Solar

If Hawaii's largest utility gets its way, the islands' abundant sunshine may be wasted.

In February, the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) proposed a ban on a booming industry of rooftop solar installations, claiming that too much distributed power generation could destabilize the islands’ isolated power grids. It was forced to back off by the public backlash, but environmental groups and the solar industry say the utility is trying other tactics that will stifle the growth of renewable energy in the state.

“Although HECO is backing away from doomsday for the local renewable industry at this point, all they did was defer the problem,” said Isaac Moriwake, an attorney for Earthjustice who is representing the Hawaii Solar Energy Association.

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• Dave Levitan's blog
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Major Chinese solar panel manufacturers are targeting the fast-growing Japanese market for their panels in 2010 and beyond. The U.S. sector remains fragmented, due to a lack of a national climate change policy, but it looks promising in the longer term, they say.

Japan is aiming for 28 gigawatts of solar power in 10 years. In comparison, current solar capacity worldwide is under 17 gigawatts.

"Some countries, when they put out a national goal, you don’t know whether they will achieve it, but Japan seems to have a good track record," said Shawn Qu, CEO of Canadian Solar, a Chinese manufacturer of solar power modules.

"If the [Japanese] government puts out the target, then they have the mechanism to make sure it happens."

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• Stacy Feldman's blog
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President Obama laid out an all-of-the-above energy policy in a speech to national business leaders this afternoon: America need nuclear, solar, energy efficiency, and expanded oil and gas production, he said, and “to truly transition to a clean energy economy, we need to put a price on carbon pollution.”

His words suggest White House support for the framework Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are using to write a compromise climate and energy bill.

The wildcard, of course, for that bill — which could be introduced as early as next month — and for any Senate action remains the price on carbon.

A report to be released in the first half of this year finds that Australia can use solar and wind power to produce 100 percent of its electricity in 10 years using technologies that are available now.

The study is being compiled by the Victoria–based advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions and is based on the research of engineers and scientists.

"We have concluded that there are no technological impediments to transforming Australia’s stationary energy sector to zero emissions over the next 10 years," said Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions.

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• Stacy Feldman's blog
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Solar cycles of magnetic fields and sunspots have become a popular foothold for climate change skeptics. A new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, however, shows that even if predictions of an extended minimum of solar activity are accurate, it will have only a tiny effect on the Earth’s climate in comparison to the current track of human-caused warming.

“There is a lot of hysterical stuff out there,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “For some reason, solar effects seem to attract more than their fair share of cranks. There are always people with these statistical models claiming that it would have a big effect, but mostly that’s just nonsense.”

The new study, conducted by Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, modeled what might happen to global temperatures if the sun enters a period of low magnetic and sunspot activity resembling that of the Maunder Minimum.

The solar efficiency problem may be solved, not by some amazing new material, but by existing and surprisingly cheap components.

Such were the findings of IBM researchers who recently achieved 9.6 percent efficiency with cells made from copper, tin, zinc, sulfur and/or selenium.

The efficiency of any solar cell refers to its photoelectric conversion rate; in other words, its ability to convert sunlight into electricity. While higher efficiency rates have been posted in the solar world (the highest so far is a 19.3 percent efficiency announced by Mitsubishi today), the IBM cell set a record for solar cells made with such low-cost and readily available materials.

The Obama administration's federal stimulus package propelled the geothermal and solar energy industries to record growth in 2009 while most of the economy struggled.

But industry anxiety is rising over the lack of a long-term policy signal from Washington. This week, trade groups again warned lawmakers that relying solely on short-term support to boost clean energy could eventually sink their industries.

As part of the push, the groups called on U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to keep his word to unleash the torrent of solar and geothermal projects proposed for America's public lands.

Circular 698 caused a momentary pause throughout the business anglo-sino-blogosphere late last year.

China passed a retroactive look-through provision that effectively changed the rules for foreign investment structures in China. The Circular in and of itself is relatively innocuous. It highlights an oft misunderstood Chinese business sensitivity in China’s central economic planning: China for Chinese business only.

As China carries forward its strategy to adapt to and mitigate climate change, foreign owned clean technology businesses need to be aware of China’s position.

The International Energy Agency projects that global energy demand will increase 46 percent by 2030, requiring an investment of $26.3 trillion in energy infrastructure to meet the expected demand.

Revamping our energy system and doing so with more renewable energy will take substantial funding, and while some countries, like China, are investing in the whole cleantech pipeline, from “lightbulb to lightbulb” — from idea to implementation, as Google puts it — the U.S. is investing in cleantech only sporadically.

“We need to invest across that whole spectrum, and we need to make that sustained,” said Bill Weihl, Google’s Green Energy Czar.

Google, for one, is putting its money where its mouth is.

Solar energy can help fuel America's economic recovery and provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, provided the government continues to support the nation's nascent solar firms, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today.

Addressing the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Salazar said the U.S. must avoid the mistakes of the past.

"We have the technology," Salazar said. "But what we need to do is have the policies in place over the long term."

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