Coals to Newcastle? Finally Nuclear? A Solar Revival? … but where’s the Policy?? Over the past decade, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was the most visible proponent of renewable energy in the region, with plans for a Zero Energy City (Masdar), largely funded by one of the country’s leading sovereign wealth funds. Intentions included integrated …
Subsidy Reversals Continue – What’s Next?? When you want more of something (solar in 2000-2005), you subsidize it. When you want less of something (Spain, 2009+, Germany?), you eliminate this incentives and, eventually, the subsidies “go negative.” After a decade of outsized subsidies (and despite substantial efforts to reduce in line with improved relative economics), …
I attended the First Annual MIT Water Summit last week. Since water, unlike hydrocarbons, is essentially neither created nor destroyed, lots of consumption and supply-based metrics can be quite confusing. First, the usual trivia of interest to water watchers: The production of 1 cup of Starbucks coffee is tied to consumption of 200 liters of water. …
Fukushima Tragedy Drives Expensive Renewables Policy Under a new incentive program since mid last year, Japanese solar installations are poised to triple from 2012 to 7 GW. This is well ahead of estimates of “only a double” as recently as summer The average Japanese electricity tariff (2013) is around $0.30/kwh, trailing only a few …
EPA & the Biofuels Back Track The (mostly corn-based ethanol) biofuel industry is, understandably, quite disappointed in the confirmation of earlier rumors that the renewable fuel mandate would be scaled back in 2014-5. The revised proposal trims roughly 10% from the ‘first generation’ volume, roughly in line with lower US gasoline consumption since enactment of …
Solar Economics and ‘what next to subsidize?’ Wholesale solar module prices have stabilized around $0.70/watt, down from over $2 in 2009. Balance of system (labor, aluminum, inverter) costs now exceed module tabs, meaning that solar PV is, essentially, an E&C business, where the arbitrage between cost, subsidy, and power values has primarily accrued to the …
AntiDumping Penalties on Chinese Solar Cells Well, it only took about seven months for the USDOJ to impose penalties on one element of the solar PC supply chain. Following on a previous finding, the agency levied 31-250% surcharges on imported cells, or modules containing Chinese cells. Larger producers who provided data/defense were generally levied …
Harsh Reality in the UAE The 60% controlled Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) concession, featuring minority partners (Shell, Total, BP, ExxonMobil), expires in 2014. Amidst jockeying for renewal and terms, the IOCs are offering carbon capture technology to aid an existing project under the control of Masdar, the UAE’s clean technology entity, where costs …
Like solar, LEDs are in massive oversupply, as (among other reasons) the 3-D TV market meets with less market interest than forecast. A leading Taiwanese producer is running at 50% of capacity. But costs are also falling, and prices are getting very close to economic parity with compact fluorescent products. Once $100, a 6 …
CleanTech – Nearing a bottom? In the late 1990s, and again around 2005, Wall Street Research eliminated most of its steel analysts, and consolidated the chemical ‘space’ into one per firm. While not a cause, the moves served as a leading and contrary indicator, as the US steel and chemical industries rebounded – sharply, as …