The largest wind turbine in the world owned by a school district is about to go online in Wray, CO. Apparently, the parts for the Americas Wind Energy turbine came from all over the world to tiny Wray, population 2100 and falling. The blades came from Spain, the generator from Holland, the tower from South Korea and the copper wire came from Canada. Ironically, even Americas Wind Energy itself is not an American company, it is Canadian.

After originally deciding on the size and type of turbine needed, the community found they couldn’t buy just one turbine in that size range. Because of the bottleneck in American wind turbine production, the large wind farms and energy development companies are dominating the turbine purchasing market, trying to get their projects online before the end of 2008 when the production tax credit (PTC) is currently set to expire. The current market uncertainty is favoring the large turbine orders, whilst moving small orders to the fringes.

It is possible this bottleneck will loosen as Vestas has just opened its first North American turbine blade facility in Windsor, CO. The wind giant has recently taken an order (pdf) for 109 turbines in the US that they said would not affect any of their existing orders. However, E.ON Climate and Renewable Energy, who placed the order, will not be scheduled to have all 109 turbines up and running by the end of 2008. Their project is not projected to be finished until the middle of 2009.

It is my guess that even if the PTC does not pass this year, it will pass at the beginning of next year, when there is a strong chance there will be a Democrat in the White, and maybe even a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It is also quite likely that Congress would extend the PTC retroactively back to the beginning of 2009, as if it never expired. Even if that is the case, there is certain to be some downturn in the renewable energy industry as investors may get a little sheepish without the security of a production tax credit this year.

Fort Morgan Times
Photo: Americas Wind Energy (AWE 52-900)

Obscured by all of the buzz about the opening of wind energy giant Vestas’ first North American blade plant, a delegation of about 30 renewable energy executives and government officials from Spain recently visited Colorado to learn about investment and expansion opportunities in the region. Some of the visitors were already in the US for the dedication of Acciona’s new concentrating solar power plant outside of Las Vegas. The Spanish delegation met with state and local public officials, including Gov. Ritter, and toured a number of sites including the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden and Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Others involved in the visit include the US Department of Commerce, Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. and the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.

It is no secret that Spanish renewable energy companies like Acciona, Iberdola, and Finavera are aggressively positioning themselves to be major manufacturers in the in the American renewable energy industry. The Spanish delegation is not visiting Colorado on a whim. The state has recently shown with the opening of the new Vestas plant, that it is willing to give cash incentives and employment bonuses to clean energy businesses who want to set up shop in the Centennial State.

Photo Credit: TheFriendlyFiend via flickr

[The following article was originally published at CleanTechnica on February 15, 2008]

Nearly 50 leading U.S. and European institutional investors managing over $1.75 trillion in assets released a climate change action plan at the United Nations that calls on Congress to introduce national policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% below 1990 levels by 2050. U.S. institutional investors also pledged $10 billion dollars over two years in renewable energy technologies and project development, energy efficiency, green building and clean technologies. The group of investors also wants the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to insist that companies listed in New York and elsewhere disclose their exposure to climate change risk. The plan aims for a 20% reduction in energy used in core land and building investments over a three-year period.

The two largest pension funds in the US, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, with some $246.7 billion under its management, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, $168.8 billion strong, were both on board with the institutional investor coalition. These two large and incredibly wealthy pension funds tend to be leaders in the institutional investor arena. George McPherson, senior managing director of the DC-based private equity firm Global Environment Fund said he expects other pension funds to create more programs geared towards clean technology over the next year.

The initiative was unveiled at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk hosted in New York by the United Nations Foundation and Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk. Ceres is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.

John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions, told the summit that some of the $5 trillion of union workers’ retirement funds should be invested in ways that help fight climate change. “These deferred wages of working people are the capital that can fuel the energy economy of the future,” he said.

Summit attendees were also given information from a new report, which concluded that major investments in energy productivity over the next 10 years could bring in double-digit rates of return.

1. Institutional investors are one of the most important macro-economic drivers in this economy. Many of the assets that the large institutional investment funds have to invest, are collections of people’s retirement funds and 401Ks. People often do not worry a whole lot about their pension funds, and how they are invested, as long as they see a return on their investment. With that said, it is good to see institutional investors combine their tremendous economic clout to put pressure on the federal government while taking some social responsibility themselves.

2. The record-breaking profits of the big oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron over the last few years was made possible, in part, by the large amount of broad-based investment from large institutional investors. People may talk out of one side of their mouth about the evils of big oil without even knowing that their retirement nesteggs are being lined with the profits of those same companies. Institutional transparency and accountability are important to socially-conscious investors, and I see this as a step in the right direction.

3. Clean tech investors (both large and small) want long term security and stability before they are willing to invest significant capital. Investors and industry need certainty over what the regulatory regime will be over the next two to three decades before they release the billions of investment capital that will finance the shift we need to make to a low-carbon economy.

ClimateBiz

Earth Times

Reuters

LiveMint (India)

International Herald Tribune

Photo Credit: chatirygirl via flickr

It is quite common for the end-user of a commodity to have no idea where the good was actually produced, never mind how it got from point A to point B. But some consumers might prefer to get their vegetables them from a local farmers’ market, instead of the supermarket. A person might want to support a business because they have received exceptional service there in the past; or, because they know the signature dish is made with the freshest local ingredients. The global commodities market has separated the consumer and the producer across both time and space. Goods can be shipped all the way around the globe and many can be stored away for future use/sale. When consumers do not see where the good is produced, how it is produced, and the byproducts of that production, they are less likely to have the knowledge that will alter their own spending habits. Not only that, but it may not be so easy to buy something even though it is all around you (as my search for locally-grown soybeans proved). Why does this matter? It all boils down to consumer choice. On one hand, the modern globalized economy consists of consumers that are primarily concerned with getting a given commodity for the best price possible. On the other hand, some may want to choose something other than the least expensive product - and that’s where coal comes in.

There are increasing numbers of people who want to weigh other variables or ’social costs’ such as the ecological sustainability of a good and the process of manufacturing it; the human rights records in the country where the good is produced or workplace health and safety records of the company making the product. The global economy lives and dies at the level of uncertainty a consumer will accept before choosing to not buy a good. Coal may be less expensive in terms of how much you pay every month for electricity, but those bills do not accurately reflect all of the electricity’s costs or, what economists call, “externalities,” like sulfur dioxide, mercury, carbon dioxide Externalities occur when neither the producer nor the consumer bear all of the costs of an economic transaction and these costs are inimical to the provision of such ‘public goods’ as air, water, streetlights, and public safety.

As consumers, we are constantly being bombarded with choices that can challenge the strength and conviction of our beliefs. Most of the choices seem minute, but depending on how loud that little voice inside your head shouts, other choices may present some rather sticky cognitive dissonance at an uncomfortable level. Don’t believe me? What is the first thing you think of when you are faced with the ubiquitous inquiry ‘paper or plastic?’ Concerned about the consequences of all that Styrofoam, do you calculate differences in total resource depletion when asked ‘dine-in or carry-out?’ Do you buy organic or conventional fruits and vegetables? always? why? why not? Do you buy your gas at Exxon/Mobil or BioWillie? Would you rather have a Budweiser or a Fat Tire? Do you prefer coffee from Starbucks, the coffee cart, or your French press? Would you rather go to to WAL-MART or AL-MART?(*) Would you choose fresh, crisp apples from New Zealand or last autumn’s apples from upstate? Would you like bananas that were grown by a company that pays extortion money to violent crime syndicates? or would you rather have no bananas at all?

As electricity consumers, we have no way of determining exactly where the electricity that powers our homes and businesses is generated. Unless you live off the grid or you’ve got the ability to completely disconnect from the grid and generate your own electricity, you cannot distinguish between an electron generated from coal and one generated from wind, natural gas, solar, hydro, or any other source. We can determine the probability that our electricity is of a specific mix, but that is about it. Electricity consumers also often lack any specific knowledge of when electricity is expensive and when it is cheap; we generally know that electricity is more expensive in the morning and in the evening but most of us do not have the ability to monitor those price fluctuations and act accordingly. Fortunately, there is some hope in all of this, as barriers to markets are removed and electricity providers are held accountable for their externalities.

As the issues of energy use and its relationship to climate change are achieving greater acceptance among the general public, consumers want more control over how the energy they consume is produced and how they consume energy. People would be much more interested in the production cost of coal if they were paying the actual cost of coal-fired electricity. Energy generated from “traditional” fossil fuels is only cost-effective because the formula used to determine those costs omits too many of the social and ecological externalities of production…(to be continued).