Renewable energy supplied an estimated 16% of global final energy consumption; Emerging and developing economies show rising share of renewables policies, investment, supply, and use

Washington, D.C.—-The newly released REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report shows that the renewable energy sector continues to perform well despite continuing economic recession, incentive cuts, and low natural gas prices.

Authored by Worldwatch Institute Senior Fellow Janet Sawin in collaboration with a global network of research partners, the report shows that in 2010, renewable energy supplied an estimated 16% of global final energy consumption and delivered close to 20% of global electricity production. Renewable capacity now comprises about a quarter of total global power-generating capacity. Including large and small hydropower (an estimated 30 GW added in 2010), renewable energy accounted for approximately 50% of total added power-generating capacity in 2010. In 2010, existing solar water and space heating capacity increased by an estimated 25 gigawatts-thermal (GWth), or about 16%.

The report was commissioned by the Paris-based Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, or REN21 (www.ren21.net). Sawin was the lead author of the report, which in recent years has become the industry standard for information on the global renewable energy industry. Worldwatch staff Matthias Kimmel and Will Bierbower, Senior Editor Lisa Mastny, Senior Fellow Eric Martinot, and Director of Climate & Energy Alexander Ochs also contributed to the coordination, research, writing, and editing of the report.

“The Global Status Report shows that despite the recession, renewables are growing at an enormous rate,” said Ochs. “Still, there are 1.5 billion people who don’t have any access to energy, and 3 billion people relying on traditional biomass sources and coal. If we want to prevent climate change from spinning out of control, we need to scale up our efforts to accelerate renewable energy development and deployment at all levels. Worldwatch will continue to provide guidance as to how this can be done.”

Renewable energy policies continue to be the main driver behind renewables growth. By early 2011, at least 119 countries had some type of policy target or renewable support policy at the national level, more than doubling from 55 countries in early 2005. More than half of these countries are in the developing world. At least 95 countries now have some type of policy to support renewable power generation. Of all the policies employed by governments, feed-in tariffs remain the most common. Last year, investment in renewables reached a record $211 billion-about one-third more than the $160 billion invested in 2009 and more than five times the amount invested in 2004.
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CALIFORNIA VOTERS REJECT PROP 23 AND SEND MESSAGE: “RENEWABLE ENERGY IS HERE TO STAY”

~Solar Industry Leader Says Validation of AB32 Cements Foundation for Continued Investment and Job Creation in America’s Largest Renewable Power Market ~

NOVATO, CA—November 3, 2010— With the country and the world watching Tuesday’s vote in California on Proposition 23, Tom Rooney, President and CEO of SPG Solar, hails voter rejection of this initiative as a reminder to State and Federal energy policy makers that renewable energy is here to stay. SPG Solar is California’s second largest commercial solar installer and manages over 1,500 solar system installations nationwide.

“Washington D.C. and every state across the country need to look at this vote as a ‘call to action’ as legislators’ debate our energy policy. America’s largest solar market has now voted, confirming the demand for cleaner energy initiatives in this country,” said Rooney.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the solar energy sector has created 17,000 jobs since 2009, and supports roughly 46,000 related jobs in the U.S. Employment in solar is expected to surpass 60,000 jobs by the end of 2010.

“Californians get it,” said Rooney. “California continues to lead the way on a critical national policy debate by rejecting the Prop. 23 notion that clean energy means fewer jobs.
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PD Ports seeks Chain Reaction for Teesside

PD Ports, one of the major companies driving Teesside’s ambition to become a centre of excellence for the European wind energy sector, recently hosted a Chain Reaction conference in Hartlepool to build support for the concept.

Representatives of local companies, as well as local MP Iain Wright, listened to presentations outlining the major opportunities and challenges facing the renewable energy sector.

“We need to act now to build the facilities and infrastructure for the wind farm manufacturers if the UK is to develop a sustainable renewable energy manufacturing and logistics sector,” says Paul Barker, PD Ports Development Director bulks, ports and logistics. “This is the perfect opportunity for the Government to back UK manufacturing and exporting while at the same time making sure we meet our commitment to its 2020 renewable energy targets.”

Speakers called on the Government to make sure planning consent procedures for renewable projects were both transparent and fast and that access to the national grid be made easier for those already generating alternative energy.

Other parts of Europe benefit from significant levels of public subsidy which makes it more difficult for the UK to compete, so the local North-East companies are working together to launch Chain Reaction, the Teesside Renewable Energy Supply Chain Cluster.

They believe that by working together, they can offer the range of skills and facilities needed by those seeking sites for their businesses – including those making hardware for the industry and providers of components for that hardware.

“We have the skills, the facilities and the determination to blend the experience of the past with the vision needed to make this new industrial revolution work,” says Mr Barker. “The people here have the engineering skills to work with the new technologies which will be used to produce everything needed for both onshore and offshore wind farms.”

The Port of Hartlepool, part of PD Ports, is already building a reputation as a centre of wind energy expertise on its 50ha site. The port hosts JDR Cable Systems, a leading cable manufacturer for renewable energy projects, and Heerema Fabrication Group, which specialises in the engineering and fabrication of large and complex structures, mainly for the offshore oil & gas and energy industry,.

With a large brownfield area, Hartlepool is ideally placed for companies manufacturing and supporting wind energy projects. Its location as the closest UK port to Dogger Bank (the Government’s largest designated offshore wind farm zone), its open access to the North Sea, and a workforce with experience and expertise in dealing with large and outsize cargo, makes Hartlepool the obvious choice for this business.

Iain Wright, MP for Hartlepool, says he is very happy to back this initiative. “The Chain Reaction initiative has enormous potential to secure Hartlepool and the wider area as a centre of excellence for wind energy. This will help to create jobs and produce wealth and prosperity for the region. I give Chain Reaction my wholehearted support and will do all I can to work with the team to make it a success”.

PD Ports welcomes expression of interest from any companies who wish to be part of the Teesside Renewable Energy Supply Chain Cluster. To register interest, contact amanda@imageline.co.uk , tel: +44 (0)20 7689 9009.

Go to PowerOfWind.com to tell Congress that you support a national renewable electricity standard.

Ed Ring

Even if California only ends up with 25% renewable electricity within the next decade or two, there is going to be a staggering amount of investment pouring into wind and solar power, and with intermittent sources of energy, massive storage infrastructure is just as necessary as the generating infrastructure. In our analysis of Prop. 7, California’s Proposition 7, the initiative that calls for 50% renewable energy by 2025, we estimated compliance would require about 500 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity generating capacity per day. For wind power, based on installation costs of $2.5 million per megawatt ($2.5 billion per gigawatt), and yields of 17.5%, this would require a total investment of nearly $300 billion. The estimated total cost for solar, at today’s prices, was considerably higher than this (bear in mind the cost for solar energy is going to drop faster and further than the cost for wind energy in the coming years). But what about the cost for storage infrastructure?

In a perfect world, parked electric cars will harvest intermittant energy – wind at night, solar during mid-day, and release that energy during the demand peak.

In a perfect world, 2nd and 3rd generation smart metering systems at homes will allow everyone’s car to act as a micro utility, an automated fiduciary, purchasing power when the spot price is low and selling power when the spot price is high.

In a perfect world, cars that store 10-50 kilowatt-hours of electricity will buffer intermittent sources, and storage infrastructure requirements will be reduced. Will electric cars proliferate as fast as intermittent generators? Will they always be parked and collecting power at the right times? Apart from electric cars performing this function, how much storage capacity are we going to need?

In California the demand peak is around 50 gigawatts, and the off-peak minimum can get as low as 20 gigawatts. The time of peak demand is between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., when appliances are operating along with flat screen TVs and PCs. During this period, when the sun is down and the wind yields aren’t yet at maximum output, at least 25% of California’s daily electricity draw is consumed, about 250 gigawatt-hours. It is reasonable to assume most of the renewable energy used to fulfill this demand will have to come from stored wind, and stored solar. So what would it cost to store 100 gigawatt-hours of energy?

Yesterday we had the opportunity to speak briefly with David MacMillan, CEO of Megawatt Storage Farms, Inc., a company that is developing large scale electricity storage using NAS (sodium-sulphur) batteries. He claims that not including site acquisition and preparation, storage technology using NAS batteries would come to about $350,000 per megawatt-hour. This means the cost to load balance California’s grid, should 50% of her energy come from solar or wind sources, would probably run about $35 billion dollars. This figure doesn’t include transmission upgrades, nor does it include site acquisition and preparation, but it also doesn’t take into account the potential of electric vehicles (or other private decentralized storage solutions) to absorb some of the required storage capacity. Objections to renewable energy in general, and proposition 7 in particular, probably cannot rest on the storage and load balancing challenges, insofar as they only represent about 10% of the required investment.

For more information about utility scale electricity storage technologies, reference our posts Utility Electricity Storage, General Compression, Solar Thermal Storage, and Gridpoint’s Storage+, to name a few. For more information about sodium sulphur batteries, visit the technical specifications page for NAS Batteries on the website of NGK Insulators, Ltd., a major manufacturer of these batteries. For more information on how these batteries work, and where they are being deployed, read About Sodium-Sulfur (NaS) Batteries, on the excellent Fraser Domain Energy Blog (where have you gone?), or the USA Today report New battery packs powerful punch.

Ed Ring is the Editor of EcoWorld, reporting on clean technology and the status of species and ecosystems.

Slip back in time 30 years and you’ll see that the green movement was positively anti-nuclear. It seems strange that 30 years on some of the very same people are putting their hopes on nuclear power to prevent global warming. It may be that we have little choice other than to go Nuclear but we have to ask the question “why aren’t we putting more emphasis on cleaner types of energy?” Some governments (Denmark is a good example) have already made great strides in harnessing cleaner and safer forms of energy including both wind farms and solar power systems. They have had great success so you have to ask why other countries are favoring Nuclear Power?

The old concerns about using Nuclear Power have by no means gone away. It is still an intrinsically dangerous form of energy and we still have no viable solution to getting rid of radioactive waste! What is keeping us from moving to other forms of energy?

The general argument is that the cost of moving to cleaner forms of energy is far more costly than staying with fossil fuels. But what of those unspoken costs staying with fossil fuels or switching to nuclear power?

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Will Raise up to $1 Billion AUD to Fund Initial Network Build Out

Melbourne, Australia (Oct 22, 2008) — Better Place today announced agreements with AGL Energy and financial advisor Macquarie Capital Group to raise $1 billion (AUD) and begin deploying an electric vehicle (EV) network powered by renewable energy. The Better Place model for sustainable mobility will help Australia move toward oil independence. With the world’s seventh highest per capita rate of car ownership, the country has nearly 15 million cars on the road after adding over a million new cars last year.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said, “The Victorian Government supports any initiative that will have positive outcomes in reducing emissions in the transport sector and welcomes this innovative approach to help make broad adoption of EVs in Australia possible.”

Better Place will use its scalable model, which Israel and Denmark have adopted, to build the EV network in Australia. Macquarie will assist in business development and help raise AUD $1 billion for the network build. In support of the project, AGL will provide electricity from renewable sources to power the electric cars and enable Better Place to deliver sustainable transportation.

“As the world’s sixth largest country, our network build out in Australia will demonstrate that the Better Place model works in all countries, regardless of size,” said Shai Agassi, CEO and Founder of Better Place. “We are investing in Australia’s economy and adding jobs while helping the country take a generational leap forward toward oil independence.” Agassi added, “With our commitment to build infrastructure and the Federal Government’s $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund, there is a compelling case for automobile manufacturers to jump in and build clean, safe, affordable electric cars for Australasia and Southeast Asia.”

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