Fiji making its mark in renewable energy
Solar energy: Innovative start-up puts Fiji ahead on renewable energy, ABC News, 1 July 16 By Pacific economic and business reporter Jemima Garrett Fiji is making its mark as a leader in renewable energy thanks to an innovative start-up company focusing on supplying energy to the corporate sector.
Sunergise is the brain-child of entrepreneurs from Africa and the Pacific and has attracted investment interest from the World Bank as well as from Australia, New Zealand, North America and China……..
The installation of the first 700 photovoltaic cells at the marina was completed in 2012, just two days before Cyclone Evan hit, with winds gusting up to 270 kph.
Only one panel was damaged.
Sunergise has since completed two more installations at the Port of Denarau, creating the biggest marina-based solar plant in the world.
Australia ‘well behind’
In Australia, corporate solar is lagging behind residential investment and Sunergise is something advocacy group Solar Citizens would like to see more of.
“Australia leads the world in terms of residential roof-top solar,” Solar Citizen consumer campaigner Reece Turner said.
“Mums and dads have invested $8 billion of their own money in solar panels in just the last six or seven years. But we are well behind in the commercial space; comparatively we are probably 20th or 30th in the world in terms of commercial solar.
“That is where we are seeing some of the growth now but we really need to incentivise that uptake of commercial solar.”
We sell energy’
Sunergise’s business model is to focus on blue chip corporate clients and to own and operate the infrastructure they put on their roof.
“We don’t sell solar panels, we sell energy,” Sunergise chairman Bob Lyon said.
“We install the panels, the clients get an instant discount on their power, they don’t pay anything [for the infrastructure].”
Sunergise sells contracts that run for 10 or more years, with the client enjoying an initial saving of about 10 per cent and certainty on their power costs for the full term of the contract.
One of Fiji’s top hotels, the Tokoriki Island resort, uses Sunergise’s solar power technology and has cut its power bill by 50 per cent and silenced its expensive diesel generators.
The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, its private sector arm, made its decision to take a 20 per cent stake in Sunergise based on the skills of its people………http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-30/innovative-start-up-puts-fiji-ahead-on-renewable-energy/7557594
Nuclear power generation no longer makes sense: renewables set to boom in California
As Nuclear Plants Shut Down, Renewable Energy Could Boom A California utility wants to close the state’s last nuclear power plant and replace it with solar and wind farms. Take Part JUN 29, 2016 Taylor Hill is an associate editor at TakePart covering environment and wildlife. “…….The shutdown has implications nationwide, as it shows how dozens of other aging nuclear plants could also be closed in favor of cheap natural gas or renewable energy…….
“Given these and other uncertainties, the parties cannot, and it would be a mistake to try to, specify all the necessary replacement procurement now,” PG&E stated in the proposal to shutter Diablo Canyon.
The boom in rooftop solar systems will also help meet electricity demand, said Geisha Williams, president of PG&E. Photovoltaic panels installed on the roofs of homes and businesses account for an estimated 5 percent of California’s electricity generation.
“You don’t need [Diablo Canyon],” Williams told KQED. “There’s been so much energy efficiency. There’s been so much power that’s been generated by customers on their own private solar rooftop.”
The nuclear power decline could be a turning point for solar.
“To the extent that any capacity is retired—nuclear or otherwise—it’s an opportunity for new solar development,” said Shayle Kann, senior vice president of research for Greentech Media.
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is calling for solar capacity to grow from 26 gigawatts to 140 gigawatts by the end of 2020 and for half a billion solar panels to be installed by the end of her first term if she is elected…….
The cost of producing electricity from photovoltaic panels is expected to drop by 59 percent worldwide by 2025, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency, making solar cheaper than fossil fuels.
“The fact is that we live in a world where technologically, financially, environmentally, and ethically, nuclear power generation no longer makes sense,” Dorsey said……http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/06/29/solar-nuclear-california-future
Four new solar power plants in Fukushima
Mitsubishi Materials builds solar plants in Fukushima, Japan Today , By Shinichi Kato, Nikkei BP CleanTech Institute, 29 June 16, TOKYO —Mitsubishi Materials Corp has started operation of solar power plants with a total output of about 8.3MW in Fukushima Prefecture.
The power producer for the mega (large-scale) solar power plants, Yabuki Solar Power Plant, is MM Sun Power, a 50-50 joint venture between Mitsubishi Materials and Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance Co Ltd.
The plants were built by using four unoccupied areas of Yabuki Techno Park, which Mitsubishi Materials Real Estate Corp, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Materials, runs in Yabuki-machi, Nishishirakawa-gun, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
The Yabuki Solar Power Plant consists of four solar power plants built on the four areas. The total site area is 103,624m2, and the total output of solar panels installed at the plants is 8.284MW. The plants transmit a total of 6.544MW of electricity to the power grid…….http://www.japantoday.com/category/business/view/mitsubishi-materials-builds-solar-plants-in-fukushima
International Energy Agency favours clean energy to cut air-pollution mortality
Shift to Clean Energy Could Save Millions Who Die From Pollution
Reducing deadly pollution has the double benefit of quickly trimming carbon dioxide emissions, the International Energy Agency says. Inside Climate News, BY PHIL MCKENNA 27 JUNE 16
In its first report ever to examine the links between these twin goals, the authoritative International Energy Agency said the solutions go “hand-in-hand.”
With a 7 percent increase in energy-related investment, it said, the world could cut air-pollution mortality from about 6.5 million today to 3.3 million in 2040. And the changes would bring about a peak in CO2 emissions by 2020, it said.
Along with spending on pollution control equipment, the keys, it said, are energy efficiency and the use of renewables like wind and solar.
The report marks a new movement among those who favor the long-term goal of fighting global warming toward an equal and more immediate concern—protecting the health of the world…….
The IEA assessment outlines a Clean Air Scenario where an additional $4.8 trillion in pollution control technologies, renewable energy and energy efficiency measures is invested worldwide between now and 2040. The investment would include making clean cooking facilities available to an additional 1.8 billion people worldwide.
The $4.8 trillion cost represents an additional 7 percent on top of energy spending plans already announced by the world’s nations, including the pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that they made under the new Paris climate treaty. (The IEA calls this baseline its “New Policies Scenario” to distinguish it from business as usual.)
The alternative Clean Air Scenario detailed in the report would result in a drop of more than 50 percent in global emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and a nearly 75 percent reduction in harmful particulate matter emissions by 2040.
Air pollution reductions would be greatest in developing countries. The 60 percent of India’s population currently exposed to air with a high concentration of fine particles would, for example, fall to less than 20 percent, according to the report.
“Implementing the IEA strategy in the Clean Air Scenario can push energy-related pollution levels into a steep decline in all countries,” Birol said.
“It can also deliver universal access to modern energy, a rapid peak and decline in global greenhouse-gas emissions and lower fossil-fuel import bills in many countries.”…….http://insideclimatenews.org/news/27062016/shift-clean-energy-could-save-climate-and-millions-who-die-air-pollution
Floating solar panels – the go for drought-stricken US lakes
Floating solar is a win-win energy solution for drought-stricken US lakes
Sunbaked southwest US is a prime spot for floatovoltaic projects, where they could produce clean energy and prevent evaporation in major man-made reservoirs, reports Environment 360, Guardian, Philip Warburg , 1 July 16 The Colorado River’s two great reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are in retreat. Multi-year droughts and chronic overuse have taken their toll, to be sure, but vast quantities of water are also lost to evaporation. What if the same scorching sun that causes so much of this water loss were harnessed for electric power?
Installing floating solar photovoltaic arrays, sometimes called “floatovoltaics,” on a portion of these two reservoirs in the southwestern United States could produce clean, renewable energy while shielding significant expanses of water from the hot desert sun.
The dual energy and environmental benefits of floating solar arrays are already beginning to earn the technology a place in the global clean energy marketplace, with floatovoltaic projects now being built in places as diverse as Australia, Brazil, China, England, India, Japan, South Korea, and California. And nowhere could they prove as effective as on lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest man-made reservoirs in the US.
The US Bureau of Reclamation estimates that800,000 acre-feet of water – nearly six percent of the Colorado River’s annual flow – is baked off Lake Mead’s surface by the searing desert sun during an average year. Lake Powell loses about860,000 acre-feet annually to evaporation and bank seepage. Since floatovoltaics can reduce evaporation in dry climates by as much as 90%, covering portions of these two water bodies with solar panels could result in significant water savings.
Extrapolating from the spatial needs of floating solar farms already built or designed, the electricity gains from installing floatovoltaics on just a fraction of these man-made desert lakes could be momentous. If six percent of Lake Mead’s surface were devoted to solar power, the yield would be at least 3,400 megawatts of electric-generating capacity – substantially more than the Hoover Dam’s generating capacity of 2,074 megawatts.
This solar infusion could give the power-hungry Southwest a major boost in renewable electricity, and at least some of that power could piggyback on underused transmission lines built for the Hoover Dam…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/30/floating-solar-is-a-win-win-energy-solution-for-drought-stricken-us-lakes
Route 66 – America’s first public solar road
The street pavers were developed by Solar Roadways, a company created by inventors Scott and Julie Brusaw which raised more than $2.2 million in crowdfunding in 2014 to bring their technology to market. The Brusaws claim that replacing all of America’s roads and parking lots with their solar pavers would generate more than three times the country’s electricity consumption in 2009.
Missouri’s transportation department is set to launch their own crowdfunding campaign to support their energy experiment, and expects the hexagonal solar panels to be fully installed and operational by the end of the year.
A model for nuclear plant closure: Diablo Canyon co-operative plan
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Closure Plan: An Important Model, Natural Resources Defense Council, June 22, 2016 Matthew McKinzie Fourteen U.S. nuclear reactors have now been shut down or their owners have announced their closures since 2010, either because they were uneconomic in today’s electricity markets or had operational or environmental problems. The Joint Proposal announced yesterday for the two reactors at California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant is historic, because it is the first time any utility owner has committed to a plan to replace retiring nuclear generation with 100 percent, zero-emissions, clean electricity-generating resources that are also lower cost. This shows that with careful planning, there is no need to substitute polluting fossil fuels for retiring nuclear generation –-an important model for the rest of the world.
The Diablo Joint Proposal signed by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Friends of the Earth, NRDC, labor and other environmental groups is further proof that our energy system is changing, and renewable energy and other resources can fill the gaps left from shuttering nuclear plants.
Energy efficiency, wind, and solar address climate change without nuclear energy’s burdens of highly radioactive waste, the need for physical and cyber security to guard against terrorist nuclear threats, the risk of radiation release in a major accident, and the nuclear weapons proliferation problem.
To see just how monumental the Joint Proposal for Diablo is, it’s important to take a look at what’s happening today in the nuclear industry. Since 2010, across Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska and California, 14 nuclear reactors at 11 power plants totaling 11.9 gigawatts of electric capacity have either closed, or their owners have announced they will close.
Information on these closed or closing nuclear reactors is summarized in this table, and patterns are evident. Three of the reactors closed for primarily mechanical/safety reasons, whereas 11 reactors closed or will close primarily for market reasons. In other words, in today’s wholesale electricity markets (which largely do not reflect external costs imposed by carbon pollution), these reactors were unable to compete with other forms of electricity generation, including natural gas and wind, when utilities are procuring energy sources to help meet their customers’ needs……….
A carbon-free, renewable futureFortunately, both the United States and the world are making great strides forward on carbon-free energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as technologies like demand response and battery storage. An October 2015 NRDC report “Tectonic Shift” describes how economic growth is now decoupled from energy usage, and that in fact energy usage is flat. California has adopted a requirement that half of its electricity come from renewable energy resources by 2030, and New York is about to adopt the same requirement. In 2015,in data compiled by AWEA, more than 30 percent of Iowa’s electricity came from wind power alone and three other states generated more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind power alone.
And the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has concluded that “renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.”……
the Diablo Canyon proposal shows that given sufficient time to prepare, retiring nuclear capacity can transition smoothly to a mix of energy efficiency measures; clean, renewable resources; and energy storage without any role for fossil fuels – an outcome that can be optimal for the environment, the market, and the reliability of the electric grid.The Joint Proposal governing the shutdown of Diablo Canyon within nine years is exactly that – full replacement of retiring nuclear generating capacity with lower cost, zero-carbon resources. The proposal is a robust model of planned, orderly transition that takes into account sound energy policy, the values of jobs and community, the threat of climate change, and nuclear safety concerns. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/matthew-mckinzie/diablo-canyon-nuclear-closure-plan-important-model
Nestle’s new deal for powering its UK and Ireland operations with wind energy
NEW RENEWABLE POWER SOURCE FOR NESTLE UK AND IRELAND OPERATIONS LONDON, The Climate Group, 22 June 16 Nestlé has signed a new deal to power around half of its UK and Ireland operations with wind from the Scottish Highlands.
An initial 15 year Power Partnership Agreement with Community Wind Power will see a brand new nine turbine wind farm open up in Dumfries and Galloway in the first half of 2017. It will produce approximately 125GWh of power per annum, meeting around 50% of Nestlés electricity demand in the UK and Ireland – equivalent to 30,000 homes.
Earlier this year, Nestlé UK & Ireland announced that all its grid supplied-electricity would come from renewable sources, in a deal with EDF Energy. This currently accounts for all of Nestlés electricity use in the UK and Ireland.
As a member of RE100, Nestlé is committed to transitioning its electricity use to 100% renewable electricity not just in the UK, but across its global operations. The latest available data shows that in 2015, 8.4% of Nestlés total electricity consumption was being sourced from renewable power. Today’s development is another positive step towards its global goal.
Dame Fiona Kendrick, Chairman & CEO of Nestlé UK & Ireland, said: “This is a newly commissioned wind farm, generating new energy, creating capacity that didn’t previously exist and capable of providing half of our electricity needs. It’s a proud moment for us and means we have reached another key milestone in our efforts to become a sustainable business.”…….http://www.theclimategroup.org/what-we-do/news-and-blogs/new-renewable-power-source-for-nestl-uk-and-ireland-operations/?platform=hootsuite
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says that renewables can deliver the Paris climate target
Explosive renewables development can deliver on Paris http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/pifc-erd062116.php POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK) While some criticize the Paris climate target as impracticable, a team of scholars argues that it is – on the contrary – a triumph of realism. First, and most importantly, adhering to the Paris target of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius is necessary in view of the massive risks that unchecked climate change would pose to society. A crucial type of threats, associated with the crossing of tipping points in the Earth system, is summarized in a landmark map for the first time. Second, implementing the Paris target is feasible through the controlled implosion of the fossil industry, instigated by a technological explosion related to renewable energy systems and other innovations. Third, the target is simple enough to create worldwide political momentum, the scientists say in their comment published in Nature Climate Change.
Necessity: tipping elements and global temperature
Based on the advances made by climate research as a whole over the past two decades, the scientists provide a defining diagram of tipping elements in the context of the global temperature evolution. “We illustrate that for the Earth system, half a degree really matters,” Winkelmann says. Warming of only 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels will have major consequences, such as threatening the survival of coral reefs worldwide. But the difference to 2 degrees is substantial. In a 1.5-degree warmer world, for example, global sea-level rise could be limited to 1.5 meters by the year 2300, whereas at 2 degrees, 2-3 meters rise by 2300 have been projected, and the Greenland ice sheet may well pass its tipping point.
“Beyond 2 degrees, the course might be set for a long-term complete deglaciation of the Northern Hemisphere,” says Winkelmann. “This would result in sea-level rise that threatens the survival of many major coastal cities including New York, Mumbai and Tokyo. Hence the necessity of the Paris target.”
Feasibility: carbon pricing, divestment movement, wind and solar power
“While the latest IPCC assessment has shattered the infeasibility myth, showing that the 2 degrees guardrail can be respected at relatively low cost with the proper political resolve,” says co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at PIK, “almost all IPCC scenarios assume so-called negative emissions – taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it. That is a very long shot. However, the price decrease and the efficiency increase of wind and solar power have been beyond the most optimistic predictions.” A technical explosion of renewables would, once the new technologies reach a market penetration of 15-20 percent, lead to an implosion of the fossil industry, the scientists argue. Currently, India appears to be very serious about implementing its colossal renewables target – an example of self-amplifying developments that have the potential to tip the global market scales.
In addition, a strong climate agreement paves the way towards carbon pricing instruments that will be adopted in more and more countries, the authors say. Last but not least, issues of morality are going to interfere with economics – one case in point is the divestment campaign which aims at pulling assets out of fossil businesses. Already today, key financial market players like the German Allianz insurance, the French company AXA or the legendary US oil dynasty Rockefeller are moving in that direction.
Simplicity: negotiators can turn objectives into action
“Beyond necessity and feasibility, the 2 degrees C guardrail has a comparative advantage over competing targets that cannot be overrated in the world of ‘realpolitik’: it is easy to grasp and communicate,” says lead author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of PIK. “In fact, the target strikes the optimal balance between concreteness and intelligibility. Now the world of climate action turns around one single number!” In the days and nights of the Paris negotiations, the 2 degrees concept – originating from a 1995 report by the German government advisory council for environmental issues (WBGU) – proved its worth since every national delegation could take a stance for the temperature limit of its choice. This would have been hard to imagine with the more complicated target suggestions made recently – ocean heat content, CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, or temperature change rate.
“The Paris agreement is a historic achievement and a genuine triumph of reason,” Schellnhuber concludes. “Now the pressure is on to implement that consensus in time, in order to avoid the looming humanitarian tragedy for good.”
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Article: Schellnhuber, H.J., Rahmstorf, S., Winkelmann, R. (2016): Why the right climate target was agreed in Paris. Nature Climate Change
Weblink to the article once it is published: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html
For further information please contact:
PIK press office
Phone: +49 331 288 25 07
E-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
Twitter: @PIK_Climate
Solar power brings free irrigation to a Gujarat Village
With Solar Power, A Gujarat Village Is Irrigating Its Fields For Free NDTV, All India |Written by Rohit Bhan | Updated: May 22, 2016 DHUNDI:
HIGHLIGHTS
- Farmers formed cooperative to install solar panels in their fields
- Solar panels power irrigation, surplus power sold to electricity board
- Project funded by farmers and non-profit group IWMI
Around seven months ago, about a dozen farmers in Ramabhai’s village about 90 km from Ahmedabad came together to form a solar cooperative and set up solar panels in the fields to generate electricity.
“We used to spend 500 rupees on diesel for pumping sets for drawing water for irrigation. But now we do it with solar energy,” Rambhai said.
“We also make money by selling solar power when we not irrigating our fields. We can sell excess electricity to the power board for Rs. 4.63 per unit,” he added…….http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/with-solar-power-a-gujarat-village-is-irrigating-its-fields-for-free-1408800
Energy storage favours the renewable revolution, not outdated nuclear power
“…….Berkeley Energy Professor Daniel Kammen ably defended energy storage, ……. Energy storage is cost competitive already in some markets—unlike new nuclear, Kammen said, and its price is dropping on a steeper curve than the dramatic reductions seen in solar costs. Storage will be more effective in the decentralized energy grid that’s emerging, he continued, than nuclear could be.
“The dramatic ramp up in solar resulted in the dramatic realization that a diverse, decentralized system can provide the same critical features that we think about with a baseload highly centralized system,” said Kammen. “Not tomorrow, but in the time frame that we need it, it’s absolutely there.”….
Ball summarized: ”So the argument is that rather than having yesterday’s no-carbon technology, which is a very centralized big generation technology, you think the world now has tomorrow’s no-carbon technology, which looks like a ballet of lots of different sources ready to go.”
In addition to batteries, compressed air storage is cost competitive, Kammen said, and flywheel storage can deliver power in sub-milliseconds. And in time, electric cars, buses and other vehicles will be used as a storage resource, he said. That’s a strategy China is pursuing and that Kammen has suggested the rest of the world consider, not in the next five years, but a bit later as these technologies develop and proliferate.
Meanwhile, small modular nuclear reactors won’t be ready in time to meet the grid’s needs, he said, and conventional reactors are too expensive.
“If you want to bet on a robust-basic-research to an applied-research-deployment category,” Kammen said, “that far favors the storage revolution than it does the nuclear revolution.”…… Silicon Valley Energy Summit , Forbes 5 June 16
Even nuclear enthusiast Ernest Moniz admits that Renewable Energy Is Now Inevitable
Renewable Energy Is Now Inevitable, Energy Secretary Says, Citing Price, Forbes, Jeff McMahon , 2 June 16,
“The discussion about climate and climate science and mitigation and adaptation is very important, but the fact is that clean energy, the clean energy scaling, has an inevitability about it following Paris,” Moniz said at the close of the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial, a San Francisco gathering of 24 energy ministers.
“This is becoming inevitable. This is the direction we’re going.”
Michael Liebreich, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has been calling the clean-energy transition inevitable for years, saying in 2013, for example, that “the inevitable conclusion is that at some point there will be a phase change, and clean energy will be the norm, not the exception.”
Liebreich said it again Thursday in San Francisco, and Moniz adopted it. But a few things had to happen before Moniz would acknowledge the “phase change.” The first was the Paris Agreement and climate conference last December that brought together an unprecedented international coalition of nations, innovators, and financiers. Secondly, the cost of clean energy and certain energy efficient products has fallen so fast that even the plummeting oil price has been unable to halt its growth.
Moniz reviewed a few indicators he had noticed at the Ministerial:
• Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) in the range of 3¢ to 4¢ per kilowatt hour for wind and solar energy, which have made renewables competitive. PPAs are the long-term sales contracts that set the price at which utilities buy power from energy producers. In its most recent analysis of thelevelized cost of energy, last September, Lazard had wind starting at 3.2¢, solar at 4.3¢, natural gas at 5.2¢ and coal at 6.5¢. “I think we may become almost expectant about this,” Moniz said, “but if you think back a short time, this kind of development would have been viewed as completely remarkable—because it is.”
Plunging prices for energy efficient products like LED lights. Moniz praised India’s success in reducing the price and increasing the efficiency of LEDs. The Indian government has distributed more than 50 million LEDs, using its purchasing power to drive down the price as it seeks to replace the country’s 770 million incandescent bulbs. Led lights cost about $35 just four years ago. In India, the price has fallen to about 80¢ for a 9-watt LED, Moniz said, “and the implications of that are pretty incredible.” Among those implications, low-energy LED bulbs demand less power from solar panels, extending the panels’ usefulness.
• Commitments by companies to power their operations using renewable energy, spurred in some cases by a campaign of the Clean Energy Ministerial led by Germany and Denmark.
“All 3 of those elements, I think, point to the way we are seeing a scaling in this clean energy realm,” Moniz said. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2016/06/03/renewable-energy-inevitable-energy-secretary-says-because-of-plunging-prices/#7cd098801ec9
Just 15 minutes after the Clean Energy Ministerial adjourned, a meeting came to order of Mission Innovation, a coalition of 21 countries (and Bill Gates) that have pledged to double financing for energy research and development. The first panel at that meeting included an inventor, a venture capitalist, a utility-workers union representative and a utility executive—Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning.
Fanning extolled an all-of-the-above energy portfolio but acknowledged the “explosive growth” of renewables.
As that meeting too adjourned, Moniz said he was moving beyond Liebreich’s “inevitability” to a new phase uttered by Fanning:
“His words were ‘Can’t keep the waves off the beach,’” Moniz said. “I think that’s much better stated.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2016/06/03/renewable-energy-inevitable-energy-secretary-says-because-of-plunging-prices/#7cd098801ec9
Chile producing too much solar energy
Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free , Bloomberg, 2 June 16
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Spot prices reached zero for 113 days this year through April
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Solar power on Chile’s central grid quadrupled since 2013
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Chile’s solar industry has expanded so quickly that it’s giving electricity away for free.
Spot prices reached zero in parts of the country on 113 days through April, a number that’s on track to beat last year’s total of 192 days, according to Chile’s central grid operator. While that may be good for consumers, it’s bad news for companies that own power plants struggling to generate revenue and developers seeking financing for new facilities.
Chile’s increasing energy demand, pushed by booming mining production and economic growth, has helped spur development of 29 solar farms supplying the central grid, with another 15 planned. Further north, in the heart of the mining district, even more have been built. Now, economic growth is slowing as copper output stagnates amid a global glut, energy prices are slumping and those power plants are oversupplying regions that lack transmission lines to distribute the electricity elsewhere………
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Inadequate Infrastructure
The government is working to address this issue, with plans to build a 3,000-kilometer(1,865-mile) transmission line to link the the two grids by 2017. It’s also developing a 753-kilometer line to address congestion on the northern parts of the central grid, the region where power surpluses are driving prices to zero…….
- When power companies aren’t giving away electricity, it’s cheap. At the Diego de Almagro substation in the Atacama region, for example, prices didn’t exceed $60 a megawatt-hour for most of March. That’s less than the $70 minimum price for companies that won long-term contracts to sell solar power in Chile’s energy auctions in October and March……..http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/chile-has-so-much-solar-energy-it-s-giving-it-away-for-free
Wind power and solar replacing diesel on Galapagos
Wind turbines on Galapagos replace millions of liters of diesel since 2007, meet 30 percent of energy needs World’s top utilities hand over project keys, chart path for Ecuador’s famously biodiverse archipelago to meet 70 percent of fast-rising energy needs with renewables, Eureka Alert, 29 May 16.
GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE ELECTRICITY PARTNERSHIP A global renewable energy project on the Galapagos Islands — one of Earth’s most fragile and important ecological treasures — has helped avoid many tanker loads worth of risky diesel fuel imports since 2007, reduced the archipelago’s greenhouse gas emissions and preserved critically endangered species.
Now, after eight successful years, the project’s new operators are pursuing an ambitious expansion that would multiply the benefits of renewable energy for this remote, precious archipelago with a growing appetite for electricity.
A performance summary and recommendations for the expansion are contained in a new report by the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP), a not-for-profit association of 11 of the world’s foremost electricity firms, which led and financed the $10 million project.
The project’s three 51-metre-tall wind turbines and two sets of solar panels have supplied, on average, 30% of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, the archipelago’s second-largest island in size and population, since it went into operation in October 2007.
During that time, it has displaced 8.7 million litres (2.3 million gallons) of diesel fuel and avoided 21,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, the GSEP report states. The achievements have led to awards from Power Engineering Magazine, World Energy Forum, and Energy Globe.
The proposed expansion could boost the renewable energy share to 70 per cent, en route to a hoped-for elimination of fossil fuels, the report states. It could also be a template for energy development elsewhere in the Galapagos chain — where renewable sources now account for 20% of electricity production — and elsewhere around the world……..http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/tca-wto052016.php
United Arab Emirates setting a solar power trend in the Gulf
Could UAE solar push lead a trend for the Gulf? BY SAKET S. DUBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation), 23 May 16 – As the Gulf states take steps to expand their use of clean energy, a bold plan by the United Arab Emirates to boost its use of renewable electricity from less than 1 percent to 24 percent in the next five years could be a game-changer for the region, experts say.
Much of the world is moving away from oil for its electricity generation, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which says that globally the fossil fuel has dropped from a 25 percent share to 3.6 percent over the last four decades…….
dropping oil prices and growing concerns about climate change have exposed the downsides of relying on oil. As the Gulf’s demand for power continues to rise, the UAE is leading the way in shifting to greener energy resources
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“The implications of unmitigated climate change for the UAE make its cities unbearably hot, water even more scarce and the region more unstable,” Rachel Kyte, the CEO of the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All initiative, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Action alone and collectively to live in balance with the planet is fundamental for UAE’s future prosperity,” she said.
SOLAR GIANT?
At the Middle East and North Africa Renewable Energy Conference in Kuwait last month, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – pledged to mobilize $100 billion into renewable energy projects over the next 20 years.
One of the projects in the UAE’s renewables push is the $13.6 billion Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai, which aims to become the biggest solar power plant in the Middle East.
It is expected to generate 5 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power 1.5 million homes – by 2030.
Dubai also plans to install around 100 electric car charging stations as part of its Green Charger Initiative.
By 2050, Dubai wants to reduce its carbon emissions by 6.5 million tons every year, with the aim of becoming the city with the world’s lowest carbon footprint, according to the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has said it wants to add another 9.5 GW of renewable energy capacity to its current capacity of 80 GW by 2030, And Oman’s power sector regulator, the Authority for Electricity Regulation Oman, has announced it will expand rooftop soar installations across residential homes, industrial and commercial buildings.
In Qatar, French energy giant Total SA has announced a joint venture worth $500 million with state-run petroleum, electricity and water companies to develop a solar-power project with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW).
And with a 70 MW solar project due to be operational by 2017, Kuwait plans to meet 15 percent of its energy needs with renewables by 2030, according to the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research…..
The region already has some of the infrastructure it needs to become a major clean-power hub. The Gulf Cooperation Council countries are linked by a 1,200-km electrical grid, built to help provide backup power in case of a blackout in one part of the system.
Expanded to other countries, that electricity highway could be the backbone of future power trading, experts say.
“The Gulf has an exportable resource in solar energy that could eventually be on a comparable level to oil and gas,” said Jonathan Walters, a former director at the World Bank……..(Reporting by Saket S.; editing by Jumana Farouky and Laurie Goering http://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-solar-electricity-idUSKCN0YE1SJ
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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