Green agenda: electric vehicles, low carbon design

Relaxnews
Friday, 2 September 2011

Over the coming weeks the latest in electric vehicles and accessories will be showcased at EcoVelocity in London while Cardiff will host the latest in energy-saving design at the Low Carbon Expo. Both of these design and technology-oriented events showcase the different ways in which designers are approaching the environmental challenges facing the world today.


EcoVelocity EV Show
September 8-11
Battersea Power Station
London, UK

London is rapidly becoming a leading world city for electric vehicles, installing infrastructure far faster than many of its counterparts. This show will display everything from charging equipment to battery-powered taxis and is set to offer a glimpse into a future in which 'the Big Smoke' may not actually have any emissions at all.
http://www.ecovelocity.co.uk/

Low Carbon Expo 2011
September 16-17
Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
Cardiff, UK

The organizers behind this eco-friendly event claim that it is the first low-carbon exhibition to be held in Wales. The Low Carbon Expo 2011 will showcase energy-saving products and services alongside interactive low-carbon workshops and live demonstrations. Over 100 companies will be exhibiting at the event and around 3,000 visitors are expected to attend. The event is far smaller than the Greenbuild Expo in October, but the Low Carbon expo is in its first year.
http://www.lowcarbonwales.com/

18th Clean Up The World Weekend
September 16-18
International

Held every year on the third weekend of September, the Clean Up The World Weekend encourages people around the world to dedicate their weekend to cleaning up their area. Organized clean-up events from Europe to China are displayed on a map on the event's website. Founded in 1993 and now in its 18th year, the Clean Up The World Weekend is implemented in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other organizations.
http://activities.cleanuptheworld.org/

26th Natural Products Expo East
September 22-24
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Map

Now in its 26th year, the Natural Products Expo East moves from Boston to Baltimore with an expected crowd of some 20,000 and 1,300 exhibits showcasing the newest products in natural and specialty foods, organic, health and beauty, natural living, supplements and pet products. The event dovetails with BioFach America.
http://www.expoeast.com

5th Solar Decathlon
September 23- October 2
National Mall, West Potomac Park
Washington DC, USA
Map

The Solar Decathlon backed by the US Department of Energy, challenges collegiate teams to design, build and then operate cost-effective and energy efficient solar-powered houses. The event which is open to members of the public and free of charge aims to inspire visitors to use energy-saving technology in their own homes. The event was first held in 2002 and has since been held biennially in 2005, 2007 and 2009.
http://www.solardecathlon.gov

China moves in on Western solar power industries

By Stephen Foley in New York
Friday, 2 September 2011
China is emerging as the dominant force in the manufacture of solar panels in a world desperate for renewable sources of energy, as collapsing prices and disillusion over government subsidies has hobbled US efforts to take a lead in the development of the new industry.


Prices of solar panels have fallen by more than 40 per cent in the past year, as a result of increased manufacturing capacity and disappointing demand, and the US was reeling yesterday from news that taxpayers may have lost more than half-a-billion dollars on one solar energy firm that shut its doors this week.

Solyndra, whose plant was visited and praised by President Barack Obama last year, said it would file for bankruptcy protection in the next few days, making it the third US solar firm to go under in the past month. Solyndra had been the beneficiary of a Department of Energy loan guarantee programme funded by the Obama administration's economic stimulus in 2009, and loans from the Treasury department. In all, $527m (£326m) in taxpayer funding had been advanced to the company, along with about $1bn in private sector investment. More than 1,100 employees were told this week that they would be losing their jobs.

"This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate," Solyndra's chief executive Brian Harrison said. "Regulatory and policy uncertainties" made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation."

Also last month, Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts firm which had once been a stock market darling, and SpectraWatt, a private firm spun out of Intel, said they were filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said the bankruptcies "are unfortunate warnings that the United States is in danger of losing its leadership position in the clean energy economy of the future. We should be doing everything possible to ensure the US does not cede the renewable energy market to China and other countries."

China manufactured about 40 per cent of the solar panels produced in the world last year, from a standing start five years earlier, and the largest single producer is a Chinese firm called Suntech Power Holdings.

Some in the US solar industry have criticised the Chinese for heavily subsidising their own firms, via grants of land for manufacturing plants and cheap loans. The United Steelworkers union filed a lawsuit last year asking the federal government to investigate China's clean energy subsidies and other policies and to pursue the matter through the World Trade Organisation.

But the shake-out in the US also reflects the collapsing prices for solar panels which has resulted from new production capacity in China, Malaysia and the Philippines, and from disappointing demand in Continental Europe, whose governments are most enthusiastically pushing solar power. Uncertainty over regulation of prices in Italy led to a sudden drop-off of demand there, and adoption was also slower than expected in Germany this year.

Shayle Kann, the managing director of GTM Research, said the US still has significant solar panel manufacturing players, such as First Solar, which is building a new plant in Arizona, but faces structural challenges that will inevitably lead to its losing market share to China, regardless of subsidies.

"There are significant low-cost and no-cost loans being granted to some manufacturers from the central government in China, but that is not true of all of them. It is one advantage among many," Mr Kann said. "Take away that government support and you would still have a similar trend, if not the magnitude. China has low labour costs, low utility costs, and a supply chain with the same benefits. In other words, the same benefits that low-cost manufacturing countries have anywhere."

Republican lawmakers criticised the Department of Energy programme of subsidies for solar companies and for the practice of the federal government trying to pick winners in new industries. The Obama administration defended the programme, which has disbursed $18bn in loans or loan guarantees, and its record to date.

Britain's solar sector hit by cut in Government support

By David Prosser, Business Editor
Friday, 2 September 2011
Britain's solar sector is reeling from an overhaul of the Government incentives offered to those installing the technology, the head of the industry's trade association warned yesterday.


Howard Johns, the chairman of the Solar Trade Association, said forecasts that last month's revamp of the feed-in tariff rules would damage the sector – and Britain's efforts to generate more energy from renewables – were already proving correct.

The revamp, introduced at the start of August, saw the Government reduce what is paid to those who generate more power than they need from solar installations. In most cases, the tariffs on offer to installations feeding such energy back into the national power grid are now much lower.

While the cuts did not affect the smallest solar installations – with domestic homes that have fitted the technology still benefiting from higher rates – these projects provide far less energy than panels on large commercial premises. However, Mr Johns warned that in many cases, these bigger projects, which could have substantially increased the amount of energy generated by solar power, were not economically viable under the new feed-in tariffs.

"We cannot understand why, at such a critical point, the UK is turning its back on a major opportunity to strengthen its position in what will be the biggest and cheapest energy generation technology," Mr Johns said.

However, the Government has insisted the feed-in tariff scheme was never meant to incentivise large commercial solar projects – and that such schemes were taking the lion's share of resources put aside with the aim of encouraging domestic households to install the technology.

Mr Johns added: "It isn't just large-scale solar that has been affected – communities, hospitals and schools have also been forced to halt their own solar panels."

Iranian nuclear power station 'begins generating electricity'

Long-delayed Bushehr plant joins national grid, according to state TV

Reuters in Tehran
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 September 2011 12.03 BST

Iran's first nuclear power plant has started adding electricity to the national grid after years of delays, according to the state news agency.

"The Bushehr nuclear power plant joined the national grid on Saturday at 11.29pm (6.59pm GMT) with the power of around 60 megawatts (MW)," the Isna news agency said.

Hamid-Khadem Qaemi, a spokesman for the country's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Iran's Arabic TV station al-Alam that the plant would be officially inaugurated by 12 September, by which time it would be operating at 40% capacity. The agency was not immediately available to comment.

The $1bn (£616m), 1,000MW plant on the Gulf coast is the first of what Iran hopes will become a network of nuclear facilities that will reduce its reliance on its abundant fossil fuels.

Started by Germany's Siemens in the 1970s before Iran's Islamic revolution, the project was later taken over by Russian engineers and has since suffered a series of delays.

The west fears Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at making atomic weapons, which Tehran denies.

Experts say firing up the Bushehr plant will not bring Iran any closer to building a nuclear bomb because Russia will supply the enriched uranium for the reactor and take away spent fuel that could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium.