The Politics of Energy #20 - France's Sarkozy urges carbon tax

By GREG KELLER

AP Business Writer

PARIS -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tax carbon dioxide emissions by households and businesses, a measure aimed at helping France slash its output greenhouse gases over the coming decades - but viewed with skepticism by many.

In a highly anticipated speech on the subject, Sarkozy sought to convince his compatriots of the need for the carbon tax, which surveys show around two-thirds of the French oppose. France would be the largest economy to impose one so far.

Sarkozy said that faced with threats to the climate and the need to reduce its dependence on oil, "it is time for France to profoundly adapt its taxation system and create real ecological taxation."

The tax would be initially based on the market price for carbon dioxide emissions permits, which is now euro17 ($24.74) per ton of carbon dioxide, Sarkozy said. At that level, the government expects to raise euro3 billion, which will be entirely returned to households and businesses through a reduction in other taxes or repaid via a so-called "Green Check," Sarkozy said.

The result would be a shift of the tax burden from other revenue sources to energy derived from fossil fuels in an effort to discourage their use.

Gasoline, diesel fuel, coal and natual gas will be subject to the tax, but not electricity, Sarkozy said. France generates most of its electricity via nuclear power, which doesn't emit greenhouse gases.

The tax would add 4.5 euro cents to each liter of diesel, 4 cents to each liter of gasoline and 0.4 cents for each KWh of natural gas consumed, Sarkozy said. The tax is intended to rise gradually from this level, Sarkozy said.

The plan, dubbed a "carbon tax" by most observers despite the government's effort to brand it as a "climate-energy contribution," has stirred passionate debate in France, where surveys say most voters oppose the idea.

Balance of article: Miami Herald

Centercut Factoids - Per Capita Oil Usage By Country

The United States is 23rd in the world in per capita oil usage at 68.672 barrels per day per 1,000 people. The U.S. uses just under one fourth of all oil produced at approximately 20.5 million barrels per day.

The US uses roughly 25% of the world’s energy, but contributes 29% of total GDP – a very efficient GDP/Energy Ratio of 1:.86. China by contrast just passed the US as the biggest pollution emitter in the world, but contributes just 8.8% of total world GDP, a GDP/Energy ration of 1:5.6 – so clearly China has a far worse GDP/Energy ratio than the US, as one might expect in a newly industrialized country.

NationaMaster.com (2007)

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us - Pogo

With world awash in crude, OPEC focuses on getting members not to sell more than their quotas

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi, whose country is OPEC's top producer and most influential member, told reporters Tuesday that crude's current prices "is good for everybody: consumers and producers."

TAREK EL-TABLAWY, AP Business Writer
 
VIENNA (AP) — OPEC appeared poised to hold oil production quotas unchanged Wednesday, with its ministers voicing satisfaction with current global crude prices.

Instead, the focus at the organization's meeting in Vienna was to be on persuading members not to sell more oil than their quotas permit.

Kuwait's oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Al Abullah Al Sabah, said OPEC's markets monitoring committee would suggest to the 12-country group that oil output targets be held steady at the organization's meeting Wednesday in Vienna.

The recommendation offers further indication that ministers from the bloc — supplier of roughly 35 percent of the world's crude — are turning their aim toward encouraging member discipline. Compliance with the output limits, which are designed to support prices, has been waning.

The group's current production target is just under 25 million barrels per day, but output figures excluding Iraq indicate OPEC members are pumping around 26 million barrels per day, analysts say, adding that Angola, Iran and Venezuela have been particularly lax with their quotas.

Balance of article - Los Angeles Times

Grid Connectivity: Invest in Alternative Energy's Missing Link

By Bill Paul

In Great Britain, more than 60 gigawatts (GW) of power, a quarter of that from renewable sources, reportedly is waiting to be connected to the nation’s power grid. In California, electric utilities say they have little hope of meeting the state’s mandate of achieving 20% of their generation from green sources by 2010 largely because of delays in getting transmission lines licensed and built. Meanwhile in Brazil, work is underway on what will be the world’s longest power line, which is being built with high-voltage, direct-current (HVDC) technology because it is ideally suited for hooking up renewable energy sources located in remote regions of the country.

Notice a trend here?

The “missing link” in many a nation’s scheme to go green is grid connectivity. Globally, hundreds of thousands of miles of new power lines are going to have to be built over the next five or so years to hook up the tens of thousands of carbon-controlling solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and other green electricity generation projects that governments everywhere are mandating must be built. (If, as expected, there’s a global cap-and-trade exchange in a few years, the number of needed miles of new grid will be even greater.)

It’s actually easier to invest in the “grid connectivity” sub-sector of alternative energy than it is in more prominent sub-sectors like solar and wind. Solar investors must worry about some super-duper new technology being developed that makes their guy’s business model obsolete. They also must worry about price swings in solar’s basic commodity – silicon. Wind investors, meanwhile, if they are in the U.S., run into the difficulty of buying shares in firms that only trade abroad.

With grid connectivity, not only are there relatively few leaders, they also trade on North American exchanges.

Last week, EnergyTechStocks wrote that to make money in alternative energy, an investor may need a mini-portfolio of Japanese stocks (see To Make $$ in Alternative Energy, US Investors Might Want to Build Their Own Japanese Stock Portfolio) This week the advice here is to also think about building a mini-portfolio of “missing link” stocks from among the following giants in the power transmission business: ABB Ltd. (ABB); Siemens AG (SI); General Cable (BGC); Quanta Services (PWR); MasTec Inc. (MTZ), and Valmont Industries (VMI).

There’s also a personal favorite of EnergyTechStocks’ managing editor, not that he has any money invested in the firm. It’s Composite Technologies (CPTC.OB). This company has a patented aluminum composite power line core that can transmit more power than regular copper lines. Yes, it’s more expensive, but with not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) still ever-present, it would seem likely that governments will place a premium on getting more out of existing transmission rights-of-way.

Seeking Alpha

Report: Lights out next year for many solar firms

Denver Business Journal - by Sacramento Business Journal

Massive inventory buildup and Chinese competition could put half of all U.S. solar manufacturers out of business next year, according to a market research firm.

The report from The Information Network said inventory is averaging 122 days in 2009 versus 71 days in 2008.

Further, it reports that production has dropped to 27.9 percent of potential capacity in 2009 from 48 percent in 2008.

“As many as 50 percent of the more than 200 solar manufacturers, mired in red ink with current selling prices above $2 per watt, may not survive,” the report said. Making matters worse, lower cost products from China are projected to drop to below $1 per watt in 2010 and 50 cents in 2011.

Denver Business Journal

The Politics of Energy #19 - Wind power: Obama's promises just hot air so far

Obama hasn't granted a single permit on public land

Chicago Tribune
By Jim Tankersley and Christi Parsons, Tribune Newspapers

WASHINGTON - -- President Barack Obama is still at least a year away from seeing wind turbines take root anywhere off the U.S. coast, even though his administration has promised to make offshore wind a priority, and even though developers are lining up to string wind farms up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

The administration, delayed by controversy and red tape, has made "clean energy" one of its top policy pushes but has yet to grant a single permit for wind or solar development on public land, onshore or off. Administration officials say the first solar permits won't come until at least next year, and that the first offshore wind farm is also likely a year or two away.

Officials say they've moved quickly to clear the "regulatory underbrush" untended by a Bush team that made little effort to develop wind and solar energy on public land, and that their efforts have sparked a "flurry of activity" among developers.

"We're cooking, and we're excited about it," said David Hayes, the deputy interior secretary. "We are going to see this commercial development occurring, both offshore and solar."

The project proposed for Nantucket Sound, where the president vacationed last month, is a case in point.

For more than eight years, investors on all sides -- some with interests in the new sources of energy, and others making money off the old ones -- have been fighting to either navigate or gum up the permit process of the proposed Cape Wind Project.

The project would provide the majority of the power on Cape Cod and nearby islands, designers say, harnessing wind offshore and transmitting it via cables under the sea back to land.

The windmills would be visible from the mainland as well as Martha's Vineyard on a clear day, an idea that warms the heart of people like Barbara Hill, a Cape resident and head of non-profit Clean Power Now.

"They'll be like masts on the horizon," she says. "It's this perfect relationship between technology and nature."

Critics fear the impact on the environment, boaters and on fishermen who make their living on the shoal where the turbines would be constructed. American Indian tribes on the sound, who call themselves "People of the First Light," say the mills would obstruct their view of the sunrise.

"It would interfere with the natural beauty, the essence of why people come here," says Audra Parker of rival non-profit Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "They don't come for an industrial landscape. They come to get away from that."

Republicans are prodding the administration to move faster on every domestic energy front. They chided Obama on an offshore-wind-themed mock postcard they released before the president's Martha's Vineyard vacation. "Don't let this energy opportunity breeze by you!" they wrote.

jtankersley@tribune.com

Step Right Up. Free Money. Get It While It While It Lasts

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Editor's Note: What would you say to an investor willing to put up one-third of a new energy project's cost, gaining nothing in return? No dividends, no interest. No fuss, no muss.

I am referring to the government's $3 billion dollar cash grant renewable energy stimulus program to incentivizing private investment in the wind sector.

Investors are funding new projects in wind power and other alternative energy schemes because of direct public investments enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus bill. A Department of Energy and Treasury-funded cash grant incentive program is funding up to one third of new projects, particularly wind farms, slated to begin construction in 2009 or 2010. According to the WSJ, just four weeks into the program $800 million in grants have already been submitted and Wall Street bankers predict that figure to reach $10 billion by the end of 2010. Free money has a way of conjuring new projects.

Any banker will tell you that funding a project with one-third "free" money removes a certain percentage of the risk and increases yield to investors. While this is an excellent result in the short term - projects get funded - in the long term it is also true that many of these projects will fail, or disappear after the grants dry up.

Usually marketplace risk takes care of private ventures - some win - some lose. By printing $3 billion in government issued debt and injecting it into the alternative energy industry we distort an efficient capital market. Investments will be made that would not be made if one hundred percent of investors' capital were at risk. You cannot create demand by printing money. What you create instead is inflation.

Why would someone produce alternative energy absent a clear market contract for delivery? Why would someone invest in a project whose product cannot be efficiently integrated into the national electrical grid? Why would someone invest in an intermittent energy source without a cost-effective way to store energy?

These are normal questions any investor asks before committing capital. Our federal government just gave investors three billion reasons to forego these questions. So the question becomes, "Why would anyone go into the wind power business?" The answer is, "Because I'll take the taxpayers' money until it is all gone."

Richard L. Wottrich

Growing Pains for Geothermal

By Toby Shute - MSN Money

For some time now, I've been quietly rooting for geothermal power. It's clean, it's cheap, and unlike solar or wind, it provides a base load of power that doesn't depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing.

Sure, I spend much more time writing about the twists and turns of the solar industry, but that's because there are so many more publicly traded solar businesses. Mining company legend Ross Beaty recently brought Magma Energy public, but it's listed in Canada. Beyond Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ORA), the pickings this side of the border are quite slim.

In recent months, I've been extremely heartened by one geothermal report, and deeply disappointed by others. Let's start with the positive.

Rocking the alternative-energy world

A study, published in the journal Energy Policy, Elsevier, has found that geothermal is both the most efficient alternative-energy technology and is also improving at the fastest rate. Wind power places second, while solar does not fare nearly as well, despite receiving the most government funding among emerging technologies.

The authors, from NYU's Stern School of Business, used a technology S-curve model that should be familiar to anyone who's read the work of Motley Fool CAPS mentor Clayton Christensen. Picture flattish growth, followed by exponential growth, and then a flattening again -- hence the "S" shape. Geothermal and wind technologies are both in that steep middle phase, where they are making rapid efficiency gains, translating to a high return on R&D investment. Wind is further along that curve, while geothermal has shown no signs of slowing performance improvement. Solar is improving much more slowly.

With geothermal poised to surpass the efficiency of fossil fuels with just a few billion dollars' more support (the authors peg the cost at $3.3 billion), the policy implications of this study are that our government funding priorities are out of whack. Imagine that.

Wait one hot minute

This is exciting stuff, but for geothermal to take the world by storm, it has to move beyond the exploitation of natural reservoirs such as occur at Calpine's (NYSE: CPN) Geysers facility and move to Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) that can pull the heat out of hot dry rock. Unfortunately, such projects have seriously stumbled lately.

First there was Australia's Geodynamics, which had an explosion at its Habanero 3 well in April. Commissioning continues to be delayed at the company's pilot plant.

More recently, AltaRock Energy suspended drilling at the Geysers after failing to make it more than a third of its way to total depth. You may recall this as the company in which Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) philanthropic arm took a monetary interest somewhat over a year ago. There are some heavy hitters on board from the venture capital community here, and even the government has dished out a little cash to this deep driller.

Anybody here know how to run one of these drills?

This is disappointing stuff, but drilling difficulties are hardly an insurmountable challenge. Look at Transocean (NYSE: RIG), which just drilled a record 35,055-foot well in more than 4,000 feet of water, uncorking a giant gusher for client BP (NYSE: BP) in the Gulf of Mexico. The geothermal industry, with a fraction of the government money thrown at fossil fuels over the years, will figure out how to drill through 12,000 feet of rock.

That road to commercialization of EGS would certainly be easier if the oil and gas industry would clue the geothermal folks in on the dark arts of deep drilling. The conspiratorially minded among us may conclude that the energy majors have no such interest in doing so, since they have a good thing going with fossil fuels. Even though Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is the biggest geothermal producer in the world, I certainly don't see the company doing a lot to push the EGS envelope.

I probably wouldn't expect too much from this group, given the clear preference by companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) to stick to biofuels. But with or without a helping hand from the hydrocarbon camp, I do expect the geothermal business to grow by leaps and bounds in the years ahead. Whether you should risk your own capital in one of these enterprises is a question for another day.

Copyright 2009 Motley Fool

It's the Population

Editor's Note: According to the Population Reference Bureau, there are roughly 133 million births per year globally. Over 100 million of these babies are born in less developed countries. There are roughly 54 million deaths per year globally; hence the net gain of humanity is close to 80 million humans a year.

This means that every year a country the size of Germany is added to the mix, stressing world resources and competing for food, energy and a basic standard of living. The net gain in less developed countries is about 70 million humans. Can you imagine any scenario where these governments can possibly keep up with such growth?

The one missing feature in any discussion of sustainability, global warming, alternative energy, starvation, access to clean water, and land usage issues, is population control. Until we start to address the obvious, the 2 billion humans on earth who have next to nothing, will continue to have nothing - which apparently is fine as long as they are not in 'your' backyard.

Richard Wottrich

Spain's Solar-Power Collapse Dims Subsidy

(Editor’s Note: This editor has been consistent in questioning massive governmental subsidies to "manufacture" demand for alternative energy. Governments cannot "conjure" productivity. There is no point in building alternative energy facilities if there is not productivity-driven growth to absorb it.)

By ANGEL GONZALEZ and KEITH JOHNSON

Spain's hopes of becoming a world leader in solar power have collapsed since the Spanish government slammed the brakes on generous subsidies.

The sudden change has rippled across the global solar industry, in a warning of the problems that government-supported renewable-energy programs can encounter.

In 2008, Spain accounted for half the world's new solar-power installations in terms of wattage, thanks to government subsidies to promote clean energy. But late last year, as the global economic crisis worsened, the government dramatically scaled back those subsidies and capped the amount of subsidized solar power that could be installed.

Factories world-wide that had ramped up production of solar-power components found that demand for solar panels was plummeting, leaving a glut in supply and pushing prices down. Job cuts followed.

"The solar industry in 2009 has been undermined by [a] collapse in demand due to the decision by Spain," says Henning Wicht, a solar-power analyst at research group iSuppli.

Spain is providing important lessons for the U.S., where lawmakers are engaged in a debate about how to support renewable energy. Boosters of clean energy, including President Barack Obama, have pointed to Spain as a success story showing how government policies jump-started renewable energy, created new industries, and helped the environment.

Balance of article: The Wall Street Journal

The Politics of Energy #18 - There is a Green Wind Blowing

(Photo: Denmark, RLW)

By Richard L. Wottrich, Managing Director, International, Dresner Parters

There is a powerful wind emanating out of Washington, D.C. It foretells that much of President Obama's success will depend on the creation of new "green" jobs in alternative energy and conservation. President Obama has recently appointed Van Jones as a special adviser on green jobs to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones has a background in activism, promoting green jobs to lift people out of poverty. Many of these green jobs are assumed to be coming in wind power. What are the prospects for wind power in America?

Relative Size of Wind Power Production
Wind power in the United States reached 29.4 MW of installed capacity in the second quarter of 2009. In 2008, the U.S. surpassed Germany in installed wind power capacity, followed by Spain. (The world leader in percentage of utilized wind power is Denmark at 19 percent of stationary electricity production.) Including projects installed through the end of 2008, wind power accounted for just 1.26 percent of U.S. electricity last year. Worldwide average wind power production contributes 1.5 percent. Wind power project installations are growing in excess of 25 percent per year in the U.S.

Coal still accounts for 50 percent of U.S. electricity production and natural gas accounts for 23 percent. All renewable energy sources combined account for just 2.5 percent of U.S. electricity production. The sheer scale of energy requirements in America ensure that these relative ratios will change very slowly for years to come.

Slow Project Funding
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, signed by the president on February 17, includes a budget of $32.8 billion for clean energy, $26.9 billion for energy efficiency initiatives, and $18.9 billion for green transportation. Of this $78.6 billion, little has been allocated to date. For example, in August, the U.S. Department of Energy chose 25 cost-sharing alternative-fuel projects to receive a total of $300 million from ARRA, amounting to .0038 percent of proposed funding. Then, the first hurdle is the slow drip, drip of federal funding for wind power projects. The second hurdle is the politics behind the selection process.

Global Stimulus Spending
ICICI Bank recently projected that total infrastructure stimulus spending committed by governments worldwide during this recession will top $35 trillion over the next ten years! This astounding amount puts in perspective funds that the U.S. government plans on spending on wind power projects, as many other nations, including China and India, will be approaching, matching or exceeding our spending. Hence, our relative advantage in direct federal subsidies is perhaps less than one might infer from the headlines.

Wind Power in China
With 20 percent of the world’s population, China now consumes 10 percent of the world’s energy. This would suggest that just to come up to the international average, China will need to double its energy consumption. Indeed, China is opening one coal fired power plant a week as this article comes to print.

China is the fourth largest producer of wind power in the world. The Chinese government is planning to have 150 gW of installed wind power capacity by 2020, of which 30 gW will come from offshore wind farms. Installed wind power capacity should reach 35 gW by the end of 2011, of which 5 gW will come from offshore wind farms, says China Daily (government-owned Xinhau News Agency). China had more than 12 gW in installed capacity as of the end of 2008. China plans to build seven of the world’s largest wind farms with a minimum capacity of 10 gW, each by 2020 in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu and Jiangsu provinces. China is on the move and it is moving faster than the U.S.

Global Wind Power Equipment Manufacturing
Many wind power components are manufactured in other countries. This capacity is increasing rapidly in China, which has natural pricing, financing and governmental advantages in comparison to U.S. companies. China has its own $675 billion stimulus spending program, which they are allocating at a faster pace than in the U.S. Furthermore, the government-controlled banking system has been loaning huge amounts to Chinese companies, with total loans nearly equaling its GDP through the second quarter of 2009.

However, recent U.S. political emphasis is leading a shift toward domestic wind power manufacturing. Many turbine manufacturing leaders have opened U.S. facilities; of the top 10 global manufacturers in 2007, Vestas, GE Energy, Gamesa, Suzlon, Siemens, Acciona, and Nordex have an American manufacturing presence.

Even so, at least 15 Chinese companies are commercially producing wind turbines and several dozen more are producing components. Leading Chinese wind power companies are Xinjiang Goldwind Co., Dalian Heavy Machinery, Zhejiang Yunda Co., Shenyang Industry University (Shenxin Co.), Dongfang Electric Group and Sinovel Wind Co. While wind power growth prospects in the U.S. are promising, it would be unwise to underestimate the impact of Chinese wind power component manufacturers on domestic U.S. manufacturers once Chinese domestic demand is satisfied.

Smart Grid Technologies
A smart electricity grid is simply an upgrade of existing power grids, which generally "broadcast" power from a few central power generators to a large number of users, utilizing digital technology to specifically route power when and where it is required within a wide range of conditions. American electrical grids are overloaded, antiquated and fragmented. Any attempt to integrate large volumes of solar and wind generated electricity into the national grid must address this issue.

Prospects for expansion in renewable energy depend heavily upon the development of smarter grids, because most renewable energy sources are intermittent in nature. Any power infrastructure using a significant portion of intermittent renewable energy resources must be able to reduce electrical demand by "load shedding" when alternative energy sources suddenly or gradually diminish. This also infers that traditional energy producers require “negative” pricing incentives (variable taxation rates) to decrease electrical production when alternative energy sources are flowing.

To integrate disparate energy sources into a smart grid, dependable coal and natural gas sources must be coordinated with intermittent solar and wind sources. In a perfectly elastic smart grid, electricity prices should be allowed to spike exactly when the desired alternative energy sources are not present. Consumers will then, in theory, decrease consumption. However, this means that prices are unpredictable and literally vary with the weather, from the smart grid’s perspective. This is a smart grid vision fraught with political danger, as politicians likely will not sit idly by as their constituents see wildly vacillating electric rates.

Energy Storage
The solution for wildly spiking electricity prices in a smart grid is energy storage. However, it is very expensive to store electricity. Any parent who has run through dozens of batteries for his children’s toys understands this.

Grid energy storage allows energy producers to route excess electricity production over the transmission grid to temporary electricity storage sites. These sites become energy producers when electricity demand increases.

Advances in energy storage are essential if alternative energy sources are to increase dramatically, as intermittent energy sources cannot store energy. Solar thermal, molten salt storage, compressed air storage, hydroelectric energy storage, ice storage, and liquid nitrogen are among scores of technologies in development in this field.

It is a fact that Japanese companies lead the way in energy storage technology, including Japan Wind Development Energy Co., Ltd. Japanese car battery leaders (which can be adapted to wind power storage solutions) include Motor Corp. (TM), Honda Motor Co. (HMC), Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY) and GS Yuasa Corp. (GYUAF).

U.S. manufacturers will have to form joint ventures, license technologies and accelerate research and development to achieve in-country green jobs in energy storage.

The Future of Wind Power
Globally, alternative energy sources account for a small percentage of our energy needs. However, government tax incentives and direct subsidies are influencing a shift of resources into these industries, creating the potential for accelerating year-on-year increases in alternative energy capacity, and the resultant falling electricity prices associated with greater scale.

In the U.S., massive federal spending will likely achieve the same results, but it would be unwise to assume that the same manufacturing advantages that have facilitated explosive growth in China, India and elsewhere will not apply to the wind power industry. As direct competition in wind power components gains traction and scale, U.S. manufacturers will have to be very nimble and adroit to survive.

Oil, coal and natural gas will continue to be the dominate energy sources globally, and in the U.S., for the balance of this century. An increase of alternative energy sources for electricity in the U.S. to 10 percent of usage would represent a huge shift in resources and create many jobs along the way. However, at this point in time, such a shift is years away, as are the myriad green jobs that we assume will be created in the process.

Making Money in Alternative Energy Means Thinking Japanese

Raymond Meier
At Gozanoishi Shrine on Lake Tazawa, in Japan's Akita Prefecture.

Colorado power utilityXcel Energy Inc. (XEL) is among the leading U.S. developers of “smart grid” technology, but when it needed a partner with know-how for operating a wind-to-battery storage system, it turned to Japan Wind Development Energy Co., Ltd. [TYO:2766].

Get used to it. As much as President Obama keeps warning that the U.S. must become an energy technology exporter, not importer, in nearly every alternative sector, Japanese companies stand out. So much so, in fact, that now may be the time for investors to start building a mini all-Japanese alternative energy portfolio.

To start with, there are the usual suspects – Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), Honda Motor Co. (HMC), and Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY). They are likely to be the three leaders, not just for all-electric and plug-in electric cars and trucks, but also – thanks to a lot of cozy technological cooperation coordinated by Japanese research labs – the manufacturing leaders of the advanced batteries that will go into electric vehicles. Another big time car-battery development firm worth including is GS Yuasa Corp. (GYUAF).

Another obvious candidate is Japan Steel Works Ltd. (JPSWF.PK). While not everyone thinks of nuclear power as green energy, it doesn’t gush carbon dioxide and more of it is definitely going to be needed if the world has any hope of meeting expected increases in the demand for electricity. Japan Steel Works happens to be the world’s leading manufacturer of the principal section of a nuclear reactor’s key component, its containment vessel.

Two other obvious candidates are Sharp Corp. (SHCAY) and Sanyo Electric Co. (SANYY). These well-known consumer products concerns are also heavily involved in solar power, energy efficiency and more.

While there are plenty more names to choose from, two that EnergyTechStocks.com finds interesting for their long-term potential are Meidensha Corp. [TYO:6508] and Takuma Co. Ltd. (TKUMF). Meidensha’s energy unit makes efficient power generation systems and components, while its environmental unit is engaged in waste and sewage treatment. Takuma makes, sells and operates power plants that run on biomass. It also is involved in the waste treatment business.

Seeking Alpha

Clunkers Don’t Come Cheap

The New York Times Editorial Board Agrees With Wottrich Article With ChinaView

(Editor's Note: Wottrich was interviewed by Xinhau News Agency on August 26th, 2009, regarding the U.S. Cash-for-Clunkers program. His critical conclusions are supported by today's NYT's editorial.)

The $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program that ended last week worked well as a jolt of economic stimulus. Nearly 700,000 people used the rebate to buy new cars in July and August — adding about 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points to economic growth in the third quarter, at an annual rate.

But there’s also another lesson in the cash-for-clunkers experience: such rebates are a spectacularly inefficient way to implement environmental policy. Sure, the new cars deliver about nine miles per gallon more than those traded in, on average. But the benefits — measured in terms of reduced greenhouse gas emissions — come at inordinate expense.

On average, cars are driven 12,000 miles per year, according to government statistics. Considering that the traded-in clunkers had an average fuel economy of 15.8 m.p.g. while the new ones deliver 24.9 m.p.g., a swap saved some 278 gallons of gas per year — which would have released almost 2.8 tons of carbon dioxide when burned.

Assuming the clunkers would have been driven four more years, the $4,200 average rebate removed 11.2 tons of carbon from the atmosphere, at a cost of some $375 per ton. If they would have been driven five years, the carbon savings cost $300 per ton. And if drivers drive their sleek new wheels more than they drove their old clunkers, the cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere will be even higher.

To put this in perspective, an allowance to emit a ton of CO2 costs about $20 on the European Climate Exchange. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a ton of carbon would be valued at $28 under the cap-and-trade program in the clean energy bill passed by the House in June.

The program might have been more efficient with modifications, like a smaller rebate. But even if the new cars bought under the program had zero emissions, the price of removing the clunkers’ carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would have been nearly $140 per ton.

The best tool to induce Americans to drive more fuel-efficient cars would be a gas tax that provided rebates for low-income drivers. Another, though inferior, alternative — if Congress couldn’t face the political risks of a gas tax — would be a program that provided a rebate for drivers of clean cars while imposing a fee on drivers of gas hogs.

In any case, as environmental policy, it’s just too expensive to buy clunkers to take them off the road.

Will Solar Ever Live Up to the Hype? Paul Allen, Vinod Khosla Bet On Infinia’s Engines of the Sun

Sitton, the CEO of Kennewick, WA-based Infinia, showed me a device resembling a satellite dish that has attracted some deep-pocketed investors, including Paul Allen and Vinod Khosla. Their hope is that Infinia’s dishes will finally turn solar energy into a workhorse for meeting more of the world’s electricity demand. If Sitton and his backers are right, he’ll be running a multi-billion dollar company five years from now. If he’s wrong, Infinia will be written off as just another costly pipe dream.

Here’s how this is supposed to work. That satellite dish I mentioned earlier? It has a little motor attached to it that keeps it in the right position to capture as many direct rays of sun as possible during daylight hours. Like any dish, it uses mirrors to reflect something, in this case, sunlight, back up to a focal point. That’s where Infinia has the business end of its device.

It’s a Stirling engine, made to convert that concentrated heat from the sun into mechanical work. It’s like a steam engine, except it doesn’t need water—it powers its internal piston through the expansion and contraction of helium. The heat moves the piston, which generates electricity. These engines are thought to be attractive for this kind of work, partly because they are highly efficient at converting heat into electricity, and they don’t require water, or oil. They are supposed to be able to last 25 years with zero maintenance, Sitton says.

Balance of article: xeconomy

Scottish island moving to 100% tidal power

Claggain Bay, Islay

The Scottish island of Islay is reported to be moving itself entirely to tidal power. According to the Guardian the island, which is home to 3500 people, will soon get all its electricity from turbines placed in the Sound of Islay. The island, Scotland’s fifth largest, is known for its whiskey.

According to the article the project will provide the 239 square mile island with 10MW of power by 2011. At £50m it’s not an inexpensive undertaking, but the move towards renewable energy seems perfect for the circumstances. The tides around the island move at up to 3 meters a second making them ideally suited for the power turbines.

As well suited as tidal power is for an island, the technology is still in its earliest stages. In fact, the articles goes on to point out that tidal energy generation is more expensive than offshore solar projects, which themselves can cost up to £3m per megawatt. Despite the price difference tidal energy should be more reliable than wind power, which fluctuates based on weather conditions, and will outlast the the current solution, a nuclear reaction on the mainland which stop being used in 2016.

Geek.com

The Politics of Energy #17 - Ag interests challenge EPA on global biofuels damage

By Bill Lambrecht
Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Midwest farmers argue that the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t know beans about farming.

That’s essentially what the St. Louis-based American Soybean Association contends in an offensive opened this week aimed at persuading the EPA to back off proposed new rules that could hamstring production of soy-made biodiesel as part of the nation’s drive to curb climate change.

The St. Louis trade group issued a “national call-to-action for grassroots activism” asking farmers and their allies to weigh in before an EPA public comment period expires next month.
The issue is complex: The EPA has proposed new rules that factor in damage that American biofuels production inflicts in faraway lands like Brazil and Malaysia, where carbon-filled forests are going up in smoke.

The “indirect land use” provisions are part of new rules to develop next-generation biofuels, including ethanol made from something other than corn.

The EPA is relying on studies showing that cultivation of new croplands to fill gaps in the commodities market when people farm for fuel rather than food has destructive effects around the world.

The issue is more than academic: The Renewable Fuel Standard requires that alternative fuels like ethanol and biodiesel reduce pollution of heat-trapping gasses over the long-term in order to qualify for guaranteed markets granted by Congress.

Corn-growers breathed easier when the EPA granted corn-made ethanol exemptions from the new rules over the next several years. But the soybean growers and the Jefferson City-based National Biodiesel Board weren’t so fortunate.

“The government is supposed to be promoting the use of renewable fuels, not making it more difficult for renewable fuels to get a start,” soybean industry spokesman Bob Callanan told us when we phoned him.

In their new grassroots campaign, the ag interests want the EPA to rewrite the proposed rules — and give biodiesel a break.

stltoday.com

(Editor's Note: Driven by the growth of biodiesel, soybean prices are up: Today’s Crop Farmer - Sales of soybeans ($5.50 a bushel) $177,000; Tomorrow’s Energy Farmer - Sales of soybeans ($6.90 a bushel) $220,800)

The Politics of Energy #16 - US Department of Energy awards nearly $300M for 25 cost-sharing alternative fuel projects

Associated Press

SEAL BEACH, Calif. - The U.S. Department of Energy has chosen 25 cost-sharing alternative-fuel projects to receive a total of nearly $300 million from funds allotted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Energy secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday that these projects will "speed the transformation of the nation's vehicle fleet, putting more than 9,000 alternative-fuel and energy-efficient vehicles on the road, and establishing 542 refueling locations across the country."

The DOE estimates the projects will help reduce the nation's annual petroleum use by about 38 million gallons.

The program will fund a range of energy-efficient and other vehicle technologies, such as hybrids, electric vehicles, plug-in electric hybrids, hydraulic hybrids and compressed natural gas vehicles.

(Editor's Note: The projected gasoline savings of 38 million gallons represents .00274% of our annual gasoline usage of 140.5 billion gallons. Put another way, the subsidized cost for the first 38 million gallons is $7.89 a gallon.)

Plugging to the Sun - National Geographic

Editor's Note: This month's Naional Geographic has an expansive article entitled "Plugging Into the Sun" that is well worth reading.

"If we talk about geothermal or wind, all these other sources of renewable energy are limited in their quantity," Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany, told me last fall. "The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited."

Balance of article: National Geographic

Biofuels to have greatest impact on land use and habitat

London, August 26 (ANI): A new study has determined that biomass production for fuel or electricity generation will have the biggest impact on landscape and habitats.

According to a report in Nature News, the broad analysis of potential US energy and climate-mitigation scenarios compared the land and habitat impacts of various energy mixes - from nuclear power to biofuels - resulting from an array of policy options.

In a supplement to the study paper, the authors re-ran their estimates to take account of the likely impact of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill.

The bill, which is awaiting approval by the US Senate, includes a cap-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gases.

The researchers estimate that regardless of whether the Waxman-Markey bill were enacted, the amount of land affected by energy development by 2030 will be between 21-70 million hectares - an area which is, even at its lower bound, about the size of the state of Wyoming.

"A cap-and-trade bill may have some incremental effect in increasing energy sprawl, but most of the development that's going to happen is because of other laws that are already in place," said study author Robert McDonald, a landscape ecologist with The Nature Conservancy
, a non-profit environmental organization based in Arlington, Virginia.

Those other laws include the US renewable fuel standard, which requires that the volume of renewable fuel blended into gasoline is increased from 34 billion litres in 2008 to 136 billion litres by 2022.

That increase will require an area of between 19 and 31 million hectares - the largest component of McDonald's projected energy sprawl, despite the fact that biofuels are expected to comprise less than 5 percent of the country's total energy budget.

The US Energy Information Administration predicts that ethanol derived from corn alone might reach annual production levels of 39 billion litres by 2030.

McDonald and his colleagues calculate that this would require more than 9 million extra hectares of land to be planted with corn (maize), an area about the size of the state of Indiana.

"If we are to prevent serious, damaging climate change, it will require one of the largest land-use changes in the history of the country," said Jimmie Powell, a policy expert at The Nature Conservancy and a co-author of the study.

"Because the change is so big, it's important that we do it carefully to minimize the environmental impacts of these new energy resources," he added. (ANI)

News Track India

Energized Portfolios: Five Power Picks

SmartMoney Magazine by Elizabeth O'Brien (Author Archive)

T. Boone Pickens grabbed headlines last year by adding wind energy to his ongoing investments in the oil patch. But across the country, investors who are not quite as famous are mimicking a new, pragmatic approach to energy investing—call it the have-it-both-ways tack. On the one hand, they’re continuing to invest in the traditional energy that will likely power our cars, heat and light homes, and run factories for decades to come. But they are also hedging those bets by plowing assets into greener and cleaner technologies.

It’s a strategy that echoes what some Big Oil companies are doing, from BP, which has spent $3 billion over four years on wind, solar and biofuels, to Exxon Mobil, which is spending $600 million on research into biofuels. Even some utilities are taking the dual approach, operating old-fashioned coal and oil-fired plants while sinking money into wind turbines and solar-energy farms.

Schlumberger (SLB)
The Houston-based oil-services firm helps customers—mostly major Big Oil firms, like Exxon Mobil—find and extract oil by setting up wells and maximizing their efficiency. About three-quarters of Schlumberger’s $27 billion in annual sales comes from outside the U.S.

Apache
The Houston-based company won’t drill unless oil is at least $40 a barrel and natural gas is at least $4.50 per million BTUs. So these days Apache (APA: 88.36, -0.51, -0.57%) is looking for oil but putting much of its search for natural gas on hold. But investors who have watched the company for years point to its long-term record of boosting production and reserves, through both acquisitions and efficient operations.

First Solar
This year it plans to double its worldwide production, manufacturing enough solar panels annually to provide about 1,000 megawatts of electricity. Analysts say this should give First Solar (FSLR: 124.08, +2.54, +2.08%) an edge, as solar technology evolves from a niche product to a more widely used energy source.

Telvent
When New York State needed help unsnarling the state’s crowded roadways, officials turned to Telvent (TLVT: 25.54, +0.94, +3.82%). Traffic management is one of many services the company provides to improve efficiency in energy, transportation and other industries.

Massey Energy
Coal stocks have been “left for dead,” says Jerry Jordan, manager of the Jordan Opportunity fund, which owns Massey Energy (MEE: 30.46, +0.03, +0.09%) shares. For savvy investors, all those negatives could spell opportunity. Coal remains one of the cheapest and most abundant fuels—powering half of the nation’s electric output—and America isn’t likely to wean itself from coal for decades. Richmond, Va.–based Massey is poised to benefit: It’s the nation’s fourth-largest coal producer and the largest coal company in Central Appalachia, with 36 percent of the region’s reserves.