With expectations low for the forthcoming Durban climate conference, it looks increasingly like our best hope is falling renewable energy prices. Here are a couple of interesting stories on that subject from Climate Progress and Yale360.
If that equation is projected into the future, the cost of wind will fall another 12% by 2016. The Bloomberg report states: "in the best locations [wind] generation is already cost-competitive with fossil fuel electricity, and that will be the case for the majority of new onshore turbines installed worldwide by 2016.
A survey of 91 solar operators in NSW by the Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) last week found 416 jobs have been lost and 25 per cent of solar businesses have closed or are planning closure in the next month.
Australia's only manufacturer of solar panels, Silex Solar, has also announced the loss of 30 jobs.
The solar industry, which employs about 15,000 people nationwide, has been hit by the recent axing of solar feed-in tariffs in NSW and Western Australia - a key incentive for consumers to buy solar panels.
Ironically, China has just gone in the opposite direction, announcing the introduction of a national feed in tariff for solar panels. Admittedly the tariff is small (16cents per kW/h) but as Giles Parkinson writes in Climate Spectator, China's solar industry is growing so rapidly anyway that prices are tumbling. In recent years, module prices have been falling by 20 per cent for each doubling in demand to a point where, in some situations solar power is close to competing on price with coal-fired power.
As most solar panels sold in Australia are made in China, the growth of solar in China should also see the cost of solar power fall sharply for Australian in the next few years.
You may have read about Sydney City Council's plan to build "trigeneration" plants that will use natural gas - and, ultimately, biogas generated from the city's composting waste and sewerage - to produce electricity, heating and airconditioning for buildings in the city.
With all the focus on solar panels, what's happened to GreenPower, that other scheme to encourage households to promote renewable energy?
In case you've forgotten, GreenPower lets you pay a premium to "buy" renewable electricity. (More precisely, your electricity supplier agrees to buy an equivalent amount of electricity from renewable resources.)
The good news is that more than 800,000 households were signed up for the scheme in June 2010. Those people are chosing to support a clean-energy future out of their own pockets.
My guess is green consumers are choosing to spend their money on solar panels instead, given the generous financial incentives. Why pay more to have renewable energy when governments are offering to pay you instead?
What is clear, however, is the huge public demand for more renewable energy.
In my previous blog, I wondered if the Deepwater Horizon oil spill might create a mood among politicians and the public in the US to support a genuine drive for clean energy. Keep an eye on public opinion in the US in the coming months.
Spain and Germany between them make up three-quarters of the global solar panel market. The reason they have so many more solar panels than anywhere else? Feed-in tariffs, which pay solar panel owners a premium to feed their electricity into the grid.
The surprise introduction of a gross Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) by the NSW government should boost the solar panel installation industry. For the next seven years, if you own solar panels, the FiT will pay you 60 cents per kW for the electricity they generate. You then buy back electricity for your home at normal rates (ranging from 28 cents peak to 9 cents off-peak).
Last month the NSW Government announced details of its Solar Bonus Scheme, better known as a feed in tariff.
The Government will pay owners of solar panels a premium rate of 60cents per kW for any electricity they feed into the grid.
The Government describes this as "the most generous of any of the State schemes currently on offer".
Like all the other states, however, NSW has opted for a net scheme. This means you only get credits for surplus electricity you feed into the grid - for instance when no-one is home. But a typical home with a typical 1kW system won't produce much surplus electricity.
Gross tariffs, on the other hand, pay you a premium rate for all the electricity your panels generate, even if you use this electricity yourself in your own home.
So gross tariffs, even with a lower cents/kW figure, are more generous than net tariffs. They provide more incentive to install solar panels and therefore more of a boost to the solar industry.
In Australia, only the ACT has a gross tariff. But then, the ACT isn't a state.
The NSW scheme will start January 1 2010 and run for 20 years.
The scheme applies to systems of up to 10kW and will "potentially expand" to include micro wind generation.
The Federal Government has ended its $8000 solar panel grant scheme three weeks ahead of the original June 30 deadline. The scheme will be replaced by a new Solar Credits scheme.
Forget the $2 billion for clean coal in yesterday's Budget. Yes, it's a waste of money. A lot of money. But, given the power the coal industry seems to have over Australian governments, it's the price we probably have to pay for the $1.5 billion allocated over the next six years to build four giant solar power stations.
The Government says these will be three times the size of any other solar power station in the world - up to 1000 megawatts, as large as a coal-fired power station. The power stations could be solar panels or solar thermal.
Spain's renewable energy sector was rocked last week by a corruption scandal. Officials in several small towns allegedly took kickbacks for approving wind farm applications and similar things.
Melbourne-based renewable Energy company Energy Matters has an online petition calling for a nationwide gross feed-in tariff scheme for people feeding solar and other renewable energy into the grid.
Under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme people who install solar hot water and/or solar power will not be reducing Australia's emissions but merely allowing polluters more room to pollute. GetUp! have started a campaign to get the government to close this perverse loophole.
There are a number of good value bulk-buying solar panel schemes around at the moment. They take advantage of three things: 1) economies of scale; 2) the $8000 Federal Government rebate and 3) $1000 of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).
What's interesting about this thermal solar power plant in Spain is that it incorporates the ability to store solar energy, by heating a molten mixture of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate.
Oops. It turns out that a gas used in the manufacturer of LCD laptop and television screens and - wait for it - thin-screen solar photovoltaic panels is a greenhouse gas a massive 17,000 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.
Some big guns in the US are beginning to throw their weight behind renewable energy. Over there, the issue is often presented as "energy security" and reducing dependence on foreign oil imports, rather than reducing climate change, but never mind.
