May 03, 2010

The news is rippling all along the Atlantic shoreline: The Obama administration has given what may be the final blessing to the offshore Cape Wind project to be built in Nantucket Sound.

While the administration never tipped its hand until last week's announcement, it was a foregone conclusion that it would approve the offshore facility given that the foundation of its economic, energy and environmental program has centered on growing green generation. As with its offshore oil and gas policies, the U.S. Department of the Interior said it would strike a balance between energy production and the environment, which in this case has meant cutting the number of wind mills from 170 to 130.

April 30, 2010

Germany has established itself as a beacon for green energy development. Other countries have been advised to try and emulate its strategies. While national policies can and should be idiosyncratic, Germany is directly financing its renewable sector as well as providing subsidies for operational costs, or feed-in tariffs.

Government backing is critical to the expansion of renewable energy around the globe. It provides the appropriate incentives and mandates that give developers the certainty they need to take risks. In the case of Germany, such a plan has propelled the nation to the forefront of international wind and solar development. As such, it is now projected to invest annually $37 billion into the green economy there by 2020, all to produce 27-30 percent of its electricity from such sources by then.

April 14, 2010

Some clouds have lifted but the solar energy still has to contend with rough weather ahead. Industry advocates say that less restrictive financing and more access to public lands would brighten their day.

The industry, in truth, has grown exponentially and continued to win a goodly share of the venture capital dollars entering clean energy markets. But it remains a tiny sliver of the overall electricity mix, pushing the sector to ask more of its government by allowing it to develop utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands and to speed up loan guarantees promised in the stimulus bill to such plants.

April 05, 2010

When major institutional investors and venture capitalists start investing in alternative and low-carbon energy companies, it is noteworthy.

Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of 80 investors who support climate change legislation and manage over $8 trillion of assets, said 85 percent of funding for alternative energy companies will stem from large institutional investors, pension and hedge funds and private equity firms, not governmental support.

April 02, 2010

In his days as a control room operator more than a decade ago, John Pespisa remembers working intermittent renewable energy resources like wind into the system. The footprint may have been small, but the resource had to be dispatched. "Sometimes at 3 a.m., you'd wonder where the wind went," he said.

No longer. With more advanced forecasting tools and improved monitoring of generation sites and communication with grid operators, controllers are better able to anticipate the fluctuations of what were once a few MWs of generation. Now, with renewables measured in the hundreds of MWs, better tools are available. And even more important than that, ambitious goals to incorporate renewable energy into California's resource mix have put added pressure on utilities to get it right. Instead of a goal to get wind, solar and geothermal power into the system, it's a mandate. Accurate forecasts and dispatch are imperative.