A Mixed Week For Renewable Energy

A mixed bag in the world of renewable energy this week. While Europe is getting its shit together on all fronts, the US is starting to think that maybe it’s set the bar a little too high in terms of its renewable energy targets.

The bad news first – the California Public Utilities Commission is saying that having 33% of the state’s energy coming from renewables by 2020 probably isn’t going to happen. Distribution of all the new energy would cost $12bn, something that broke-ass California can’t really afford right now. Also the price of renewable energy will be higher; though as all energy prices will be higher in 2020 thanks to increased demand and upgraded distribution networks, renewables won’t cost that much more. Congress is also scaling back Obama’s original renewable plans, as they were just too radical to win votes. The US National Academies of Science concurs – it says that the grid needs an upgrade before the targets can be met.

More gloom: Wave power is finding it hard to get funding these days, and the red tape involved in setting up offshore tidal plants is pretty heavyweight. Read all about the bureaucratic nightmare here, complete with requisite sea metaphors (“investors’ patience at low tide”, “wading in the shallow end”, “further out… the regulatory waters are murkier”). What’s heartening though is Scotland’s embrace of tidal power as one of its main renewable energy sources – it’s currently investigating the impact it would have on biodiversity in Scottish waters.

And hurrahs for the motion passed in UK parliament that will allow the rollout of ever more photovoltaic cells across the country – i.e. solar panels for your roof. The incentive for households to invest in the panels has just got much greater, with the introduction of tariffs that allow a hefty return on leftover power being sold back to the National Grid from your panels. It’s expected that you could have made back your money in less than 10 years, and then obviously turning a profit from then on. The greater uptake also means greater competition, and therefore greater falls in price for the panels; prices have fallen 20% this year already. And as non-renewable prices go up, it’s only going to become more and more attractive.

MPs are also courting a group of scientists this week, who have the idea of creating a massive electricity grid, stretching from Kazakhstan to the UK, and Scandinavia to North Africa, that would tie together the renewable energy output from the entire region and distribute it more evenly. It would cost £1.3tn over 20 years.

And MPs have finally caught up with that KPMG report we looked at a while back, and they’re pretty annoyed at our current status as third-worst renewables provider in Europe. If you look at the original report, the gap between our targets and our current state is definitely worrying. But at least things seem to be turning towards the right direction – getting this ship around was always going to be a long job.

This is just silly though. What about planes, guys?

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Green Rush | June 16, 2009 1:40PM |