Google bets billions on renewable sources
Google is now one of the largest investors in wind and solar power projects in the US, with a swathe of new programmes launched over the past 12 months. The latest commitments involve $155 million in wind farms in Oregon and southern California, $39 million in two North Dakota wind projects, and power purchase agreements with NextEra Energy for 215 MW of wind generation from Iowa and Oklahoma.
These projects follow Google’s earlier commitment to erect the Atlantic Wind Connection, an assembly of wind turbines stretching 565 kilometres along the US Atlantic coastline that is estimated to eventually cost at least $5 billion. Recently, Google also announced an investment of $280 million in the California-based SolarCity company, which leases out solar panels to home owners.
“Like other companies, energy drives our business, and we want that energy to be as clean as possible,” Google’s director of green business operations, Rick Needham, declared recently. “As a company that views environmental sustainability as a core value, we want to make sure to use clean energy and use it as efficiently as possible.”
“The wind industry is particularly important in ensuring that we develop a clean energy economy in the US and abroad,” he added. “Wind energy has already become cost-competitive in many markets and is second only to natural gas in new generation build-out in the US.”
A tidal surge with a whiskey bonus
An array of tidal turbines is to be installed in a deep, but sheltered, channel between Scotland’s inner Hebridean islands of Islay and Jura, where tidal streams flow at almost 11 km/ hour. It will use ten of the new 1MW tidal current turbines developed by Hammerfest Strøm, a Norwegian company part-owned by ScottishPower Renewables. A 300 kW prototype has already been tested off Norway, while a 1MW model is currently being tested on the islands of Orkney. With planning permission given by the Scottish government, the first turbines could be in place from 2013 – with the full project up and running by 2015 – with an estimated investment of £40 million.
The community-owned Islay Energy Trust will receive a share of the profits from the tidal scheme, which will be reinvested in green energy projects on Islay, including solar PV panels and wind turbines, and may be used to fund offshore wind and marine power projects in the future; it may even experiment with electric cars. In addition, ScottishPower Renewables has signed a deal with the drinks giant Diageo to provide it with all the electricity needed for eight of its whiskey distilleries and maltings on Islay from the tidal array, and has promised to use local contractors for its installation. The company is also developing a 95-turbine tidal array at Ness of Duncansby in the Pentland Firth as part of The Crown Estate’s first 1.6GW marine energy leasing round.
Latin America opts for hydropower
Hydroelectricity is seen as Latin America’s main resource for clean energy generation, according to experts of the regional energy organisation Olade, based in Quito, Ecuador. Installed hydropower projects in Central and South America are already the main source of electricity in the region, with a total capacity of approximately 150GW, of which 80GW is installed in Brazil alone, where more such projects are being lined up.
The main countries following Brazil’s hydropower lead in the coming years are likely to be Argentina, Mexico and Costa Rica. Mexico currently generates 80 percent of its electricity from thermal power stations.
Bio energy investment is also continuing across the region, especially in Brazil, a large producer of ethanol, and Argentina, which has substantial biodiesel projects. Wind power is not yet well established in Latin America, although projects are getting under way in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The case for geothermal
A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests it is possible to achieve at least a tenfold increase in the global production of heat and electricity from geothermal energy – heat emitted from within the earth’s crust – between now and 2050.
The IEA says geothermal energy could account for around 3.5 percent of annual global electricity production and 3.9 percent of energy for heat by 2050 – a substantial increase from current levels of 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.
“This would be an important contribution to global efforts of reducing carbon emissions, using a sustainable and reliable source of energy that is available all over the world, and does not fluctuate with the weather or season,” said IEA executive director, Nobuo Tanaka, who launched the report, ‘Technology Roadmap: Geothermal heat and power’, in Stockholm.
One key area of action for governments identified in the report is the introduction of incentive schemes that will encourage the development of geothermal technologies that are not yet commercially viable. These include feed-in tariffs, which are payments to anyone who generates electricity for a grid using renewable sources of energy.
Milou Beerepoot, the report’s author and a senior analyst at the IEA, argues for lifting the barriers around obtaining permits, which are necessary for all new geothermal plants. “Many countries that lack specific laws for geothermal resources currently process geothermal permits under mining laws that were conceived with objectives other than renewable energy production,” she writes.
Currently, technologies that allow energy to be tapped from hot-rock resources are still in the demonstration stage, but the report suggests that governments should provide sustained and substantially high research, development and demonstration resources to plan and build pilot plants during the next decade.
