Over the past six months, oil prices have plunged more than 50 percent, renewable energy company asset values have taken an even bigger dive, and financial institutions have collapsed completely, leading to a worldwide credit crunch.

Is this really the best time for your company to be thinking about generating renewable energy onsite?

Before answering, consider these forecasts by the International Energy Administration (IEA) in its recent World Energy Outlook 2008:

-- Energy is going to get more expensive, with oil reaching $200 per barrel by 2030.
-- Carbon-intensive energy, which comprises well over half of the energy in the United States, is going to get much more expensive-in part due to a cap on carbon that could reach $180 per ton.
-- The price and supply of fossil fuels will continue to be volatile.

In that context, it's clear: Companies can't afford not to think about investing in renewable energy, especially those with high energy-to-raw-material cost ratios, such as firms in agriculture, food processing, metal refining, paper manufacturing, and chemicals.

What follows are five key reasons why you should consider generating renewable energy onsite to power up your business.

Renewable Energy is Beating the Grid

In some regions, the cost of generating onsite renewable energy is already beating electricity bought from the grid. This "grid parity" is currently happening in places like California, Hawaii and Japan, where electricity costs are high and renewable resources are abundant. By 2012, Australia and Italy will likely achieve grid parity, and by 2015 much more of the United States will as well.

Threatened Supply and Hungry Demand Build the Case for Self-Production

Oil production is expanding to regions with increasingly unstable governments and crippling poverty, such as Iran, Russia, and Qatar, which together hold 56 percent of known new oil reserves.

On the demand side, the world is hungrier than ever: Even with the extremely high per-capita oil needs of OECD countries, fully 80 percent of projected new demand is coming from China, India, and the Middle East, while 1.6 billion people around the world still go without any electricity. As for logistics, the bulk of oil moves through international waters where there is growing banditry, such as the $100 million oil tanker heist by Somali pirates that is still unresolved. The result: The fossil fuel supply chain poses tremendous uncertainty on both price and physical delivery.

Carbon Legislation is Pushing Up Costs

Carbon cap-and-trade regulations, in some form or another, are descending on economies around the world. Already underway for several years, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme charges European heavy emitters $21.39 for every ton of carbon above their cap. In October, the U.S. inaugurated its first cap-and-trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which regulates utilities in the Northeast with a cost of $3.07 per ton. Regulation is just around the corner for other parts of the U.S., as well as for China and Canada. The IEA, an energy policy advisor to 28 member countries, predicts that by 2030, the average carbon prices will climb to $90 or even $180 per ton.

In addition to cap-and-trade regulations, low-carbon product standards and border tax adjustments also will put pressure on supply chains and buyer demand. All this means that carbon-intensive energy is a growing liability, whether at your own operations, upstream with suppliers, or downstream with the use of the products you sell.

Incentives for Onsite Renewables Production are Rising

"Feed-in tariffs," which require utilities to connect small, onsite renewable projects to the grid and pay their generators for surplus energy generated, are gaining traction. Countries such as Germany and Spain have adopted such policies successfully, and others like the U.S. (in California) and China are in the midst of implementing and scaling them up.

Creative Finance Options Abound

There are numerous ways to gather the resources to make onsite projects happen. Thanks to the grid, energy service companies can provide some or all of the financing needed. The grid also enables creative partnerships. For example, in partnership with Xcel Energy, Colorado's Aspen Skiing Company recently financed $1.1 million for a 147-kilowatt solar energy array. Of the energy produced, a third goes to a local school, and two-thirds is sold back to the grid, with profits given to Aspen Skiing Company.

There is a good chance you will find financing for onsite renewable energy projects by exploring partnerships with foundations or exploring funding available in carbon markets for carbon-offsets projects.

With the energy crisis likely to outlast the current economic crisis, investing in onsite renewable energy generation can insulate your company from the shocks, scarcity, and rising prices of energy. And with recent political discussions about a "New Green Deal" and a climate change "Manhattan Project," it's even possible that governments will add to or reconfigure the $300 billion in energy subsidies around the world.

So, in response to the question we started with: Is this really the best time for your company to be thinking about generating renewable energy onsite?

Yes, now more than ever.

Source
Author, Ryan Schuchard
Ryan Schuchard is Business for Social Responsibility's environmental research and development associate.

The U.S. housing sector remains in deep recession. Consumer spending is down. Business investment remains lackluster, with industrial production indicators hitting new lows monthly. And lay-offs have hit alarming levels.

Against this backdrop it's understandable if one holds a not-so-optimistic view regarding the U.S. economy and the markets for early 2009: the economy's fundamentals are weak, and it's going to take a lot of stimulus, fiscal and otherwise, to turn them around.

Nevertheless, there are bright spots -- in this case literally, as well as macroeconomically -- regarding the U.S. economy of tomorrow.

This way to the future

One small, but significant data point: despite the plunge in oil prices to around $50 per barrel, demand for solar energy and solar panels remains strong. Demand for solar energy systems increased 45% in 2007 and is expected to register another impressive gain in 2008, The New York Times reported.

About 25,000-35,000 workers -- installers, manufacturers, distributors, project developers, and material suppliers -- are currently directly employed in the solar energy sector, which is expected to grow to more than 110,000 in 2016, according to Solar Energy Institute Association data, The Times reported.

And here's an equally important stat: the jobs pay between $15-30 per hour, with many solar companies offering health benefits, The Times reported.


'Scale it up, and good things result'

Economist David H. Wang said those who view the 110,000-solar-job projection as small are missing the point: those totals don't assume any money from the Obama Administration's upcoming fiscal stimulus package or its energy bill/program, which will likely follow it.

"Assume continued technology progress in solar cells. Now multiply that by efforts to increase renewable energy sources in public schools and buildings. Now add an enhanced, but not an unreasonable, federal tax credit. Bingo. I think you can see that goods things will begin to happen from a domestic jobs and a GDP standpoint," Wang said. "If we add wind, auto sector transformation, and electric grid improvements to the equation, I think you can see that renewable energy has the ability to be a major source of good-paying, domestic jobs, for decades. Scale it up, and good things result."

Wang said a key factor will be the role energy efficiency plays in the Obama Administration's infrastructure and energy bills. For example, if the new administration gives school/public building energy efficiency a low priority, the seed-money effect on the solar industry will be less. If it is given a high priority, "it will create a surge of players in the field increasing research efforts," which will speed solar tech advances, further lowing solar costs, "which will really drive increased solar use and installation."

Energy Policy/Economic Analysis: In the very near future, your son or daughter may be a solar product designer, engineer, or solar product installer. Or perhaps you will become one yourself, with additional training in a career shift. Add wind energy, a revamped auto sector, mass transit expansion, and export sales of the above technologies -- some may become the envy of the world -- and one can begin to see the beginnings of the U.S. economic recovery and sustainable growth.

Solar power is explored , as KVPR's Quality of Life moderator Terry Phillips welcomes guests in the studio and via phone. Franz Weinschenk is a teacher and writes a column about alternative energy issues. Erin Clark is Managing Director of Regrid Power, Tom Cotter is a Solar Consultant for Regrid Power, and Bruce Williford is a biology teacher at Fresno High School. Listeners learn about the Fresno Solar Tour coming up on April 18th, and talk with listeners about their experiences and ideas regarding solar power.

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KVPR's Quality of Life Show on Alternative Energy
Regrid Power

When it goes online in 2010, the hybrid plant will also be the second largest solar energy facility in the world, become the largest outside California and provide an estimated 75 megawatts of solar thermal capacity while directly displacing fossil fuel usage, the utility said.

The facility, called the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, is being built at the utility's existing natural-gas/oil-fired 3,657-megawatt Martin power plant. The plant is near Indiantown in Martin County, roughly 100 miles north of Miami.

Once complete, the new facility will pair a solar-thermal field with a combined-cycle natural gas power plant. Together, they're expected to use less fossil fuel when the sun is out while helping to produce steam to generate electricity.

The solar portion of the combined facility is to feature some 180,000 collectors with mirrored surfaces spread over 500 acres. The technology works this way: The mirrors reflect the sun onto receivers to heat liquid creating steam that in turn produces electricity whenever the sun is shining.

The utility projects that the new facility will produce about 155,000 MWh of electricity a year — about enough to power almost 11,000 households in its service area. FPL also estimates that the facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.75 million tons across a 30-year period.

The Martin project is the largest of three of the solar facilities the utility is building in the state. All told the facilities are expected to produce 110 megawatts of emissions-free energy when operational. The other Florida projects are at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and in Desoto County.

In addition to becoming the operator of the second largest solar plant in the world, the utility already lays claim to operating the world's largest solar-thermal plant: the 310-megawatt Solar Electric Generating System in the world in California's Mojave Desert.

The utility says its capacity to produce solar power coupled with its production of renewable energy from the wind make FPL the U.S. front-runner in the renewable energy field. The utility has 58 wind power projects in 16 states with a capacity of more than 5,800 megawatts of electricity.

In California on Monday, Southern California Edison celebrated the completion of the largest rooftop solar installation in its state. The solar power array of two square miles of panels are expected to produce 250 megawatts of peak capacity — enough power for 1,300 homes.

Just a week earlier, the Northern California Solar Energy Association released a report charting the growth of solar installations in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

More than 60 percent of the country's solar installations are in the Golden State, and the number of the installations has grown 30 to 40 percent annually for the past several years, Molly Tirpak Sterkel of the California Public Utilities Commission said in her forward to the report, which is available here.

It’s been a long 21 months of campaigning, voting and high emotions with the American Presidential election. Now that President-Elect Barack Obama has been voted into office, with his official term starting on 20th January 2009, it is a great time to look back at what his views and promises were in regards to his presidency’s impact on the solar industry.

With the world watching the unfolding events of the past year in America’s politics, many issues were at the forefront of debates. Economy, war and international relations; all the typical - indeed, important - questions that needed to be asked of the future leader of the United States. One question that was of particular interest was the position that the candidates, specifically Barack Obama, held in regards to renewable energy, especially in the solar industry. Interestingly, Obama had addressed this at an early speech at Las Vegas’ Springs Preserve, Nevada, on 25th June 2008 and again at the last debate with Senator John McCain.

In Las Vegas, Obama acknowledged that Nevada alone could create “upwards of 80,000 jobs by 2025” with solar, wind and geothermal energy. He also conceded that the U.S. was much farther behind in renewable energy technology than other parts of the world, particularly Spain, Germany and Japan. He directly cited Germany as “a country as cloudy as the Pacific Northwest [which] is now a world leader in the solar power industry and the quarter million new jobs it has created.” This was a concept that seemed to baffle him, considering that states like Nevada have such tremendous amounts of sunshine every year. The U.S. is not as far advanced in harvesting this sunshine like the European countries.

While America has had a long infatuation with offshore drilling, Obama stated that he felt that in the roughly eight years it would take the U.S. to start using oil from offshore drilling, Germany would “have doubled their renewable energy output.” He praised Germany’s government for providing investments and incentives to the renewable energy industry. The country’s model makes it possible for solar power companies to research and develop the technology needed for a successful alternative energy-fuelled country.

Using Europe and Asia as a model for success, Obama said that he “will invest $150 billion over the next ten years in alternative sources of energy like wind power, and solar power, and advanced biofuels-investments that will create up to five million new jobs…”

By the time October’s last presidential debate rolled around, the world’s economies had become even more depressed. This made it even easier to dismiss asking a question about the future President’s plans for the world’s climates or the U.S. energy predicament, but moderator Bob Schieffer pressed the Senators to state their positions. Both Obama and McCain stated their plans to reduce U.S. reliance on Middle East and Venezuelan oil in order for the country to achieve energy independence within approximately the next 10 years. However, it was Obama who held to his plans to grow renewable energy sources, specifically in the wind and solar sector. He spoke of the U.S. transportation system and how it “accounts for about 30 percent of [U.S.] total energy consumption”; how he wanted the country to gain energy independence, with plans to “retool some of these plants to make these highly fuel-efficient cars and also to make wind turbines and solar panels, the kinds of clean energy approaches that should be the driver of our economy for the next century.” Obama also promised plans to address the United States’ energy use consumption, while creating policies that reduce the carbon emissions and making energy policy a priority.

Now, one month after the debate and one day after the election, we begin to watch the new President-elect of the U.S. while wondering not only if, but when he will implement his promises, enthusiasm and vision for renewable energy in the U.S. As with all things, only time will tell.

Source

At this moment in history a financial crisis of global proportions is unfolding. The impacts of this disaster will be felt for years to come, and its cost borne by future generations. A universal lesson also comes from this crisis: Markets can deliver profits, but they may not deliver sustainability. For this reason, the public interest must be secured at all times by policy foresight and responsible leadership.

The serial market failures sparked by the collapse of the housing industry and credit markets have profound consequences for California’s budget. Given the current fiscal uncertainty, it is reasonable to challenge government priorities, assessing the long-term economic and social performance of every dollar of government spending and every regulation. California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) is a hallmark example of the proactive initiatives needed to sustain California’s prosperity, overcoming short-term challenges to put the state on a long-term path of lower carbon emissions and higher economic growth.

While multiple studies have been conducted assessing the economic impacts of the California Air Resources Board's Scoping Plan to implement AB 32, to date, there has been limited economic analysis of California’s climate risk -- the impact of climate change if the state continues business-as-usual -- or of the adaptation needed to cope with unavoidable climate change. This report provides for the first time a comprehensive examination of the economic impacts of climate change and adaptation in California. In conducting this multi-sector assessment, we compile the most recent available science on climate damage, assess its economic implications, and examine alternative strategies for adaptation.

The report can be downloaded here.

Web Site:http://www.nextten.org/research/research_ccrr.html

California Climate Change Portal

Solar installers....hold on to your hats. Things may get very busy in 2009 for homeowners with the October ’09 increase hike in electric rates for ratepayers on E-1, the most common rate plan in this territory. As the market continues to struggle electric rates will further increase as warm weather arrives. When June and July bills begin arriving in mailboxes there will be increased interest in installing solar to get insulated from these ongoing utility rate hikes.

On Sunday evening, November 16, at 6 p.m., a forum on global warming will be held at the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary BC lounge. This Mennonite Peacemaker sponsored event will feature a four person panel including Steve Ratzlaff, Michael Kunz, Ken Martens Friesen, and Mary Anne Isaak. Panelists will share biblical reflections, scientific background, practical steps, and opinions on why more hasn't been done already to tackle this issue.
Map It

As families tighten their belts to ride the latest economic roller coaster, an unprecedented number of homeowners are learning how to go solar and save on monthly utility bills by attending the National Solar Tour, the largest grassroots solar energy event in history.

The nonprofit American Solar Energy Society (ASES) is bringing together as many as 150,000 citizens to tour some 5,000 homes and businesses in 48 states to learn about money-saving technologies.

The National Solar Tour features property-owners who open their doors to neighbors to share how they are using the latest solar technologies to drastically reduce monthly energy bills, reduce harmful carbon emissions, and enjoy tax credits and cash incentives as they improve their property values.

Amid a struggling U.S. economy, these powerful open-house tours and neighbor-to-neighbor discussions show everyday people how they can combat soaring energy prices with solar energy and energy efficiency - while generating green-collar jobs across the U.S.

"The National Solar Tour highlights how families are using solar energy to fight back against skyrocketing energy costs," said Neal Lurie, Director of Marketing for ASES. "Participants come in curious, but they leave convinced ready to go solar."

According to survey results from last year’s National Solar Tour, 76% of participants said they are definitely or very likely to invest in solar or energy efficient technology after the Tour, compared to 50% before the Tour. A stunning 74% of participants indicated that they had never visited a solar or green-built home prior to this event. Last year’s National Solar Tour attracted more than 115,000 people in 2,900 communities in 46 U.S. states.

A conference designed to grow clean energy potential in the Valley

November 5-6, 2008
AgTAC Center, Tulare, CA

Online registration is now open, so reserve your space today!











What is the Farming Clean Energy Conference?
This is a vanguard forum for the Valley, designed to highlight the opportunities and challenges for supporting broader adoption of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies on San Joaquin Valley farms and agribusinesses.   On the first day (Nov. 5), participants and presenters will discuss the Valley’s clean energy potential, barriers, broader issues and policies that need to be addressed.  On the second morning (Nov. 6), attendees will benefit by hearing from regional farmers about innovative Valley farm-based clean energy projects, and the challenges and creative solutions invoked to move these ventures forward.  Technology focus areas include:  energy efficiency, bioenergy (biogas, biomass and biofuels), solar and wind generation.
Who Should Attend?
Valley farmers, agribusiness owners, industry representatives, policymakers and regulators, utility representatives, clean energy providers, advocates, project financiers and students.

Register TODAY!  www.valleycleanenergyconference.org