Green Tech

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure.

"I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," he said in an interview with PBS Newshour.

"What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were."

Sweden has labeled the accord Obama helped broker a disaster for the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the summit was "at best flawed and at worst chaotic," and climate change advocates have been even more scathing in their criticism.

The talks secured bare-minimum agreements that fell well short of original goals to reduce carbon emissions and stem global warming, after lengthy negotiations failed to paper over differences between rich nations and developing economies. Some singled out China for special blame.

British Environment Minister Ed Miliband wrote in the Guardian newspaper on Monday China had "hijacked" efforts to agree to significant reductions in global emissions. Beijing denied the claim and said London was scheming to divide developing countries on the climate change issue.

Obama did not point any fingers, but did say the Chinese delegation was "skipping negotiations" before his personal intervention.

"At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said.

Obama forged an accord with China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the conference's final hours after personally securing a bilateral meeting with the four nations' leaders.

"We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries--not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters," he said.

The PBS interview with Obama can be viewed here

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

WASHINTON--Two U.S. senators pledged on Tuesday to take up legislation early next year to extend the biodiesel tax credit as it looks likely action will not be taken on it this year.

An industry group complained that if a bill was passed by Congress early next year to extend the credit, it would not be enough to stop plants from closing after the credit expires on December 31.

Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, said they would take up legislation to extend the $1-per-gallon tax credit and an array of other tax breaks as soon as possible after Congress convenes next year.

The credit extension has been delayed by the health care debate and because it has been linked with other tax incentives.

The renewable fuels industry was angry that legislation has not yet passed in the Senate. A so-called extenders bill passed in the House of Representatives earlier this month that would keep the credit going to the end of 2010. But industry had wanted five-year extensions to be passed before the end of the year.

"Very frustrating," said Monte Shaw, director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. "Congress has really dropped the ball on this."

He said he appreciated that Baucus and Grassley hope to move on it early next year. But he said biodiesel plants are already losing contracts to make the fuel because of the credit not yet being renewed and oil refiners are afraid they will not get the credit for blending the fuel.

Plants will shut after December 31 and thousands of people could lose their jobs until the credit is renewed, Shaw said.

The White House has said the extension of the tax credit for biodiesel would provide "clean energy companies with the certainty they need to make critical investments in the nation's energy future."

Soybean oil is a primary feedstock for making biodiesel. Eleven percent of this year's soybean crop will be used for biodiesel, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate.

The American Soybean Association has said failure to renew the incentive could reduce prices paid to farmers for their soybeans by 25 cents or more per bushel.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. PST with additional information on PG&E deal.

SolarReserve said on Tuesday it has signed a deal to build a utility-scale solar plant in Nevada with a molten salt storage system that will let it supply power when the sun isn't shining.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company has a 25-year power purchase agreement with utility NV Energy to supply about 480,000 megawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to power about 75,000 homes during peak times. The capacity of the concentrating solar system will be 100 megawatts and be located near the town of Tonopah in Nye County, Nev.

The plant will use a field of heliostats--large mirrors that track the movement of the sun--to heat molten salt held in a tower. That liquid salt is heated to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and transferred to storage tanks. It is then fed into a loop where it creates steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. The colder molten salt is recaptured and fed back into tanks to be heated again.

Click for larger image.

(Credit: SolarReserve)

The company did not indicate how many hours of storage it intends to have at the Tonapah plant but said that the solar field will be able to deliver energy at peak times even when the sun isn't shining.

Construction of the project is expected by the end of 2010, but it still needs approval from the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.

The southwest U.S. is prime land for concentrated solar thermal technology, which needs the right sun angle and a lot of sunlight. Utilities in California and other states are pursuing large-scale solar projects to meet state mandates for renewable energy generation.

The addition of a storage system adds to the overall cost per kilowatt-hour of solar. But it allows the power producer to deliver electricity during peak times when the cost of electricity is highest.

Also on Tuesday, California utility Pacific Gas & Electric said that it has signed a contract to purchase electricity from a SolarReserve-developed project at the Rice Airfield in San Bernardino County, Calif.

The proposed Rice Solar Energy project, which has not yet been approved by state regulators, would produce 150 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 60,000 average homes, starting in 2013, according to PG&E.

In a company blog, PG&E said that the molten salt storage technology was successfully demonstrated in the 1990s at the Solar Two power plant in California, and plants in Spain have also used the technique. "Best of all, a well-insulated storage tank for molten salt can be 99 percent efficient, so it loses heat only very gradually," company representative Jonathan Marshall wrote.

U.S. lawmakers face an uphill battle enacting a climate bill in 2010 that includes a cap-and-trade market in greenhouse gases, after this month's U.N. meeting in Copenhagen failed to hammer out a global pact on emissions cuts.

U.S. climate legislation remains likely as lawmakers feel pressure to help the country lead in production of low-carbon energy sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear power.

But the Copenhagen Accord did not include emissions targets. This will make it difficult for lawmakers to argue that the United States should have a cap while China, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, and other big polluters are not legally required to act on climate.

"We were previously of the view that cap and trade was becoming an increasingly hard sell in the U.S.," said Paul McConnell, an energy markets analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "But I think the events in Copenhagen have probably made that even more difficult."

Alternatives to cap and trade will emerge, such as mandates and incentives for increasing levels of energy from low-carbon sources like solar, wind, and nuclear.

Further delays in launching a trillion-dollar market in U.S. rights to emit greenhouse gases will disappoint potential investors and dealers looking toward a trading scheme that could be several times larger than the one in Europe.

The health care debate has delayed U.S. Senate action on climate, and financial industry reform legislation will likely push back the cap-and-trade debate into early next year, analysts said.

The longer the delay, the harder it will be to convince undecided Democratic senators to vote for a cap-and-trade plan.

"For a lot of moderate Democrats who are up for re-election, they don't want to be seen as closely attached to this because of the concerns about job losses and higher energy prices," said Divya Reddy, an analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington.

Said McConnell: "Cap and trade potentially could have economic impacts, which many senators would be loathe to push onto the U.S. economy right now," as it struggles to recover from recession.

That could make it harder for the three senators working on a compromise climate bill -- Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and independent Joe Lieberman -- to come up with the 60 votes required to pass the measure with cap and trade. Such a proposal was included in the climate bill that passed narrowly in the House of Representatives in June.

Failure to pass a U.S. cap and trade program could have international implications. It could delay development of a similar market in Canada, which has signaled it will follow the U.S. lead on an greenhouse gas emissions mechanisms.

Lengthy delays could also hamper investments in energy efficiency and low-carbon sources like wind, solar, and nuclear power. Experts say such alternatives would remain more expensive than today's dirtier technologies.

"Plan B" alternatives
Kerry said in Copenhagen last week that the Senate bill may not contain cap and trade, and other options are being discussed.

So-called "Plan B" alternatives to cap and trade could include carbon taxes and national mandates for power generators to produce higher levels of cleaner energy sources, Reddy said.

A new climate strategy could also include elements of a "cap and dividend" plan recently introduced by two senators. That aims to cut Wall Street's role in emissions markets by auctioning permits to polluters and delivering most of the proceeds to the general public.

But Kevin Book, an analyst at Clearview Energy Partners said many senators and many companies, like oil major ConocoPhillips and power generator Duke Energy, are already sold on cap and trade. Some power companies that have invested in low-carbon electricity generation feel they could compete better against companies that burn mostly coal under a cap-and-trade regime.

In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may become more aggressive on forcing polluters to cut emissions after issuing a finding late this year that greenhouse gases endanger human health.

Still, the lack of a global agreement on emissions cuts will make it hard for U.S. lawmakers to convince the public to accept caps on emissions that get stricter over time.

"There's definitely scope for other solutions," McConnell said. "For the U.S. to put itself under strict and binding emissions targets when other major emitters aren't doing the same thing, represents something of a challenge."

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

First Solar employees work on the solar power station in Blythe, Calif.

(Credit: First Solar)

Solar module maker First Solar on Monday opened the largest photovoltaic solar power station in California, which the company plans to replicate in order to expand its utility business.

The plant in Blythe, Calif., which First Solar purchased from energy developer NRG, will have the capacity to generate 21 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 17,000 homes. It will supply electricity to Southern California Edison under a 20-year purchase power agreement.

It's one of a number of projects that First Solar is pursuing as it seeks to expand in the utility-scale solar business. A deal to build a 48-megawatt plant in California to supply Pacific Gas & Electric was approved last week. "The development, project finance and construction of this solar plant demonstrate First Solar's capabilities in utility scale projects," Bruce Sohn, president of First Solar, said in a statement.

First Solar's panels, which use thin film solar cells made from cadmium telluride, are considered the lowest cost solar panel in the industry. The company's relatively low cost and the technology's track record make it attractive to utilities that need to meet the California renewable energy mandate.

COPENHAGEN--U.N. climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China, and other emerging powers that falls far short of the conference's original goals.

"Finally we sealed a deal," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The 'Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this...is an important beginning."

A long road lies ahead. The accord--weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the "political" deal many had foreseen--left much to the imagination.

It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times--seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms, and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved.

It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed decisions on core issues such as emissions cuts into the future.

"This basically is a letter of intent...the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change, but not in precise legal terms. That means we have a lot of work to do on the long road to Mexico," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen--a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

In a sign of optimism about the stock market's reception to clean energy start-ups, California solar company Solyndra on Friday filed documents to go public.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company said it plans to raise $300 million in a public stock offering to expand into a market it projects to grow at 34 percent annually.

Four-year-old Solyndra makes a very specialized solar module designed for flat commercial rooftops. The system, which looks like long rows of black tubes, uses flexible thin-film solar cells shaped as a half cylinder to generate electricity from sunlight. The shape increases the amount of captured light while providing cooling from the air.

Solyndra's rooftop solar arrays are made up of hundreds of tube-shaped solar cells.

(Credit: Solyndra)

The company received a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program earlier this year, which it used to open a manufacturing facility in California. That loan, authorized in the 2007 Energy Act, was the first that the incoming DOE had given after a four-year backlog of applications.

Solyndra said it intends to use the proceeds from a public stock offering to finance the expansion of its second fabrication unit. It has also applied for a second loan guarantee for $469 million from the DOE in September, it said.

Billions of venture capital money has been put into green technology companies, but there have been few successful stock market offerings that have rewarded early investors and fueled further growth.

Earlier this year, Watertown, Mass.-based battery company A123 Systems went public and its stock has largely maintained its initial rise. That successful offering was seen as a sign that investors are interested in the potential for energy technology companies despite the economic downturn.

In its S-1 documents, Solyndra indicated that it had revenue of over $174 million and a net loss of nearly $120 million for the nine months of 2009. In the past several weeks, Solyndra announced distribution agreements with companies outside the U.S.

As the year ends and the world's attention is fixed on climate negotiators in Copenhagen, the discussion about green technologies is as much about the economy as it is the planet.

In my annual Year in Review column, I point out that national governments are active participants in nascent emerging energy technologies, whether it be modernizing the grid or creating a manufacturing base for electric vehicles. Governments around the world this year pumped stimulus money into promoting domestic clean energy, not only to lower emissions but to position their countries' economies for the future.

Green technology professionals have always been out to develop profitable businesses. But now, it seems, they are increasingly pressing their case for clean-energy policies because of the importance of green tech in national economic competitiveness.

This is playing out at the Cop15 climate negotiations this week as well, where one of the key issues revolves around the transfer of low-carbon technologies to developing countries.

In one example, a delegation of smart-grid companies from the U.S. on Friday demonstrated a home energy management system to several members of Congress.

Smart grid technologies can help address environmental problems by using energy more efficiently. But the primary message that the smart-grid delegation had for members of Congress is that the U.S. needs to press faster to promote clean energy technologies, said Chris King, chief regulatory office at Silicon Valley smart-grid start-up eMeter, who was in the delegation. Europe and Asian countries have more aggressive roll-out schedules for smart meters and have made regulatory changes to promote energy efficiency, he said.

"We are ahead now but policy needs to keep pace with technology companies," King said. "We can benefit from it in the U.S. and contribute to the strength of the economy by exporting to other markets."

Two solar project developers this week raised funds to install commercial and utility scale projects from a somewhat unlikely source: venture capital firms.

On Friday, Tioga Energy said it has raised $20 million to build out its business of providing project financing for commercial and municipal solar installations, such as schools and businesses. Investors included solar wafer manufacturer MEMC and venture capital companies NGEN Partners, Nth Power, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

SunBorne Energy Holdings on Wednesday disclosed that it has secured $5.2 million in funding from venture-capital company General Catalyst. It plans to develop utility-scale solar projects in India, including a planned solar thermal project in the state of Gujarat.

Although they are addressing different customers, both companies are in the business of renewable energy project development, where they build, own, and then maintain solar installations.That model is typically used for non-residential solar because third-party financing makes investment far more attractive to prospective customers such as businesses and utilities.

(Credit: Applied Materials)

Tioga Energy provides power purchase agreements in which the customer doesn't have to pay the upfront cost of the solar panels. Instead, it purchases the electricity generated by the panels from Tioga, which finances the installation and manages ongoing operation.

Financing renewable energy projects is typically done by banks or companies specialized in project financing, but that source of money has dried up in the economic downturn. Venture capitalists, meanwhile, have typically stayed clear of project finance because they seek bigger financial returns by investing in technology or business model innovations.

But General Catalyst is starting to look at project development companies as part of its mix of investments, said investor Bilal Zuberi in his blog. "Strong execution, plus control over a scarce resource, allows a developer to not just create value from projects on the ground but also from future pipeline of projects," he said.

The series B round for Tioga Energy will serve to finance construction and development of new projects. NGEN Partner Steve Parry in a statement said it invested in Tioga's series B round with MEMC to accelerate the adoption of green technology and renewable energy.