Green Energy

Environmental groups are set to fan out on Capitol Hill on Thursday to lobby lawmakers to back a 100 percent renewable energy mandate for the nation as an essential part of the progressive “Green New Deal” agenda.

The groups, including Friends of the Earth, Center for Biological Diversity, and Food and Water Watch, along with 625 members, called on lawmakers in a letter to pursue legislation to ensure that all electricity comes from solar and wind by 2035 or sooner.

Renewable energy, under the groups’ definition, would not include any form of fossil fuel or combustion-based electricity generation, nuclear power plants, biomass energy, large-scale hydroelectric power, or waste-to-energy technologies.

The mandate corresponds to the United Nations’ recently released report on climate change that recommends transitioning away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, stronger storms, flooding, and drought.

Those principles also align with the so-called “Green New Deal” agenda being floated by new Democrats in the House, which calls for taking more direct action to combat the threat of global warming.

Critics of that deal say that, if adopted, it would ultimately raise the cost of electricity and place additional burdens on the average consumer.

The activists swarming the Hill Thursday are also calling for mining and extraction policies that ensure fossil fuels are kept in the ground.

“Pursuing new fossil fuel projects at this moment in history is folly,” the groups state in a letter to lawmakers. “Most immediately, the federal government must stop selling off or leasing publicly owned lands, water, and mineral rights for development to fossil fuel producers.” The groups also want the government to ban approvals of all new fossil fuel power plants and infrastructure projects.

Additionally, the environmental activists are aiming to repeal recent legislation that ended the 40-year ban on crude oil exports to be reversed and to end the export of all other fossil fuels. They want a phase-out of existing fossil fuel plants and projects.

Meanwhile, another large environmental coalition called Environment America also launched a campaign to persuade the nation’s 20 new governors elected in November to enact laws and regulations to face the challenge posed by climate change.

Environment America is also using the U.N. report, in addition to the new national climate assessment issued by the U.S. government, to make the case for enacting new clean energy policies.

“With the stroke of a pen, governors can increase renewable energy use, reduce transportation emissions, and curb energy waste,” said Andrea McGimsey, Environment America’s senior director of global warming program. “These policies have proven effective and can bring immediate benefits to our health and environment.”

Environment America’s list of principles is less prescriptive than the activist groups’ letter to House and Senate lawmakers. For instance, it does not call specifically for a 100percent renewable energy goal, attributing the lack of specificity on the limits placed on governors by pre-existing laws.

Nevertheless, it does call on governors to enact aggressive clean-energy targets, impose limits on fossil fuel use and production, and transition to more electric cars.

DSM has tripled the solar output of its facility in Belvidere, New Jersey, as it moves one step closer to sourcing 100% renewable energy for its global operations.

The on-site solar generation facility is comprised of more than 62,000 solar panels and is estimated to produce 25 million kWh of renewable electricity annually.

At peak production, the maximum output of the unit will exceed the site’s peak consumption, with the excess solar power being sent to the power grid during those times.

Netherlands-headquartered DSM partnered with GeoPeak Energy to develop, engineer and construct the expansion.

The panels use DSM’s own anti-reflective coating for the solar glass that increases efficiency by up to 3%. This technology is already in use at DSM’s operating solar fields in Kingstree, South Carolina, and Pune, India.

Hugh Welsh, president of DSM North America, said: “The newly expanded solar field is part of DSM’s commitment to doing well by doing good for both our communities and our environment.

“It will minimise our impact on the planet through clean, renewable energy and allow for sending enough green energy back to the grid to power 406 homes for a year. At DSM we are proud to do our part to move the state of New Jersey and our country toward a clean energy future.”

As a member of the RE100 initiative, DSM has a goal to source 100% renewable electricity for its global operations. The project is led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP.

Sam Kimmins, head of RE100 at The Climate Group, said: “DSM is a prime example of an RE100 member investing in pragmatic and impactful projects by cutting emissions from its operations and greening the grid to the benefit of local communities.

“By expanding its Belvidere solar field to triple the size, DSM sends a powerful message that the business case for renewable power continues to grow – showing the wider business community that the clean energy transition is happening now, and won’t slow down.”

GeoPeak Energy partner AJ Javan added: “We’re proud to be an integral part of DSM’s commitment to sustainability and thank DSM for trusting us to develop and construct another solar project. Over the past few years, GeoPeak Energy has partnered with DSM to implement key objectives of its sustainability plan, including this 20MW Solar Project.

“This is a prime example of the planning and execution that is required to complete the construction of a complex project of this scale.”

Last year, DSM signed an energy supply agreement with Eneco, meaning 100% of the electricity used by the company in the Netherlands will be from renewable sources. The company has committed to sourcing at least 50% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

An abrupt statement in Turkey’s official journal yesterday revealed the government has cancelled a tendering exercise for the deployment of 1 GW of new solar, due to be held on January 29.

Ankara did not give an explanation for the cancellation, which had been planned for the construction of large-scale solar in three areas.

“Currently, the government is reconstructing the details of this 1 GW tender and will re-announce it within this year,” said Eren Engur, CEO of Turkish solar consultancy Icarus Enerji. “Another YEKA-3, with 20-30 MW each with a total of 1 GW is also under process,” he told pv magazine, referring to a third round of renewables tenders under Turkey’s Renewable Energy Resources Area Project (YEKA) green energy policy.

Engur said solar parties in Turkey including government agencies are working to simplify the application process and incentives for rooftop solar systems below 10 kW in size, with the new rules expected to boost the market soon. “We also have extensive work on including solar storage to these new tenders,” he added.

Unlicensed small PV dominates

The postponed procurement was to be split into three tenders for three locations: Sanliurfa-Viransehir in the southeast of Turkey, where 500 MW were to be deployed; the Hatay-Erzin site in the same region, for a 200 MW project; and the Nigde-Bor location, in central Anatolia, which was expected to host 300 MW of solar and a 30 MW/90 MWh (AC) li-ion battery storage project. The maximum price the Turkish government had set for the tender was $0.065/kWh.

Local content requirements were embedded in the tender, with 60% of the modules having to come from domestic manufacturers. Selected projects were to be awarded a 15-year PPA.

So far, only around 63 MW – for licensed larger projects built under the country’s auction scheme, PEKA – have been registered by state-owned grid operator TEIAŞ. Most of the 5 GW of solar capacity registered by the end of November was represented by unlicensed projects not exceeding 1 MW in size.

The Schletter Group has emerged from its US unit’s bankruptcy earlier this year to begin delivering a new, more stable solar tracker to the North America, Asia, and Australia markets, with one recent sale in Zimbabwe. The company also is installing bifacial solar panels for the first time on its new tracker in Germany, says Christian Salzeder, the new chief sales officer for Schletter in Kirchdorf, Germany.

The new Schletter tracking system stability is provided in part by a patent pending locking mechanism, that better resists the so-called “galloping effect” that wind can produce on long arrays. As a result of the locking mechanism on each post, the tracker is as stable as a fixed-mount solar installation, the company says.

Most other tracking systems use hydraulic dampers or similar supporting structures to mitigate galloping, caused by a combination of the vibrations and torsional forces on the central torque tube caused by the wind. “The self-locking mechanism avoids dynamic effects much better than any other tracker in the market,” Salzeder says.

While at rest, it has the properties and durability of a fixed mounting system and is designed to withstand wind speeds of up to 161 mph, Schletter says. According to the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, for a wind to be classified as a Category 1 hurricane, it must have one-minute maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph. The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, consists of storms with sustained winds over 156 mph.

The new tracker design also features more solar panels per motor than any other competing system, which increases the ground cover ratio, the company says. This feature is achieved through its large wingspan and ground cover ratio. Each row can be up to 393-ft long and is driven by one centrally-located motor. At 13 ft in width, each row is wide enough to hold either two panels oriented vertically or four horizontally, so that up to 574 square yards of solar array can be installed per row and motor. The capability allows developers to make optimal use of the available land, with a ground cover ratio of more than 50%, the company says.

The new tracker also will be sold in the United States since the company’s Shelby, NC unit was reorganized. “North America is a key market for our international group of companies,” said Florian Roos, the Group CEO, in a December statement. “We will go on building a strong presence here and market the entire range of our innovative and durable mounting solutions. This is especially true for our new and innovative tracker system which is as stable as a fixed tilt and was developed specifically with the North American market in mind.”

The US unit of Schletter was rescued by Golden Square Capital Partners, of Frankfurt, backed by Avenue Capital Group, a $9.4 billion US hedge fund. “The new shareholders have also provided a double-digit million dollar sum of additional cash capital for investments in product development and the further development of the markets in Asia and North America,” Schletter says.

Since the bankruptcy settlement, Schletter has won a number of projects in international markets, “including the respective largest solar parks in Vietnam (200 megawatts) and the Philippines (150 MW), a 60 MW project in China and the third largest rooftop project in Germany (6.2 MW),” the company says.

Schletter claims to be one of the victims of Trump’s solar import tax move. At the time of the US unit’s bankruptcy filing in April, the company said, “The current financial situation in the United States is primarily the result of launching a new product before it was ready for high volume production, combined with the effect of the solar tariffs.”

The bankruptcy statement continued, “The U.S. subsidiary, Schletter Inc, under its previous management overextended itself by acquiring a number of large scale projects involving a new product (the G-Max fixed tilt product), which it had solely developed in and for the U.S. The cost of carrying through these projects was significantly higher than planned due to the premature launch of the new product. It is this considerable financial burden which ultimately made this step necessary.”

Apart from its US and German manufacturing locations, Schletter operates Schletter Canada Inc., based in Windsor, Ontario, and a unit in China.

The UK Government on Tuesday finally proposed what amounts to relatively mediocre guidelines intended to support the development of small-scale renewable energy technologies by ensuring remuneration for any and all electricity generated that is supplied to the grid by small-scale generators.

The proposed Smart Export Guarantee was unveiled by the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and opened for consultation until early March, and comes less than a month after all hell broke loose when the BEIS announced in December that existing schemes to incentivize small-scale generators to supply electricity to the grid were closing, and that no replacement was intended. Such schemes — a Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme and a generator export tariff — remunerated small-scale generators for the electricity they generated but then supplied to the grid. Both are set to close on 31 March, and in December the BEIS made it clear there were no plans to replace them, leaving new small-scale generators in the lurch.

Those most obviously affected by such a shift are rooftop solar owners, but the UK boasts approximately 560,000 households and businesses generating small-scale electricity under the FiT scheme using a range of technologies including anaerobic digestion (generating energy from waste products), wind power, biomass, and hydro-electricity. However, these technologies are in the overwhelming minority, with 99% of small-scale generators under the FiT using rooftop solar.

This 99% accounts for 80% of the capacity being generated by these small-scale generators, with wind accounting for 12%, hydro for 3%, and anaerobic digestion for 5%.

The BEIS announced on Tuesday, however, a proposed Smart Export Guarantee for small-scale renewable electricity generators which would guarantee payment for excess electricity supplied to the grid. The proposed Guarantee would specifically replace the FiT scheme and would require electricity suppliers to pay new small-scale energy producers for excess electricity generated from homes and businesses which is supplied to the grid.

“This new scheme could help us to build a bridge to the smart energy system of the future, with consumers firmly at its heart – not only buying electricity but being guaranteed payments for excess electricity they can supply to the grid,” said Claire Perry, the UK’s Minister for Energy and Clean Growth. “It could also reduce strain on energy networks with a more decentralised and smarter local network delivering resilience much more cost effectively, unlocking innovative products for electric vehicles and home energy storage; a win-win for consumers and the environment and a key part of our modern Industrial Strategy.”

While this is good news, the welcome by the renewable energy industry has been tepid, representing concerns over the specific value of remuneration small-scale generators can expect.

“We give these proposals a cautious welcome,” said Chris Hewett, CEO of the UK’s Solar Trade Association.

“We are very pleased the Government is unequivocal; small generators will be compensated for the power they contribute to the system, but the issue remains providing remuneration at a fair market rate. We are particularly pleased to see a clear requirement to meet MCS standards for participation in the scheme, which means safeguards for consumers will be retained.

“Positively, the Government again identifies the System Sell Price as accurately reflecting the market value of power spilled to the grid,” Hewett continued. “However, the consultation acknowledges many of the market barriers we have raised with Government and the associated costs. Our worry is that these may impede the ability of suppliers to offer fair and meaningful rates, even though they may wish to. Customers are freely able to switch suppliers in a competitive market so where these costs fall remains vital to developing meaningful offers.” – Hewett

“These new government proposals rightly recognise the role that small-scale generation can play in developing a smarter, more decentralised energy system that benefits consumers,” added RenewableUK’s Head of Policy Barnaby Wharton.

“Small-scale wind energy and other renewable generation reduces overall demand on the grid and supports thousands of jobs in industries across the UK. It is vital that the value of this locally generated, low-carbon power is reflected in the final Smart Export Guarantee proposals.”

“Owners of small scale solar will be paid for the power they export, which is an improvement on the proposal that they give their power away for free,” said Dustin Benton, Policy Director at the UK’s Green Alliance, who spoke to me via email. “But the guarantee is very limited: there’s no minimum price, and it won’t come into force before the current export tariff is cancelled, which means there could be a gap of up to a year in which new small scale generators aren’t paid.

“Rather than this stopgap, we’d like to see a new regime for small scale power which enables small generation to get paid for exports when it supports the decarbonisation of the grid.” – Wharton

In what seems like news that has come a decade late, the International Renewable Energy Agency announced on Wednesday that Canada has finally become a member, becoming the Agency’s 160th member.

According to its website, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) “is an intergovernmental organisation that supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future, and serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, a centre of excellence, and a repository of policy, technology, resource and financial knowledge on renewable energy.” First proposed back in 1981 at the United Nations Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy, held in Nairobi, Kenya, it took until 2009 to found the organization and its statute was entered into force in July of 2010.

A total of 159 member countries beat Canada to joining IRENA including such pearls of democratic action as Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, and the Russian Federation.

But better later than never, and Canada’s admittance came on the eve of IRENA’s ninth and its largest Assembly where more than 120 ministers from around the world are expected to join 1,200 delegates from 150 countries in Abu Dhabi to discuss developing the deployment of sustainable sources of energy.

“We are delighted to welcome Canada as a new member of the IRENA family,” said IRENA Director-General, Adnan Z. Amin. “Canada has vast renewable energy resource potential and long-standing experience in low-carbon development that it can share through international cooperation.

“We look forward to working with the Canadian government as well as the private sector and research institutions to advance energy transformation. Canada’s membership firmly underscores the leadership it can demonstrate in renewable energy technology, sustainable development and global energy decarbonisation.”

“The growing green economy is among the greatest economic opportunities for Canada in a generation,” added Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources. “Becoming an IRENA member will accelerate Canada’s efforts to build a clean energy future which will bring new economic growth and thousands of new, well-paying jobs.”

“We are supporting a clean growth economy that will help reduce emissions and generate well-paying jobs for middle class Canadians and future generations,” said Vanessa Adams, Press Secretary for Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, who spoke to me via email.

“We are serious about moving to a clean future by taking action on climate change and investing in clean growth.

“For a decade, the Conservatives had the chance to protect the environment and grow the economy, and they didn’t take it. Just because they couldn’t do either, doesn’t mean we can’t do both.

“We’ve made real progress by joining IRENA, an organization that supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future. As a member, Canada will continue to actively promote its expertise and leadership in renewable energy and accelerate its efforts to build a clean energy future that will bring new economic growth and thousands of new, well-paying jobs.

“Canadians expect their government to create a sustainable Canada that will be here for our kids and our grandkids, while also growing our economy. That’s exactly what we are doing and what we will continue to do.”