Scaling up solar in India

February 28, 2008 (Renewable Energy World) –

Moser Baer PV steps up its plans to change the way India receives electricity. 

The company, a relatively new entrant in the solar photovoltaic (PV) market, has recently announced a series of new initiatives. These include setting up India’s largest grid-connected solar farm in the sunshine abundant state of Rajasthan, and increasing production capacities.

MBPV announced that it had partnered with the Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation (RREC) to set up a solar farm of 1-5 MW capacity in the state. At US $4.5 million per MW, the total investment for this farm will be US $25 million.

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Green developers get S$20m fund (Singapore)

March 4, 2008 (Today Online) – Developers of new and green buildings can now tap into a S$20 million fund set up by the Government – a decision that is certain to sit well all-round as oil prices continue to surge.

The fund will partly offset the cost of integrating solar panels into new buildings “which attain a certain level of Green Mark standard”, Mr S Iswaran, the Minister of State for Trade and Industry (MTI) told Parliament yesterday.

Australian industry looks to gas, coal for transport fuel

February 26, 2008 (The Australian) – A move to develop a national agenda to create a multi-billion-dollar industry producing liquid transport fuels from coal and gas will be launched today by the Rudd Government.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson will use a conference in Brisbane to set the scene for gas and coal offsetting Australia’s huge and growing oil import bill.

Australia last year spent $7.5 billion on energy imports, more than it gained from selling oil, gas and coal overseas.

The country has only about eight years of oil at current rates of extraction but more than 100 years of gas and about 600 years of coal.

Japanese govt to push high-tech ways to reduce CO2

March 2, 2008 (Daily Yomiuri) – The government and business groups are set to jointly promote the use of 21 revolutionary new technologies, such as an advanced form of solar-power generation and underground storage of carbon dioxide emissions, as part of a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, government sources said Saturday.

Adoption of the plan, which also forms part of a national road map for promoting technological development, by the world’s major polluters could account for as much as 60 percent of the 40 billion ton cut in global emissions by 2050 that Japan has proposed, the sources said.

The government is set to announce the plan at a meeting of ministers from 20 countries on global warming to be held in Chiba starting March 14.

China Goes Climate Cool

Spring 2008 (YES! Magazine, Anna Fahey) – Last summer, Chinese President Hu Jintao toured the country in short sleeves to show that his countrymen could turn their air conditioners down. In China, conservation is “in.” Fashions do change.

Global warming denial is out of vogue. Unfortunately, though, the climate change do-nothing set is sporting a new line: “Why should we bother fighting climate change when China’s emissions are increasing?”

Thirst for electricity threatens Australian targets

February 26, 2008 (Canberra Times) – Australia’s rapidly escalating electricity consumption remains the biggest risk to meeting its Kyoto treaty targets, a new Federal Government report warns. A Department of Climate Change analysis of national greenhouse emission trends estimates Australia’s emissions from electricity use will increase 59 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020.

Despite use of renewable energy doubling to 20 per cent of the national electricity mix by 2020, carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired electricity are projected to rise from 1990 levels of 129 million tonnes a year to 204 million tonnes.

New South Wales deflects calls for solar subsidies

February 19, 2008 (Sydney Morning Herald)- The Sun King has had a vision, but the NSW Government has its own ideas. Zhengrong Shi, the Australian-trained solar energy scientist who has in seven years gone from an academic position at the University of NSW to become the richest person in mainland China, yesterday called on the Government to intervene in the state’s energy market and subsidise solar panels on houses.

Dr Shi urged the Premier, Morris Iemma, to adopt a system of “feed-in tariffs”, in which people who generate solar energy at home can sell it back to the state grid at more than the market rate. Variations of the system work successfully in most European nations, Canada, Japan and China, leading to large increases in the number of people using solar power.

Greens delighted electricity feed-in scheme becomes law (Australia)

February 14, 2008 (SA Parliament Release) – The SA Government’s solar panel ‘feed-in’ Bill has passed both Houses of Parliament tonight, with crucial Greens’ amendments. The Electricity (Feed-in Scheme – Residential Solar Systems) Amendment bill encourages the uptake of solar electricity by allowing residents to sell their solar electricity at a higher rate than they are charged.

Asia’s tigers eye nuclear future

February 15, 2008 (Asia Times) – The 2005-07 spike in petroleum prices topping out at US$100 a barrel has prodded economic planners across the globe to reconsider their energy options in an age of growing concern over global warming and carbon emissions. The Southeast Asian economies, beneficiaries of an oil and gas export bonanza through the 1970s-1990s, now find themselves in an energy crunch as once-ample reserves run down and the search is on for new and cleaner energy supplies. Notably, regional leaders at the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore in November 2007 issued a statement promoting civilian nuclear power, alongside renewable and alternative energy sources.

Carbon Credits for Commercial Forests in New Zealand

February 14, 2008 (New Zealand Herald) – Ministers and officials are grappling with some thorny issues over how to parcel out more than $1 billion worth of free carbon credits to the owners of commercial forests planted before 1990. They ought to have better things to do with their time.

Under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, if a forest planted before 1990 is harvested and not replanted, the carbon stored in those trees (about 800 tonnes a hectare for a radiata pine forest) is deemed to be emitted then and there, and the country is liable for those emissions.