Originally published on RenewEconomy. Numerous studies tell us that 100% renewables is possible, and cost-effective. But how to structure an energy market where there is no fuel cost? Germany is already grappling with this dilemma, and the world is watching with interest. This is part of a series of articles … [continued]
Since Japan’s feed-in tariff (FiT) was introduced (July 2012), its solar photovoltaic generation capacity installed has amounted to 3.9 GW. In all, approximately 4.086 GW of renewable power generation capacity was added since July 2012, including solar, wind, small and medium-sized hydroelectric, biomass, and geothermal. Solar accounted for 90% of the … [continued]
Canada’s “little Germany” has cut per-capita emissions 24% since 1990. The Ontario government announced on Friday that it will introduce legislation next week to ban the burning of coal and the building of new coal plants. The Canadian province expects to have completely outgrown coal by 2014, thanks to a combination of … [continued]
Originally published on The Lenz Blog This interesting and beautiful graph was recently published by the German Renewable Energy Agency (Agentur für Erneuerbare Energien). It shows the increases of energy costs per month for the average German household from 2000 on. The tiny, small, barely visible violet part at the top is … [continued]
Editor’s note: We’ve covered almost all of the stories noted below, but this overall summary of the Japanese solar market from Think Progress is quite good, so I decided to go ahead and repost it. Enjoy! By Ari Phillips Last week, amid the 19th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate … [continued]
Abu Dhabi’s electricity regulator is aiming to obtain 7% of the city’s electricity from renewable power sources, and it hopes to implement a rooftop solar scheme to help attain that goal. This will be proposed to the Executive Council in early 2014. The solar rooftop scheme is to generate 500 … [continued]
“A lot of the utilities don’t totally understand this new paradigm that’s coming.” David Blittersdorf of AllEarth Renewables has been working to advance renewable energy in Vermont for years, and was instrumental in getting the state’s standard offer program (a feed-in tariff) passed in 2009. He’s adamant that the state … [continued]
I’ll be honest — I’m not a “nuclear power hater.” But if you look at nuclear power objectively and calculate its costs — including insurance costs and waste management costs — it is simply a bad deal. It’s very, very expensive. The private industry would never develop nuclear on its … [continued]
One of our Dutch readers, Remco van der Horst of Better Energy, recently passed along an excellent report on various aspects of Germany’s solar power boom. The report actually reads more like a fact-checking of common claims (in media and politics) regarding Germany’s rapid energy transition. It is easy to read, … [continued]
As some of you may remember, I posted a poll last month asking what you all thought was the most disruptive cleantech model. (Note: I used model very loosely here, and you could basically just change that out for “thing” or “solution” if you wanted to.) Interestingly, my answer (which … [continued]
