few weeks ago when the Chancellor told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee in their ‘annual evidence session’ that the agreed ‘strike price’ of £92.50 per MWh (in 2012 money, RPI indexed) is “substantially cheaper than other low-carbon technology like offshore wind or onshore wind.”

This statement is palpably untrue. After RPI indexation £92.50 is actually £96.24 today’s money. Onshore wind and ground-based solar projects have bid for ‘contracts for difference’ (the main current support mechanism) and been awarded them at a price of around £80 per MWh.

Hello?? Is anyone at home?

Pressed on the justification for the claim the Treasury issued a statement: “Nuclear energy is an important part of the UK’s energy mix as we move towards a low carbon future. It is also the cheapest low carbon technology that can reliably generate electricity at such a large scale.”

 

There Are 800 Fossil Fuel Subsidies Around The World

September 23, 2015

There Are 800 Fossil Fuel Subsidies Around The World

There are 800 different programs around the world that subsidize fossil fuels, according to a new report from the OECD. The OECD released the report ahead of the international climate change negotiations set to take place in Paris in December, where the world has a “moral imperative to reach an ambitious and actionable agreement.”

Tackling climate change will be a monumental task, but key to the effort will be scrapping “lose-lose” fossil fuel subsidies, as the OECD calls them. Subsidizing oil, natural gas, and coal leads to distortions in prices, contributes to overconsumption of energy, and saps developing countries of revenues that could be used for much better investments in education and infrastructure.

They also lead to environmental fallout, with capital flowing to pollution-heavy industry and energy extraction. These investments, once made, can last for decades, essentially “locking-in” pollution for a long time to come. That is one of the glaring downsides to subsidizing fossil fuels. “Because they change the stream of income investors expect to receive for holding a particular asset, those subsidies influence investment choices and change the allocation of capital across sectors. In the case of certain fossil-fuel subsidies, there is therefore the risk that investors end up favouring sectors that produce fossil fuels or use them intensively, at the expense of cleaner forms of energy and other economic activities more generally,” the OECD wrote.

Related: Peak Oil Has More To Do With Oil Prices Than You May Think

The report only surveyed the OECD member countries (consisting of Western Europe, Japan, Korea, North America, and a few other rich countries), plus Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa. All told, the OECD concludedthat the world subsidized fossil fuels to the tune of $160 to $200 billion per year between 2010 and 2014, across 800 subsidy programs. That is much more than the $121 billion that renewable energy receives each year.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hundreds Rally in Alaska to Tell Obama ‘Climate Leaders Don’t Drill the Arctic’

September 3, 2015

Hundreds Rally in Alaska to Tell Obama ‘Climate Leaders Don’t Drill the Arctic’

Climate groups rallied in Anchorage, Alaska yesterday to demand that the U.S. government, President Obama and Alaskan leaders take the urgent action needed to stop climate change. The “Rally to Confront the Glacial Pace of Political Action” took place as President Obama met with ministers from around the world for the “GLACIER” conference.

Peggy Wilcox of Anchorage takes a selfie with Frostpaw the polar bear at the rally. Photo credit: Mark Meyer / Greenpeace
Peggy Wilcox of Anchorage takes a selfie with Frostpaw the polar bear at the rally. Photo credit: Mark Meyer / Greenpeace

More than 300 people participated in yesterday’s rally. The groups four “demands” for political leaders include:

  1. Support an immediate shift to the development and widespread implementation ofrenewable energy sources
  2. Support the call by global scientists to keep 80 percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground
  3. Protect and champion the rights of communities of color on the front lines of climate change
  4. Commit the U.S. to legally binding commitments at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference

In response to the President’s visit, Faith Gemmill of RedOil said, “Indigenous peoples of Alaska have seen alarming impacts from climate change already, and Shell’s drilling will only make them worse. We’ve seen over 300 wildfires this past summer which burned throughout the state and forced communities to evacuate, as well as the very real threat of actual forced relocation of coastal communities due to coastal sea ice loss and erosion.”

The President has said again and again that climate change poses a serious threat to humanity and in going to Alaska, he is highlighting how the state is on the front lines of the fight against climate change.

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Germany Struggles With Too Much Renewable Energy

August 18, 2015

Germany Struggles With Too Much Renewable Energy

Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has been one of the few countries that have successfully moved away from nuclear energy. Germany has so far successfully shut down its nine units that had the capacity of generating enough power for at least 20 million homes in Europe. In fact, the contribution of nuclear power in Germany’s electricity generation has now fallen to just 16 percent and renewables are now the preferred source of electricity generation in the country.

Image Source: GreenTechMedia

However, Germany and its neighbors are now facing an unusual problem. With the dramatic increase in green energy usage, Germany is generating so much electricity from renewables that it is finding it hard to handle it. The excess electricity that is generated is being spilled over to its neighboring countries, thereby increasing the threat of a power blackout should there be a sudden supply disruption.

How much should Germany invest to solve this problem?

Although Germany has increased its renewable energy generation by almost five times in the last decade, it has failed to invest in building the necessary infrastructure to carry this energy. The excess electricity that is being generated by Germany is spilling over to Poland and Czech Republic, two countries that are investing close to $180 million to shore up their grids from Germany’s power spillage.

“A huge accumulation of overflow increases the threat of a blackout. The root of the situation is allowing a huge amount of electricity to be generated regardless of the capacity of the grid,” said Zbynek Boldis of Czech grid CEPS AS. It is quite obvious that Germany needs to upgrade its network to accommodate the excess power. In fact, grid companies in Germany are set to invest close to $24 billion for upgrading their network and modify its existing high voltage power lines.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Distributed Energy Incentive Program Disproportionately Benefiting Fossil Fuels, Regulators OK With

August 16, 2015

California Distributed Energy Incentive Program Disproportionately Benefiting Fossil Fuels, Regulators OK With 

A California program designed to spur innovation in technologies for distributed generation of low-emission energy is disproportionately benefiting fossil fuels projects, primarily natural gas — and a new proposal to update the emissions threshold that determines which projects are eligible will not change that, critics of the program say.

Some 70 percent of the energy generation that has so far received rebates from California’s $83-million-a-year, ratepayer-funded Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) has been fossil-fueled, according to the Sierra Club.

SGIP, administered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), provides rebates for distributed energy systems installed on the customer side of the utility meter — “behind the meter” in industry parlance.

To qualify for funding, distributed energy system providers must demonstrate that their technology’s greenhouse gas emissions fall below a certain threshold, ensuring that it’s cleaner than the grid energy it will replace.

Janice Lin, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA), says that the new emissions threshold proposed by CPUC chairman Michael Picker is too high because it fails to properly account for California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which directs energy providers to increase procurement from renewable sources to 33 percent of the state’s total energy mix by 2020.

“If they had correctly factored in the 33 percent RPS,” Lin told DeSmog, “they would have arrived at a much lower emissions factor threshold.”

In one example cited in a comment CESA and the Natural Resources Defense Council submitted to the CPUC, a consumer using a distributed energy system that adheres to the proposed emissions factor could be responsible for as much as 23 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than if they were to simply stick with the grid, which is easily on pace to achieve

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Renewable Energy: Why Emissions and the Economy Don’t Tell the Whole Story

August 13, 2015

Renewable Energy: Why Emissions and the Economy Don’t Tell the Whole Story 

Last week, President Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, the United States’ strongest climate policy to date. The plan aims to reduce coal-fired power plant emissions by allowing states to devise their own plans to reach federally-mandated emissions reduction targets. This choose-your-own-adventure policy could send states down very different paths, some worse for the environment and community resilience than others.

A bragging point for the Clean Power Plan is its flexibility; all currently identified low-carbon energy sources can play a role in state plans, including natural gas, nuclear, hydropower and other renewables. But despite the low-carbon nature these energy technologies share, they differ greatly in overall community and environmental benefit. Natural gas is abundantly available today due to controversial fracking technology (most of which occurs near rural communities); hydropower requires dam construction (sometimes on massive scales); and nuclear power comes with the risk of disastrous accidents, issues around extraction and long-term storage problems.

The final Clean Power Plan rule does emphasize renewable energy and energy efficiency over natural gas; a “Clean Energy Incentive Program” provides credits that can be traded later as part of emissions trading systems to states that expand wind, solar and energy efficiency efforts in the two years before state implementation plans take effect. However, shifting from coal to natural gas is one of the three building blocks EPA used in calculating state goals, so states are still permitted to emphasize natural gas in their implementation plans, even if it’s not incentivized. Shifting from one fossil fuel to another is not a sustainable energy future for any state, even if it slightly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

– See more at: http://www.iatp.org/blog/201508/renewable-energy-why-emissions-and-the-economy-don’t-tell-the-whole-story#sthash.efdtxaKW.dpuf

 

New Report Reveals Corporate-Funded Hydra Head Blocking U.S. Renewable Energy

July 28, 2015

New Report Reveals Corporate-Funded Hydra Head Blocking U.S. Renewable Energy

A new report from the Energy and Policy Institute reveals the fossil fuel- and utility sector-funded network working to curb the proliferation of renewable energy in the United States.

Co-authored by Gabe Elsner and Matt Kasper and titled, “Attacks on Renewable Energy Policy in 2015,” the 86-page report shines a spotlight on the bevy of coordinated attacks on renewable energy policy happening in in Washington and all fifty states.

Why all 50? Because that’s how this network flexes its muscle and advances corporate interests.

Look no further than the State Policy Networl (SPN), an entity created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) corporate bill mill, which acts as the central hub around which the rest of the spokes in the think-tank (or “stink tank”) and public relations wheel connect. Both of these groups play a central role in the report.

“Once ALEC model bills are introduced, allied legislators and fossilfuel-funded front groups cite flawed reports to back up their reasoning to either repeal or weaken” laws favorable to advancing renewable energy, the report explains. “[Thereafter], State Policy Network lobbyists…[provide] testimony in favor of the ALEC bills. Finally, fossil fuel-funded members groups, such as Americans for Prosperity, put additional pressure on lawmakers to pass ALEC model bills.”

But ALEC and SPN are just two examples and although they play a pivotal role, the report points to 23 other industry-funded front groups also part of the anti-renewable influence peddling machine. Others include names familiar to DeSmog readers, including the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and Institute for Energy Research, the Heartland Institute and Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) and others.

Not Just Money in Politics, Lobbying

The report has citation after citation raising dire questions about the state, and often lack thereof, of U.S. democracy. But just as important is the premise it presents.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Clean Energy Finance Corporation: Tony Abbott defends decision to axe wind, solar from renewables spending

July 13, 2015

Clean Energy Finance Corporation: Tony Abbott defends decision to axe wind, solar from renewables spending

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says it is “no secret” he wants the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) abolished, but while it is still in place it should be as useful as possible.

The Opposition and the Greens have accused the Government of trying to get rid of the taxpayer-funded authority by stealth, by issuing a new directive to stop the CEFC from investing in wind farms and household rooftop solar projects.

“The Parliament set up this corporation with a very expert board and very expert staff to make these decisions free of political interference,” Opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler said.

“What we see now is Tony Abbott trying to nobble this corporation for his own ideological purposes.”

But Mr Abbott says it is not useful for the CEFC to invest in established technologies that can easily attract private funding.

“The best thing that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation can do is invest in new and emerging technologies, the things that might not otherwise get finance,” he said.

“That’s why we’ve got this draft direction there.”

The Government has twice tried and failed to win parliamentary support to shut down the statutory authority, and Mr Abbott has previously described the wind turbines as “visually awful”.

The directive on wind and solar stems from the deal the Government struck with crossbench senators earlier this year to reduce the Renewable Energy Target.

Part of that agreement said the Government would write to the CEFC to ensure “significantly” increased uptake of large-scale solar, emerging renewable technologies and energy efficiency.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message

July 8, 2015

In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message

climate films
If you’d like, I’m what you’d call an ex-(aspiring) filmmaker, an early vanguard of what promises to be, in one way or another, an eventual mass exodus from the film and television industries. I won’t go into my reasoning behind film and television’s future demise here, but suffice to say, if left to its own devices, the future of film and television is in the hands of peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization.

The reasons for why I quit the industry are wide and varied, ranging from a strong dislike of narcissism, an aversion to big business (which makes all the necessary high-tech equipment), an abhorence of the massive amounts of trash one sees resulting from a film production, a concern about the ridiculous amounts of energy (read: fossil fuels) that goes into making a film, and much else. It’s the last one that I want to touch upon here, film and television in the age of fossil fuels and the climate change dilemma.

Although I wasn’t aware of peak oil ten years or so ago when I quit film and television once and for all (be it making the stuff or watching it), I was however aware of anthropogenic climate change – which I believed in back then, and still do today. That being said, I had a few problems coming to terms with climate change and the stupendous amounts of energy required to power all the massively blazing lights, cameras, editing systems, projectors, and everything else that went into my chosen line of work. When I finally reached my impasse I decided to say “stuff this” and so I went ahead and quit.

Nonetheless, I’m apparently not much of a trend-setter, and so ten years on the film and television industries still seem to be doing thriving. In fact, last I heard, there’s a new thing out there called (ahem) Nyet-Flix.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/07/in-films-about-climate-change-the-medium-is-the-wrong-message/#sthash.T6Swf3lV.dpuf

 

Pope Francis’ Encyclical Is A Sincere Call For Climate Action, Economic Justice

June 19, 2015

Pope Francis’ Encyclical Is A Sincere Call For Climate Action, Economic Justice

Pope Francis has released his long awaited encyclical, or teaching document, on climate justice and the environment, and it flies in the face of everything climate deniers stand for.

The encyclical is officially called “Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home,” and it makes a compelling case for humanity’s moral responsibility to “protect our common home” by tackling the root causes of two of the greatest interlinked global crises of our time: climate change and poverty.

“[T]he earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor,” Pope Francis writes. Echoing his earlier critique of capitalism and inequality, the Pope links the pollution and waste degrading our environment directly to our “throwaway culture” that, unlike nature, does not seek to reuse and recycle every resource as a valuable constituent of the circle of life.

“We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations,” the Pope writes. He faults this mode of consumption for creating global warming, and concludes: “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”

The Pope unequivocally embraces the science showing mankind is responsible for global warming:

“A number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.”

He specifically calls for policies to change the way we power human society:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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