El presidente Barack Obama reiteró su apoyo a la industria durante su reciente discurso del Estado de la Nación pero ante la persistente debilidad económica, la polarización política en Washington y una falta de interés público en las causas del cambio climático, los vitales subsidios gubernamentales podrían caducar sin ser renovados.

Promotores de las fuentes energéticas alternativas están atemorizados del retroceso que eso podría significar para la industria, mientras los críticos de ésta señalan que el mercado es el que debe tener la última palabra.

Créditos impositivosUno de los principales subsidios, llamado programa 1603, que permitía a las empresas de energía renovable recuperar 30% del costo de un nuevo proyecto en efectivo una vez compleataba su fase de contrucción, venció el año pasado.

Era especialmente favorable para los productores de energía solar. Más de 22.000 proyectos recibieron US$1.760 millones, según el Departamento del Tesoro.

Otro subsidio, en la forma de un beneficio al impuesto de producción, otorga un crédito de 2,2 centavos de dólar por cada kilovatio-hora de electricidad generada durante los primeros 10 años de operación de un proyecto de energía renovable.

Según los líderes del sector, ese subsidio le permite tener precios competitivos pero, después de varias extensiones, entrará en caducidad a finales de 2012.

“Si el crédito al impuesto de producción desaparece, quedarán comprometidos cientos de miles de empleos relacionados a la generación de energía eólica”, declaró a BBC Mundo Erin Greeson, gerente de comunicaciones de Renewable Northwest Project (RNP), una organización sin ánimo de lucro que promueve el “desarrollo responsable de fuentes renovables” en la costa Pacífica de EE.UU.

“Es un ejemplo de una buena política que ha mantenido esos puestos de trabajo en Estados Unidos. El país necesita esos empleos y el sector ha comprobado que los puede crear, así que el subsidio debe continuar”.

Costo laboral

Pero hay algunos que sostienen que la asociación de más seres humanos vinculados a la producción de energía es prueba de su ineficiencia.

“Me río cada vez que la gente del sector renovable dice que va a crear más empleos”, expresó Kenneth Green, un científico ambientalista y analista político del American Enterprise Institute (AEI), un centro de investigación conservador en Washington.

Green arguye que las cifras arrojadas sobre la generación de empleo son muy turbias pues el costo laboral es parte del costo energético, así que si se emplean más personas en la producción de la misma cantidad de energía se está retrocediendo.

“Lo que se busca es una planta automatizada en lugar de 500 molinos de viento que tienen que ser mantenidos individualemente por personas”, comentó el analista a la BBC.

El doctor Green aboga públicamente por un fin de todo tipo de subsidio a todas las industrias energéticas, incluyendo petróleo, gas, carbón, nuclear, solar, eólica, etc. “Creo en la inteligencia del mercado para distribuir las cosas”.

Erin Greeson recalca, sin embargo, que la mayoría de industrias en EE.UU. recibieron apoyo del gobierno para poder madurar, desde la agricultura hasta las vías de comunicación. La industria petrolera, según ella, es la que más se ha beneficiado y continúa haciéndolo.

“Los subsidios para la industria de hidrocaburos fueron instalados en los años 20 a perpetuidad. El pueblo estadounidense lleva casi un siglo sosteniéndola”, sostuvo.

Eso, de acuerdo a la portavoz de RNP, le permitió crece y volverse muy competitiva y extraodinariamente rentable. “La razón por la cual el sector de energía renovable ha entrado en un ciclo de altibajos, de auge y colapso, es por la inestabilidad de políticas para estimular su crecimiento”.

Menos Entusiasmo

En su reciente discurso del Estado de la Nación, el presidente Barack Obama se comprometió a invertir en proyectos de producción de energía “limpia” como una manera de crear independencia energética y generar empleo.

No obstante, el lento proceso de recuperación económica y una creciente oposición política a la idea de invertir más dinero federal hace que la probabilidad de refrendar los subsidios sea más distante.

“A quién no le gusta la idea de tener energía de fuentes gratis e inagotables y, aparentemente, menos contaminantes”, dijo Kenneth Green de AEI. “Pero al enfrentar las realidades de la industria, la poca viabilidad económica y la necesidad de enormes subsidios, el entusiasmo empieza a enfriarse”.

“Además”, señaló, “los conservadores están en ascenso y ellos tienen la tendencia a no gustarles los subsidios”.

Últimamente, los críticos de los subsidios han visto sus argumentos fortalecerse con el espectacular colapso de una empresa de paneles solares, Solyndra, que recibió un préstamo garantizado del gobierno de US$535 millones, en 2009, para quebrar y despedir a sus más de mil empleados dos años después.

“Ese caso será emblemático de un gobierno escogiendo tecnologías ganadoras y perdedoras en el mercado”, manifestó Kenneth Green.

Por su parte, Erin Greeson reconoce que el caso Solyndra es de gran magnitud pero si una industria va a ser sometida a escrutinio todas también deberían serlo. “Así como hay unos ejemplos de fracasos en la industria renovable, los hay de grandes éxitos”, señaló.

Uno de estos se dio en el estado de Oregon, donde las empresas de distribución de energía añadieron fuentes alternativas a su portafolio y reportaron que estas representan una opción menos costosa, de menor riesgo y mayor competitividad a largo plazo que el carbón.

“El cambio es difícil y toma tiempo. Requiere educación, consciencia, voluntad pública y liderazgo político”, añadió Greeson.

“Aplaudimos el compromiso del presidente Obama, pero se necesita más concentración y voluntad en la inversión en energía renovable y a eso instamos a nuestros políticos”, concluyó.

Fuente: www.bbc.co.uk

Natural gas has a bad rap in some parts of the country, because the process of fracking is not popular. But many people looking at cheap natural gas from the global perspective see it as a good thing.

Henry Jacoby, an economist at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at MIT, says cheap energy will help pump up the economy.

“Overall, this is a great boon to the United States,” he says. “It’s not a bad thing to have this new and available domestic resource.” He says cheap energy can boost the economy, and he notes that natural gas is half as polluting as coal when it’s burned for electricity.

“But we have to keep our eye on the ball long-term,” Jacoby says. He’s concerned about how cheap gas will affect much cleaner sources of energy. Wind and solar power are more expensive than natural gas, and though those prices have been coming down, they’re chasing a moving target that has fallen fast: natural gas.

“It makes the prospects for large-scale expansion of those technologies more chancy,” Jacoby says.

Natural Gas: ‘A Bridge To Nowhere’?

From an environmental perspective, natural gas could help transition our economy from fossil fuels to clean energy. It’s often portrayed as a bridge fuel to help us through the transition, because it’s so much cleaner than coal and it’s abundant. But Jacoby says that bridge could be in trouble if cheap gas kills the incentive to develop renewable industry.

“You’d better be thinking about a landing of the bridge at the other end. If there’s no landing at the other end, it’s just a bridge to nowhere,” he says.

In the short run, at least, the wind industry isn’t too worried about this. Denise Bode, who heads the American Wind Energy Association, says low gas prices don’t undercut current prices for wind, because those are mostly fixed by 20-year contracts, not market prices.

And even if wind is a bit more expensive than natural gas, she says utilities still want it in their mix. Windmills aren’t subject to changing fuel prices, so the cost of production is quite predictable. That’s not true for natural gas — there’s no guarantee that today’s cheap prices will stay as low as some predict.

“It’s very difficult to really know how certain that is, so you always want to balance that with something that is certain,” Bode says.

Reducing Political Will For Renewables?

What really worries her isn’t natural gas — it’s politics. Wind could lose a huge tax break at the end of this year. And that would have a much more dramatic effect than low natural gas prices.

“You’ll see very low numbers” for new wind installations if the federal production tax credit expires,” Bode says. “In fact, I think EIA [the U.S. Energy Information Administration] projects almost zero for 2013.”

The solar industry’s subsidies run for several more years, so they are not in that bind, at least not yet. But Trevor Houser, an energy analyst at the Rhodium Group, says these tax credits and other incentives like state renewable standards are key if renewables are to grow and mature during the natural-gas glut.

“Long-term renewable deployment in the U.S. is going to depend primarily on policy,” Houser says. “Is there enough concern about environmental consequences to put in place incentives for renewable energy?”

That partly depends on how much of a premium people and companies will be willing to pay for cleaner energy. Right now, with natural gas so cheap, that premium is fairly substantial.

“If those prices hang around for another three or four years, then I think you’ll definitely see reduced political will for renewable energy deployment, ” Houser says. “But we don’t expect prices that low to hang around that long, because low prices are in many ways self-correcting.”

Gas is so cheap now that companies that produce it are struggling to make a profit. So Houser expects prices to move up. That will help close the price gap between gas and renewable energy.

Even so, there’s still a huge way to go before prices and government policies do enough to significantly reduce emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming.

Source: www.npr.org

For decades traditional fuels have enjoyed global dominance on the energy market virtually unchallenged, but that situation is changing. News out this week shows that global renewable energy deals surged last year by a massive 40%, triggered by the Japanese nuclear disaster and buoyed by an increase in billion dollar transactions.

The finding is contained in a PriceWaterHouse Cooper report published on Monday which reveals that renewable energy deals hit a record high of $53.5 billion in 2011 – compared to $38.2 billion in 2010.

“Deal-making in the renewables and energy efficiency sectors is intensifying as the sector evolves. Sustained high deal numbers and record total value reflect a maturing of the sector,” Paul Nillesen of PwC said. “The trend is all the more noteworthy given the uncertainty in the market and in government policies on renewables. We believe that deal flow will continue to be significant in the medium term,’ he added.

The entrance of pension and insurance funds in offshore wind farm in Denmark confirms the trend towards a maturing market and the creation of secondary markets, with assets sold for a second or third time, PwC said. The group predicted that as offshore wind projects increase in size, the need for a strong balance sheet to support the technology becomes more important. “This creates scope this year for a landmark wind power combination between players from one or more of Asia Pacific, Europe and North America,” Ronan O’Regan of PwC said.

But PwC’s report did not come without warnings. Continued Eurozone uncertainty could hamper heals in 2012 and US and European manufacturers are coming under cost pressures, it said. However, Nillesen said that waiting for things to improve is not necessarily the right strategy: “If a deal is highly strategic, and mission critical, then parties will still feel it is worth doing on the right terms.”

Source: www.evwind.es

In an interaction with the members of the Confederation of Indian Industry – Southern Region, Mr Girardi pointed out that Chile had 4,000-km-long coastline that afforded possibilities of developing tidal energy, and being a volcanic country, geo-thermal energy was also possible.

A member of the delegation led by Mr Girardi said at the interaction that while everybody knew Chile as a producer of copper, not many knew it was also rich in lithium. Lithium is a metal that is used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. Chile would welcome any kind of partnership in this area too, he said, noting that the Japanese had formed similar partnerships in the neighbouring Argentina.

Mr Girardi said that the mining sector in Chile would need investments of about $40-50 billion. Such huge mining operations would need energy. “We foresee a tremendous need for solar energy,” he said.

Mr T.T. Ashok, Chairman, CII-Southern Region, said India was set to emerge as a hub of wind, solar, biomass and bio-fuels related manufacturing and exports because of its very strong manufacturing and R&D orientation.

“The two countries need to expedite the proposed Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement that can cover protection of bilateral investments, services, and education,” Mr Ashok said.

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com

But it’s the type of thin-film solar panels and where the photovoltaic power plant will be built that foreshadows a potentially sizable business opportunity as well as a way to maximize renewable energy production.

Energy producer Invenergy will build the Grand Ridge Solar project in Illinois adjacent to its 210-megawatt wind farm. (Powered, not coincidentally, by GE wind turbines.)

By pairing wind and solar farms, Invenergy makes more efficient use of the transmission system, given that both sources of electricity are intermittent and tend to hit peak production at different times of day. That helps power grid operators balance supply and demand.

“You put those two together you have a much more dispatchable and local renewable system,” Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy business, told me Thursday. “We’ve built 30 gigawatts of wind farms so adding solar is a good utilization of assets.”

Abate says it’s too early to tell how big a market that could be but notes that installing solar at just 10% of those wind farm sites would sell out GE’s solar panel production for the next five or six years.

The company is building the U.S.’s largest solar panel factory in Colorado, which will annually manufacture 400 megawatts of cadmium-telluride thin-film photovoltaic panels. (That poses a competitive threat to First Solar, the industry leader that dominates the market for cadmium-telluride solar panels.)

But GE will be supplying a different type of thin-film solar panels made by Japan’s Solar Frontier to the Invenergy project in Illinois. It’s the second win this week for Solar Frontier’s CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) technology.

On Monday, renewable energy developer enXco announced that it would build a 150-megawatt solar farm in the Southern California desert using Solar Frontier panels near its wind farms in the Tehachapi Mountains. Those wind and solar farms will share a 4,500-megawatt renewable energy transmission line under construction in the Tehachapi.

That is by far the biggest deployment of CIGS technology, which a number of Silicon Valley startups have been working on for years to commercialize as it promises cheaper solar electricity through by lowering production costs.

Source: www.forbes.com