Climate debate pushes RE exchange index

8 Feb 2007 - The recent climate change debate spurred by the release of the IPCC fourth assessment report has most likely been the main driver for the new record level of the RENIXX exchange index for renewable energy companies. Yesterday the index reached close at a record height of 1098.09 points.

The Renixx (Renewable Energy Industrial) index covers the world’s 20 largest companies in the sustainable energy business. Since the start of 2007 the index has increased by 18.6%, while the exchange barometer has already increased by more than 40% in 2006. According to a press release from the German IWR (International economic forum for renewable energy) the German exchange turnover in the last two days only was over 500 million €. This happened despite a slight decrease in the economic climate index for renewable business in January.

For the development of the Renixx index see here.

A 25 million dollar idea

13 Feb 2007 - Do you know how to remove a billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere? Get in contact with Richard Branson from Virgin quickly. He has offered 25 million dollars (about 18 million euros) for the best idea.

Sir Richard Branson launched the competition last week in London, the BBC reports. Branson wanted to underline the scale of the looming ecological disaster and the need for immediate action. “The Earth cannot wait another 60 years,” he told the press conference. “The clock is ticking.” So Branson introduced the Earth Challenge Prize as a stimulus.

Judging the ideas will be a jury including Gaia godfather James Lovelock and Jim Hansen from NASA, presently climate advisor to the Bush administration. The other two members are environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell (UK) and paleontologist Tim Flannery (Australia).

At the conference, Sir Richard was accompanied by environmentalist Al Gore (‘An Inconvenient Truth’), who stressed the uniqueness of the situation: “We’re not used to thinking of a planetary emergency, and there is nothing in our prior history that equips us to imagine that we, as human beings, could actually be in the process of destroying the habitability of the planet for ourselves.”

Mankind annually emits seven billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The removal of one billion tonnes would be a substantial reduction. About half of the CO2 produced by man is taken up by nature (oceans and forests mainly), the other half stays in the atmosphere for around one hundred years, adding to the accumulating CO2 concentration.

Now what could be a solution? Carbon capture and storage is already being investigated. Scrubbing CO2 from the air would probably cost so much energy that potentially more emissions would be produced than captured. Would CO2-absorbing paint on car fronts help enough? Or seeding the oceans with iron or phosphates to make the algae grow quicker? Of course, we won’t give away our best guesses.

Portugal sets new ambitious renewable energy targets

Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates has announced that the country will increase its renewable electricity target for 2010 from 39% of electricity consumption to 45%. The increased target comes as Sócrates promised that his country would play “a leading role” in directing European climate change policy during Portugal’s Presidency of the EU in the second half of this year.

The Portuguese Prime Minister also set a target for biofuels at 10% of total road fuel consumption by 2010, which is almost twice the 5.75% indicative target set at the EU level. In January, the European Commission proposed a 10% biofuels target for the EU ten years later, by 2020. Environmental weighting on vehicle tax will also be increased progressively in Portugal to 60% by 2008. Microgeneration will also be further encouraged and the licensing process for new wind farms will be made faster.

The revised targets were welcomed by Quercus, the Portuguese National Association for Nature Conservation. However Francisco Ferreira from Quercus warned that “the achievement of the renewable target will be very dependent on favourable rainfall patterns” due to the large percentage of hydro power in Portugal, and the biofuel target “can only be met importing raw materials.”

UK companies are already experiencing success in the Portuguese renewables market. Ocean Power Delivery are contracted to design and install their Pelamis wave energy devices off the north coast of Portugal in the world’s first commercial wave power project (see Newsletters 25/04/06, 24/10/06).

Recently too, Peter Brotherhood, a UK steam turbine manufacturer has won a £2 million contract from Portuguese company Energetus to supply a steam turbine driven generator set for use in a wood burning power plant in Portugal. The 10.75 MW turbo generator set will be tested prior to dispatch and will be delivered to Portugal in June 2007. The Central Biomassa Terras de Santa Maria biomass project will generate electricity, fuelled by forest residue, including some cork powder.

Further information:

Prime Minister’s speech (in Portuguese)

Ocean Power Delivery

Peter Brotherhood

Source: ENDS Daily 25/01/07, DTI Renewable Energy Trade Promotion Service 30/01/07

Egypt orders Spanish wind turbines

12 Feb 2007 - The Basque wind energy company Gamesa has obtained an order to supply 241 megawatt of wind turbines for two wind farms  on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt. The order is worth more than 279 million Euros.

The wind parks have been ordered by the Egyptian New & Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), part of the Ministry of Energy and Electricity, which coordinates all renewable energy projects, be they solar, wind or biomass. The wind parks will be built in Zafarana, next to the Red Sea, and they will contain 284 turbines with 850 kilowatt capacity generators.

The 279 million Euro deal was closed by the Egyptian Minister of Energy and Electricity, Mr. Hasan Ahmed Yunes, and Spain’s ambassador in Egypt, Mr. Antonio Lopez Martinez.

The deal makes Gamesa the prime provider of wind energy in Egypt with a total of 405 megawatt capacity once this wind farm is in place. Still, that could be only the beginning, since estimates show that all along the Gulf of Suez, there could be a potential to install 20,000 megawatt wind power capacity.

Construction of the wind farms is planned to begin in the first half of 2008. Gamesa points out that part of the workforce will be contracted locally.

Total launches demo CO2 capture and storage

9 Feb 2007 - The French oil company Total have announced the launch of a pilot project to capture CO2 and store it in a depleted natural gas field in the south west of France. Up to 150,000 tonnes of CO2 will be injected 4,500 metres into the ground at the gas field in Rousse (Pyrenees) over a period of two years, starting at the end of 2008.

Christophe de Margerie, President of Exploration & Production at Total emphasises that this project will demonstrate the role that CO2 capture and storage  can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial installations. “It represents the first integrated CO2 capture system using oxy-fuel combustion (burning fuel in pure oxygen) combined with storage in a depleted hydrocarbon field.”

The concentrated CO2 will be extracted from the steam production unit at the Lacq gas processing plant, where oxygen is used for combustion, instead of air. The Rousse field was selected for its geological structure, which gave the best guarantee of sustainable storage. The project, which will cost nearly 60 million Euros, will be carried out in partnership with Air Liquide and in cooperation with the French Petroleum Institute (IFP), the French Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM) and others.

Bonaire self supporting island with green energy

Bonaire will become a self supporting island as a new wind/diesel system will be built. The plant is intended to provide 10 megawatts electricity from wind and 13 megawatts from diesel. It is part of a wind/diesel project that will supply the second largest island of the Dutch Antilles, located off the coast of Venezuela. Bonaire uses around 12 MW electricity at peak moments.

The new system will be ready and providing the whole island with electricity by the end of 2008. EcoPower Bonaire BV, a consortium of Econcern, Enercon and MAN, has signed a contract with the Water and Energy Company of Bonaire (WEB Bonaire NV) to build the wind turbines. The cost of the wind/diesel combination is predicted to be around

€ 27 to 31 billion. It is expected that a part of these costs will be recovered by selling the CO2 credits, under the Clean Development Mechanism.

The first phase of the project is to gain experience with wind energy on Bonaire and to reduce its short-term electricity costs by building a wind turbine off the Southeast coast of the island. This wind turbine will start supplying electricity in the second quarter of 2007. In the next phase a 10 MW wind farm, consisting of 11 to 12 wind turbines with a capacity of 0.8 to 0.9 MW each, and a 13 MW biodiesel power plant will be built on the Northeast coast of Bonaire. Under ideal circumstances, this wind farm could meet Bonaire’s current electricity demand.

US biofuel program harmful for environment

The large scale biofuel program president Bush announced in his State of the Union, could do the environment more damage than good, critics say.

Ethanol should replace imported fossil fuels and thus reduce the dependence on imported gasoline. Bush wants to reduce fuel usage by

20% by 2017. This is equivalent to three quarters of the current gasoline import from the Middle East. The president wants to reach this target by making vehicles more fuel efficient and by dramatically increasing ethanol production, to five times the current target level.

Although Bush mentions research into production of ethanol from wood chips and grasses, ethanol in the US is currently produced from corn. Analysts have calculated that Bush's 10-year target would require more corn than the total amount the US currently grows. The reservation of

20% of US corn for fuel purposes has already quadrupled the price of tortilla (from corn) in Mexico and led to food riots.

In contrast to ethanol from sugar cane, ethanol from corn hardly helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, critics say. A report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last June showed that emission gains were virtually cancelled out by the energy needed to produce the fertilisers and to convert the crops into ethanol.

Finally, the London based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) warns that the hunger for energy crops could be an incentive for farmers and companies to replace forests with corn fields. "Environmental benefits could be lost if the sector's expansion leads to further deforestation," IEDD researcher Annie Dufey says. "It is increasingly urgent to map a path for the global biofuels industry that supports sustainable development."