A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

September 22nd 2012

The Wind Industry Is Booming, But Boy Do Some Bleak Futures Lay Ahead

Of all the renewable technologies open to us these days, there’s no doubt that wind is the outright winner in the capacity and cost race, and more specifically, onshore wind, those gleaming white towers some countries are lucky (and tolerant) enough to have dotting their countryside and coastal regions.

Global wind deployment was once again up last year, this time by a relatively humble 6%, equating to just shy of 42GW of energy capacity installed, when compared to the average of 23% for the five years leading up to 2010, but is nonetheless signs of rampant and continued uptake the world over. Asia takes the biggest bite, with 52.1% of the global share, most of that in China, in which a recent study undertaken by multiple parties has concluded that Chinese capacity could reach 300GW by 2020, and 400GW by 2030; they are absolutely HUGE numbers, and if achieved, mark a seriously devoted agenda from the communist-cum-capitalist nation.

Closer to home, Europe has fallen in the rankings, taking just 24.5% of new installations for 2011, with again, a large majority of that down to one country, Germany, whose brilliant FiTs and policies allow for cost-effective and quick deployment of wind turbines throughout the country to the tune of almost a 1/3 of all European cumulative additions.

However, a draft government regulation released a few weeks ago in Germany seems to be stifling this growth just as it gets some real pace, or at least in the offshore department. Offshore has unfortunately been a much less avidly followed form of wind energy, due to its high costs, difficult maintenance and installation issues and generally poor policy and regulation worldwide, but Germany has always been one of the leaders. This new announcement would slash incentives for offshore generation prices, from 1 Euro/MWh to 0.75 Euros; whilst this cuts costs slightly for consumers on the renewable section of their bills, it will ultimately put future projects off and may stunt growth of a crucial area for the industry.

On the plus side, the UK achieved a milestone for wind energy generation recently by producing 4.1GW of electricity, over 10% of the country’s needs, using those spinning blades to boil cups of tea and burn toast, beating the previous 3.8GW record set in May. Some decided to lessen this triumph by stating that 4.1GW roughly equals the output of just one single coal and biomass-fired plant, Drax, which is not only more reliable but not as expensive. Surely they can’t be serious? When Germany produced over half their energy needs via solar and wind earlier this year, I don’t remember seeing any rabid comparisons to numbers of coal or gas plants over there, so why here?

Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: wind, energy, sustainable, renewable, emissions, coal, gas, turbines, economy, politics, policy, rewards, windfall, farm, clean, green, asia, china, trade, war, onshore, UK, america, USA, elections, europe, electricity, germany, investment, PTC,.

July 13th 2012

The ‘No More Solyndras’ Act - A Direct Threat To US Domestic Markets

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As I write this, the US government is mullung over claims by the GOP that the highly controversial, but equally highly successful government-backed solar loaning programme, is no longer worth anybody’s time or money, including the taxpayers of America.

The so-called ‘No More Solyndras’ Act, a cleverly named piece of legislation that aims to shut down all workings of the loan system is being hotly debated in the Houses involved, and there is no sign of Republican backing slowing. Standing on the shoulders of all those who were wronged and misguided during the entire Solyndra debacle and buoyed by the seemingly never-ending support for discontinuing further loans, it’s looking possible that the damn thing might actually get through the legal process.

Firstly, a quick recap. The US doesn’t employ feed-in-tariffs like those of the relatively successful European and Asian nations such as Germany or Japan, meaning that to raise funding and popularity in the renewable markets, other measures must be taken not involving direct payments to consumers or utilities. To this end, the US government, under the peruse of George Bush, set up the solar loaning programme in 2005, which would aim to invest taxpayer and private investor money directly into companies producing, manufacturing and selling solar cells, panels, technologies and the like. By propping up the as-yet immature industry and lending them a helping hand to wade their way into the global market, there was really no other way to go about it.

For a good time the programme was rather successful, if not very, lending money to multiple solar ventures which ultimately allowed the US domestic market to regain leadership status in the global trade, rising up to join the ranks of its eastern cousins who had been running clever programmes for years before. All in all, 33 separate companies were funded through government loans, with a total of $10bn set aside for mitigating any losses during loaning of up to $26bn, the original figure accrued for investment. Without this, it’s highly likely the US solar industry would have stagnated, or at best regained a tiny proportion of the status it has today, and in a world where Chinese and European solar is booming, that is a necessity.

Given how paranoid the US is over its domestic markets and anti-competitive trade, this is a godsend; you only have to look at the current trade war with Chinese solar companies to see this paranoia in its rawest form.

Posted at 10:28am and tagged with: GOP, republicans, energy, solyndra, solar, carbon, science, US, government, beacon, loan, bankrupt, renewable, feed-in-tariff, fracking, asia, china, trade, markets, economy,.

June 1st 2012

Department Of Commerce Takes A Hit At Chinese Wind Power Next

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It would seem that the Department of Commerce has chosen its next target to slap some hefty trade tariffs on, that certainly didn’t take too long eh? This time they’ve stayed in China, but gone for another of the potential renewable winners of the world, wind energy, quoting the same old story as last.

Last December, the DoC received complaints from multiple American wind companies complaining that China was yet again unfairly subsidising and trading its domestic wind towers, reducing costs and outcompeting other manufacturers, namely in the US. By reducing their trading costs out of China, in an uncannily similar vein to the recent solar trade war, the US market is being flooded by cheap-as-chips wind towers designed for large-scale generation of 100KW and over.

Of course, the US they again doesn’t agree with this whatsoever, and has chosen to file preliminary reports to determine what value to set the counter-tariffs at, with both China and Vietnam under scrutiny, who has also been seen to be ‘unfairly’ trading its wind capacity. As many of you who have followed the solar mess that is the anti-dumping case, it has not only brought anger and protest from both US and Chinese sides, but has been suggested to be threatening the entire solar industry as a whole, and no doubt this will have the same effect on the wind industry.

What differs between both cases however is the size of each respective nation’s wind industry size. The US has been steadily throwing up wind towers in recent years in bigger and bigger quantities, and now has a formidable wind-generation capacity, whereas China’s influence in the market is much smaller, with solar their chosen renewable path.

So, my question is this…why start yet another trade dispute between China and themselves, when the DoC knows, 1) how much consumers/manufacturers/sellers rallied against the solar tariffs, and 2) when wind energy is in the best interest of everybody to continue growing worldwide, especially in the dirtier Asian countries yet to move on from coal; China’s industry is only small and this response could severely cripple it.

Posted at 9:46am and tagged with: wind energy, electricity, china, us, department of commerce, tariff, trade, market, manufacturing, science, solar, america, anti-dumping,.

May 17th 2012

Chinese Solar Tariffs Hide Some Unfortunate Truths

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First of all, I just want to say a quick apology for the distinct lack of posts in the past 3 days, a detour from my usual every other day/daily posts. Basically, university work is to blame for it; dissertation has finally been handed in but two more exams sit lurking in front of me, so I’ll likely be taking a bit of a downtime between each post, but do not worry (if you even read this blog, I love you if you do), I’ll be back on form and free in two weeks time.

Now that that’s out of the way, onto the subject of todays post - those pesky Chinese and the apparent trade war between their solar capacity and the US. I wrote a blog on this relatively recently detailing why the Chinese were being scorned for their solar trade practice, and why even back then I felt it was a bad idea for everyone involved.

I’ll quickly recap just to jog my own and any reader’s memories.

The US found out that the Chinese government had been quite heavily subsidising their solar industry, namely SunTech, in a move to make their solar panels cheaper to make, easier to ship and to effectively flood the global market. As the US doesn’t like competition they see as unfair, they set about placing tariffs on the Chinese market to the tune of as much as 4.3%, to alleviate the apparently anti-trade practices.

When I initially blogged about this, I, and I’m sure many others thought that the whole thing was a mess, and entirely unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. Chinese solar is good, and theres nothing we can do about it. If they can manage to flood the market with quality solar panels at cheap prices and in abundant amounts, why should the US stifle this growth in place of its more expensive types? Surely as long as the world is getting solar, from multiple other countries aside from the US and China, everyone is a winner? Well that was my thinking at the time at least.

Now it has been revealed that, the night before the tariff decision was made on Monday, the American organisation, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE), has called for all seven members of the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) to release their own books on the subsidies, tax breaks and government help they have received in their time. This is a truly inspired move, with the president of CASE, Jigar Shah, highlighting how the original Chinese-US tariff war demanded clarity on Chinese solar, and yet there was no clarity with US-owned companies. By ordering the release of such information, the true story unravelled quickly.

Posted at 10:12am and tagged with: China, solar, US, trade, war, tariff, energy, industry, manufacturing, truth, SunTech, market, economy, subsidies, government, dumb, stupid,.

May 3rd 2012

Solar Experiences The Bad & The Good - Graphene, Prices & Chinese Tariffs

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The past week has been a bit of roller-coaster for the solar industry, with some rather large ups and a potentially even larger down. As it stands, solar is either teetering on the edge of a steep cliff, ready to drop into possible failure and public outcry, or it may be just months away from its crowning moment.

First on the agenda, I’ll get the bad out of the way, leave you folks with the nice sciencey stuff last.

China has been causing a stir in the solar panel market for the past couple of months, with some of its largest companies, such as the infamous Suntech, being accused of accepting rather lucrative and un-competititve subsidies through the Chinese government, allowing the company to make panels at low low prices and flood the international market without much stress on their part.

Obviously, the US jumped straight in to defend their maturing solar industry and the vested interests of First Solar, its largest manufacturer of panels, on the grounds that this unfair marketing was taking sales away from America and skewing the market towards Asia. This story blew up in size as more countries came to see the issues of both sides, and China came under scrutiny over the subsidies and tax-breaks, of which they of course denied, stating they were fair and within trade law.

Since then, I’d heard little until this week, when the US decided to impose trade tariffs on Chinese solar manufacturers, to the tune of between 2.9% and 4.73%. These figures were in all honesty a relief to many thinking that much higher rates would be decided, crippling the Chinese industry in the long-term. This is an admittedly depressing setback at a time when solar needs all the momentum it can get to smash through the fossil fuel lobbies and slap itself on every roof it can, and is based on purely US-centric economic stances to do with ‘flooding the market’. In my opinion, and I’m sure many agree (?) that it doesn’t matter where the solar panels come from, as long as global kWh prices are falling and interest increasing, which are far as I know, generally are.

Posted at 11:04am and tagged with: solar, china, trade, tariff, energy, science, graphene, technology, material science, efficiency, money, price, 2020, suntech, US, tax,.

April 15th 2012

Buying Coal Deposits Abroad To Avoid Carbon Leakage?

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I read an article recently on Grist covering the subject of coal deposits around the world and the hugely troubling issue known as carbon leakage, a stumbling block for both the economy and the climate, with the article going on to detail how this new paper, published in the Journal of Political Economy, could sold the problem once and for all.

At its simplest, carbon leakage is a nasty side-effect of the supply and demand system our capitalist economy runs by, and is a possibility resulting from multiple different ways of dealing with taxing carbon and introducing credits especially. The crux of the issue in regards to this paper, is as follows.

If a ‘climate coalition’, such as the UN or OECD, decides to reduce the demand of coal within its member nations, it is highly likely other non-participating countries will sense the drop in global prices and exploit this readily. Flip this over, and reducing the supply results in practically the same response. Prices will rocket if coalitions cut demand or extraction, ultimately making it much more profitable for said member nations to begin selling coal once again, generating a tidy profit in the process.

“In other words, global fossil-fuel markets are like a big balloon. If one set of countries squeezes consumption or extraction, the balloon just puffs up somewhere else” - David Roberts, Grist

Posted at 2:59pm and tagged with: coal, carbon leakage, economy, politics, coal, Grist, carbon, climate, energy, coalition, UN, OECD, emissions, trade, colonialism,.

April 11th 2012

US Coal Exports Rise And The Asians Keep On Consuming

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It’s astounding to chart the rise in Asian coal consumption of the last decade, with the graph in the middle of this piece no doubt shocking you as it did me. Obviously I understand there are inherently more people in the Asian states, but that rise is obscene in magnitude and actually seems to pick up in speed in the last 2 years, which I personally find very hard to swallow and rather worrying in terms of our future climate. When this is compared with the progress Europe and the US have made in reducing their consumption, it’s simply wrong.

Now the reasoning, or at least a large part of it, is due to the graph you see above, detailing US coal exports for the past 6 years, which has, as of 2011 reached a peak never before experienced, at an all time high of ~107,000 thousand short tonnes. That means that the US is effectively sending it’s generous deposits of domestically produced coal all the way to the other side of the world, for the Asians, and more than likely China to readily absorb and burn. This also accounts for the strangely large drop in consumption by the US, as they forgo burning for selling.

It’s not hard to see that there is a link between this peak-coal export and increased consumption, and of course there are other trade routes and factors adding to this problem, but the fact that the US have actively moved to coal-dominant exportation and yet still harp on about using renewables for a better world, is a sinister and dangerous happening.

With America offloading it’s fossil fuels to outside parties who welcome the chance to avoid mining their own or tarnishing their environmental reputation, they can happily progress in the knowledge that they are not burning it themselves. What use is introducing green technology if the coal that should be left in the ground is simply making its way round the world, dropping of carbon as it travels?

This is the unfortunate reality these graphs and studies demonstrate, and is no doubt a practice being carried out by many other developed nations. It is likely driven by a more gas-centered economy in the modern world, with oil and coal looked down upon as the dirty and irresponsible fuels that they are; for America to find a way to free up these abundant reserves without actually using them, at the same time making a tidy profit, it’s no surprise they snapped up the chance.

For how long this will go on for is unknown. Other nations may become wise to this trick and begin finger-pointing the Obama administration and America’s fossil fuel industries. However these fingers should also be turned on the receiving end of things, at the Asia’s. Solar and wind are booming in this part of the world, and have been the subject of many headlines, but this importation of coal must be stemmed if real climate progress is to be made. Without a carbon tax, dropping your coal off in another country and letting them deal with the consequences will end up biting all of us in the *** in the end.

http://www.solarfeeds.com/u-s-coal-exports-20-year-high/

http://grist.org/list/chart-the-mind-boggling-rise-in-asian-coal-consumption/

Posted at 11:03am and tagged with: US, china, asia, carbon, coal, exports, fossil fuel, renewable, sustainability, economy, trade,.