“The key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the world’s oil markets and uncertainty about what’s going on in Iran and the Middle East, and that’s adding a $20 or $30 premium to oil prices,” Obama said in an interview with the American Automobile Association (AAA) published Friday.

Obama also said increasing demand for oil in China and India was driving prices.

“As more and more people around the world see their standards of living rising, they purchase cars, they have demand for oil, that creates a greater demand worldwide and that raises the price,” Obama told AAA.

Pump prices are hovering near record highs as markets worry about tensions in the Middle East, with Obama moving to clamp down on criticism of his administration on the issue in an election year.

Amid a four-state tour to defend his energy plans this week, Obama stressed that his administration has approved “dozens” of new oil and gas pipelines, but new drilling was insufficient to lower rising gas prices.

The United States this week pushed for a tough new set of sanctions on Iran aimed at pressing the state over its nuclear program, penalizing foreign financial institutions over transactions with Tehran’s central bank which handles the country’s oil sales, its key export.

Source: www.google.com

Frente a ese escenario, el mandatario defendió su política de diversificación energética y refutó una vez más la propuesta de los republicanos a favor de un agresivo programa de producción de petróleo.

En su mensaje sabatino, Obama insistió en que parte de la solución a este reto es el desarrollo de vehículos de consumo más eficiente de gasolina, desestimando las críticas de que esa sea una apuesta quimérica.

“La reciente alza en los precios de la gasolina ha sido otro penoso recordatorio de por qué tenemos que invertir en esta tecnología” , dijo el mandatario en su mensaje desde una fábrica de motores de turbina en Virginia.

Ante la insistencia republicana de que lo que el país requiere es “perforar, perforar y perforar” , para reducir el costo de la gasolina, Obama dijo que esa es una respuesta irreal dada la existencia real de las reservas petroleras de Estados Unidos.

“Hemos estado perforando. Bajo mi Administración, la producción de petróleo en Estados Unidos está al nivel más alto en ocho años. Hemos cuadruplicado el número de plataformas de petróleo en operación y hemos liberado millones de acres para la perforación”, recordó.

Obama explicó que el impacto de una agresiva política en este sentido sería limitado debido a que Estados Unidos tiene sólo el 2.0 por ciento de las reservas de petróleo del mundo.

“No podemos simplemente perforar nuestro camino para llegar a precios de gasolina más bajos, sobre todo, cuando consumimos un 20 por ciento del petróleo del mundo”, precisó. ó que la estrategia tiene que ser integra con miras a reducir la dependencia de fuentes extranjeras como el petróleo y descansar más en fuentes de energía renovable, limpia y doméstica, tanto solar, eólica, de gas natural, de biocombustibles, y otras.

“Esa estrategia es la que buscamos. Por eso es que visité una planta en Carolina del Norte a principios de esta semana, donde están fabricando camiones que funcionan a base de gas natural, y camiones híbridos que caminan más millas con un sólo tanque”, recordó.

Obama dijo que esa es una de las razones por las cuales su administración se ha concentrado en impulsar el desarrollo de vehículos con mayor consumo eficiente de combustible. vehículos, insistió el mandatario, “no son una solución quimérica que esta a años de distancia. Se están fabricando aquí ahora, por trabajadores estadunidenses, en fábricas aquí en Estados Unidos” .

“Poner fin a ese ciclo de alzas en los precios de la gasolina no será fácil y tampoco sucederá de la noche a la mañana. Voy a continuar haciendo todo lo que pueda para ayudarlos a ustedes a ahorrar dinero en la gasolina, tanto ahora mismo como en el futuro” , aseguró.

Fuente: www.provincia.com.mx

The president’s tax framework recognizes that to date, the U.S. has only provided a temporary PTC for renewable energy – a practice that has led to instability in the wind and solar industries.

This market volatility has been a burden not only on the renewable energy sector, but also on the financial markets and the overall economy.

“This approach has created an uncertain investment climate, undermined the effectiveness of our tax expenditures and hindered the development of a clean energy sector in the United States,” the president’s framework states.

Moreover, under the current tax structure, many companies have had no choice but to utilize tax-equity financing to fund their renewable energy projects – a method the framework says is “inefficient tax planning.” Under Obama’s proposed tax plan, a permanent PTC would resolve this problem by making the permanent PTC refundable.

Obama’s tax-reform plan also emphasizes domestic manufacturing and innovation, with a focus on clean energy technologies. Under the president’s framework, the savings garnered from a manufacturing tax deduction would be used to reduce the effective rate on manufacturing to a maximum of 25% and to encourage clean energy research and development.

“As we expand manufacturing in the United States, the tax code should encourage doing so in way that is sustainable and that puts the United States in the lead in manufacturing the clean energy technologies of the future,” the framework reads. “This will create jobs here at home and can also have important spillover benefits. Moving toward a clean energy economy will reduce air and water pollution and enhance our national security by reducing dependence on oil.”

Source: www.nawindpower.com

Renewable Energy Outlook Uncertain

With all kinds of economic struggles and uncertainty in Europe, the 2012 outlook for renewable energy in the region is not as bright as in 2011.

“The sovereign debt crisis continues to stifle renewable energy investment in the Eurozone, along with Governments scaling back their ambitions for the sector,” Ernst & Young writes.

“Simultaneously capital scarcity and increased competition from Asia will continue to put pressure on developed markets for the foreseeable future.”

“Early indications for 2012 are that it will be more challenging for stakeholders, with mature markets getting softer due to continued liquidity constraints and the ongoing withdrawal of government incentives,” Gil Forer, Ernst & Young’s Global Cleantech Leader, says.

“The perfect storm of Basel III, banking downgrades and Eurozone instability has increased the underlying costs to banks of lending, especially long-term,” Ben Warren, Ernst & Young’s Energy and Environmental Finance Leader, summarizes.

“With Basel III to be fully implemented by 2019 we feel it is likely that there will be further impacts on costs of bank funding from the legislation during 2012 and therefore additional increases in margins and reducing availability of long-term bank debt.”

Renewable Energy in Asia Still Hot… but Complicated

“However within emerging markets we continue to witness growth in the levels of capacity, as energy security concerns and demand for jobs drive increased government commitments to renewable energy,” Forer notes.

But the researchers find a mix of increasing solar energy targets and underdeveloped grid infrastructure that limits usefulness of new wind power projects.

US Wind Support Now Gone

As you well know, US policy support for the wind industry, especially in the case of the Production Tax Credit (PTC), has dropped off a cliff at the federal level, leaving the industry worse off than it was in 2011. 2012, thus, is looking to be a less exciting year for renewable energy fans in the US.

Germany on the Line

Germany has been a solar powerhouse for years now. But proposed changes to its feed-in tariff program for solar that are on the table right now could have a dramatic and negative effect on that industry.

“The German solar photovoltaic (PV) market expanded in 2011 with more than 7GW installed, but if currently proposed reductions and restrictions in photovoltaic (PV) feed in tariffs pass the German government in March, this would significantly suppress market activity in 2012 and beyond,” Ernst & Young note.

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) May Be Ready for a Growth Spurt

Despite waning and uncertain renewable energy support from the leaders mentioned above, the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region offers up a bit of relief, as it looks set to start booming (as reported here on CleanTechnica a few times this year).

“An abundance of solar and wind resources are expected to attract a significant amount of investment in the short to medium term, particularly in more economic and politically stable markets. Many countries in the region are seeking to significantly increase the proportion of renewable energy in their generation mix as they look to diversify their predominantly hydrocarbon fuel supply and to meet the ever-increasing consumer demand.”

Consolidation Inevitable

As written here on CleanTechnica several times in the past several months, consolidation within maturing renewable energy sectors (especially solar) make consolidation of cleantech companies inevitable. Company mergers and acquisitions are likely to continue to a high degree throughout 2012.

Source: www.cleantechnica.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