Groundhog Day may be the more apt analogy as this scenario repeats every year or two, unfolding in a ritual where green energy executives and their respective trade groups warn that the expiration of the incentive tax credit – used primarily by solar – and the production tax credit for wind will cost tens of thousands of jobs and slow the nation’s transition to carbon-free power. At the 11th hour or later, Congress invariably extends the tax incentives once again.

Except this year, renewable energy industry leaders may not be so much drama queens as Cassandra’s. In the midst of a presidential election year with Republicans riding the bankruptcy of solar panel maker Solyndra to slam the Obama administration’s green energy policies, Congress may well let the tax breaks die.

For the solar industry the issue is the inelegantly named 1603 Treasury Program. During the depths of the recession in 2009 the Obama administration gave renewable energy developers the option of taking a 30% tax credit in the form of cold hard cash as there weren’t many project financiers left with profits they needed to offset with tax credits. Wall Street’s collapse also dried up the pool of so-called tax equity investors. Congress at the end of 2010 extended the cash grant program for another year and now time’s up. (The investment tax credit itself doesn’t expire until the end of 2016.)

“The problem remains,” says Joe Desmond, senior vice president of communications and government affairs for BrightSource Energy, a California solar power plant builder. “There are tax equity investors out there. But it remains insufficient to serve the anticipated demand moving forward until the economy recovers.”

In other word, there are too many projects, like the multibillion-dollar solar thermal power stations BrightSource builds or the residential rooftop photovoltaic systems SolarCity leases, and too few investors able or willing to do tax equity deals. On the other hand, Desmond says, being able to dispense that tax credit in the form of cash allows developers to tap a larger pool of potential financiers.

The cash grant program “is a very effective tool and helped more deals get done in 2011, and the loss of 1603 would slow the pace of growth in the renewable energy space,” Jonathan Plowe, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch’s head of new energy and infrastructure solutions, said in an e-mail. Plowe has worked with SolarCity to finance the Silicon Valley’s company’s initiative to install 120,000 solar arrays on military housing in 28 states.

The Solar Energy Industries Association commissioned a study that found that some 37,000 jobs would not be created in 2012 if the cash grant program expires at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“More than 100,000 Americans work in the solar industry, double the number in 2009,” Rhone Resch, the chief executive of the solar trade group, said in a statement. “Solar is a proven job creator at a time when the unemployment rate for the country remains stubbornly high. The 1603 Treasury Program has been the single most effective policy driving renewable energy growth during the past two years.”

Desmond notes that two of BrightSource’s planned solar power plants will create $800 million in wages over their operating life with each employing more than a thousand workers at the peak of construction.

But won’t the solar industry just be back next year at this time, hat in hand, if the cash grant program is extended for another 12 months?

No, according to Desmond, as such an extension should bridge the gap between an improving economy and efforts to put in a place a permanent financing program for renewable energy projects.

“As soon as the economy recovers, it takes the burden off of having to request an extension,” he says.

Desmond wouldn’t comment on how the expiration of the cash grant program might affect the financing of BrightSource’s next two power plants, citing the Oakland, Calif. startup’s upcoming $250 million initial public offering. But he did allow that tax equity financing raises the cost of a project.

The American Wind Energy Association, meanwhile, on Monday released a study by Navigant Consulting that predicted that an extension of the production tax credit, or PTC, would create 54,000 jobs over the next four years.

If it expires, 37,000 jobs will be lost, the study found. Congress has typically authorized the credit, which pays wind energy producers 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, for two-year periods, creating something of a boom-and-bust cycle in the wind industry. (Wind developers also have been able to participate in the cash grant program in lieu of taking the production tax credit.)

Last week, I was in the Tehachapi Mountains, where a wind-farm building boom has been under way for the past two years, to do some reporting for a forthcoming Forbes magazine story. On the site of one planned wind farm, a veteran wind executive took the long view of the industry’s ups and downs.

“Even though the economics of wind are a bit uncertain due to the uncertainty of the PTC and the unstable policy environment that creates, we’re still betting that policy stability will return,” the executive said.

The question is, does Congress have the will to extend the tax credit and make that stability last more than two years?

Source: www.forbes.com

Las eólicas estarán emplazadas en las provincias de Talara y Cupinisque, en los departamentos noroccidentales de Piura y Lambayeque, respectivamente, y en Marcona, en el sureño departamento de Ica, con una producción de energía de más de 100 megavatios.

Las plantas solares se ubicarán en los departamentos sureños de Arequipa, Moquegua y Tacna y tendrán un potencial de 80 megavatios.

“Estos proyectos siguen en marcha, los inversionistas vienen trabajando en la culminación de toda la fase previa al inicio de las obras, entre ellas el cierre financiero, la obtención de permisos” y otras actividades según el cronograma establecido”, dijo Mardo Mendoza, de la Dirección General de Electricidad (DGE), dependiente del MEM.

El funcionario, titular de Concesiones Eléctricas, agregó que “es importante que el Perú cuente con plantas de este tipo de tecnologías, porque vislumbra un crecimiento de las energías renovables, lo que guarda concordancia con las estrategias del MEM”.

Las energías renovables son calificadas de “amigables con el medio ambiente”, a diferencia de las denominadas convencionales que causan efectos negativos en el entorno; las primeras no producen emisiones de CO2 ni generan otros gases contaminantes, además que reducen la dependencia de importación de combustibles.

De acuerdo a estudios, Perú cuenta con un gran potencial para el aprovechamiento de la energía renovables, pues además de la solar (fotovoltaica y térmica) y eólica, también posee fuentes hidráulica, biomasa (bioenergía) y geotérmica.

Fuente: www.laestrella.com.pa

Given that hydroelectricity contributes only a small part, 3.3 percent, of Germany’s power grid, the share of the “new” renewable energy sources – solar, wind, and biomass – has grown significantly.

“The renewables are showing their true potential,” says Anike Peters, energy expert with Greenpeace Germany. “And that is in spite of numerous attempts to obstruct their progress.”

The new figures, published in late August by the German Association of Energy Providers, show the share of renewable electricity sources rising by more than 2 percent in a year – a year in which the German government made not one but two U-turns on nuclear energy policy.

The government’s double reversal “was a nightmare for anyone involved in planning the future of Germany’s power supply,” Ms. Peters says.

In October 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government decided to extend the life of the country’s nuclear power stations by up to 14 years, thus reversing the so-called atomic consensus drawn up under her predecessor Gerhard Schröder that planned to phase out the use of nuclear reactors by 2022. Tens of thousands of antinuclear protesters took to the streets of Berlin, but failed to change Ms. Merkel’s mind. Fukushima Daiichi did. The political fallout of the nuclear catastrophe in Japan had the German government return to the original target of ending the use of nuclear power within 12 years. The decision was complemented by legislation on renewable energy, aiming to extend the share of green power sources to 35 percent by 2020.

“The nuclear episode wasn’t really a turning point. It was more a bump in the long road towards a sustainable energy policy,” says Charlotte Loreck from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin.

Ms. Loreck points out that the decision for a nuclear phase-out as well as the legal framework for the promotion of renewable energy sources have been there for more than a decade, particularly the feed-in tariffs, which guarantee providers of green energy access to the power grid and a fixed price for up to 20 years.

“The German mechanism of feed-in tariffs has given power providers and utilities the security they need to invest. It has proven to be superior to other existing promotion schemes and has been copied by countless other countries. I think Germany is on the right path,” she says.

The costs for the feed-in tariffs are borne by the German consumers, currently at 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. And according to a new study by pollsters TNS Infratest, 79 percent of Germans are happy to pay this price or even think it should be higher.

“Most people seem to understand quite well how much value sustainable energy sources add to their lives,” says Philipp Vohrer, director of the German Renewable Energies Agency, which commissioned the study. “And so they are prepared to accept new technologies even where they pop up right in front of their homes.”

But Mr. Vohrer’s conclusions could prove to be optimistic. While it may be true that many Germans don’t mind a few extra euros on their electric bill, they are increasingly unwilling to tolerate infrastructure projects in their neighborhood. In the Schorfheide region, a popular weekend retreat for Berliners just north of the capital, you can find more and more villages openly advertising the absence of windmills as one of their features. And there are countless campaigns up and down the country against the construction of new high-voltage power lines.

It’s a dilemma, admits Lars-Arvid Brischke, a senior scientist with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg. “With every new power line that is being built we see protests and legal interventions, which interrupt the planning process and delay the construction. No one wants a pylon in their backyard.”

But decentralized power generation, offshore wind parks, and import of green electricity require massive expansion. “We need 3,000 kilometers of new power lines until 2025,” says Mr. Brischke. “That gives you an idea of the potential for conflict.”

Source: www.alaskadispatch.com

China will raise development targets for renewable energy such as wind power and solar energy for the five-year period through 2015. China is targeting 3GW of roof-top solar energy capacity by 2015 and 25GW by 2020, according to a Chinese press report. China is targeting 3 gigawatts of roof-mounted solar power generating capacity by 2015 and 25 GW by 2020. If the goals are confirmed, they suggest a third of China’s solar power capacity would be roof-mounted by 2015 and a half by 2020, making rooftop solar panel installations a key direction in solar power expansion.

China had only about 300 megawatts of rooftop solar power capacity at the end of 2010. Other main solar power installations include ground-mounted, utility-scale photovotaic power stations and concentrated solar thermal power plants.

China has doubled its target for installed solar power capacity over the next five years to 10 GW by 2015 and 50 GW by 2020, state media reported.

The country aims to have 100 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid wind farm generating capacity by the end of 2015 and to generate 190 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of wind energy annually, the China Securities Journal reported, citing a government plan. The goal was higher than a target of 90 GW proposed earlier by the National Energy Administration.

Of the planned 10 GW of solar power capacity in 2015, photovoltaic power installations will account for 9 GW and concentrated solar thermal power capacity will make up the rest, the report said.

Last month, the country set unified grid feed-in tariff for solar power generation for the first time ever, giving clearer guidance for solar power project developers when making investment decisions.

Source: www.evwind.es

En esta ley se exigirá la compra de electricidad generada por energía solar, eólica, biomasa, geotermica y en menor medida de centrales hidroeléctricas en un plazo máximo de 20 años. El Gobierno ha explicado que pretende aumentar la capacidad de los cinco tipos de energía por encima de los 30.000 megavatios en aproximadamente una década.

Sin embargo, en el proyecto de ley quedan sin resolver detalles relevantes que pueden diluir el impacto de esta nueva política energética, como el precio de los servicios públicos en cada una de ellas, que no será determinado por el Parlamento al menos hasta el año que viene.

Según los legisladores, el próximo año se pondrá en marcha un plan para recompensar a los inversores en energías renovables como parte de la solución para reemplazar la pérdida de capacidad para generar energía y para alejar al país de las inversiones en nuevas centrales nucleares.

Esta reforma se ha promovido tras el desastre nuclear provocado por el terremoto de marzo y el tsunami, que destruyó la confianza del público en la seguridad de la industria atómica. Además ha influenciado también el retraso en la reapertura de las plantas que están paradas, el alto precio del petróleo y que las importaciones de gas se hayan disparado.

La Cámara Baja aprobó este proyecto de ley el martes, pero necesitaba contar también con el apoyo del Senado, por lo que se les remitió el mismo día para que fuese estudiada y votada, según explicó el primer ministro japonés, Naoto Kan, que este jueves ha anunciado su renuncia.

Fuente: www.europapress.es