Last Thursday, the German federal grid regulatory agency — the Bundesnetzagentur — handed a draft for a plan to extend the German power grid to the federal goverment. The content of the plan was especially anticipated by the wind industry, which currently suffers the most from the insufficient power grid … [continued]
The first two parts of this series took a closer look at the political changes that occurred here in Germany at the beginning of this still young decade. Last year saw a 180° course correction by the conservative federal government in terms of energy policy. While the nuclear phaseout didn’t happen because of … [continued]
I can’t remember where I ran across these — I think a reader shared them with me — but I started going through a bunch of old drafts of articles I wanted to write but never got to last night (Spring cleaning, I guess) and ran across them again. … [continued]
Not a Joke On a cloudy saturday, on April 1, 2000, the German “Renewable Energy Sources Act” entered into force replacing the “Feed-in Law” of 1991. It’s unique features were 1) a renewable-energy-source-specific feed-in tariff (FiT) guaranteed for 20 years and 2) minimum goals for the share of renewable energy … [continued]
Activity in Europe’s offshore wind sector continues to increase, as European government and industry continue to follow through on plans to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Offshore wind installations are a big part of Germany’s groundbreaking plans to phase out nuclear power, while world wind energy leader Denmark intends to increase its already high percentage of wind power by tapping more offshore wind energy.
Despite claims that Germany would have to go all dirty energy on us after switching off nukes last year, that hasn’t been the case. Here are some interesting energy statistics from Germany, as just released last week: Germany’s energy intensity, energy use per GDP, dropped over 3% in 2011 … [continued]
Wouldn’t it be cool to build a wind farm out of LEGOs? They must have such options now, eh? Especially now that we see LEGO’s owners are wind power fans,.. or that they just see the financial benefits of investing in wind power. As reported yesterday by Reuters, the … [continued]
In total, wind and solar power were responsible for 68% of new EU power installations in 2011 and renewable power as a whole was responsible for about 70%. Over 30,000 MW of the 44,939 MW of new power capacity came from wind and solar—that’s a 37.7% increase over 2010 and sets a new record for the EU.
Some more top cleantech stories from around, to kick off the week:
Private equity firm Blackstone is investing in offshore wind in Germany in a big way. The company announced it had secured a total of 1.2 billion euros of financing for the 288MW Meerwind North Sea wind farm project, as well as obtaining a permit for Nordlicher Grund, a 64-turbine, 1.3 billion euro North Sea wind farm. A group of seven banks will provide 822 million euros in debt financing with Blackstone supplying Meerwind’s equity. Supporting the financing is Germany’s feed-in tariff, which locks in rates for Meerwind’s electricity output.
