Opinion:
¶ Why Colorado Requested A Pause On The Clean Power Plan, But Isn’t Taking It • Colorado regulators say they will press forward on President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail emissions from coal-fired power plants, despite a temporary pause issued by the U.S. Supreme Court for the Clean Power Plan this week. [Colorado Public Radio]
A coal train enters the Craig Station power plant near Craig, Colo. on Tuesday, June 16, 2015.
Science and Technology:
¶ The Brattle Group study says that the America’s 50 million residential electric water heaters can address bigger challenges such as storing energy from wind farms and solar arrays. The study examined smart technologies focused on water heaters, which use 9% of US household electricity. [Minneapolis Star Tribune]
World:
¶ Solar power project developers in India are expanding the rent-a-roof concept for developing solar systems to sell electricity to large-scale consumers. Under the rent-a-roof concept, the project developers set up solar power systems atop roofs of industrial or commercial electricity consumers. [CleanTechnica]
¶ The European Union said it nearly doubled its share of renewable energy from a 2004 benchmark and was already close to meeting its target obligations for 2020. The share of energy from renewable resources was 16%, about 89% above 2004 levels, the first year it started keeping records on renewables. [UPI.com]
About a third of all EU member states have met their goals for renewable energy usage early. File photo by Stephen Shaver / UPI | License Photo
¶ A leading source of solar analysis, IHS, published the latest edition of its Solar Deal Tracker this week, in which it finds that the global solar PV pipeline has now exceeded 200 GW, thanks in large part to the extension of the US Investment Tax Credit. Of the PV projects 110 GW are in the US, China, or Brazil. [CleanTechnica]
¶ BP says it sees a bright future for the oil and gas industry with crude prices spiking at $100 a barrel again, huge increases in shale output and new production from Canadian tar sands. BP believes fossil fuels will still be providing 80% of total energy supply in 2035 and admits this implies high carbon emissions. [HITC]
¶ More than 110 groups from across the globe joined a declaration today demanding that bioenergy be excluded from the European Union’s next Renewable Energy Directive. The EU is considering today the directive’s renewal for 2020 onwards. A decision is expected by the end of the year. [Center for Biological Diversity]
Bioenergy heating plant in Austria. Photo by Johann Jaritz. CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons.
¶ GE Power Conversion built the first serial Permanent Magnet Generator in its Saint-Nazaire offshore wind factory, which was inaugurated in late 2014. The factory has a capacity of manufacturing 100 generators per year. The generator has a 6-MW capacity and will supply power for 5,000 households. [AltEnergyMag]
¶ TEPCO says the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is much improved over the past five years. Nevertheless, seen from the road below, the nuclear power station looks much as it may have right after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that caused a triple meltdown here almost five years ago. [Washington Post]
Slogan sign “nuclear (power generation), a bright and future (source of) energy” Photo by Hohoho. CC BY-SA 4.0 International. Wikimedia Commons.
¶ Salvadoran electricity company Delsur published the timetable and preliminary rules for a solicitation to supply 150 MW of renewable energy plants. Of this, 100 MW will correspond to solar PV and the remainder wind projects. It is El Salvador’s second solicitation for renewable energy projects. [pv magazine]
US:
¶ Georgia will stop its work toward implementing the Clean Power Plan, a key piece of the EPA’s efforts to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Georgia is one of 27 states that had asked the US Supreme Court to delay implementation of the plan.
[WABE 90.1 FM]
Georgia will stop work on the Clean Power Plan. John Amis, File / AP Photo
¶ The White House promised that the US would be able to uphold its international commitments on climate change after the Clean Power Plan was delayed by the Supreme Court. Share pricess of coal companies jumped on the court’s news, but after the initial rise have resumed their long decline. [Sky News Australia]
¶ US outfit Apex Clean Energy is developing a 450-MW wind farm in western Ohio that it acquired from BP Wind Energy. Apex took over the Long Prairie project in 2014 and has leased all land needed for a first phase, the developer said in a presentation to Van Wert County officials this month. [reNews]
Wind farm in Ohio. Photo by Nyttend. Placed into the public domain by the author. Wikimedia Commons.
¶ The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is showing us that the algae biofuel field is still making progress despite low oil prices. Researchers at the lab are reporting a breakthrough system that ramps up the efficiency of the algae-to-ethanol process to a significant degree. The process combines two species of algae. [CleanTechnica]
¶ The unprecedented drought in California cost consumers an extra $2 billion in power bills because it dried up hundreds of hydroelectric stations in the state, curbing a key source of renewable energy, a new report found. Since it started in 2011, the drought has also undermined efforts to tackle climate change. [Bloomberg]
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