British Airways has signed an agreement with Solena Group to help build Europe’s first biofuel plant, amid plans to begin using the fuel in its fleet starting in 2014, according to a Dow Jones Report. The announcement was made at the Farnborough Air Show.
Solena Group, a U.S. renewable energy company, will help build the plant which will convert landfill waste into the low-carbon-intensity fuel, helping the British aviation company to lower its carbon footprint. BA has said it is targeting a 50 percent reduction in its emissions by 2050.
Also at Farnborough, Bombardier Aerospace announced plans to fly a Q400 aircraft using fuel from an oilseed crop as part of a new biofuel test program. The program objective is to optimize production and establish performance standards for refined camelina oil as a drop-in replacement for jet fuel that fits with the current refining and distribution infrastructure and with existing engines.
Camelina provides benefits over traditional petroleum fuel because it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent, reduces sulphur dioxide (SO2) and is not competitive with food production because it can be grown in rotation with wheat and on marginal land.
European aerospace and defense company EADS, meanwhile, announced that it is aggressively pursuing biofuel technology in an effort to make the aviation industry completely carbon neutral one day. EADS owns Airbus. The company recently flew the first aircraft powered entirely by algae-based biofuel at the Berlin Air Show last month.
EADS said it is pursuing an algae biofuel solution, which it says holds several advantages over other forms of biofuel, such as those derived from corn or other food products. Like carmelina, algae does not compete for agriculture space, the company said. Oil-producing algae also consume high quantities of carbon dioxide, making it a potentially attractive source of carbon offsets. Also like carmelina, it can also be combined with kerosene supplies for use in existing engines without the need for retrofitting.
EADS’ Chief Technology Officer said he would like to see 10 percent of the Airbus fleet run on algae-derived fuel by 2030.
Currently, biofuel remains significantly more expensive than current kerosene production methods, since it is produced in only small quantities. But that may change soon as the technology reaches a critical mass, according to a MarketWatch report.
Airbus also said it is working on new air traffic management systems which would allow aircraft to fly closer to one another without increasing the risk of a collision. This would decrease delays and increase overall fuel efficiency. Airbus said 10 percent of its efforts to double the fuel efficiency of its fleet will come from improved ATM systems.
Solazyme recently delivered 1,500 gallons of biofuel to the U.S. Navy for use in its jets as part of a test program.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Terra-Power Raises $1.2B To Blow Out California Wind Farm
New York-based Terra-Gen Power has raised $1.2B to build the largest wind farm in the US. The company plans to generate 570 megawatts-worth of power at its Alta Wind Energy Center site in Kern County, CA.
This new capacity will be added to existing installations at the Center which stands at 150 megawatts. Terra-Gen will be buying 190 new turbines from Vestas-American Wind Technology. It's previous turbines were from GE.
For Sweden-based Vestas the order is worth more than 600M euros ($770M). The company's shares rose over 5% on the news. This is Vesta's 5th big order this year
This new capacity will be added to existing installations at the Center which stands at 150 megawatts. Terra-Gen will be buying 190 new turbines from Vestas-American Wind Technology. It's previous turbines were from GE.
For Sweden-based Vestas the order is worth more than 600M euros ($770M). The company's shares rose over 5% on the news. This is Vesta's 5th big order this year
Senate Halts Effort to Cap CO2 Emissions
Democrats Forgo Centerpiece of President Obama's Energy Plan, as Cap-and-Trade Fails to Lure Broad Support in Congress.
By STEPHEN POWER
Senate Democratic leaders Thursday shelved their effort to cap greenhouse-gas emissions as part of a broad energy bill, putting aside indefinitely a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's ambitious effort to transform the way Americans produce and consume energy.
The proposal would have allowed utilities to trade permits to pollute as they worked to shift away from coal—a concept commonly called "cap and trade."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that neither he nor the White House had managed to line up 60 senators to support even a limited proposal seeking to cap carbon-dioxide emissions from electric power companies.
Mr. Reid refused to declare the idea dead. But Thursday's decision called into question when or whether any legislated cap on greenhouse-gas emissions would reach Mr. Obama's desk.
Now, businesses, such as wind-turbine makers, that had bet on a greenhouse-gas provision to make alternatives to coal and oil more cost-competitive must recalculate how long it might take for that to happen.
But industries that opposed congressional action to limit greenhouse-gas emissions still have to reckon with uncertainty over how far the administration may push an effort to do the same thing via the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Advocates of the cap-and-trade approach say that making it more expensive to burn coal or oil would encourage investments in new technology that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and energy consumption, resulting in lower energy costs overall and avoiding the potential long-term toll of climate disruptions on the economy. Some also argue putting a price on carbon can ahelp reduce reliance on foreign oil. Opponents of such legislation dispute this.
Opponents say compelling utilities to pay for emitting carbon dioxide would force them to pass along those costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. Republicans branded a House bill that proposed an economy-wide system for capping carbon dioxide emissions a "job-killing energy tax."
Senate Republicans closed ranks in opposition to even limited use of such mechanisms as the clock ticks down to the November elections.
But a limited cap-and-trade proposal backed by Mr. Reid and the White House also failed to win over a cadre of conservative Democrats from industrial and coal states, who opposed the idea of imposing caps and higher costs on the use of coal and other fossil fuels.
Some also worried that the measure would put U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage to rivals in China, now the No. 1 consumer of energy according to the International Energy Agency.
China's role in the U.S. debate over climate change cuts both ways. Opponents of capping emissions say enacting such policies would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to China, which has refused to cap its emissions. Advocates of capping emissions say that unless the U.S. puts a price on carbon, it will lose out to China in the race to develop the energy technologies —and jobs—of the 21st century.
Mr. Reid said Democrats will push for more limited energy legislation, aimed at holding BP PLC accountable for the oil spill, providing incentives to the production and purchase of natural-gas vehicles and funding land and water conservation.
The Senate's inaction leaves Mr. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson, in charge of setting federal limits on greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson has already adopted rules limiting emissions from cars and requiring state regulators to account for such emissions when they issue air-quality permits to large refineries and manufacturing facilities.
The agency's authority to do so is under assault. Business groups have sued, challenging the legality of EPA proposals to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. And a group of Democrats is pushing legislation to bar the agency for two years from regulating emissions from stationary sources.
Utilities now will be forced to make long-term decisions without knowing how carbon dioxide will be treated, said Mike Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power, Columbus, Ohio.
He said that for the next few years, utilities likely would build gas-fired power plants, which have about half the carbon emissions of plants burning coal. But the cost of nuclear energy will be relatively more costly without a penalty imposed on fossil-fuel use.
Uncertainty over the future price of carbon and what sorts of technology the EPA will require already is having a "chilling effect" on investment in the steel industry, said Thomas Gibson, a former EPA official who now heads the American Iron and Steel Institute.
But other business could be chilled if Washington abandons entirely the idea of raising the price of consuming fossil fuels. Companies trying to develop and sell solar and wind energy technology, energy-conservation systems or electric vehicles have hoped that caps on greenhouse gas emissions would jump-start demand.
These companies will now focus on certain states that have their own clean-energy mandates, such as California, Colorado and New Jersey, said Angiolo Laviziano, chief executive officer of REC Solar Inc., a provider of solar systems in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Still, the solar industry is growing at the rate of about 40% a year in terms of electrical power installed and is likely to continue to grow, said Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Corp.'s Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Mr. Reid's decision to pull cap-and-trade from the energy bill could reverberate on Wall Street, where banks and brokerage firms had been anticipating climate legislation that would lead to widespread trading of carbon "credits."
There is already a global carbon-trading market, with the majority of the trading taking place in the regulated European markets. It amounted to $127 billion last year.
It isn't clear how many of the provisions Mr. Reid is promising to include in the narrower energy bill will survive a Senate floor debate. Republicans have objected to Democrats' proposals to eliminate the cap on oil companies' liability for damages related to spills, currently $75 million, saying the proposals, as written, would make offshore drilling unaffordable for all but the largest oil companies and foreign-owned nationalized oil giants. Some business groups are also rallying to defeat the provisions related to natural gas.
.—Jim Carlton contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com
By STEPHEN POWER
Senate Democratic leaders Thursday shelved their effort to cap greenhouse-gas emissions as part of a broad energy bill, putting aside indefinitely a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's ambitious effort to transform the way Americans produce and consume energy.
The proposal would have allowed utilities to trade permits to pollute as they worked to shift away from coal—a concept commonly called "cap and trade."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that neither he nor the White House had managed to line up 60 senators to support even a limited proposal seeking to cap carbon-dioxide emissions from electric power companies.
Mr. Reid refused to declare the idea dead. But Thursday's decision called into question when or whether any legislated cap on greenhouse-gas emissions would reach Mr. Obama's desk.
Now, businesses, such as wind-turbine makers, that had bet on a greenhouse-gas provision to make alternatives to coal and oil more cost-competitive must recalculate how long it might take for that to happen.
But industries that opposed congressional action to limit greenhouse-gas emissions still have to reckon with uncertainty over how far the administration may push an effort to do the same thing via the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Advocates of the cap-and-trade approach say that making it more expensive to burn coal or oil would encourage investments in new technology that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and energy consumption, resulting in lower energy costs overall and avoiding the potential long-term toll of climate disruptions on the economy. Some also argue putting a price on carbon can ahelp reduce reliance on foreign oil. Opponents of such legislation dispute this.
Opponents say compelling utilities to pay for emitting carbon dioxide would force them to pass along those costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. Republicans branded a House bill that proposed an economy-wide system for capping carbon dioxide emissions a "job-killing energy tax."
Senate Republicans closed ranks in opposition to even limited use of such mechanisms as the clock ticks down to the November elections.
But a limited cap-and-trade proposal backed by Mr. Reid and the White House also failed to win over a cadre of conservative Democrats from industrial and coal states, who opposed the idea of imposing caps and higher costs on the use of coal and other fossil fuels.
Some also worried that the measure would put U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage to rivals in China, now the No. 1 consumer of energy according to the International Energy Agency.
China's role in the U.S. debate over climate change cuts both ways. Opponents of capping emissions say enacting such policies would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to China, which has refused to cap its emissions. Advocates of capping emissions say that unless the U.S. puts a price on carbon, it will lose out to China in the race to develop the energy technologies —and jobs—of the 21st century.
Mr. Reid said Democrats will push for more limited energy legislation, aimed at holding BP PLC accountable for the oil spill, providing incentives to the production and purchase of natural-gas vehicles and funding land and water conservation.
The Senate's inaction leaves Mr. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson, in charge of setting federal limits on greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson has already adopted rules limiting emissions from cars and requiring state regulators to account for such emissions when they issue air-quality permits to large refineries and manufacturing facilities.
The agency's authority to do so is under assault. Business groups have sued, challenging the legality of EPA proposals to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. And a group of Democrats is pushing legislation to bar the agency for two years from regulating emissions from stationary sources.
Utilities now will be forced to make long-term decisions without knowing how carbon dioxide will be treated, said Mike Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power, Columbus, Ohio.
He said that for the next few years, utilities likely would build gas-fired power plants, which have about half the carbon emissions of plants burning coal. But the cost of nuclear energy will be relatively more costly without a penalty imposed on fossil-fuel use.
Uncertainty over the future price of carbon and what sorts of technology the EPA will require already is having a "chilling effect" on investment in the steel industry, said Thomas Gibson, a former EPA official who now heads the American Iron and Steel Institute.
But other business could be chilled if Washington abandons entirely the idea of raising the price of consuming fossil fuels. Companies trying to develop and sell solar and wind energy technology, energy-conservation systems or electric vehicles have hoped that caps on greenhouse gas emissions would jump-start demand.
These companies will now focus on certain states that have their own clean-energy mandates, such as California, Colorado and New Jersey, said Angiolo Laviziano, chief executive officer of REC Solar Inc., a provider of solar systems in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Still, the solar industry is growing at the rate of about 40% a year in terms of electrical power installed and is likely to continue to grow, said Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Corp.'s Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Mr. Reid's decision to pull cap-and-trade from the energy bill could reverberate on Wall Street, where banks and brokerage firms had been anticipating climate legislation that would lead to widespread trading of carbon "credits."
There is already a global carbon-trading market, with the majority of the trading taking place in the regulated European markets. It amounted to $127 billion last year.
It isn't clear how many of the provisions Mr. Reid is promising to include in the narrower energy bill will survive a Senate floor debate. Republicans have objected to Democrats' proposals to eliminate the cap on oil companies' liability for damages related to spills, currently $75 million, saying the proposals, as written, would make offshore drilling unaffordable for all but the largest oil companies and foreign-owned nationalized oil giants. Some business groups are also rallying to defeat the provisions related to natural gas.
.—Jim Carlton contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com
Gillard Seeks to Burnish Green Credentials
By RACHEL PANNETT
CANBERRA—Facing a tough election fight next month, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday reaffirmed her center-left Labor government's commitment to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, unveiling a range of interim measures to green up the economy before a carbon cap-and-trade program is in place.
"Climate change is real and it is caused to a significant extent by human activity," Ms. Gillard said in a speech in Brisbane.
Her predecessor Kevin Rudd, ousted in a Labor Party mutiny on June 24, angered progressive voters in April when he shelved plans for a carbon emissions trading scheme until at least the end of the current Kyoto Protocol period in 2012.
The scheme met an impasse in the upper house Senate, where it was opposed by conservatives as too tough on industry and the environmentalist Greens as too lenient.
Mr. Rudd's carbon trading backflip led critics to question his credibility, given he was elected to office in November 2007 in large part on his pledge to make Australia greener, describing global warming as the "biggest moral issue of our time."
Australia uses fossil fuels, chiefly coal, for around 90% of its electricity generation, making it one of the biggest per-capita polluters in the developed world.
Ms. Gillard is seeking to re-establish the ruling Labor Party's green credentials ahead of a general election due Aug. 21.
But in doing so she is treading a difficult path between green groups who argue anything short of putting a price on carbon--forcing big polluters to pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions--amounts to inaction, and big industry groups, who argue Australia shouldn't adopt any climate program that would set it apart from its global peers.
Tony Abbott, leader of the main opposition Liberal-National coalition of center-right parties, described Labor's latest policies as "camouflage for the coming carbon tax."
Christine Milne, leader of the environmentalist Greens party—which is likely to hold the balance of power in the Senate after the election—accused Ms. Gillard of "making excuses for more delays" while other countries are moving toward putting a price on carbon emissions.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama's push to curb greenhouse-gas emissions was dealt a blow Thursday when the Senate postponed its bid to pass broad legislation to combat climate change until September at the earliest.
The delay means that Mr. Obama's fellow Democrats, who control Congress, have little time to advance the complex legislation amid intense political pressure in the weeks before November congressional elections.
It is also a possible setback to global climate talks, which are widely seen as dependent on actions taken by the world's biggest economies, and polluters, like the U.S. and China.
Though Ms. Gillard has said she won't resurrect Australia's cap-and-trade plans any earlier than 2012, she announced Friday that, if re-elected, Labor will offer companies an incentive to cut their emissions before then, rewarding any early efforts by requiring them to purchase fewer carbon permits in any future carbon-trading market.
The baseline for any emissions reduction efforts will be the same starting point as in the government's proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme, which was shelved earlier this year.
"It will make businesses think twice before adding to their pollution levels ahead of a future market, because if they pollute more, they may have to make even greater emissions reductions down the track," Ms. Gillard said.
"The price of inaction is too high a price for our country to pay," Gillard said.
Any new coal-fired power stations built under a re-elected Labor government will be subject to tough emissions standards—and will need to be set up to sequester any greenhouse-gas emissions underground, a process that would potentially reduce the environmental impact of burning dirty fuels such as coal for power generation.
Labor, which already passed laws requiring 20% of Australia's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020, also will spend 1 billion Australian dollars (about $890 million) over the next decade connecting renewable energy sources—like wind and solar power—to the national electricity grid.
Some of Australia's richest solar, biomass, wind and geothermal resources are in remote regions—like central and northern Australia—and are not connected to the main electricity networks.
Also, Labor will establish a new A$100 million Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund for renewable energy projects.
Ms. Gillard also announced a new 150-strong "citizens' assembly" to seek a fresh community consensus on climate change policy, and an independent panel of scientists to provide policy
Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
CANBERRA—Facing a tough election fight next month, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday reaffirmed her center-left Labor government's commitment to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, unveiling a range of interim measures to green up the economy before a carbon cap-and-trade program is in place.
"Climate change is real and it is caused to a significant extent by human activity," Ms. Gillard said in a speech in Brisbane.
Her predecessor Kevin Rudd, ousted in a Labor Party mutiny on June 24, angered progressive voters in April when he shelved plans for a carbon emissions trading scheme until at least the end of the current Kyoto Protocol period in 2012.
The scheme met an impasse in the upper house Senate, where it was opposed by conservatives as too tough on industry and the environmentalist Greens as too lenient.
Mr. Rudd's carbon trading backflip led critics to question his credibility, given he was elected to office in November 2007 in large part on his pledge to make Australia greener, describing global warming as the "biggest moral issue of our time."
Australia uses fossil fuels, chiefly coal, for around 90% of its electricity generation, making it one of the biggest per-capita polluters in the developed world.
Ms. Gillard is seeking to re-establish the ruling Labor Party's green credentials ahead of a general election due Aug. 21.
But in doing so she is treading a difficult path between green groups who argue anything short of putting a price on carbon--forcing big polluters to pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions--amounts to inaction, and big industry groups, who argue Australia shouldn't adopt any climate program that would set it apart from its global peers.
Tony Abbott, leader of the main opposition Liberal-National coalition of center-right parties, described Labor's latest policies as "camouflage for the coming carbon tax."
Christine Milne, leader of the environmentalist Greens party—which is likely to hold the balance of power in the Senate after the election—accused Ms. Gillard of "making excuses for more delays" while other countries are moving toward putting a price on carbon emissions.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama's push to curb greenhouse-gas emissions was dealt a blow Thursday when the Senate postponed its bid to pass broad legislation to combat climate change until September at the earliest.
The delay means that Mr. Obama's fellow Democrats, who control Congress, have little time to advance the complex legislation amid intense political pressure in the weeks before November congressional elections.
It is also a possible setback to global climate talks, which are widely seen as dependent on actions taken by the world's biggest economies, and polluters, like the U.S. and China.
Though Ms. Gillard has said she won't resurrect Australia's cap-and-trade plans any earlier than 2012, she announced Friday that, if re-elected, Labor will offer companies an incentive to cut their emissions before then, rewarding any early efforts by requiring them to purchase fewer carbon permits in any future carbon-trading market.
The baseline for any emissions reduction efforts will be the same starting point as in the government's proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme, which was shelved earlier this year.
"It will make businesses think twice before adding to their pollution levels ahead of a future market, because if they pollute more, they may have to make even greater emissions reductions down the track," Ms. Gillard said.
"The price of inaction is too high a price for our country to pay," Gillard said.
Any new coal-fired power stations built under a re-elected Labor government will be subject to tough emissions standards—and will need to be set up to sequester any greenhouse-gas emissions underground, a process that would potentially reduce the environmental impact of burning dirty fuels such as coal for power generation.
Labor, which already passed laws requiring 20% of Australia's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020, also will spend 1 billion Australian dollars (about $890 million) over the next decade connecting renewable energy sources—like wind and solar power—to the national electricity grid.
Some of Australia's richest solar, biomass, wind and geothermal resources are in remote regions—like central and northern Australia—and are not connected to the main electricity networks.
Also, Labor will establish a new A$100 million Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund for renewable energy projects.
Ms. Gillard also announced a new 150-strong "citizens' assembly" to seek a fresh community consensus on climate change policy, and an independent panel of scientists to provide policy
Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
The world's first molten salt concentrating solar power plant
'Archimede' demonstration solar plant in Sicily becomes the first to use molten salts to store energy overnight
Carlo Ombello for Carbon Commentary, part of the Guardian Environment Network guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 July 2010 11.32 BST
The world's first molten salt solar plant, which opened in July at Priolo Gargallo, near Syracuse, Sicily. Photograph: Enel
This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled "Archimede", the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage, and the first to be fully integrated to an existing combined-cycle gas power plant. Archimede is a 5 MW plant located in Priolo Gargallo (Sicily), within Europe's largest petrochemical district. The breakthrough project was co-developed by Enel, one of World's largest utilities, and ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.
Several CSP plants already operate around the world, mainly in the US and Spain. They use synthetic oils to capture the Sun's energy in the form of heat, by using mirrors that beam sunlight onto a pipe where pressurised oil heats up to around 390°C. A heat exchanger is then used to boil water and run a conventional steam turbine cycle. Older CSP plants can only operate at daytime – when direct sunlight is available -, an issue that has been dealt with in recent years by introducing heat storage, in the form of molten salts. Newer CSP plants, as the many under construction in Spain, use molten salts storage to extend the plants' daily operating hours. Archimede is the first plant in the world to use molten salts not just to store heat but also to collect it from the sun in the first place.
This is a competitive advantage, for a variety of reasons. Molten salts can operate at higher temperatures than oils (up to 550°C instead of 390°C), therefore increasing efficiency and power output of a plant. With the higher-temperature heat storage allowed by the direct use of salts, the plant can also extend its operating hours well further than an oil-operated CSP plant with molten salt storage, thus working 24 hours a day for several days in the absence of sun or during rainy days. This feature also enables a simplified plant design, as it avoids the need for oil-to-salts heat exchangers, and eliminates the safety and environmental concerns related to the use of oils (molten salts are cheap, non-toxic common fertilizers and do not catch fire, as opposed to synthetic oils currently used in CSP plants around the World). Last but not least, the higher temperatures reached by the molten salts enable the use of steam turbines at the standard pressure/temperature parameters as used in most common gas-cycle fossil power plants. This means that conventional power plants can be integrated – or, in perspective, replaced – with this technology without expensive retrofits to the existing assets.
So why hasn't this technology come before? There are both political and technical issues behind this. Let's start with politics. The concept dates back to 2001, when Italian nuclear physicist and Nobel prize winner Carlo Rubbia, ENEA's President at the time, first started Research & Development on molten salt technology in Italy. Rubbia has been a preminent CSP advocate for a long time, and was forced to leave ENEA in 2005 after strong disagreements with the Italian Government and its lack of convincing R&D policies. He then moved to CIEMAT, the Spanish equivalent of ENEA. Under his guidance, Spain has now become world leader in the CSP industry. Luckily for the Italian industry, the Archimede project was not abandoned and ENEA continued its development till completion.
There are also various technical reasons that have prevented an earlier development of this new technology. Salts tend to solidify at temperatures around 220°C, which is a serious issue for the continuous operation of a plant. ENEA and Archimede Solar Energy, a private company focusing on receiver pipes, developed several patents in order to improve the pipes' ability to absorbe heat, and the parabolic mirrors' reflectivity, therefore maximising the heat transfer to the fluid carrier. The result of these and several other technological improvements is a top-notch world's first power plant with a price tag of around 60 million euros. It's a hefty price for a 5 MW power plant, even compared to other CSP plants, but there is overwhelming scope for a massive roll-out of this new technology at utility scale in sunny regions like Northern Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the US.
The Italian CSP association ANEST claims Italy could host 3-5,000 MW of CSP plants by 2020, with huge benefits also in terms of jobs creation and industrial know-how. A lot more can be achieved in the sun belt south of the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Middle East. If the roll out of solar photovoltaics in Italy is to offer any guidance (second largest market in the World in 2009), exciting times are ahead for Concentrating Solar Power.
• Carlo Ombello blogs at opportunity:energy
How scrapping the SDC to save money will cost the taxpayer a fortune
The decision to stop funding the Sustainable Development Commission is the definitive false economy
Saving money can cost a fortune. The government's decision to scrap the Sustainable Development Commission will save £3m a year. It is likely to cost the taxpayer many times more.
The environment department's announcement that it would stop funding the SDC coincided this morning with the publication of the commission's latest (and last) report on the government's green progress. This report shows that even the modest measures the previous government introduced to save energy and water and reduce waste have cut the state's annual bills by £60m to £70m.
It goes on to find hundreds of millions of pounds of further possible savings, by identifying the kind of waste which – or so you would imagine – the government would be glad to uncover. It shows how civil servants can cut their use of road fuel, extend the life of their computers and drive down energy costs in government buildings.
That – among other things – is what the SDC is for. Junking it is the definitive false economy: spoiling the ship for a ha' pence of tar. It blows away two of the government's central claims: that its spending decisions will be rational and rigorous, and that it will be the "greenest government ever". When you remember that the £1.9m Westminster spends on the SDC (the rest is supplied by the three other UK governments or assemblies) is no more than a rounding error on the costs of renewing the Trident missile system, which it refuses even to include in the defence review, you begin to suspect that this decision has little to do with saving money and a lot to do with ridding itself of a turbulent priest.
The commission is a strange beast: while it makes reams of constructive suggestions, it has also been one of the government's harshest critics. This is a dangerous place to be for an organisation wholly dependent on government funding, but it is also an essential function. Without critical scrutiny of their decisions, governments mess up. This is why we have parliamentary committees; but the SDC was able to extend and supplement their work with reports much more detailed and probing than parliament has been able to produce.
As well as holding central government to account, it has helped schools and the NHS greatly to reduce their carbon emissions, pushed the last government into launching its Great British Refurb programme for improving the energy efficiency of housing, waged war on construction waste and pressed the state to protect consumers from the predatory behaviour of energy companies.
It has also been an amazingly radical voice within the government, asking questions that scarcely any MPs dare to put. It has, for example, championed the idea of a steady-state economy, publishing Tim Jackson's ground-breaking report Prosperity Without Growth?. The government won't be hearing such messages from any other agency or department.
Scrapping the commission is stupid, irrational and counter-productive. It suggests that, for all its talk of listening and engaging, the new government can't handle criticism and fears effective scrutiny. That's another way of saying that its instincts are not very democratic.
Saving money can cost a fortune. The government's decision to scrap the Sustainable Development Commission will save £3m a year. It is likely to cost the taxpayer many times more.
The environment department's announcement that it would stop funding the SDC coincided this morning with the publication of the commission's latest (and last) report on the government's green progress. This report shows that even the modest measures the previous government introduced to save energy and water and reduce waste have cut the state's annual bills by £60m to £70m.
It goes on to find hundreds of millions of pounds of further possible savings, by identifying the kind of waste which – or so you would imagine – the government would be glad to uncover. It shows how civil servants can cut their use of road fuel, extend the life of their computers and drive down energy costs in government buildings.
That – among other things – is what the SDC is for. Junking it is the definitive false economy: spoiling the ship for a ha' pence of tar. It blows away two of the government's central claims: that its spending decisions will be rational and rigorous, and that it will be the "greenest government ever". When you remember that the £1.9m Westminster spends on the SDC (the rest is supplied by the three other UK governments or assemblies) is no more than a rounding error on the costs of renewing the Trident missile system, which it refuses even to include in the defence review, you begin to suspect that this decision has little to do with saving money and a lot to do with ridding itself of a turbulent priest.
The commission is a strange beast: while it makes reams of constructive suggestions, it has also been one of the government's harshest critics. This is a dangerous place to be for an organisation wholly dependent on government funding, but it is also an essential function. Without critical scrutiny of their decisions, governments mess up. This is why we have parliamentary committees; but the SDC was able to extend and supplement their work with reports much more detailed and probing than parliament has been able to produce.
As well as holding central government to account, it has helped schools and the NHS greatly to reduce their carbon emissions, pushed the last government into launching its Great British Refurb programme for improving the energy efficiency of housing, waged war on construction waste and pressed the state to protect consumers from the predatory behaviour of energy companies.
It has also been an amazingly radical voice within the government, asking questions that scarcely any MPs dare to put. It has, for example, championed the idea of a steady-state economy, publishing Tim Jackson's ground-breaking report Prosperity Without Growth?. The government won't be hearing such messages from any other agency or department.
Scrapping the commission is stupid, irrational and counter-productive. It suggests that, for all its talk of listening and engaging, the new government can't handle criticism and fears effective scrutiny. That's another way of saying that its instincts are not very democratic.
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