Home: Renewable Energy News: Thursday 04 February, 2010

Renewable Energy News

THURSDAY 04 FEBRUARY, 2010 |

Abbot's Emissions Reduction Fund - The Verdict

Emissions Reduction Fund verdict
A couple of days on from Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott's announcement of the coalition's official climate change policies and the Emissions Reduction Fund, the dust has settled somewhat and verdicts from various corners are in.

The Rudd Government has labelled it a climate con job, saying "It won't work. It puts no price on carbon pollution. What he does through this plan is leave the big polluters alone and he slugs the taxpayer instead."

Greens Leader, Bob Brown said "Planting 20 million seedlings while cutting millions of trees in mature forests is an Abbott absurdity".

WWF welcomed Mr Abbott's attempt to address climate change, but said the Coalition proposal represented a risk both the planet and economy can no longer bear. "The Coalition's proposal does not go far enough, and is extremely risky - with no hope of transforming Australia into a competitive, low carbon economy" said WWF-Australia CEO Greg Bourne.

However, many trade groups have indicated support, including the Minerals Council, the Retailers Association and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The Clean Energy Council also welcomed the Coalition's announcement, but warned that specific measures in the climate change policy to assist some clean energy technologies will not work unless the national Renewable Energy Target is fixed.

"One of the fundamental structural problems with the current design of the RET is that a range of support measures for small scale technologies are unintentionally crowding out investment in industrial scale clean energy plants." said Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren.

"We need to find a way of continuing to roll out household scale clean energy technologies like solar panels and solar hot water while at the same time building multi-million dollar clean energy projects."

As part of Mr. Abbott's proposed Emissions Reduction Fund, an additional $1,000 on top of existing solar rebates for either solar panels or solar hot water systems would be provided and $100 million be given to a Solar Towns and Solar Schools Initiative in grants for towns, non-capital cities and schools for grid connected solar electric systems.

What are your thoughts on the Emissions Reduction Fund? Discuss it here.

Wind Energy Powered Ahead Globally In 2009

Global wind power 2009
The Global Wind Energy Council has announced the world’s wind power capacity grew to 157.9 GW in 2009. During last year, 37.5 GW of wind turbine capacity was added, representing growth of 31% over 2008.

A third of this extra capacity occurred in a single country - China, which experienced yet another year of over 100% growth.

According to Steve Sawyer, GWEC’s Secretary General, “Copenhagen didn’t bring us any closer to a global price on carbon, but wind energy continued to grow due to national energy policy in our main markets and also because many governments in prioritised renewable energy development in their economic recovery plans."

The global wind market for turbine installations in 2009 was worth approximately AUD 71 billion dollars and the GWEC estimates around half a million people are now employed by the wind industry globally.

While China was the world’s largest market last year, more than doubling its wind generation capacity from 12.1 GW in 2008 to 25.1 GW at the end of 2009, the US continues to lead the field in terms of total installed, grid-connected capacity with 35 GW. Against all initial expectations, the US wind energy market installed nearly 10 GW in 2009, thanks to the US Recovery Act's strong focus on wind energy development.

Newly added capacity of 1,270 MW in India along with contributions by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan made Asia the biggest regional market for wind power in 2009, with more than 14 GW of new capacity.

Europe continued to see strong growth also with 10.5 GW installed in region last year, led by Spain (2.5GW) and Germany (1.9 GW). Italy, France and the UK all added more than 1 GW of new wind power capacity each.

Aside from the massive green jobs boost, the environmental benefits of the burgeoning wind industry have been substantial too. According to Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, "The 158GW of global wind capacity in place at the end of 2009 will produce 340 TWh of clean electricity and save 204 million tons of CO2 every year."