CleanTechnica

A new study shows that requiring utility companies to get 25% of their power from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind (by 2025) would result in more jobs.

“A strong renewable electricity standard is crucial to create a stable investment environment and grow this highly promising sector,” says Don Furman, senior vice president for development, transmission, and policy at wind energy company Iberdrola Renewables. “Without a strong RES, the US wind industry will see no net job growth, and will likely lose jobs to overseas competitors.”

Furman’s points here are nothing new. Obama said the same thing very strongly in his State of the Union address and, everyday, I read articles on this matter and on the “clean energy race“.

Nonetheless, this new study puts some numbers into the issue and helps to back up Furman and Obama’s claims. This study found that “the industry would create 274,000 more jobs under a 25 percent renewable power standard than it would create without a mandate.” (emphasis mine)

This is much more than what would be created from the proposed mandate put forth by the House of Representatives as part of a comprehensive climate and energy bill that is now being worked on in the Senate.

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A new poll conducted by Yale University and George Mason University researchers shows that American voters do want strong climate and energy legislation.

“Climate Change in the American Mind: Public Support for Climate & Energy Policies in January 2010” is the name of the poll and it shows bi-partisan support for more clean energy research, controlling CO₂ in our atmosphere, and (once informed on what it is) cap-and-trade legislation, among other things.

Whereas a poll I reported on the other day showed much stronger support for a carbon tax when compared to cap-and-trade (once survey respondents were informed a little on the two systems), this poll does not get into the issue of a carbon tax but finds great support for cap-and-trade.

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For the 5^th year in a row, China has doubled its installed wind power capacity. Wind power capacity in the world grew 31% in 2009.

The Global Wind Energy Council released a report on new global wind power statistics this week and these are some of its main findings.

In total, 37.5 GW of wind power were added in 2009, bringing total worldwide installations up to 157.9 GW. One third of these new installations were in China.

The US, despite projections that wind power would drop due to the recession, continued to see growth and remains on top in total installed capacity (but who knows for how long).

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Well, it is a surprise to me, and probably to a lot of people. But news from the US Climate Task Force and Fortune 500 is that US voters prefer a straight carbon tax over cap-and-trade once they are educated a little bit on the two options. This is what a recent survey shows. The survey finds that American voters actually prefer a carbon tax by a ratio of more than 2:1!

According to the survey, 58% of people supported the carbon tax, 27% supported cap-and-trade, and 15% were not sure or wanted neither.

Why might this be the case?

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I just wrote about how it looks like China is going to clean the US’ clock on large-scale clean energy projects. But, as we all know, clean energy doesn’t need to be from (super) large projects to provide people with power. In fact, that is one of the hopes many of us have, that “power” will be more decentralized.

However, something that would combine those two approaches — large-scale, centralized power and small-scale, decentralized projects — might be ideal, providing the best advantages of both approaches. That’s exactly what large-scale distributed energy power purchase agreements do.

Additionally, it looks like they are here!

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Obama said just the other day that “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” and I got into a little discussion about the rivalry between Obama and the President of China, Hu Jintao, on this topic.

I thought I would leave that issue for awhile to cover other stories, but then this landed at my feet and I couldn’t resist. China’s upcoming Big Clean Energy plans are HUGE and are likely to dwarf what are currently the largest wind power and solar power projects in the world.

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Suniva, Inc., a solar manufacturer based in Georgia, is aiming to bring a commercial, grid-connected, stored solar energy system to the state for the first time.  The company has just announced a partnership with Georgia-based GS Battery USA Inc., that will combine Suniva’s solar modules with high tech batteries on a 30 kilowatt solar plant at GS Battery’s headquarters in Roswell, Georgia.

To make it a trifecta, a third Georgia-based company, First Century Energy of Atlanta, is the designer of the solar array.  It’s an interesting sustainable energy threesome given that GS Battery is a subsidiary of GS Yuasa Group of Japan, which is a global battery technology leader that has just contracted with NASA to assemble lithium ion battery cells in Roswell — and there’s a couple of other U.S. government connections, too.

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Hollywood, as a whole, is one of the most powerful entities (can I call it that?) in the world. Some of its biggest stars are getting involved in the politics of climate and clean energy now.

A great new video on the web featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Felicity Huffman, Forest Whitaker, Ed Norton, Justin Long, and others nails the key points of climate and energy legislation with the most popular language.

One of the stars even decides to drop his pants because of the heat (climate change).

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Probably the biggest news piece this week was Obama’s State of the Union address. David Roberts of grist seemed to hate it. Whereas often like-minded and equally critical Joe Romm of Climate Progress actually seemed to love it.

Dan Harding of CalFinder had mixed reactions, first “feeling passion stir deep within [him] and tingles of inspiration buzz beneath [his] skin,” then thinking that “[Obama's] speeches have grown more and more centrist.”

Immediately after reading those first two reviews (David and Joe’s), the idea for this article came to my mind. Who’s more powerful than the President of the United States of America?

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In a high tech, low key twist on American Idol, green technology competitions are springing up all over the country.  Among the newer ones is the Clean Energy Prize sponsored by the University of Michigan and DTE Energy, and it offers some clues about the technology stars of the sustainable energy future.  For one thing, they better be prepared to go on stage and pitch their talent – one element of the competition is an oral presentation before a panel of judges.

DTE’s involvement is another interesting aspect of the competition.  A large part of the company is a conventional natural gas utility, Detroit Edison, but an emerging part is DTE Energy Ventures, which focuses on sustainable energy tech.  That puts DTE among a growing list of large energy companies that are turning more investment resources over to sustainable fuels – yet another indicator that peak times for fossil fuels are on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »