The meeting also included officials of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which has broad administrative and planning control over the Chinese economy, including formulating policies for economic and social development, restructuring China’s economic system and guiding private investment.

During the meeting, Lingle invited Xu and the China Academy of Engineering to be co-organizers for the 2010 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo.

Xu agreed to co-sponsor next year’s summit and to have a specific “China-focus.” Zhou Fengqi spoke at the recent Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo that was held in Hawaii in September 2009.

While in Hong Kong, Lingle participated in discussions with Secretary for the Environment, Edward Yao. Lau is responsible for Hong Kong’s clean energy portfolio.

Lingle and Lau spoke of a potential link between Hawaii and Hong Kong as mutual “test-beds” for the integration of renewable energy and achievement of high levels of energy efficiency.

The governor invited Hong Kong to participate in the 2010 Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Yao reciprocated by inviting the State of Hawaii and Hawaii companies to participate in its Green Tech Exposition.

If this wind farm is built, then the project will mean that, per head of population, Maldives will be getting about six times more electricity from wind than the UK. The British Climate change expert that helped Maldives develop its draft of the project, Mark Lynas, says that he welcomes the wind farm proposal. He went on to say that it could be a signal for the rest of the world.

He went on to say that if a middle income country can cut its emissions by a quarter through standard commercial partnerships, then the rest of the world has very little excuse for saying that carbon reduction is too expensive. The Maldives government is taking the leading climate change in an effort to push larger states into taking more action.

The $200 million wind farm project is being financed and built by the Falcon Energy group. It will use turbines from the American company GE, which is one of the world’s leaders in wind energy. The project is said to get its start with a year long analysis of wind conditions to assess the best arrangement for the turbines.

The event focuses on small wind power for homes, businesses and government buildings and nonutility scale turbines that generate 100 kilowatts of power or less.

"As the wind industry grows, we will need all project sizes and financing models," said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, a national advocacy group that organized the conference. "Small and community wind are a complement to utility-scale wind and allows us to get individuals invested in what we're doing."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm pitched Michigan as a key player in expanding the wind industry's supply chain. She touted the Great Lakes State's manufacturing expertise, engineering talent and proximity to shipping channels as a combination few other states possess.

Already, Michigan has amassed a sizable supply base for making wind turbine parts and has another 1,000 suppliers -- many of them with ties to the automotive industry -- capable of milling components, she said.

"We know how to make gear boxes and drive trains and brakes. We know how to make that stuff. It's just in a smaller way," Granholm said, adding that manufacturing is in the state's "DNA."

Although about 1,400 registered for the conference, the turnout was closer to 2,000, Bode said.

About 110 exhibitors showcased the latest in small wind technology, including turbines of all shapes, sizes and configurations.

Homeowners, small businesses and entrepreneurs may find they can make money by installing wind power and selling carbon credits back to utilities, said Trevor Lauer, vice president of retail marketing at DTE Energy in Detroit.

The projects include the 504 MW Great Gabbard wind farm being developed by Scottish and Southern Energy, Airtricity, RWE and Innogy, Vattenfall’s 300 MW Thanet wind farm due to be completed next year and DONG Energy’s 361 MW Walney 1 and 2 wind farms. Vattenfall’s 150 MW Ormonde project and the 315 MW Sheringham Shoal wind farm being developed by StatoilHydro and Statkraft are also in the running.

A total of 13 companies including DONG Energy, RWE npower, SSE Offshore Transmission, National Grid Offshore and a StatoilHydro/Statkraft consortium will take part in the competitive tending process to connect up offshore wind farms.

The transmission links to an additional three projects are also open to bidders, but will not be eligible for EIB funding.

“The EIB’s support will be very welcome,” says Minister of Energy Lord Hunt. “This money would help projects currently under construction get their cables in the water and feeding into the grid quickly and cheaply.”

However, Ofgem chairman Lord Mogg admits that while the £300 million funding from the EIB is helpful, the total cost of connecting up the 33 GW of offshore wind generation required to meet the UK’s emissions target will be around £15 billion – a cost that will ultimately be borne by consumers.

While the Wampanoag tribes on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard appear assured a seat at the table, the Cape's planning and regulatory agency, the Cape Cod Commission, has not been included so far, commission executive director Paul Niedzwiecki wrote in an e-mail to the Times.

Invitations to join the group went out Oct. 20, but the commission had not received one as of Friday.

"It's concerning given that Cape Cod comprises two-thirds of the Massachusetts coastline," Niedzwiecki wrote.

Consultation with local communities is "critical" to forming a consensus around where wind turbines and other renewable energy projects are located, said Mark Forest, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.

Officials from the Interior Department are scheduled to meet with Delahunt this week to brief him on the task force and who will be involved, Forest said.

"That's one of the things that we want to understand," Forest said of the group's makeup.

Cape Wind unaffected

Similar task forces are being formed in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia.

The task force's work is not expected to affect the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm, which would sit in the so-called "doughnut hole" of federal waters in the middle of the Sound. The U.S. Minerals Management Service, a division of the Department of Interior, is the lead agency to review Cape Wind and other potential leases for wind turbines on the outer continental shelf.

In addition to federal officials, the task force will include only elected state and local officials or their designated representatives, according to a draft charter document obtained by the Times.

Collaboration has worked in other states and countries, particularly in Europe; Germany zoned the North Sea for 25,000 megawatts of offshore energy in two years, Forest said.

The Cape Cod Commission is not the only group that fears being left out of the process.

A group of renewable-energy advocates, other nonprofit groups and Cape and Islands officials have written a consensus statement calling, in part, for a community group to work in parallel to the elected officials and federal agencies, said Chris Powicki, president of Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Collaborative.

"The question is, how will stakeholder groups and the public be represented?" Powicki said.

Disenfranchised

The process the state undertook to create its draft ocean management plan is an example of the disenfranchisement that is possible if all such groups are not included, he said.

Martha's Vineyard, in particular, has railed against the state's plan, which proposes two areas southwest of the island for potential large-scale wind-energy projects.

Unlike its Cape counterpart, the Martha's Vineyard Commission will have a voice on the joint task force.

The commission has received an invitation to join the task force, said William Veno, senior planner with the island agency.

And at a recent meeting with state officials about the state draft plan, island officials were told that the state's major areas of interest for wind energy development lie in federal waters, Veno said.

This came as welcome news for some islanders who questioned why the state was "experimenting" in state waters when the greatest renewable energy resources, such as wind, lie beyond the three-mile boundary with federal waters, Veno said.

But, as of now, the draft plan still leaves waters off the Vineyard open to the greatest degree of wind-energy development in the state: 166 commercial-scale turbines and another 10 community-sponsored turbines.

'A bad start'

"It's unfortunate that this has gotten off to a bad start," said Edgartown Selectman Arthur Smadbeck. Because the move to develop offshore renewable energy is so new, it is hard to blame anyone for missteps, he said.

But projects such as Cape Wind are examples of what can happen when planning is not done well, Smadbeck said.

Approval of the proposal by Cape Wind Associates LLC to build 130 turbines in the Sound is currently stalled over historic and tribal objections, including a bid to have the area listed on the National Registry of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property.

The potential listing, while not an outright death knell for the project, could lead to more significant delays in the already eight-year-long permitting process for Cape Wind. The state's historic commission is expected to decide whether the Sound is eligible for a listing this month. A final decision on the listing could come by the end of the year and, if approved, would create another series of hurdles for Cape Wind.

Attempts to rush the state's ocean management plan through — a final version is due by Dec. 31 — exemplify how offshore renewable energy has gotten off on the wrong foot, Smadbeck said.

"The message we are trying to send is, slow down," he said.

However we are not allowed to have an industrial policy in the US because to do so would make us "socialist" - like those darn Germans. Instead we'll let much of our manufacturing rinse away to cheaper locales because well, that's just how it works. Except in Germany apparently. The statistic that caught my eye in this story was due to this lack of manufacturing capability 84% of the money thus far allocated for "green" is going to foreign companies.

The rest of the piece deals with a company we actually had a position in during parts of 2007 and 2008, A-Power Energy (APWR) and how they have won a contract to do wind energy ... in Texas.

•News last week of the first major influx of Chinese capital and wind turbine manufacturing expertise into the renewable energy market in the United States — a 600-megawatt wind farm planned for the plains of west Texas — had many readers of the Green Inc. blog in a state of agitation.

•The details of the deal known so far: Contingent on financing from Chinese commercial banks — and no small measure of funding from the U.S. economic stimulus package — A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Nasdaq-listed company based in the Chinese industrial city of Shenyang, would provide 240 of its 2.5-megawatt wind turbines for a 36,000-acre, or 14,600-hectare, utility-scale wind farm in west Texas to be operated by Cielo Wind Power, a developer based in Austin. 

•The total cost of the project, which was brokered in part by the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an American private equity company, was estimated at $1.5 billion.

Here is where it gets tricky - as they say devil in details

•“This planned $1.5 billion investment in wind energy will spur tremendous growth in the renewable energy sector,” Mr. McGarr was quoted in a news release as saying, “and directly create hundreds of high-paying American jobs.” (rah! rah!) 

•The devil, though — as many observers pointed out by the end of the week — is in the details. The group’s calculations last week put the number of American jobs at a little more than 300 — most of them temporary construction jobs, along with about 30 permanent positions once the wind farm is operating. Mr. McGarr told The Wall Street Journal that more than 2,000 Chinese jobs would be created by the deal. (oops)

•That, along with the fact that the project was hoping to secure 30 percent, or $450 million, of its financing from U.S. stimulus funds, was enough to send tempers flaring.

Boo Yah! American stimulus - creating 300 temporary jobs in America, and 30 real ones... and 2000 in China. Sort of symbolic really - considering the money for said stimulus was borrowed from China in the first place. But don't let reality get in the way of trumpets blaring about "green tech" and "job creation!"

Interesting reader comments:

•“I don’t understand why China is exporting wind energy to the U.S.,” wrote Mark from New York City. “Isn’t this exactly the kind of project a United States company could and should be doing?” 

•Another reader — Drew from Boston — was more blunt: “Again, China is playing the West for a sucker,” he wrote. “We send them our engineering, they get the manufacturing work and experience.” (but that doesn't explain the success of Spain and Germany in renewable energy, Drew) 

• “Why are U.S. stimulus funds being used to subsidize manufacturing jobs in China,” (because Americans won't do the work ....Germans will? Or is it Spaniards?) wrote a reader at Green Inc., who pointed out that American officials had repeatedly warned that the United States could lose its competitive edge on renewable energy manufacturing to China.

•“Thank you for killing the U.S. windmill industry,” wrote a reader from Chicago at Green Inc. “Thank-you, U.S. industrialists and financiers, for having us buy these things with financing and grants emanating from money borrowed from China.”

China obviously has no qualms with protectionism...Europeans have also complained strongly about this.

•As Keith Bradsher wrote earlier this year in The New York Times, by establishing prohibitive quotas for homegrown solar and wind turbine equipment, and disqualifying bids from foreign companies on dubious grounds, the Chinese leadership has muscled out American and European manufacturers of clean energy seeking to gain a foothold in China’s burgeoning market for renewables.

And it gets better than that in the bigger picture - when we look at more than 1 deal:

•In a somewhat intriguing coincidence of timing, Mr. Choma and his colleagues published, on the same day the Chinese-American wind farm deal was unveiled, a detailed analysis of where stimulus money aimed at creating renewable energy projects and jobs in the United States was flowing. 

•By Mr. Choma’s reckoning, 84 percent of the $1.05 billion in clean-energy grants distributed by the government since Sept. 1 has gone to foreign renewable energy companies — specifically, wind companies. Through its American subsidiary, Iberdrola, a global manufacturer of wind turbines based in Spain, commanded most of that funding: $545 million

•“We broke down some of the numbers and found out that the program funded 11 projects that installed 982 turbines,” Mr. Choma wrote in an e-mail message, “and 695 were built by foreign manufacturers.”

•To some extent, this is hardly surprising. As Mr. Choma noted, the American clean energy manufacturing base — particularly its wind turbine production capability — is tiny compared with that of Europe.
Not to worry - there is still hope! Only $1B down, and $21B more to go. Certainly by this time next year countless wind turbine mfg plants will have spread across the American heartland and instead of 84% of all monies going overseas, a far more palpable number... such as 82% of the remaining $21B will be a direct transfer from our grandchildren's future liabilities balance to foreign entities. Boo yah!

•And to be sure, the dispensation of the $22 billion in stimulus funding that is supposed to go toward renewable energy projects has only just begun.

And once more the key below.... as we hollow out manufacturing because that kind of work is too expensive in the US and is best left for cheap locales like... Germany.

•And as Mr. Choma noted, when it comes to stimulating the economy, it is the manufacturing that matters. (here all this time I thought it was wasting trillions on pushing up home prices and getting people to daytrade their deed?) He points to a 2004 study from the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research institute based in Washington.

The institute found that for every 1,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity had the potential to generate as many as 4,300 jobs, of which about 3,000 are created at the manufacturing level. (oh well, we still have our financial oligarchs who can help finance the clean energy deals and while it doesn't create a lot of jobs, it creates a lot of wealth for that tiny sliver of society - and that's the important thing. Because then - per dogma - that wealth will trickle on, err trickle down to the rest of the society... especially former workers in manufacturing now living the middle class dream as Walmart clerks)

The £84 million deal comes amid rising interest in the wind industry, which was virtually paralysed in the credit crunch last year. Last week, The Times reported that multinational companies, including Google, were examining opportunities in the industry in the UK.

TCW, a subsidiary of Société Générale, the French bank, has $118 billion (£72 billion) in assets under management and is a well-known investor in energy projects. It has energy investments worth $7 billion in more than 250 energy projects in 27 countries.

Nick Hyslop, an analyst for RBC Capital Markets said: “It’s clearly a much better market than it was. The UK wind market is recovering and good projects have more chance of getting money.”

Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, which also made a £50 million profit on the deal, said that the refinancing was a milestone in the group’s renewables strategy. The strategy was boosted in April by the Government’s decision to strengthen the subsidies available to offshore wind operators.

Analysts at Credit Suisse said that the announcement was “good news for the offshore wind industry, signalling that there are equity financial investors, aside from utilities and international oil companies, still looking at assets”.

Centrica has also raised £340 million in project finance from a consortium of 14 banks to fund the wind farms.

However, Andy Cox, energy partner in KPMG, said: “The challenge to finance offshore wind projects should not be underestimated. Capital remains constrained and the operating risks are still cause for concern. “The deal is definitely a step forward, but it’s dwarfed by the total amount of refinancing required to construct the 25 gigawatts of UK offshore wind projects in the pipeline, around £100 billion according to the Crown Estate.”

Centrica also said that it was to press ahead with a £725 million investment in another offshore wind farm to be built off Skegness.

In March, SeaEnergy joined up with EDP Renovaveis to bid for offshore wind farm leasing rights from the UK’s Crown Estate.

The US wind energy industry installed 1,649MW of new generating capacity in the third quarter, up from 1,210MW in the second quarter and 1,389MW in third quarter 2008. More than 5,800MW of wind capacity has been added so far in 2009, bringing total US capacity to more than 31,100MW, according to the Washington, DC-based AWEA.

A change in the tax code by Congress allows wind, biomass and other renewable energy projects to temporarily elect to receive an investment tax credit (ITC) normally reserved for solar projects, instead of receiving tax credits against power production. In the economic stimulus package in February, the US also allowed project developers to receive cash payments in lieu of the tax credits.

Since the early July announcement of the grant programme rules, the wind sector has seen more than 1,600MW of completed projects and more than 1,700MW of construction started. These projects equate to about $6.5 billion in new investment, according to AWEA.

“We have seen an almost instantaneous response from the project development side in wind in terms of new activity,” said Elizabeth Salerno, director of industry data and analysis for AWEA.

However, she added that: “We can’t ignore the fact that we aren’t out of the trenches yet. The grant programme is working, but we still don’t have a long-term, stable policy in place.”

More than 5,000MW of wind capacity is now under construction for completion this year or next, but that is nearly 38% lower than the 8,000MW-plus under construction at this time in 2008.

The wind industry installed a record 8,358MW of new capacity in 2008, a number AWEA does not expect to exceed this year, Salerno said.

“I don’t think that should be a surprise to anyone given the hit of the financial crisis but, nevertheless, [this is] still a very strong year,” she said.

Texas added the most new wind capacity in the third quarter at 436MW, followed by Oregon at 251MW and Illinois at 201MW. Texas also has the highest total wind capacity at 8,797MW, with Iowa second at 3,053MW and California at 2,787MW.

With more than 8,500 megawatts of wind capacity, Texas is the nation’s leading producer of wind power. It produces more than double the amount of wind energy than the next state, Iowa.

But the transmission lines across Texas can only handle about 4,500 megawatts of this production so thousands of megawatts of wind energy go to waste each day.

It only takes one year to build a wind farm but five years to build the power lines to transmit the energy, leaving a major surplus in the amount of power the current cable system can handle, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Web site.

The council manages the current power lines and has been planning for the past two years to regulate the construction of a new system of high-voltage transmission lines. These will allow the distribution of wind energy across what is known as the “grid.”

The vast majority of this power is generated in West Texas, where wind production has rapidly grown in the past three years, from 2,800 megawatts in 2006, to more than 4,000 megawatts in 2008, to its current capacity of 8,500 megawatts, said council spokeswoman Dottie Roark.

Roark said a large proportion of this growth is because of the state’s new policy of rewarding environmentally friendly companies. By using wind energy, companies receive Renewable Energy Certificates, which can be sold and traded with other companies, she said.

Much of this growth is also due to the deregulation of the Texas energy sector in 1999, which opened up opportunities for more companies to produce their own power, Roark said.

While largely produced in the western half of the state, most wind energy is used by the cities of Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. There are not enough high-voltage power cables to transfer this energy across the state, said Paul Sadler, executive director of the Wind Coalition, a nonprofit association organized to promote the development of wind energy.

“If you put too much power on the line, it will overload,” Roark said. “There are many days when ERCOT tells wind generators that they have to back down.”

The passage of Senate Bill 20 in 2005 helped jump-start the current expansion project by mandating long-term planning for the transmission line and wind farm companies. These companies were previously one united corporation before the 1999 deregulation.

The bill introduced the concept of Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, which designates eight areas around the state in which independent transmission companies can build their power lines.

According to Roark, a large amount of the land for these zones will be acquired via eminent domain.

Roark said the current plan to expand the power-line system is an expensive one. Developers estimate the project to cost more than $4.93 billion in the coming years, and they hope the new grid can be fully functional by 2013, she said.

“Private transmission line companies are encouraged to build these lines because they will receive a guaranteed rate of return [from their services],” Sadler said.

While there is no current shortage of energy, the sizeable growth of Texas cities in the past decade has caused concern for analysts about the future because expanding the system is a long-term project, said Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

“There is enough energy now, but Texas is a rapidly growing state, so there will be a need for more energy in the future,” Hadley said. “This plan [will be effective] for the next 10, 20 or even 30 years.”

Hadley said between 5 and 10 percent of Texas energy is generated from wind each day.
“This is a significant increase from 10 years ago, when it was only about 1 percent,” he said.

The Danish wind turbine maker said the base is located in northern China's state-sponsored development area, Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, and covers more than 230,000 square meters (57 acres). The official unveiling last week included Vestas China President Lars Andre Andersen and the development area's Vice Director of the Administrative Commission Ni Xiangyu.

The company's first blade factory was launched in the development area in 2006, and since then Vestas has been expanding it. The site now includes completed control system and machining factories as well as expanded generator and blade factories.

This is Vestas’ largest integrated wind power production base, incorporating the production of turbine engine rooms, blades, generators, control systems and mechanical parts. A new supply and logistics center for internal wind turbine tower components is also expected to be put into operation.

Vestas has committed RMB 1.8 billion ($220 million) to construct new factories and expand existing ones, as part of its long-term investment strategy. The company’s total investment in the development area has exceeded RMB 2.5 billion ($380 million), accounting for more than 70 percent of its total investment in China.

In January, Vestas said it was planning to invest $350 million in its Tianjin, China-based subsidiary, responding to growing demand in China for its turbines (see Vestas grows wind presence in China [2]).

By the end of the year, Vestas said its investment in China is expected to exceed RMB 3 billion.

China is a significant market for wind turbine manufacturers. The country had an installed capacity of 5.9 GW at the end of 2007, an increase of 145 percent over the previous year. China is expected to surpass Germany as the leading wind-energy country by the end of 2009 (see China Wind ramps to meet gearbox shortfall [3]).

China also has the largest wind turbine manufacturing industry in the world, with more than 40 wind-component manufacturers including Goldwind, Sinovel Wind, Dongfang, Windey and Sewind (see China drives global market, supply for wind [4]). China’s wind equipment market is worth about $8.59 billion annually.

In May, Vestas' competitor Siemens broke ground on a wind turbine production facility in Shanghai's Lingang New City, signifying its entry into China’s wind power market (see Siemens breaks ground in China’s wind market [5]).

The company, which received planning permission for the site back in September 2008, said that Lloyds and BNP Paribas had teamed up to provide a 15 year debt facility worth up to £36m and that as a result it would now proceed with plans to select contractors for the project. It added that it hoped to have the facility completed in 2011 to coincide with the completion of the grid connection to the site.

A major utility has already been identified as a preferred partner for a Power Purchase Agreement, according to Novera.

The deal represents something of a coup for the firm given recent reports that bank financing for wind energy projects has contracted by between 50 and 80 per cent since the start of the recession. The firm is also in the process of attempting to fend off a hostile takeover bid from private equity backed rival Infinis.

Richard Round, acting chief executive and finance director of Novera, said that the bank's backing represented an important step in the development of the company's wind energy portfolio. "In addition to Glenkerie, we have two consented sites and a further four in planning," he said. "We continue to demonstrate our track record of achieving planning consents, securing finance and developing wind farms."

The banking sector has come under fire for failing to finance economically viable wind energy projects as they attempt to rebuild their balance sheets. However, Richard Simon-Lewis, senior director for renewable energy at Lloyds, argued that the Novera deal further cemented the company's commitment to the sector.

His comments were echoed by Nick Gardiner, director for energy and utilities at BNP Paribas Fortis, who also hinted that the bank would be willing to back future Novera developments.

Locating a wind turbine on Lake Michigan was a concept that federal officials thought was too ambitious. The test platform project advances design, permitting and construction issues that an offshore wind turbine developer would face. Permits likely would be needed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard and the Michigan Department of Environment Quality, Boezaart said.

The GVSU advisory committee is looking at a platform that would by 10 by 20 feet, Boezaart said. It would need electricity from solar cells, a wind generator and back-up diesel engine to power the test equipment and provide navigational lights.

The GVSU planning group has brought together attorneys from Varnum law firm in Grand Rapids interested in permitting issues and Rockford Construction Co. and its Spanish partner Berge Logistica Energetica which plans to be in the turbine installation business. Also joining the group are economic developers from the West Michigan Strategic Alliance and the Right Place Inc. of Grand Rapids.

The group is working to find the 20 percent match needed for the $1.4 million in federal funds and is seeking state assistance.

The Michigan Public Service Commission, Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the state’s Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth have been asked to participate, Boezaart said. The GVSU effort also has drawn the interest of offshore wind turbine developers, he said.

By the end of January, GVSU will need to complete a final project design, identify the match money and provide letters of commitment, federal officials have said.

“The missing link that we hope to close is wind data for Lake Michigan,” Boezaart said. “Before any turbines go into Lake Michigan, we have to collect serious wind data.”

Since Siemens entered the wind market in 2004, the company has become the third largest wind turbine supplier to the North American market. Today, Siemens employs roughly 900 highly skilled workers in its North American wind power business — a number that is expected to grow.

In September, Siemens broke ground on its new wind turbine assembly facility in Hutchinson, Kan., to better meet the increasing demand for clean energy in the Americas. The 300,000-sq-ft/27,870-sq-m wind turbine nacelle facility is scheduled to become operational in fall 2010 and will employ approximately 400 green-collar employees. The plant’s annual planned output will be approximately 650 nacelles – or 1,500 MW. Siemens also recently opened, and subsequently expanded, its blade manufacturing facilities in Fort Madison, Iowa.

 Wind power is one of the biggest contributors to the company’s environmental portfolio. In 2008, revenue from products and solutions of Siemens’ environmental portfolio was nearly €19 billion ($28.4 billion USD), which is equivalent to around a quarter of Siemens’ total revenue.

Mr Prescott said the record low 25% approval figure is unacceptable and called for councils to accept their obligations to tackle climate change and recognise that wind farms are part of Government policy.

The MP also demanded local authorities identify sites suitable for wind farms and that they stop delaying decisions in the expectancy that the government will overturn their rulings.

But last night, Mr Prescott’s comments were met with anger from anti-wind campaigners in the region.

Andrew Joicey, who farms at Cornhill and who is a member of the Save our Unspoilt Landscape group opposing a turbine scheme at Barmoor near Berwick, said he was speechless.

He said wind power is not the answer to tackling global warming given that there are doubts over its efficiency.

Mr Joicey added: “They criticise Nimbys. If someone has a valid objection under the planning system, they have the right to air it and to make an objection. They should not be criticised for doing that.

“It is not just ‘chocolate box’ views that are brought up against wind farms in the inquiries. There are some genuine planning reasons why these wind farms are opposed – planning guidelines both local and national.”

Mr Joicey said it would be sensible for councils to identify wind farm sites, as long as they do not do so on the advice of developers.

The MP’s comments have also angered Bill Cotton, who fears the prospect of four wind farms being built close to his bed and breakfast business at Wingates, Northumberland, could see it close.

Mr Cotton, a 68-year-old retired lawyer, said: “I bet he (Mr Prescott) does not have a single turbine within the vicinity of his home.”

Speaking at the annual conference of the British Wind Energy Association, the trade body for the wind and marine renewable energy industry, Mr Prescott said: “Basically people who have moved out into the countryside and built nice houses, good luck to them, but they are the ones who don’t want any change.

“People who have moved out of our towns and have a nice chocolate box view, they have bought that and I understand it, but at the end of the day you have got to strike a balance of what is in the national interest and, frankly, they are the ones who will suffer first because these are also areas in danger of massive floods caused by climate chance.

“I want to see kids outside planning inquiries not with ‘save our view, we don’t want this’, placards but with placards saying ’what about our kids and our kids’ kids’.”

In his address to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) conference in Liverpool, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband will today announce plans for a £5.15 million research project designed to minimise wind turbines' impact on radar signals.

The project will be undertaken by air traffic control operator NATS and radar technology specialist Raytheon Canada, and will be funded through £2 million from the Crown Estate, £1.55 million from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and £1.6 million from the Aviation Investment Fund Company, which was set up last year by a coalition of wind energy firms.

The 19-month R &D project would investigate the viability of a range of different technologies. "They are going to be looking at both hardware and software solutions,". "First up they will look at the wind turbines themselves and see if they can be coated with material that does not interfere with radar. For example, they will look at the material used by stealth planes to make them invisible to radar. Second, they will look at tuning the software so it does not pick up the signal from the wind turbines."

Fears over disruption to radar signals is one of the most common causes of opposition to wind farm plans, with aviation objections currently holding up more than 5GW of wind energy in the planning system and a further 5.5GW in early stages of development.

A number of these projects have been granted tentative approval on the understanding that a technological fix to the problem of radar interference can be developed. DECC said that if the NATS project is successful the conditions on these projects could be lifted and construction work could begin immediately.

Miliband will say that resolving the issue of radar interference would represent a major boost to the industry and make it more attractive to investors. "I know that delays in the planning process can cause uncertainty and be a barrier to investment in renewables, and there are specific issues in connection with aviation and radar that need to be addressed," he will say. " This R & D project could resolve wind impacts on radar in the UK and potentially release 5GW of wind power."

In related news, former deputy prime minister John Prescott is expected to launch a blistering attack on another major obstacle to wind industry expansion – "landowners and nimbys".

In his speech to the BWEA conference, Prescott will resort to class warrior rhetoric in an attempt to promote wider approval for wind farms, and call on the government to impose renewable energy targets on local authorities that would force them to grant approval to more low carbon energy projects.

"Time and time again we see ambitious and worthy wind turbine applications defeated by a vocal minority of landowners and nimbys," Prescott will say. " It's all very well arguing that a wind turbine might spoil the chocolate box view for a few homeowners. But did these same people campaign against the mobile phone masts that allow them to call locals to organise their protests? Did they moan about the pylons that bring electricity to their hamlets to power their computers that sent out emails to lobby the councils against wind farm applications? Of course they didn't! They accepted them because they were necessary."

He will lay the blame for the slow progress of the UK's wind energy industry firmly at the door of "the squires and the gentry" who have "had it their way for far too long", arguing that the government's plans are being thwarted by local councils.

"We cannot let the squires and the gentry stop us meeting our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children and our children's children," he will argue. "The government has developed a strategy for the UK's contribution towards a global solution to climate change. It has created national and global policies but it also requires the successful delivery of this strategy at a local level. It is absolutely scandalous that three-quarters of applications are now being refused - the highest it has ever been."

Using features drawn from jet engine design, FloDesign Wind Turbine (shown above in an artist’s rendering) has developed a prototype that is three times more efficient at turning the wind into electricity than today’s towering, three-bladed models, according to CEO Stanley Kowalski III. Carefully shaped cowlings channel air into patterns that create spinning vortexes – like miniature tornadoes – as the currents exit the device. This trick accelerates the air as it pass through.

The technology could transform the commercial wind business with units that are easier to install, longer lasting, and more adaptable to a variety of environments. Today’s wind turbines can top out at 300 feet or taller, requiring a train of tractor trailers to haul tower sections and blades that are as a long as a football field. FloDesign’s new approach fits on a single rig.

Because it’s blades are lighter and smaller, the design starts spinning and making energy at lower wind speeds and is more tolerant of volatile wind patterns, making it a natural for windy niches where big turbines can’t fit, such as in cities, on ridgelines and beaches.

Scaled down blades also spin faster, reducing the need for the costly gear boxes that today’s windmills must use to connect slow-moving rotors to a high-speed generator kits. With fewer gears and other moving parts, the company claims it can reduce the parts count in a turbine by up to 75%, thereby boosting reliability, too.

The Wilbraham (Mass.)-based company, which has also received funding from the Energy Dept., is hunting for another $25 million to deploy full scale test rigs. Last year, it landed two start-up awards from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including cash grants of $300,000. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers committed $6 million in venture capital in an initial funding round in 2008.

For more info, see video below:

“On this wind energy project the work is independent and there is a lot of repetition” said Mike O’Connor, president of Naikun. “The turbines are all identical pieces of construction that are interconnected and link to an offshore platform, which is the most sophisticated component on the project.”

The project involves the construction of 110 wind turbine generators with a plant capacity of 396 megawatts (MW).

“The foundation for the turbine, which is very common in Europe, is a giant open ended steel tube about 4.5 to 5 metres in diameter,” said O’Connor. “They are 55-85 mm in thickness, with the thickest section at the seabed, where there are the greatest forces on the piles. The high strength steel piles are 40 to 50 metres in length.”

Construction of each foundation requires an enormous jack-up vessel, designed to handle high winds and nasty waves. The unique European vessel can accommodate 40 to 50 staff and has amenities such as a café and work out rooms.

The foundations are transported to the site by barge and received by the vessel, which uses a 440 ton crane and a pile guiding frame to lift them into place.

A 200 to 250 ton pile driver places the piles into the seabed, where the water is a depth of 12 to 20 metres at low tide.

“A transition piece, which is 20 metres long, is then slipped on top of the steel pile,” said O’Connor.

“This piece is the transition from the steel pile foundation to the bottom of the turbine tower. It is in the tidal portion, so it is specially treated with anti-corrosive paint. Ladders and bumpers are installed through the tidal zone, so staff can do maintenance.”

There is a five metre overlap between the two sections, which is sealed with a special quick setting high strength grout.

Once the grout sets, the foundation becomes one piece. There is a giant flange on the transition piece that meets up with a flange for the installation of the wind turbine tower.

The jack-up barge has storage for tower sections, which are lifted into place and secured.

The nacelle or hub of the wind turbine generator is lifted about 80 metres above the water to the top of the tower.

The blades are lifted and attached to the rotor.

Once this is completed, the jack-up moves to the next location and continues the same operation.

This construction process is estimated to take about 1.8 days per foundation including an allowance for weather delays.

Actual working time at each site is expected to last less than one day; with the pile driving itself taking 2 to 4 hours.

Foundation installation takes place 24-hours per day, seven days per week.

The platform, that forms the deck of the offshore converter station, will be constructed and installed in the same way.

The platform will accommodate the transformers, equipment, maintenance supplies, fuel, waste storage, boat access facilities, and a helicopter pad. It will be built on four or six steel foundations and supported by a self-elevating platform.

The offshore converter station receives the collected power from all wind turbine generators and converts the AC power to +/-200 kV DC for transmission via an exportsubmarine cable to the mainland landfall on Ridley Island.

The cables will be routed from the seabed up through J-tubes, which protect the cable as it enters the foundation and rises up to the platform.

The Ridley Island station takes the high voltage direct current and converts it to high voltage alternating current for delivery to the existing Port Edward substation.

Marine construction will occur between April and September when weather and sea conditions are most favourable.

More than 200 people will be needed to build the wind project including construction workers, marine operators, cooks, helicopter pilots and administrative support staff to name a few.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2010 and conclude in 2014. On-site construction works will take place over three seasons from 2012 to 2014.

The project will produce 1.3 gigawatt-hours of energy a year, which is enough electricity for 30,000 homes.

In August a Dennis historic district committee narrowly approved allowing the police department to install solar power on its rooftop amid concerns about maintenance and appropriate screening from the road.

Most recently a turbine project at Cape Cod Community College was held up after the Old King's Highway Historic District Committee required that the college seek the district's approval before proceeding.

The college is waiting for a decision on how to proceed from the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management, the agency responsible for construction projects on state-managed property, college spokesman Michael Gross said.

While piles of dirt surround a large hole on the West Barnstable campus where the college planned to install the 600-kilowatt turbine, historic preservation committees across the Cape continue to grapple with their role in a changing political and technological landscape.

A voice for preservation

The six Old King's Highway Historic District committees that monitor and regulate an 80-square-mile swath north of Route 6 from Sandwich to Orleans are arguably the most powerful voice for historic preservation on the Cape. A regional commission oversees the six committees and hears appeals.

"As of this point the regional commission has not taken a position on wind power or renewable energy per se," said Jim Wilson, attorney for the regional board.

Although there has been no appeal so far to the regional commission on renewable-energy projects, a jurisdictional issue in the college's case concerns the commission, he said.

"We're monitoring the matter because our understanding was that the community college originally took the position that they were exempt from our regulations or our statute but that's contrary to the reading of the statute," Wilson said.

But the historic district is meant to be a "living district" and not one "frozen in time" that absolutely prohibits new technology, including renewable-energy projects, he said.

The college, although known for its eco-friendly buildings and curriculum, is far from insensitive to historic concerns and believed it provided ample opportunity for comment on its plan, Gross said.

The primary concern for historic committees is clear, said Peter Lomenzo, chairman of the regional commission and the Dennis historic committee. "How do we maintain and preserve the historic nature of the district throughout the six communities?" he said.

Of course there will inevitably be conflict with projects that do not meet the district's standards, he said.

Clash of now and then

While renewable-energy projects are popular now, this is not the first time historic districts have dealt with conflict between new technology and historic preservation, Lomenzo said.

When cellular telephone companies first proposed large antennas in the district the committees decided the antennas were inappropriate, he said. The telephone companies solved the problem by burying the antennas in flagpoles or placing them inside church steeples and in the ridge lines of roofs, he said.

Although wind turbines present more substantial hurdles, there is a place for them in the district if they can be located out of view, Lomenzo said. Even antennas that cannot be buried in other structures have been erected successfully out of sight from area roadways, he said.

In Dennis, an entire section of the historic district south of Setucket Road has been exempted from historic review for solar panels on roofs less than 50 feet long, Lomenzo said.

But Lomenzo admits even he is not the final word on what goes up in the historic district. In the vote on whether solar panels should be allowed on the Dennis police station, he voted against approval.

"I don't think we have to win them all," he said. "I think we just have to be consistent in what our guidelines say."

The most publicized dispute over renewable energy and historic sites is the plan by Cape Wind Associates LLC to locate 10 wind turbines in the Sound.

Opponents contend the project will affect historic and tribal sites. Cape Wind is waiting on a federal review of those concerns before it can receive the go-ahead from the Department of the Interior.

"As a resident of Cape Cod, I would just say I'm puzzled why there would be a conflict between wind power and historic preservation," Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said. "There were once 1,000 working windmills on Cape Cod in the early 1800s."

Although the look of new turbines is obviously different, the basic idea is the same, he said.

Efforts by the state to clarify the regulatory landscape for projects, including the Energy Facilities Siting Reform Act intended to decrease the time of permitting for wind energy projects, would likely be welcomed by everyone, Rodgers said.

Despite delays and other setbacks for renewable-energy projects caused by historic-based objections, historic committees are going to be able to say no to the new technologies, said Liz Argo, a renewable-energy and sustainable building practices consultant from Orleans.

And waiting for technologies that will make it easier to hide renewable-energy projects from view is "clearly not an option," she said.

While wind power can offer significant financial and environmental returns, this resource does pose many challenges. Among these is the fact that wind is an idiosyncratic ‘fuel,’ due to its stochastic nature and to the fact that it is impossible to store. This idiosyncrasy presents difficulty in managing energy systems, with a significant increase in the resources required to establish a real-time balance between generation and demand.

There are several existing generation technologies available to firm the variability of wind capacity. At Iberdrola, we believe the best operational option is pumped storage, which is always available and provides significant flexibility with regard to start-ups and shutdowns. Indeed, the company is already building the 852 MW La Muela 2 pumped-storage plant for this purpose and is investigating construction of three additional pumped-storage plants with a total capacity of 1640 MW.

The Challenge of a Balanced Grid

Iberdrola is the largest producer of wind power in the world. At the end of 2008, the company had 9302 MW of installed wind capacity around the world, including 4526 MW in Spain, 665 MW in the United Kingdom, and 2876 MW in the United States. These plants produce nearly 17,000 GWh of electricity annually. In addition, Iberdrola is investigating potential new wind plants worldwide with a total capacity of more than 54,000 MW.

By comparison, global wind capacity at the end of 2008 was nearly 121,200 MW, with production of 260 TWh a year, according to the World Wind Energy Association. More than 27,200 MW of this capacity was added in 2008, the association reports.

Nonetheless, wind is limited in quantity and cannot be stored, so it is important to forecast wind speed in order to estimate future production. However, because winds are highly variable, long-term production forecasts have a large margin of error. Consequently, introducing significant quantities of wind capacity imposes special requirements on the electricity system, both in the long and short term.

Over the long term, the challenge arises from the fact that there are periods during which high demand coincides with a low level of wind power generation, and vice versa. For example, for wind production by the Spanish mainland power system, the average load level between 2005 and 2007 was about 21%. During this same time period, the load factor – the ratio between the net amount of electricity generated and net rated output capacity – varied significantly, with values of 2.5%–70%. Thus, electricity from wind power stations may not be available at those times when it is most needed for the electricity system. This requires the installation of additional power based on other technologies, which replaces wind during periods of low wind electricity production.

Over the short term, the effect of wind power production on the balance between the market and electricity system is clear. The time horizons of interest include weekly, daily, and real time.

The 635 MW La Muela pumped-storage plant in Valencia, Spain is being expanded with the addition of a second powerhouse, the 852 MW La Muela 2. Iberdrola anticipates this plant will begin operating in 2012 to help firm the variability of the utility’s extensive wind capacity. It will be Europe’s largest pumped hydro scheme.

Due to the difference in demand between work days and holidays, each generating company produces a weekly operation schedule that details planned start-up and shutdown times for each plant, the so-called ‘unit commitment’. Thermal stations have a high cost associated with start-ups and shutdowns, so utilities make use of their most flexible plants, such as conventional hydro plants and pumped-storage facilities. In this context, the presence of substantial wind power production has an important effect on the weekly operation schedule. Because of the stochastic nature of wind speed, the uncertainty involved in weekly planning is ± 25% of installed capacity, with a confidence level of 70%. With wind power installed capacity in Spain of 13,836 MW, the uncertainty level on a one-week horizon is ± 3460 MW. To absorb this uncertainty would require shutting down or starting up about nine 400 MW single-shaft, combined-cycle plants.

On the daily horizon, auctioning of production and demand of most of the system’s energy occurs one day ahead. Predictive uncertainty in wind power production one day in advance is ± 15%. Using the 13,836 MW of wind power in Spain as an example, this uncertainty represents about 2075 MW, equivalent to starting up or shutting down five 400 MW single-shaft, combined-cycle plants.

A substantial portion of the work to correct this imbalance may be performed in markets organized less than one day ahead (typically three to 24 hours). However, the remaining imbalance has to be managed in real time by other groups in the system, which requires an increase in the services dedicated to this objective. Using the Spanish mainland power system as an example, there are two principal mechanisms to solve these imbalances:

• A secondary reserve system, in which power plants offer a range to increase and/or decrease generation, which is governed in real time by the system operator’s secondary power/frequency regulation loop
• A tertiary reserve mechanism, which consists of the start-up/shutdown of a series of plants that receive remuneration for varying the load over a maximum timeframe of 10 minutes.

What Role can Hydro Play?

There are several types of electricity generation technology that can be used to help firm the variability of wind capacity. These include conventional hydro, pumped storage, conventional thermal, and simple cycle or combined cycle gas-fired turbines. To analyse the regulation capacity of these technologies, Iberdrola primarily considered three factors: start-up and shutdown capacity; regulation velocity (in % load per minute); and, technical minimum load (in % of maximum load).

Hydro plants have several advantages when considering these factors. First, they are the most flexible of the technologies in performing continuous start-ups and shutdowns without a significant detrimental effect on the equipment’s service life. Secondly, their load variation speed is high. For example, it is possible to vary the power output by about 100% per minute. And, thirdly, the minimum load is low, often less than 10% of the rated capacity. In addition, their fuel cost is zero and they do not produce any operational emissions of greenhouse gases. However, this type of technology is limited in connection to the hydraulic management of rivers, which is mainly conditioned by the storage capacity of the reservoirs in the basin in which each plant is located. During dry years, the reservoir level can decrease significantly, limiting the hydraulic power available.

Nonetheless, conventional hydro is the most attractive option for firming the variability of wind capacity, and this is for two main reasons. Firstly, it is the lowest-cost technology and secondly, it is the cleanest one, as its operational greenhouse gas emission level is zero. Unfortunately, in developed systems, almost all the hydroelectric potential has already been harnessed. This makes it difficult to increase installed capacity to supply grid regulation services. Therefore, other technologies are needed to provide balancing services.

From the technical point of view, pumped-storage stations have the same characteristics as conventional hydro plants. Additionally, their operation is not limited by exploitation of the basin in which they are located. Thus their power is always available, even during dry periods when conventional hydro is limited. A disadvantage of pumped storage, compared with conventional hydro, is that it is necessary to pump the water to the upper reservoir to produce electricity. This cost of this process is the price of the electricity divided by the efficiency of the cycle (typically about 75%).

From the environmental point of view, these stations permit a significant reduction in electricity system emissions by producing low-emissions electricity during off-peak periods and replacing more contaminating technologies (such as fossil-fueled plants) during periods of peak electricity demand.

Other Types of Balancing Capacity

The start-up and shutdown capacity of a conventional thermal plant is limited, for two reasons. First, its start-up process requires a substantial amount of energy, which involves a substantial cost, and, secondly, performing continuous start-ups and shutdowns significantly reduces the service life of the plant. The regulation velocity of conventional thermal stations is limited to about 1% per minute, due to their high thermal inertia. However, their control range is acceptable, given that the technical minimum lies at about 45% of maximum power.

Open simple cycle gas turbine technology involves significant flexibility for continuous start-ups and shutdowns. In addition, it allows relatively rapid power variations, with a change velocity of about 4% per minute. On the other hand, the minimum power of these plants is usually about 60% of full load, which limits their regulation capacity to 40% of rated power.

From the flexibility point of view, combined cycle gas turbine plants are placed between conventional thermal stations and open cycle turbines. Thus, with respect to conventional thermal stations, they are more robust when performing continuous start-ups and shutdown cycles, due to the greater flexibility provided by the gas turbine. With regard to the regulation velocity, it is about 2.5% per minute, slightly lower than open cycle turbines, because of the higher thermal inertia of the combined cycle’s conventional steam cycle part. Lastly, the minimum power of these plants is nearly 50% of the power at full load.

These plants can render regulation services at a moderate variable cost, although qualitatively higher than conventional hydro or pumped storage.

Thus, after conventional hydro, pumped-storage plants are the best choice to firm the variability of wind. Power from these plants is available without the restrictions inherent in conventional hydro plants. A disadvantage of this technology is its ‘fuel cost’ at around 40% greater per kilowatt hour than that of combined cycle plants.

However, in systems with a significant quantity of thermal generation, this risk is quite limited because off-peak prices usually drop considerably due to the fact that these stations cannot perform daily start-up and shutdown cycles.

After conventional hydro and pumped storage, combined cycle plants are the next most likely option to firm the variability of wind. In the case of systems with low levels of hydro generation, a mixture of open cycle and combined cycle power plants is the most viable alternative to firm the variability of wind.

Planning for Pumping

Iberdrola has about 10,000 MW of hydro capacity worldwide, including more than 8800 MW in Spain. Of this 8800 MW, representing 47% of the installed hydro capacity in Spain, more than 2300 MW is pumped storage. This large portfolio of hydro plants has allowed Iberdrola to maximize the profitability of its wind turbine installations. But because of its rapid development of new wind turbine installations, the company is continuously seeking to broaden its portfolio of pumped-storage stations. It can be difficult to find suitable sites that permit the construction of pumped-storage stations at a moderate investment cost. Even in systems where suitable sites are available, the investment cost of this type of station is very high, which obliges developers to assume a very high risk during the long periods of amortization required.

Iberdrola’s most recent activity to add to its pumped-storage portfolio involves the expansion of the existing 635 MW La Muela plant with the installation of a second powerhouse. La Muela began operating in 1989. Construction of 852 MW La Muela 2 began in 2006 and is expected to be complete in 2012. The new powerhouse will contain four sets of generators (supplied by Alstom) and pump-turbines (supplied by Voith Hydro). Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, S.A. (FCC) of Spain is the civil contractor for La Muela 2, and a consortium of Alstom, Sacyr Vallehermoso, and Cavosa is supplying the penstock. Ingenieria y Construccion S.A.U. (Iberinco) is performing the engineering work for La Muela 2.

In addition, Iberdrola plans to begin construction of two pumped-storage plants in Portugal in 2010 as part of the Alto Tomega hydro complex. Construction of the 1200 MW complex involves building four dams and four power stations, two of which will be pumped-storage facilities: the 779 MW Gouvaes plant and the 112 MW Pradoselos plant. Construction is due to be completed in 2018.

Finally, Iberdrola is considering several other locations for pumped-storage facilities. Among these is the 750 MW Santa Cristina plant in Spain.

Pumping up a Solution

The increasing penetration of wind power technology in current electricity systems requires a substantial increase in the resources required to balance generation and demand, as well as additional investments to guarantee the continuity of electricity supply when wind intensity is low.

Of all of the available technologies in current electricity systems, pumped-storage plants constitute the most attractive option for firming the variability of wind. Accordingly, Iberdrola is involved in the development of several of these plants and when completed in 2018, they will provide nearly 1750 MW of capacity to the electrical system of Spain and Portugal.

The lawmakers were responding to Parkinson, who on Wednesday told an audience in Topeka to call the state's delegation and demand they vote for the standard.

"Please, do not assume that because your congressperson or senator comes before your group or your community and says they support wind power, that that means anything," Parkinson told a gathering at the Kansas Wind and Renewable Energy Conference. "If they're not voting for an RES (renewable energy standard), they're not supporting wind power. That's the bottom line."

The state's lone Democrat, Rep. Dennis Moore, was the only lawmaker to flatly say he supported such an idea. He pointed to his June vote on a cap-and-trade energy bill that included a renewable energy standard.

Moore said at the time, "Changing the way we create and use energy will not only create new industries and jobs throughout the country -- jobs that can't be shipped overseas -- it will revitalize our economy by making the United States a leader in the energy industry and increase our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil."

Moore was the only Kansas representative to vote in favor of that June bill. Republican Reps. Todd Tiahrt, Jerry Moran and Lynn Jenkins voted against it.

On the other end of the spectrum from Moore, Tiahrt said investing in renewable energy must be coupled with conservation efforts and expansion of "traditional sources of energy" within American borders. He pointed to Spain, where a national renewable energy standard has pushed energy prices higher.

"We must not pursue policies that artificially raise utility rates for consumers," Tiahrt said. "We must work toward energy independence using a comprehensive plan that does not result in a government-induced energy tax on consumers."

Jenkins' office echoed Tiahrt's call for a comprehensive approach, including increased oil production, in addition to renewable sources.

"While Congresswoman Jenkins opposes the job-killing cap-and-trade legislation, she continues to pursue an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence that includes looking at a renewable energy standard and assessing the potential positive impacts on the Kansas economy," said spokeswoman Mary Geiger.

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback supported a similar Senate bill that passed out of committee this summer. That legislation, however, hasn't moved through the full chamber. The senator noted Kansas has the third-best capacity for wind energy production in the country.

"I truly believe that by pursuing a robust energy strategy that utilizes all forms of energy, both conventional and renewable, our country will one day achieve true energy independence," he said.

Likewise, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts said his support in the Senate Finance Committee for preferential tax treatment for renewable electricity production and legislation he cosponsored to offer long-term extensions of those provisions are proof of his support of renewable energy sources. However, Roberts said he is concerned about the cost of imposing requirements on specific energy sources.

"I have strong concerns about the costs of setting nationwide mandates on specific types of electricity production because in the end, ratepayers eventually suffer the most through increased utility prices for these more expensive technologies," he said.

Comparing the distribution of 12 species of birds across 12 upland wind farms in the UK with that on similar nearby sites without turbines, the scientific study -‘The distribution of breeding birds around upland wind farms' - found that seven of the species showed ‘significantly lower frequencies of occurrence close to the turbines.'

The study found that no species were more abundant close to the turbines, but there was no evidence of consistent avoidance of overhead transmission lines connecting sites to the national grid.

However, speaking to NewEnergyFocus today (October 5), a spokesperson for the BWEA said: "This study shows there is a potential problem with displacement, but it is not yet proven that there is a problem with bird mortality rates."

"Wind farms and turbines are the most benign form of energy generation and the industry has found that wind farms simply do not pose a threat if they are properly sited and follow procedure. The threat of global warming could be a far greater threat to the population of birds than wind farms," he added.

Research

The bird distribution research was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology two weeks ago (24 September) and was funded by RSPB Scotland, the Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Mountaineering Trust.

Lead author James Pearce-Higgins, senior conservation scientist with RSPB Scotland, said: "There is an urgent need to combat climate change, and renewable energy sources, such as wind farms, will play an important role in this. However, it is also important to fully understand the consequences of such development, to ensure that they are properly planned and sited."

"In conjunction with the Scottish wind farm sensitivity map which we produced three years ago, these findings will aid planners and responsible developers in enabling Scotland to meet its renewable energy targets and avoid the most sensitive sites for birds" he added.

The study found that levels of turbine avoidance suggested breeding bird densities may be reduced within a 500-m buffer of the turbines by 15-53%, with buzzard, hen harrier, golden plover, snipe, curlew and wheatear most affected.

Bird distribution was assessed using regular surveys during the breeding season.

Commenting on the findings, Andy Douse, ornithological policy and advice manager with Scottish Natural Heritage, said: "SNH welcome the publication of this important paper, as it provides us with unequivocal evidence of both the nature and scale of bird displacement at operational wind farms."

"It will allow us to make better, more informed assessments of proposed wind farms in future and so reduce some of the uncertainty that has existed about potential impacts," he added.

Just four of the transformers would be enough to meet Northern Ireland’s electricity needs as one of them can generate 400mW, the equivalent of Kilroot power station.

Harland and Wolff workers took around four months to build the structure's ‘jacket’, made up of legs and a tubular frame — while a Latvian yard constructed a platform containing a canteen, health clinic and sleeping quarters for 30 people.

Small tug boats will tow the transformer out of the Harland and Wolff building dock and then ocean-going tugs will take over and escort the structure to its destination, around 90 miles north of the German island of Borkum. The journey is expected to take around five days. The platform will be raised to the top of the structure to resemble an oil rig without a drill.

The coveted contract was awarded to Harland & Wolff by German offshore construction company Weserwind GmbH.

David McVeigh, head of sales and marketing at Harland and Wolff, said the contract consolidated the company’s prowess in renewable energy.

“This is a significant win for a number of reasons,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

“The platform, specifically designed and built for the offshore wind farm industry, demands high precision co-ordination among a number of specialist manufacturers across Europe — and is proof of our ability to diversify and be a bigger player in the offshore wind energy industry.”

Harland and Wolff recently completed a contract for the assembly of 60 wind turbines intended for an offshore site near the south west Scottish coast of the Irish Sea.

The wind complex is a collaborative wind project with the community that included negotiations with over 300 landowners, and a mix of different turbines made by several companies including Mitsubishi, General Electric, and Siemens.

"Texas continues to lead the nation in the development of renewable energy and has more wind generation capacity than any other state and all but four countries," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement.

The project took approximately 500 workers, and an investment of over $1 billion dollars to be implemented, according to EC&R.

But the investment should pay off in the end. At 781.5 megawatts, the Roscoe wind complex has the capacity to power 230,000 residences, according to EC&R.

The company said in a statement that the Texas project is "the completion of the world's largest wind farm near Roscoe, Texas (sic)" and that once completed, its London offshore wind project will be "the largest offshore wind farm in the world."

The announcement follows Perry's Wednesday meeting with Texas business leaders to express his views against proposed federal carbon cap-and-trade legislation, which are in opposition to those who feel the bill would encourage green technology innovation.

"Texas has shown you don't need federal mandates to improve the environment or foster the next generation of energy technology," Perry said in a statement.

"Texans should be wary about a cap-and-trade bill that would not only impose the largest tax hike in the history of the United States, but also inject the federal government further into every Texas home, farm and workplace," he said.

The consortium will develop and demonstrate advanced systems to monitor the condition and performance of turbines and predict future maintenance requirements for key components so they can be corrected before expensive damage occurs.

Systems will be installed on onshore wind turbines and tested for 18 months with a further year of tests planned for offshore wind turbines, to demonstrate the benefits and savings.

It is estimated that increased output, through reduced downtime and reduced maintenance costs, could result in a benefit of up to £50,000 per turbine, per year.

Prof Bill Leithead of the university's Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: 'Offshore wind farms have enormous potential, but the difficulties of maintaining any piece of equipment offshore remains high. So it is imperative not only that offshore wind farms are extremely reliable and efficient but that proactive operation and maintenance strategies are adopted.'

Dr David Clarke, chief executive at the ETI, said the new system will monitor the condition of wind turbines, which should increase their availability and lead to lower generation costs.

He added: 'The project will develop accurate models for predicting potential damage and fatigue to turbines providing early warnings and identifying the causes of possible component failures before expensive repairs are needed or the turbine fails. It will also aim to identify the causes of fatigue, which should allow early action to be taken to increase reliability.'

Dr Toby King, chief executive officer at Insensys, said: 'We believe that this project will increase the output and reliability of wind turbines by detecting the causes of component damage and enabling them to be corrected, before the damage occurs. For example, many turbines today operate with blade imbalances, which can rapidly lead to expensive gearbox and bearing damage, and yet are easy to correct.'

The turbine-monitoring system will cover all aspects of a turbine including the blades, bearings, gearbox, generator, power electronics and support structures.

The Ontario government said the two parties have been involved in "months of extraordinarily co-operative effort" toward an agreement that would involve billions of new investment, including in manufacturing facilities.

"Both Samsung C&T Corporation and the government of Ontario are pleased to confirm that efforts are progressing well toward the signing of a historic framework agreement," the government said in a statement.

"While the contents of the proposed agreement remain commercially sensitive, both parties can confirm that Samsung, one of the world's leading companies, proposes to establish a new renewable-energy business in Ontario."

Part of the plan calls for the erection of about 50 of the 200 turbines on sparsely populated forest and scrub lands belonging to Six Nations, near Dunnville, Ont., Chief Bill Montour said Sunday.

There has been "nothing substantive" since Samsung and Ontario government representatives toured his area in late July but the project could be a huge boon under the right circumstances, Montour said.

"We're not interested in one or two per cent of the royalties; we want to have a play in the project," he said.

The chief said Six Nations has a reputation in steel erection, a facility for steel fabrication, and could possibly do some of the electronics assembly and maintenance on the towers and turbines.

Samsung would first put up six, 80-metre measuring towers to see whether a wind farm would be economically viable, he said. The plan was to put those up some time this fall.

Samsung could not be reached for comment Sunday and the Ontario government said further information would only be made available "once a framework agreement has been completed."

To encourage large-and small-scale renewable energy production, Ontario's new Green Energy and Economy Act includes a "feed-in" tariff program - the amount paid to producers of green power.

Wind-turbine developers can earn about 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, roughly double the amount consumers now pay for electricity.

Earlier this year, Samsung Heavy Industries Co., the world's second-largest shipyard, announced ambitious plans to enter the global wind-turbine market in 2010.

The company said it planned to make turbines with capacities of 2.5 megawatts and five megawatts for a market it estimated would be worth US$74 billion by 2020.

Samsung has already gained a toe-hold in the U.S. with a winning bid to supply Cielo Windpower with three of its new 2.5 MW turbines. It recently sought to recruit a senior project manager in Ontario for "early-stage development" of wind projects.

The company has also entered the solar-panel business, and both solar-panel and wind-turbine manufacturing in Ontario are reported to be part of the talks with the province.

Ontario's manufacturing sector, particularly its hard-hit auto sector, has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in recent years .

While Premier Dalton McGuinty called the act a significant move to attract green investment to the province, the United Steelworkers criticized regulations that require wind-power facilities in the province to have 25 per cent Ontario content for the next three years.

"Setting the domestic content so low will not spur the creation of a manufacturing base to support this industry and will limit domestic job creation," the union's Ken Neumann said last week.

GE made the announcement at CanWEA 2009, sponsored by the Canadian Wind Energy Association. The CWE package is especially important for wind turbines that operate in Canada where cold temperatures are common. Earlier this year, GE announced that the 2.5xl, already proven in applications in Europe and Asia, will be launched in North America in 2010.

The CWE package originally was developed for GE’s 1.5-megawatt (MW) wind turbine and has been adapted for the 2.5xl, which is the latest evolution of the company’s wind turbine technology. “With more than 4,400 wind turbines on cold weather sites, GE is very experienced with operating wind turbines under challenging conditions,” said Vic Abate, vice president of renewables, GE Energy.

The 2.5xl represents GE’s most advanced wind turbine technology in terms of efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. It is designed to yield the highest annual energy production in its class and builds upon the success of the GE 1.5 MW wind turbine, the world’s most widely deployed wind turbine with more than 12,000 now installed.

With its 2.5 MW generator, the 2.5xl can provide more output for projects where land is constrained and because of its strong acoustic performance, setback distances to noise receptors can be minimized, enabling installation of more units on a given plot of land.

“Despite the global economic challenges, we continue to see opportunities for continued growth in the North American wind industry,” said Abate. “Adding the cold weather extreme package to our 2.5xl design greatly expands our capabilities to meet the diverse needs of our customers.”

According to the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA), Canada surpassed 2,000 megawatts of installed wind power capacity last year and is expected to exceed 3,000 megawatts in 2009. Wind currently supplies about one percent of Canada’s electricity demand, with the country’s wind turbines representing more than 2,800 megawatts of generating capacity, enough power to meet the needs of more than 860,000 homes. The province of Ontario is currently Canada’s wind leader with 1,162 megawatts of installed capacity, providing clean electricity for over 300,000 homes.

GE currently has a strong wind presence in Canada, with an installed base of 938 MW (39 percent) nationwide and 780 MW in Ontario (62 percent). GE is also a lead supporter of CanWEA’s “WindVision 2025” initiative to work with federal and provincial stakeholders to provide 20 percent of Canada’s electricity with wind power by 2025, resulting in an estimated 52,000 new “green collar” jobs and $79 billion in new investment nationwide.

About GE Energy

GE Energy (www.ge.com/energy) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies, with 2008 revenue of $29.3 billion. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, GE Energy works in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels. Numerous GE Energy products are certified under ecomagination, GE’s corporate-wide initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges.

About GE

GE is a diversified global infrastructure, finance and media company that is built to meet essential world needs. From energy, water, transportation and health to access to money and information, GE serves customers in more than 100 countries and employs more than 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's Web site at http://www.ge.com. GE is Imagination at Work.

The government said it is the first program of its kind in North America.

Solar, wind, water, biomass, biogas and landfill gas producers, including individual homeowners, will all be eligible to sell their power to the provincial grid under the program, one of the four final components of the Ontario Green Energy Act announced by Premier Dalton McGuinty Thursday.

"The tariff will make it easier to get financing and access to the energy grid," McGuinty said at a new conference in Toronto Thursday. "These rules will give investors the confidence they need to help build tomorrow's green economy."

The other components include:

• A requirement that wind turbines be located at least 550 metres from residential homes – farther away than anywhere else in Canada, the United States and eight European countries.

• A requirement that at least 25 per cent of the goods and labour for Ontario wind projects and 50 per cent for solar projects come from Ontario.

• The establishment of an office to help developers, communities and municipalities get the required approvals for their green energy projects.

The act is already law, having gained royal assent in May, which means most of the new rules went into effect as soon as they were announced.

The government predicts that the entire Green Energy Act will generate 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in Ontario.

Wind rules get mixed reviews

The new rules about the location of wind turbines are part of the renewable energy approval process that became law Thursday. Wind farms with six or more wind turbines or noisier models must be located even farther from homes than 550 metres. Exceptions will be made for turbines located near an existing source of noise such as a highway.

Some people had lobbied for stricter rules, complaining that noise and vibrations generated by turbines cause health problems. However, the wind energy industry has said there is no evidence in peer-reviewed science journals that such noise causes adverse health effects or bothers people as much as other noise.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said Thursday that the new turbine rules will be the toughest in North America but "will not unreasonably deter new investment, so that we can together create jobs in this new green economy."

Bart Geleynse, managing director of Prowind Canada, said the rules won't affect his company's plans to build a 10-turbine wind farm in the village of North Gower, now part of Ottawa.

"We were placing wind turbines that distance away from homes in any case," he said.

But Glenn Brooks, city councillor for the area, said some European countries require 1.5 kilometres between wind turbines and homes. He argued that studies supporting Ontario's new setback distances have not yet been done.

"They're going to fast-track wind turbines … without looking at the health related issues, and that ought to be a concern of everyone," he said.

Solar array ban on farmland

Individuals, communities, businesses, schools and hospitals that want to sell renewable energy to the grid under Ontario's new feed-in tariff program will be offered 20-year contracts (40 for hydro projects) and guaranteed prices of 10.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for landfill gas projects larger than 10 MW to 80.2 cents per kWh for residential solar rooftop projects 10 kW or smaller. A bonus will be paid for aboriginal and community projects to encourage participation.

However, the regulations will ban all except very small ground-mounted solar arrays (100 kilowatts or less) in the two highest-quality classes of farmland or in designated specialty crop areas.

"We think our best agricultural land should be preserved for the purpose of agriculture," Smitherman said.

Solar farms of up to 500 megawatts will be allowed on about 2,400 hectares of slightly lower quality class 3 lands as part of projects that have already seen significant investment, Smitherman added.

The Ontario Power Authority will start taking applications on Oct. 1, 2009, and expects to sign the first contracts in early December.

According to the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, which represents and supports community-based renewable power projects, similar programs have been successful in various European countries and have even been adopted in regions of China and India.

Kristopher Stevens, the association's executive director, said in a statement that the Ontario program provides "great incentives" for green energy projects, while streamlined regulations remove existing barriers.

Ontario content for wind, solar to rise

However, the group was disappointed in the rules regarding Ontario content for wind turbines and solar panels.

"The 25 per cent is only expected to promote local construction jobs and transmission components, not the turbines themselves as hoped," it said in a news release.

The government said it plans to boost Ontario content requirements to 60 per cent for solar on Jan. 1, 2011, and 50 per cent for wind on Jan. 1, 2012.

McGuinty also faced questions Thursday about whether the new rules would hurt federal government efforts to fight the U.S. 'Buy American' policy. That policy requires public works projects funded by the U.S. federal stimulus package to use only U.S.-made iron and steel. The premier responded that there was no comparison.

"They are permitting zero per cent Ontario content. In one case here in Ontario, we would permit up to 75 per cent U.S. content," he said. "We're not saying we're going to do everything, but we are going to lay claim to a significant portion of the work and the jobs that are going to be made available to us because of this legislation."

"It has also stimulated a stronger domestic manufacturing sector; some foreign companies now source more than 80% of the components for their turbines in India. The current annual production capacity of wind turbines manufactured in India is about 3,000-3,500 MW, including turbines for the domestic as well as for the export markets. However, the actual number of turbines produced is driven by market forces, and high interest rates often do not allow for the accumulation of inventory. Thanks to new market entrants, it is expected that the annual production capacity will rise to 5,000 MW per year by 2015," adds the report.

Companies operating in this segment in India include Suzlon, Vestas Wind Tech, RRB Energy, Enercon, Vestas, GE, Gamesa, Siemens, ReGen Power Tech, LMGlasfiber, WinWinD, Kenersys and Global Wind Power.

The companies are manufacturing in India either through joint ventures under licensed production, as subsidiaries of foreign companies or as Indian companies with their own technology.

The report indicates that the capital cost of producing wind turbines has fallen steadily over the past 20 years as turbine design has been largely concentrated on the three-bladed upwind model with variable speed and pitch blade regulation, manufacturing techniques have been optimised, and mass production and automation have resulted in economies of scale.

A graduated assumption estimates the costs of 5.35 crore Rs/MW (as per 2008 prices) to decrease to 5.00 crore Rs/MW by 2010 and then stabilize at that level.

"The reason for this graduated assumption, is that the manufacturing industry has not so far gained the full benefits from series production, especially due to the rapid upscaling of products. Neither has the full potential of the latest design optimisations been realized," states the report.

Now, the industry has entered the "commercialisation phase", thereby lowering the cost of wind turbine generators during the last few decades. The costs are expected to be driven down further by stepping up the local manufacture of all turbine components in India and substituting imports of more expensive parts from international markets.

According to New Energy Finance, newly launched Wind Turbine Price Index shows an 18% decrease in contract prices for delivery in H1 2010. While the years 2006 to 2008 have seen a marked increase in the price of new wind turbines globally, caused by rising raw material prices and shortages in the supply chain for turbine components, the ramifications of the financial crisis has reversed this upwards trend. As financing for new projects became harder to come by, previous supply chain difficulties were overcome. In addition, decreasing raw material prices also helped bring prices down. As a result, since late 2008, global turbine prices have dropped by 18% for turbines to be delivered in the first half of 2010

The Minister for New and Renewable Energy released the book titled “Indian Wind Energy Outlook – 2009" on the 9th September 2009 in New Delhi. This report is published jointly by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association (IWTMA).

Clipper will receive £4.4M to develop a prototype blade measuring over 70m in length and weighing over 30t – the largest in the world – for the Britannia project. The company will now start development work for the blades on a plant in the North East of England, which will employ 60 people by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, Artemis will have £1M to transfer their existing technology from automotive to wind energy, and Siemens will get £1.1M to develop the next generation power convertors for their larger offshore turbine.

Consolidating our lead

Announcing the grants, Miliband said the UK is “consolidating its lead” in offshore wind energy, and that the sector could employ tens of thousands of workers by 2020.

“It will take an active government to get us there,” he said, “and the funds I’m announcing today are part of the £120M investment we are making this year and next in the wind industry to make that happen.”

The grants are awarded under the Low Carbon Energy Demonstration (LCED) capital grants scheme. The first company to receive one of the grants was Vestas Technology UK Ltd in July.

Despite the grant for its research and development centre, Vestas controversially closed its wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight – the only such factory in the UK – soon afterwards due to “unfavourable market conditions” (NCE 12 August). The grants to be awarded under phase 1 of the LCED will total £10M.

Clipper Windpower chairman James G.P. Dehlsen welcomed the company’s grant. “DECC’s leadership in initiating and expediting the grant program is timely and will help to accelerate our planning for and delivery of the Britannia project,” he said. “We are appreciative of the support and look forward to the opportunity to continue to work closely with DECC.”

Ed Miliband said: “We already have more offshore wind energy than any other country, we have the biggest wind farm in the world about to start construction, and now we’ll see the biggest turbine blades in the world made here in Britain.”

“DECC’s leadership in initiating and expediting the grant program is timely and will help to accelerate our planning for and delivery of the Britannia project.” - James G.P. Dehlsen, Clipper Windpower

The Co Antrim-based company currently employs 10 staff, however, it has recently recruited a further six people and has plans to bring an additional four on board next year.

CEO of VWE, Tony Gordon, said: “We are delighted that Clarendon Fund Managers have followed their initial investment and now with the inclusion of North Star Equity Investors’ Capital, VWE is well positioned to grow its business in the UK and Ireland.’’

VWE designs, manufactures and sells vertical axis wind turbines using its proprietary modular construction and installation techniques.

Its first product, a 3kw turbine, is aimed at the domestic and small commercial market.

A 6kw turbine will be launched to the market in spring next year.

The company, which is headquartered in Ballyclare, is hoping to take advantage of any growth in the market for micro-generation following the recent Energy Act of 2008 and its subsequent consultation in July this year.

VWE has a number of turbines already in place across the UK, including Leicester, Belfast, Cork, Limerick and East Kilbride, with further turbine orders including one for the Environment Agency offices in the UK

"This would bring us closer to our goal of producing 25,000 megawatts offshore by 2030," Tiefensee told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.

He added that the ministry had approved some of the 2,500 applications received by his office for wind turbines in the North and Baltic seas. Tiefensee told the paper he would present a proposal for the wind farms at a Cabinet meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday.

Costs for the new wind farms have not yet been established, a spokesperson for the Transport Ministry told the Hamburg newspaper.

The move comes as politicians debate the continued use of nuclear power in Germany and how to deal with the radioactive waste it generates.

"The current discussion about the nuclear waste depot Gorleben shows once again very clearly that we need to expand renewable energy," said Tiefensee, who is a member of the center-left Social Democrats.

Dozens of farms already approved

Of the 40 wind farms planned, 30 would be in the North Sea and 10 in the Baltic Sea. Twenty-two have already received government approval and Berlin intends to set aside some 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) for offshore power projects. Most will be built near the East Frisian Islands.

"We are securing and creating jobs in one of the markets of the future," Tiefensee said, adding that wind farms could mean 30,000 jobs in Germany. "We want Germany to be at the fore of this technology."

Approval has already been given for 22 offshore wind farms in the North Sea and another three in the Baltic with a total of 1,800 turbines, according to Christian Dahmke of Germany's Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency. He added that officials were considering another 55 applications.

Germany isn't out to sea alone

Over the last week a number of similar announcements have been made in other European countries, indicating that wind energy will gain greater prominence in the political and public debates over renewable energy.

Turbine maker GE Electric announced Thursday that it signed agreements to supply what would become the largest European on-shore wind farm in Romania, while oil-nation Norway said the same day it had authorized its first ever off-shore wind facility.

Planning for huge wind farms out at sea has been going on for years, but little tangible progress had actually been made. Technical problems have been a main challenge.

The head of the European Wind Energy Association, Christian Kjaer, on Monday also called on EU governments to give a clear signal of their support to the wind power industry.

Up to 16 percent of all energy consumed in the EU could come from wind farms by 2020. Plans for such offshore facilities would cost 57 billion euros ($83 billion) with transmission lines costing between 20 and 30 billion euros, the organization estimated.

Its chief executive Christian Kjaer said financiers are ready to invest in the new infrastructure but want reassurances from governments that wind farms will get the links and support they need to get power into the continental electricity grid.

He called on the EU to create a single electricity grid to replace the current 27 national energy systems.

“We are looking at setting a wind farm with a combined power output of as much as 187 megawatts [MW],” the Vergnet official said.

Bole said Vergnet has already proposed to help EDC for its planned 86-MW wind-farm power project in Burgos, Ilocos Norte.

Vergnet is a developer of collapsible wind-turbine technology specifically designed for islands that are prone to cyclones or typhoons.

Bole said his group is one of the five companies that participated in the bid for EDC’s Burgos wind-farm project, which the latter is still evaluating.

Bole also added that EDC is expected to come out with a decision within the month.

Vergnet, according to Bole, is also tracking the plans of Trans-Asia to develop a 54-MW wind-farm project in Guimaras.

Bole revealed that Vergnet is also helping Napocor’s Small Power Utilities Group (SPUG) to provide electricity to off-grid islands and remote areas.

“We will be selecting a number of islands where we could put up our hybrid wind-diesel power plants,” said Bole, enumerating that his group has identified the islands of Batanes, Dinagat, Lubang, Cuyo, San Jose in Mindoro and Casiguran in Aurora—all of which do not have round-the-clock power service. He estimated that the Napocor-SPUG project might have a power output of around 20 to 30 MW.

“The Napocor-SPUG projects are going to be financed by French protocol, meaning a grant from the French government. Within the next two years, we should have plenty of turbines in the Philippines,” he added.

Bole said the thumb rule of investment cost for a wind-power project amounts to at least $2 million to $2.5 million per megawatt. In 2007 Vergnet told the BusinessMirror that it is looking at offering its wind-turbine technology to local wind-energy developers.

In the Philippines, Vergnet has already installed three small wind turbines on Batanes Island in 2003, which have withstood the storms that have passed through the years. 

'For this, public-private-partnership is the way to go,' Abdullah told a gathering of wind turbine manufacturers and industry experts. 'The ministry is ready to help you in every way, but I need energy at a cheaper rate.'

The study says wind power can supply 21.2-24.2 percent of the electricity India will need in 2030, if the industry gets all the encouragement it wants. In contrast to this 'advanced' scenario in the report, it says without any extra push, it will be able to supply 2.4-2.7 percent of India's energy needs in 2030.

The report says: 'India's tremendous wind energy resource has only been partially realised due to the lack of a coherent national renewable energy policy. Currently, the promotion of renewable energy in India is mainly driven by state governments, but inconsistent implementation and the lack of a national policy is hampering genuine progress...'

'To boost investment in renewable energy, it is essential to introduce clear, stable and long-term support policies,' it said.

IWTMA Chairman D.V. Giri urged the government to 'fast track proposals to introduce a national renewable energy policy to help the industry'

The Hywind pilot is to be tested over a two-year period. It combines technology from both the wind power and oil and gas sectors, and draws on expertise gained from StatoilHydro’s long offshore experience.

“We’ve drawn on experience acquired during 30 years on the Norwegian continental shelf to realise this groundbreaking project,” says Gunnar Myreboe, executive vice president for Projects & Procurement in StatoilHydro

The Hywind concept combines known technologies in a completely new setting and opens up the possibility for capturing wind energy in deep-water environments.

The floating structure consists of a steel cylinder filled with a ballast of water and rocks. It extends 100 metres beneath the sea’s surface and is attached to the seabed by a three-point mooring spread.

The turbine itself was manufactured by Siemens. Technip built the floater and was responsible for the installation work offshore. Nexans Norway laid the submarine power line. This comes ashore near Skudeneshavn at the southern end of Karmoey, where local grid operator Haugaland Kraft operates a receiving station.

The company, which is based in Aberdeen, will also rename itself as SeaEnergy.

It has secured a total of £7.5m of funding from Lanstead, which will become a 22% shareholder in the group.

Stephen Remp, executive chairman of Ramco Energy, said its subsidiary SERL had already secured 456MW of offshore wind farm acreage alongside large utility partners.

Investment funds

He said: "The offshore wind opportunity is truly enormous, with over £130bn pounds of investment envisaged over the next 11 years through the Scottish and UK offshore rounds."

Ramco Energy said cleantech and green-focused investment funds were reluctant to invest in the group while it retained its focus on oil and gas.

Lanstead is committed to investing £5m, and an additional £2.55m which is subject to shareholder approval at its general meeting.

Ramco Energy also announced interim results for the first half of the year, with a pre-tax loss of £2.5m compared with a loss of £1.2m in the same period last year.

Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather said: "Today's announcement is further evidence of the enormous potential of offshore wind in Scottish waters, which can play a very significant role in a renewables-led economic recovery.

"In becoming the only quoted pure play offshore wind company on the London markets, Seaenergy plc reinforces the already powerful signal that Scotland is the place to be for all forms of offshore renewables."

An industry report last week predicted there could be more than 12,000 jobs in Scottish marine renewables by 2020.

The U.S. Treasury and Energy departments on Tuesday said that 12 renewable-energy projects, 10 of them in wind, were awarded cash grants, a move meant to bring financiers back to the U.S. wind industry and create manufacturing and construction jobs.

On Wednesday, the AWEA said that a new study shows that the government stimulus on wind is money well-spent when it comes to job creation. Specifically, the industry association backed an analysis from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory that debunks a previous study which found that Spain's wind and solar policies actually resulted in fewer jobs.

That previous study dates back to March when researchers at Spain's King Juan Carlos University concluded that for every job created by Spain's aggressive renewable-energy policy, on average 2.2 jobs will be "destroyed." The study (click for PDF in English) has been cited by people opposed to using Spain as a model for U.S. energy policy.

The reasoning behind the analysis is that nonsubsidized investments would have created jobs at a lower cost. It calculates that a "green job" in Spain costs over twice the "average capital per worker" in the private sector.

The analysis of Spanish job creation doesn't quite add up, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's response which was published in August. (Click for PDF.) NREL found fault with how the King Juan Carlos University study calculated job loss, saying that more established methods found a net benefit to Europe's energy policies.

In addition, NREL researchers said that the Spanish study doesn't take into the account the value of creating industries with export potential. Many industrial areas of the U.S. with auto expertise, for example, are trying to move into wind turbine manufacturing. It also said that there are limits to applying the lessons of Spain's employment market to other countries.

But even in its rebuttal, NREL researchers concede that it's a fair to ask whether the net effect of boosting wind and solar power is more jobs. In the U.S., the Senate is considering whether to create a national mandate for renewable-energy production at utilities or to ratchet up the one passed by the House earlier this year.

Overall, NREL found that the price of conventional energy is the key point in determining whether government policies supporting renewable energy have a net positive effect on creating jobs. "With increased awareness of potential energy price scenarios, recent research has found that it is only when conventional energy prices are forecast to be very low that net employment impacts from (renewable energy) investments are negative," according to the study.

The EWEA estimates, based on forecasts produced by its 27 member associations, that 8,600 megawatts (MW) of new capacity will be installed across the 27 European Union member states in 2008, compared to the 8,484MW that was installed last year.

The increase would bring the European Union's cumulative installed wind energy capacity up from 2008's 64,935MW to 73.535MW, the association added.

The Brussels-based organisation claimed that the forecast was "encouraging" in view of the current financial crisis and the fall in electricity demand that had been caused by a decline in overall economic activity.

Commenting on the estimates, the EWEA's chief executive, Christian Kjaer, said: "I am pleasantly surprised by the research results. They show that the underlying demand for wind energy technology is currently strong enough to make up for project delays caused by many banks' continued reluctance to provide project finance.

"Although the outlook for 2009 is encouraging, the real test of the wind energy sector's ability to withstand the financial crisis will be 2010," he added.

The association called for action to be taken "rapidly" to increase liquidity in financial markets, claiming it was "essential" that government money ploughed into banks across Europe in stimulus packages was able to reach the "real economy".

UK

The 1% growth is expected to come from the newer members of the EU, the EU12 - such as Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary - who are expected to install 150MW more than they did in 2008, an increase of 35%.

While the EWEA did not provide a UK-specific forecast, it did predict that, in the EU15 - which includes the UK - capacity would not increase in 2009 by more than it did in 2008.

"(That is) provided we get our act together and people take risks and educate themselves and chase contracts with major wind turbine manufacturers," said Helge Wittholz, an industry consultant who spoke at the seminar.

"It takes effort. It won't be easy."

But the effort is worth it, he added, with the sector growing at 25% a year as other manufacturing industries decline.

"It is growing so fast there is a shortage in manufacturing capacity. If you need an industry, you have to create a market."

Wittholz, a partner in Synova, a Miton-based energy firm, urged the Ontario and federal governments to step up support for the sector and for manufacturers to do the work needed.

"There has been a lot of lip service, a lot of talk, but policies have to be implemented."

Ontario has few manufacturers of wind turbine parts, with none in the London area, and Canada has only two small makers of turbines -- both in Quebec.

Bill Kydd, an official with Hi-Tech Controls in London, believes there may be growth potential in the sector, but is frustrated at what he sees as lack of support for small industry looking to make the change.

"There is a lot of talk, but we are competing against existing (U.S.) businesses doing this for 15 years. We need help." he said.

Kydd's east London company makes cooling systems for vehicles and machinery in industry and wind turbines need cooling systems he can supply -- but he's run into a wall of bureaucracy trying to get started.

"We are finding it difficult to get assistance. We tried working with (business support agencies) here in London and it was very frustrating. It soured us."

His cooling industry has seen sales drop by half during five years, staff has been slashed from 45 to 15 and the turbine industry may be at risk of staying in business, he says.

But Jeff Bakker, an industrial electrician in Goderich with Meier Machining, undergoing a name change to Farm Energy Supply, believes this is an industry that might be worth tackling, no matter the hurdles. And his Huron County home is rich in wind turbines.

"There is potential, huge potential in this industry. In Goderich, we have large buildings that are empty, a harbour, a skilled workforce, engineers from (the now-closed) Volvo plant looking for work," said Bakker.

"We can make hubs, parts and ship them to the U.S. We can do the casting work here."

Officials with Ontario's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade said at the seminar they've tried, unsuccessfully, for several years to woo a wind turbine manufacturer to Ontario.

Ontario manufacturers now only supply about 5% of the parts for turbines here, delegates heard. In fact, the parts for turbines are so large that just shipping some -- such as hubs, rotors and blades -- can add 50% to a part's cost, they were told.

Ray Givens, owner of Givens Engineering in London that makes lifting equipment for industry, sees many hurdles for local industries considering the wind industry. Parts are massive, often requiring castings of 10 to 15 tonnes. Also, the sector is already well served by U.S. suppliers, meaning a local industry has to be better-quality and cheaper to crack the market.

"I am a manufacturer looking to diversify, but this is an industry that is well developed. The market is very competitive and the parts may be too big for us to handle," said Givens, who has cut his workforce to 12, down 50%, as sales have plummeted about 40%.

"What this industry needs is an established company, big enough, who believe they can do it. That would do the trick. "

From 2000 to 2006, Canada increased its use of wind energy by 51%, to about 2,000 megawatts this year, and forecasts see that rising to 12,000 megawatts by 2014. Globally, forecasts see wind power providing 800,000 megawatts by 2018 from about 100,000 this year.

The Ontario Innovation Demonstration Fund is a four-year, $50-million fund making $100,000 to $4 million available per project for sustainable energy initiatives.

The meeting was held at the London Club following a survey of regional manufacturers in London, Sarnia-Lambton, Chatham-Kent, Huron County, Canada's technology triangle and Guelph.

The company said it was expanding heavily in China and the US because these markets were growing the fastest, in contrast to the sluggish pace of wind farm development in the UK.

Vestas wants to supply all its markets from domestic factories, which is why the company decided to stop making turbines to export to the US from its Isle of Wight factory.

Announcing a 15% fall in quarterly profits today, the chief executive, Ditlev Engel, defended the decision: "We are moving to the US because it makes sense to be close to where the action is."

The company had planned to convert the Isle of Wight factory so that it made turbines for the UK market, because it expected that government renewable energy policies would lead to a big increase in the number of wind farms being built here. "But it just didn't happen," he said.

The UK wind market is still relatively small. Last year, about 0.5GW of wind farms were installed in the UK, compared with 8.5GW in the US, the world's largest producer of wind energy. Because of the transport costs of shipping turbines large distances, it makes sense for factories to be located close to where they will be deployed. The cost of transporting blades from the Isle of Wight to the US was higher than the labour costs needed to make them, for example.

Vestas is also heavily expanding into China, which is the world's fourth largest wind energy producer but is forecast to overtake the US soon. In China, the government requires that at least 80% of all wind farms are made using domestically manufactured components, requiring Vestas to open new factories there if it wants a big slice of the market. The vast majority of the new 5,000 jobs are in China and the US.

Engel again hit out at nimbys and local politicians for blocking onshore projects, which he said had stymied growth in the UK market. As a result, Ditlev said that not enough wind farms were being built in the UK to support a factory in the country.

"It's very important to recognise that if the green agenda is going to move ahead the issue of planning has to be addressed," he said. "To get to the 2020 [renewable energy] targets things have to move pretty fast. You have to accept changes. That means people have to engage, not just say we don't want it [a wind farm] here."

The Guardian has also obtained a letter from the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, Andrew Turner, calling on the local council to block an application to erect six turbines near the village of Wellow on the island in 2006 because of the impact on the countryside. Vestas executives in the UK had warned the council at the time that if the project was rejected, it could lead to the eventual closure of the factory because it would undermine the UK's commitment to wind energy.

"I fully understand that as a country we need to reduce our carbon footprint and welcome other initiatives," he wrote, "[but] I do not accept that a convincing case has been made that the development will be economically beneficial to the Island." The project was rejected and no onshore wind farms have yet been built on the Isle of Wight.

Vestas also said that the wind power industry was showing signs of recovery after being paralysed by the effects of the credit crunch. Engel said that banks had begun lending to wind farm developers again and that the firm had seen an increase in orders in the past month.

The company said government financial stimulus measures designed to kick-start such infrastructure projects were starting to have an effect. New banks were also prepared to lend to projects, Vestas said, but it added that the more thorough due diligence they were insisting on meant it took longer to secure financing than before the credit crunch.

The economic downturn also contributed to the decision to close the Isle of Wight factory. This was partly because it slowed the development of wind farms here even more, but also because the lower global demand meant the factory was not needed to make turbines for other markets and Vestas was left with an excess of manufacturing capacity in northern Europe. Vestas also shut factories in Denmark, with the loss of 1,142 jobs.

Vestas reported that pre-tax profits for the three months to the end of the June were down by 15% to €78m (£67m), in large part because of redundancy payments it made to the workers it laid off, and to pay salaries for an enlarged workforce elsewhere.

The £3m turbine will have a combined blade and tower height of 130m, making it taller than the 122m turbine beside the M4, outside Reading. And the proposed 2.5 MW turbine will produce quantities of green energy equivalent to that used by 1,200 households a year. It promises to be one of the first wind energy developments to be built on council land in the UK. Detailed technical and environmental work will shortly begin with a view to submitting a planning application in 2011.

Partnerships for Renewables, set up by the Carbon Trust to work with the public sector, will pay for the development costs, with an annual payment made to Oxford City Council.

Last year, the Town Hall asked experts to look at four possible sites for a wind turbine, all on the edge of the city. The other sites were at Cutteslowe Park; close to the Hinksey Heights Golf Club; and south of Greater Leys.

Tom Brinicombe, of Partner-ships for Renewables, said the Horspath site had been selected because it was a suitable distance from housing, with no environmentally designated land nearby.

He said: “There are also a number of businesses and organisations in the vicinity of the site. There is potential for the turbines to supply green electricity directly to them. We would be happy to discuss this opportunity with local electricity users as part of our development.

“The current plans are to have just one turbine. But there is the potential to have more. If we do that we will make sure the local community knows exactly what is going on.”

The company hailed the announcement as “a major breakthrough in the pursuit of renewable energy generation on council land.” Mr Brinicombe said: “We have spoken to the vast majority of local authorities in England and Wales. Oxford is the first one to show the leadership to come into this.”

A test mast will shortly go up to see if the wind power is sufficient.

John Tanner, the city council board member for a Cleaner, Greener Oxford, said: “The site is a first for Oxford and a practical contribution to creating a Low Carbon city. Wind turbines are quiet, graceful and not a threat to wildlife. Compared to ugly electricity pylons, wind turbines are a huge improvement for Oxford’s environment.

“The real threat to our countryside locally is not wind turbines but climate change. I hope everyone will support this wind turbine plan. Both the city council and Partnerships for Renewables are committed to ensuring that the local community is central to the development process.”

The idea of building a wind turbine near Hinksey Heights has been dropped after early protests. But if the Horspath scheme proved successful, Partnerships for Renewables hinted that Cutteslowe Park and Greater Leys could later see turbines.

The U.S. Energy Department released a report last month saying "Soaring demand for wind has spurred expansion of wind turbine manufacturing in the U.S. As a result of this continued expansion, the American Wind Energy Association estimates that the share of domestically manufactured wind turbine components has grown from less than 30% in 2005 to roughly 50% in 2008, and that roughly 8,400 new domestic manufacturing jobs were added in the wind sector in 2008 alone."

Experts say the wind energy manufacturing industry is a good one for the U.S. supply chain because wind turbine manufacturing and assembly relies heavily on locally sourced parts than many current manufacturing industries.

According to a Reuters report, "Local sourcing makes sense for wind turbine production, because of the high number of components needed. The main components are bulky, so transportation can add a huge chunk to the cost."

Jeff Anthony, director of business development at the American Wind Energy Association, agrees. Anthony tells Purchasing, "As compared to the electronics industry, the size and weight of the components involved in this industry are very significant and the transportation cost is much higher. So when international players are locating a factory in the U.S., one of the major considerations is the proximity to a suitable supply base."

Also, OEMs in the wind energy market also want to be near their end-market as well, he says, which is a good thing for suppliers in the 28 states that have passed laws requiring utilities to have a certain percentage come from renewable energy.

Anthony says there really isn't a standard supply chain model in the wind energy industry today. While one OEM tends to make more of the individual components, others tend to outsource more and focus more on certain components and assembly.

"It still presents a variety of opportunities for suppliers in the U.S. to work with all of the OEMs building up their infrastructure in this country," Anthony says. "Of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers globally, only two are based in the U.S."

According to the AWEA, there are more than 8,000 components that make up a finished wind turbine in the tower, rotors, nacelle, foundation and other sections. And with demand for wind turbines up, the manufacturing process is getting a much closer look lately. Atlantic Wind & Solar claims to be designing what could be the first automated fabrication process for the manufacture of wind turbines.

Atlantic Wind & Solar hopes to replicate an automotive assembly line for turbines, which could be capable of manufacturing up to one complete (1.5 Mw) wind turbine per hour or an estimated 2,080 windmills per year.

Behind the notorious clouds of filth and greenhouse gases that China’s industrial behemoth spews into the atmosphere every day, a little-noticed revolution is under way. China is going green. And as the authorities here spur manufacturers of all kinds of alternative energy equipment to make more for less, “China price” and “China speed” are poised to snatch the lion’s share of the next multitrillion-dollar global industry – energy technology.

Chinese factories already make a third of the world’s solar cells – six times more than America. Next year, China will become the largest market in the world for wind turbines – overtaking America. This fall, a Chinese firm will launch the world’s first mass-produced all-electric car of this century. And where are American utilities buying the latest generation of “clean coal” power stations? China.

“The Chinese government thinks of renewables as a major strategic industrial option” that will help fuel this country’s future growth, says Li Junfeng, deputy head of energy research at China’s top planning agency. “We will catch up with international advanced technology very quickly.”

China will likely remain the world’s worst polluter, emitting more CO2 than any other nation, for the foreseeable future. Its reliance on cheap coal to generate the bulk of its electricity makes that almost inevitable.

At the same time, however, “this country is installing a one-megawatt wind turbine every hour,” points out Dermot O’Gorman, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Beijing. “That is more encouraging than the one coal fired power station a week” that normally dominates foreign headlines.

Indeed, China is pushing ahead on renewable technologies with the fervor of a new space race. It wants to be in the forefront of what many believe will be the next industrial revolution. If it succeeds, it will hold far-reaching implications for the planet – affecting everything from Detroit’s competitiveness to global warming to the economic pecking order in the 21st century.

“The rest of the world doesn’t even realize that we are very likely ceding the next generation of energy technology to the Chinese,” says Todd Glass, an energy lawyer with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati in San Francisco.

A 20-MINUTE DRIVE from the Great Wall, along the south shore of the Guanting reservoir, straw-hatted peasants tend their corn crop as the elegant blades of windmills spin idly above them in the gentle breeze, farming the wind.

Guanting’s 43 wind turbines provided some of the power for last year’s “Green Olympics” of which China was so proud, and they continue to generate not only electricity, but admiration: The wind farm is a favorite spot for newlyweds to take their wedding photos.

“They find the windmills beautiful and magnificent,” says Yin Zhiyong, the Guanting wind farm manager, as he shows a visitor around. “So do I.”

Mr. Yin trained as a coal engineer; when he was at college 20 years ago, wind-power courses were not offered. Today, he is convinced, “new energy sources are the new way of development. I’m part of the future.”

The Chinese government shares that view. The country’s installed wind power capacity has doubled each of the past four years, and is likely to exceed the 2020 target next year, a decade ahead of schedule. A revised goal, expected to be more than three times higher than the current one, will be announced soon, officials say.

Beijing has deliberately stimulated the wind sector with an array of subsidies and tariffs and a rule obliging power companies to buy renewable energy similar to a law now before the US Congress. So fast have windmills been built that the national grid cannot handle all the energy they generate, and much is wasted.

But the industry built by government policy is now looking much further afield. “Goldwind’s goal is to become a multinational and international company,” Wu Gang, the CEO of Goldwind, the firm that built Guanting’s turbines, told the “Securities Times” last month. “That is our business target.”

Already, he pointed out, Goldwind is building wind farms in Texas, and Goldwind acquired its key technology by buying 70 percent of the German company Vensys, not by developing it itself. That deal points up a key ingredient in Chinese firms’ strategies: If they don’t have time to develop technological proficiency, they will use their financial clout to get ahead.

China’s top planning agency is soon expected to announce plans to raise the proportion of renewables in the country’s energy mix to 20 per-cent by 2020, matching the European Union’s ambitious target.

Goals like this act as clear pointers for the state-owned power generating companies, where “the idea of planned industrial policy is in their blood,” as Ellen Carberry of the China Greentech Initiative puts it.

That approach is apparent in the electric-car sector, says Ms. Carberry, who represents 60 global and Chinese companies seeking to grow the green technology market here.

Two Chinese firms, BYD Auto (for Build Your Dreams) and Qingyuan are vying to bring an all-electric car to market this fall. In December, BYD started selling the world’s first mass-produced plug-in hybrid vehicle.

With the passenger vehicle sector moving forward, the government ordered 1,000 hybrid buses for Beijing and Shanghai earlier this year. It announced customer rebates of up to 40 percent off the price of new cars, depending on their energy efficiency.

Almost overnight, Beijing has focused world attention on the Chinese hybrid vehicle mar­ket. “They saw that Detroit was in a muddle, so they will leapfrog,” says Car­berry.

The government has taken a different path with solar energy, refusing until recently to offer any encouragement of its use at home because solar’s price was still much higher than traditional fuels and incentives would have been very expensive. But that hasn’t stopped Chinese and foreign venture capital firms from investing in the manufacture of solar panels for export. Here, as in other fields, “China is a fast follower,” says Alex Westlake, a founder of Clearworld Now, which invests in Chinese green-tech firms.

Though solar technology is not as advanced in China as in the US, producers here have used the country’s traditional cost advantage to vault to the top of the solar sales league.

And when the government does make up its mind which technology to back, its support “will make the Chinese photovoltaic market the biggest in the world,” predicts Miao Liansheng, CEO of Yingli, one of the country’s top solar-cellmakers.

The sheer size of China’s market, and the economies of scale that size allows, are key components of the country’s advantage. “They are using their manufacturing strength and imposing cost discipline on the world,” says Mr. Glass.

NOWHERE ARE CHINA’S green ambitions more evident than in its drive towards new “clean coal” technology, which would help Beijing reduce its emissions of pollutants and CO2 while remaining reliant on its giant coal reserves. China burns coal to generate 80 percent of its electricity; the United States uses it for half its power. No matter how many sources of renewable energy those two countries tap, coal will remain their dominant fuel source for several decades.

Many energy experts are pinning their hopes on new ways of using an old technology, coal gasification. It cuts SO2 and NOx emissions and separates out CO2 so that it can be captured and then either used in industry, digested by biodiesel-producing algae, or stored permanently underground.

The US was meant to lead the way toward a near zero emissions coal-fired power plant by building one first while other countries, including China, waited for experimental data before constructing their own.

But the US Futuregen project ran into so many cost and political troubles that it was shelved. As a result, the Chinese government decided last year to move ahead with its own project. The Greengen plant, designed to be the most efficient and cleanest coal-fired power station ever built, should begin operations by the end of next year, officials here say.

In the meantime, two Chinese research centers, the East China University of Science and Technology and the Thermal Power Research Institute, have developed coal gasification techniques to challenge America’s lead in the field. Both recently licensed their inventions to American firms building power plants in the United States.

“The general thinking in the US is that we are 30 years ahead of China in technology,” says Ming Sung, a Chinese-born American who worked most of his career with Shell. “We think it’s a one-way transfer. China licensing technology to the United States is still very unusual. But it will become less and less unusual.”

He points to underground coal gasification, where solid fuel is converted to gas without even being extracted, as an example. China graduated 17 PhDs in that field last year. Only two graduated in the rest of the world.

Not that the US is a technological laggard, of course. US firms were developing advanced coal gasification technologies 30 years ago, but the Department of Energy lost interest in them when the oil embargo ended, complains Mr. Ming. “The US is very innovative, but everything comes to fruition in China,” he says.

Or, as Zhang Hongmei puts it: “In America, some people say there is no such thing as clean coal. It is very controversial. Here it’s not a question of debate or lobbying. It’s a question of doing something.”

Ms. Zhang is director for technology strategy and development at ENN, China’s largest privately owned clean-energy provider. At its spacious and exquisitely manicured campus in Langfang, 40 miles east of Beijing, executives live in villas by the fairways of the company golf course.

That is the kind of perk that has helped the company recruit many engineers abroad – both foreigners and Chinese whom ENN has tempted home. “In China as a whole, research levels are still generally low. We are at a very, very young stage compared to the US or Europe,” says Gan Zhongxue, ENN’s chief technology officer. “So we recouped many researchers from the US and Europe who are familiar with advanced technology and can then do something for ENN.”

“China cannot yet produce things with the credibility and quality behind the ‘Made in Germany’ label,” adds Jennifer Morgan, an analyst with E3G, a London-based environmental think tank. “They are not there yet.”

Still, the country has plenty of reasons to attempt to be the world’s next green-energy power. For one thing, it has few natural energy resources of its own. Plus, its pollution problems are so severe that it has little choice. The country’s outsized reliance on coal is literally a matter of life and death: 750,000 people in China die prematurely each year because of air pollution, a World Bank study in 2007 found (though the Chinese government insisted the bank cut that statistic from its final report). Only 1 percent of the population breathes air that would be considered safe in Europe.

Moreover, Beijing – just like US President Barack Obama – sees renewable energy as an economic boon. Building out a new global energy industry over the next half century will generate more business than any other sector, Chinese officials predict, and they want a hefty chunk of that business. “This gives us an opportunity to develop a new area for a new industry” says Professor Li. “It’s good for our long-term development.”

BUT THE QUESTION LOOMS: What does China’s rise as a green power mean for the rest of the world? Certainly it has its benefits. A China with more solar cells and electric cars will help reduce the amount of heat-trapping gases building up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

It could also reduce the competition for, and depletion of, dwindling natural resources – notably oil. If China rises as a green-technology manufacturing hub, it could supply the world with low-cost solar panels and wind turbines as it does now with toys and textiles.

Yet there are worries for the West, too. If green energy is the new industrial revolution, Beijing will be grabbing many of the jobs of tomorrow. That will likely hasten the day when China becomes the world’s No. 1 economic power.

“China sees [green technology] as an enormous market that is not claimed or controlled by any one nation, and there is an opportunity for them to do it,” says Carberry. “The combination of urgency; the enormous needs; a focused, systematic planned government; an army of engineers; and access to capital may define China as the platform for the green- technology industry globally.”

Mr. Westlake of Clearworld Now, echoing the 1980’s song by the American rock band Timbuk3, puts it more pithily: “The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades.”

What Continental needed was a niche that wasn't being filled by these large companies. Through a series of introductions, good fortune and proper timing, Continental discovered that there was a specialized market niche, a group of customers, whose needs fit between the gigantic multi-megawatt wind turbines and the backyard varieties and whose needs weren't being served. The company identified a market for medium sized wind turbines - those in the 300-900 kilowatt range.

Continental decided to design and build medium sized turbines that would be ideal for large power consumers. Many large power consumers have a strategy in place to replace a portion of their consumption with local wind power. The large power users Continental was talking to had their own land located on sites rich in wind resources. The company designed wind farms that would typically consist of five to 25 wind turbines that will supply power to the factory complexes, schools, cities, counties, wastewater treatment plants, water pumping facilities, small, medium and large farms, as well as for developers seeking to provide clean energy for their residential and commercial projects. Generally located in larger population or industrial centers, distributed wind farms are more efficient because they generate power closer to where it is needed in greater quantity.

Although the company is keeping most of its technical details under wraps, according to CEO Jim Winsayer the turbines will be less than 200 feet tall and generate about 300 kilowatts of electricity. One turbine would supply enough electricity for roughly 100 homes.

As the customer pipeline filled up, Continental received an angel investment to help move them forward. Continental has already-booked sales that are in the eight-digit range and as a result is currently seeking a Series B funding for the establishment of its U.S. wind turbine manufacturing and development center in Santa Paula, California.

The discovery of the untapped medium sized turbine market was timely, but it presented certain challenges. For example, orders for blades, gear boxes and other components have backed up at existing vendors. Wait times for component equipment have been as long as three years. (Also competing in the small to medium size wind turbine market is Germany's Enercon. )

Continental had to start from scratch and has spent the last year and a half designing its turbines. With the completed design plans in hand, the company sent out requests for proposals to potential subcontractors. They have been looking for everything: blades, generators, gear boxes, ladders, control boards, software and other equipment.

Continental's solution to the pinched supply line was to target vendors that weren't making turbine components, but could be. For example, a mobile-communications tower company could build the wind-measuring towers that determine the suitability of a turbine site, even though the communications company has never done so before. By taking a chance on a vendor new to turbines, Continental circumnavigated pinch points in the supply chain and the vendors were invited to enter a lucrative new space.

In June Continental announced plans to build a wind power facility in Santa Paula, California that will produce the medium sized wind turbines. They will operate in much smaller installations compared to the larger wind turbines made by most other manufacturers today. The new Santa Paula wind turbine plant could eventually produce 600 turbines a year. Continental Wind Power will begin production of wind turbines in 2010 that are slated for installation at wind farms beginning at the end of 2010.

Continental is also attempting to maximize impact in stimulating the American economy by attempting to source everything in the U.S., and the company is prioritizing purchasing from local component manufacturers. "There's actually a pretty good concentration of firms, particularly in Ventura County, that may be hurting because of offshoring. Now there's an opportunity to bring some of this business back here," said Winsayer.

The company will start hiring soon, which could bring 300 to 500 green collar jobs to Santa Paula for positions ranging from assembly workers to industrial engineers.

"We're hoping people get a sense of the potential in the valley," said Todd Schwarz, the instruction dean overseeing technology programs at the college.

While not operational, there's still instructional value to the blade, such as showing students its interior and the fastening apparatus that once hooked the blade up to a tower. The blade was provided by Suzlon Corp., its manufacturer, at a cost of just $10.

The college has hired its instructor for the program, Twin Falls resident Mark Goodman. Goodman has 30 years of experience in the electro-mechanical apparatus field servicing industrial motors and generators.

A couple of years ago, only a few dozen of the 80-metre (262-foot) propellor-like turbines stood on the wind farm's vast open expanse of grass. Today it has 200 and counting.

The facility's growth is but one example of soaring investment that has made China an emerging world leader in wind energy, with potentially huge benefits for the environment in both China and the world.

With close to 80 percent of China's energy supplied by cheap but heavily polluting coal, the government has laid ambitious plans to raise the use of renewable energy, such as the winds that rake northern and western China.

"It's not like people are still talking about wind as a potential future direction. It is already the way forward for a lot of power companies in China," said Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaign manager for Greenpeace China.

But the pace of wind energy's development in China has surpassed even the most optimistic projections.

After setting an original goal of 30 gigawatts of installed wind power by 2020, the government recently said that could be raised to 100 gigawatts as installed capacity has doubled each of the last four years.

From almost nothing a few years ago, China had 12.2 gigawatts of installed wind power by the end of 2008 as power companies have rushed to meet government mandates to raise the proportion of energy they produce from renewable sources.

There are about 121 gigawatts of installed wind power worldwide, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), with the United States, Germany and Spain the top three wind power nations, followed by China.

In June, authorities in northern China's windswept Gansu province detailed plans for a "Three Gorges of Wind Power," a reference to the massive Three Gorges hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River.

Gansu's plans alone would nearly match the eventual 22.5-gigawatt installed output of the dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project. Other provinces are discussing similarly ambitious plans.

Installed capacity has grown so fast that it has outpaced the electrical grid's ability to accommodate the newly generated electricity, leaving much of the output of Deng's wind farm going to waste.

"Our nation's wind power has developed very fast but the distribution system's development has lagged. This was an unavoidable problem with wind," he said.

Of China's 12.2 gigawatts of installed power in 2008, only 8.9 gigawatts made it into the electrical gird, said Qiao Liming, GWEC policy director.

The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that wind farms in remote regions rich in the resource are too far from electrical grids.

"In the past two or three years this has really become a serious problem in China," said Qiao.

Another issue is a project bidding process widely viewed as lacking transparency and which sets wind electricity tariffs too low for wind farms to turn a decent profit, she said.

But the government has shown increasing concern about these hurdles and appeared set to solve them, Qiao said, noting that an economic stimulus plan unveiled last year will include heavy investments in electrical grid expansion.

"It's part of a process. Because of the huge wind farm development that just happened in recent years... it takes some time for the government to really solve such issues," she said.

The growing pains are not stopping development of wind farms like that managed by Deng, located on the edge of the Mongolian steppe and reached via a three-hour drive north of Beijing along a highway dotted with huge trucks hauling 40-metre long wind turbine blades toward the plains.

Deng said hundreds more of the 80-metre tall turbines are planned.

"Despite the problems, the government is working to coordinate the development of the grid and wind farms. This will create an even better path for wind power," he said.

The Government’s plans are likely to include more than 4,000 additional onshore turbines by 2020, many built at beauty spots and on high ground which would make them visible across miles of open countryside.

Another 3,000 turbines would be installed at sea — some of them visible from the coast, though others could be up to 100 miles offshore. Ministers are considering several measures to push wind farm planning applications through more quickly.

Of the 93 applications submitted for onshore wind farms in the past three years, only 35 were approved by local authorities. Another 14 were eventually passed after an appeal but almost half of the original applications failed.

In England, the South East, South West, East Midlands, London and the North West regions have all set targets for installing a combined total 1,310 megawatts of wind turbine capacity by 2010. So far they have installed only 340 megawatts (MW) and have another 66MW under construction.

The worst performing area is the South West, which has so far achieved only 15 per cent of its 2010 target of 355MW and has no wind farms under construction. There are 2,327 onshore wind turbines in Britain, each with an average capacity of 1.5MW — enough to power 840 homes. Offshore there are 210 larger turbines, the latest of which have a capacity of 5MW.

Critics of wind farms point out that they rely on an intermittent source of energy and have to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power when there is no wind. They also object to the visual intrusion of many turbines.

Dustin Benton, policy officer for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “Wind turbines need to be sensitively sited, because they are large industrial structures and inappropriate for certain landscapes.”

The CBI has also thrown its weight behind the anti-turbine lobby by calling on the Government to focus less on wind power and more on building new nuclear power stations and coal plants with carbon emission-capturing technology. It said Britain was sleepwalking towards an unhealthy reliance on gas for electricity generation if the wind targets could not be met.

The Government has already put pressure on councils to approve wind farms, issuing guidance which states that applicants should expect “expeditious and sympathetic” treatment.

The British Wind Energy Association, the trade body for suppliers and operators, wants ministers to adopt a “national presumption” in favour of all renewable energy developments and proposes a “flying squad” of experts to help councils to overcome objections.

Ministers will claim on Wednesday that 250,000 “green” jobs could be created as Britain increases renewable energy from 2 per cent to 15 per cent by 2020. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said: “We can lead in the green jobs of the future, making wind turbines, making parts for nuclear power stations.”

However, Britain’s only wind turbine factory, in Newport on the Isle of Wight, is due to close this month with the loss of 600 jobs. Any new turbines are likely to be made abroad.

The trade union Unison said: “It is criminal to actually have the only wind turbine factory close. The Government should be intervening now.”

A spokesman for the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) told NewEnergyFocus that the publicity surrounding the closure of Vestas' Isle of Wight plant had outlined the issues for the general public. He said: "There is now a direct correlation between nimbyism and the curtailment of the economic benefits of wind power."

The BWEA stance comes after wind turbine manufacturer Vestas attempted, and failed, to obtain a court's permission to remove 20 workers currently occupying its Isle of Wight factory, which is due to close this month.

The Danish company announced in April that it would shut the turbine blade factory in Newport, with the loss of 600 jobs, because the UK market was too small to justify keeping the plant open - and the firm cited the UK's planning system, which sees many wind farm proposals rejected, as the main obstacle to the growth of the market.

Employment

The BWEA said that the headlines generated by the closure of the plant, the ensuing strike and occupation, and the effects of the loss of 600 jobs on the Isle of Wight economy will finally show the public that opposition to wind farms in the planning system does impact on employment.

The spokesman said: "A positive factor of this unfortunate crisis is that the public are now aware of the fact that the opposition to wind farms is affecting the economic opportunities available to this country."

He added that people had historically been "ill-disposed towards wind", as demonstrated during the 1990s, when investors first began looking to put money in wind power, where the slow planning system all but cut off investment in the industry.

The Association considers that the UK must be especially aware of the economic impact of the wind industry, when Round Three - the third cycle of the government's offshore wind programme - goes into planning.

Miliband

Meanwhile, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband agreed that the planning system was impeding the growth of the wind industry, blaming Tory councils for blocking wind farm applications.

In a letter to Labour supporters, he said: "Their biggest difficulty is with planning objections to onshore wind turbines, which have slowed down the growth in the UK market. We are unlikely to be a centre for onshore wind production if applications are consistently turned down. Analysis in the Guardian on Monday reported that Tory councils have blocked 70% of proposals for onshore wind schemes."

Local authority

But Brian Anderson, conservative councillor for North Dorset district council, which recently voted to reject the 12MW Silton wind farm near Gillingham, said that the public was not convinced of the efficiency of wind power.

"I'm not sure about the efficiency of wind power, it needs to be proved to the public, and at the moment the statistical evidence is not there. That is the general feeling throughout the country, and unless the government starts making all the decisions on wind farms, then I think the trend will continue."

He added: "I feel desperately sorry for those 600 people on the Isle of Wight who have lost their jobs, but the question is, would one of them want a wind turbine in their back yard?"

Vestas

Vestas was preparing for a second court hearing on August 4 2009 in an attempt to "gain possession of our own land".

Vestas' spokesman added: "At Vestas we are patient people, and this is an unfortunate situation for everyone."

According to the chairman of Tuy Phong District, Han Dac Thuan, the investment for the first phase is estimated to exceed VND817 billion. In the second and third phases, the wind farm will be expanded to accommodate a further 80 turbines. The project is planned to be completed in 2011 and cost over VND2 trillion once finished.

A lever for boosting regional economic development

Although covering a large area of land, the project in the commune, according to Mr Thuan, is built mostly on deserted land. “It doesn’t occupy any fertile agricultural land at all, but provides jobs and services to local people,” he said.

Mr Thuan cited an example that of all 1,500 hectares of land reserved for wind energy projects in the region, the Wind Power Plant 1 occupies just 150 hectares. Only 20 percent of the used land is located on agricultural land, which has been left unused for years because nothing can grow on it.

The project initially raised public concern about noise pollution, but Mr Thuan said, “Modern technology helps produce modern large turbines with low sound at ground level. Standing next to a large turbine turning in a strong breeze, the sound you will hear is not much louder than the wind blowing in the trees. Even at a wind farm consisting of dozens of turbines, the audible noise level is usually much less than that of roadway traffic.”

Mr Thuan emphasized that the project, if exploited appropriately, will not only supply another useful form of energy to the country, but also help boost the regional socio-economic development.

He pointed out that once the wind farm is complete, dozens of wind farms under project 2 will be built to supply more power to the region. Thanks to an adequate source of power supply, the region will then be able to develop its tourism industry.

According to Tuy Phong’s socio-economic development plans for the period between 2015 and 2020, Binh Thanh Commune is to extend its area to transform it from a tourism zone into a tourist city, where visitors can come and stay to enjoy the beaches and the landscape in the region.

At present in Binh Thuan Province, 10 investors are investing in 12 wind farms with a total capacity of over 2,000 mega watts.  

Advanced Magnet Lab believes it has developed the technology to pack lighter and smaller but more powerful superconductor systems to operate large wind turbines that could provide up to 10 megawatts of electricity — enough to provide power to more than 5,000 homes.

The company’s efforts in this area comes as clean energy is increasingly in the spotlight. During his prime-time news conference Wednesday, President Barack Obama mentioned boosting investments in clean energy and has made it a high-profile part of his first year in office, and a bill calling for the cap-and-trade of greenhouse gases has made its way through the House.

Currently, wind power generates about 1 percent of the electricity produced in the United States, but the Department of Energy’s goal is to boost that to 20 percent by 2030.

Advanced Magnet Lab is “in the right place, at the right time with the right technology,” said Mark Senti, Advanced Magnet Lab’s president. If wind power catches on, it would greatly boost the company’s fortunes and add another clean-energy sector to Brevard County and Florida’s fledgling portfolio of renewable power ventures, which already include solar research and bio-fuels.

“Their technology enables an entirely new class of renewable energy systems and presents an opportunity for a new industry,” said Lynda Weatherman, president and chief executive office of the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast, who has reviewed the company’s technology and business plans.

“AML’s magnet technology is like nothing else available,” she said.

“Florida is the optimum renewable energy state,” Senti said. “We have the optimum solar and biomass resources. Florida’s offshore (wind) equals the total available solar and doubles even the most optimistic bio-mass potential.”

"We've been given two bulbs a house, it's a blessing for all of us," said 42-year-old fisherman Mohammad Arif on the subtropical island of Kharochhan, a land of creeks and mangroves in the cyclone belt of the Arabian Sea.

Lying 150 kilometres (94 miles) due south of Pakistan's financial capital Karachi, Kharochhan is an island of thatched homes where fishermen scrape by on 75 dollars a month and never dreamed of having electricity.

Then a local charity pitched up and installed five wind turbines. Now a fifth of homes -- 100 out of around 500 -- have been hooked up to the system.

"Each of us saves up to 1,500 rupees (18 dollars) that we would have spent on kerosene. I couldn't afford to educate my children, but now I'll put two of my four daughters in school," Arif said.

"We're poor with meagre resources. Our boys usually become fishermen and our girls illiterate housewives. This money could help us improve our children's future," he added.

Pakistan faces a catastrophic energy crisis, able only to produce 80 percent of the electricity that it needs, suffocating industry and making life tough in extreme winter and summer weather.

The shortfall has been blamed on government incapacity, corruption, short sightedness, debts, a creaking distribution system and lack of money to invest in energy sources.

To help cut energy needs Pakistan last year introduced daylight saving time in summer, but experts say the most sustainable long-term solution is to tap into abundant renewable resources.

Half an hour by boat from the mainland, development on Kharochhan has been hampered by isolation, said Nadeem Jamali, secretary general of a charity helping coastal villages use strong winds to generate electricity.

"Our project is to avoid environmental degradation and help provide the population with a proactive social life," said Jamali, of the Pakistani charity Action for Humanitarian Development.

Before his organisation erected turbines, villagers cut down mangroves for firewood to cook meals and used kerosene to light homes, damaging the environment and producing heavy smoke causing allergies.

"Wind energy should stop the use of kerosene and we advise people to use acacia wood for cooking because mangroves protect them from rampant cyclones," said Jamali, of the trees that are a buttress against waves during storms.

Shah Kamal, who designs wind turbines, says the high winds that batter Pakistan's 1,050-kilometre (656-mile) coastline are perfect for powering turbines and cutting power shortages.

The applied physics graduate said the energy crisis, which sees power cut for 10 hours a day when temperatures top 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), forced him to design and mount a wind-turbine generator on the roof of his house in Karachi.

"When I solved my own problems, I thought why not provide similar advantages to other people?" he said.

"We have given electricity to more than 100 houses in Kharochhan with five turbines. There are also four street lights," Kamal said.

"I see a great future for this technology," he added.

It has revolutionised villagers' lives, which once ended at sunset.

"With light available at night we can now do business for longer and our women do more embroidery work to earn for the family," said local fisherman Shahid Ali.

"Stray dogs don't bark at us now because they can recognise us in the light. And most satisfying of all -- our lights don't go off as routine in big cities," said Ali.

Pakistan's Alternative Energy Development Board says small wind turbines provide electricity to a few dozen coastal villages and that one large wind farm was established in April.

"Our target is to meet at least five percent of total installed capacity through renewable energy resources by 2030," said AEDB chief Arif Alauddin.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department says the country has the potential to generate 50,000 megawatts -- more than its total needs -- through wind, mostly in southern Sindh province.

Swat, the northwest valley ripped apart by fighting with the Taliban, also enjoys favourable wind conditions where authorities intend to invite investors once militancy is suppressed, said an official in Islamabad.

Texas once again led the country for individual projects, adding 454 megawatts during the quarter.

In total, U.S. wind farm developers installed 1,210 megawatts of new wind power during the quarter, or enough energy to power about 350,000 homes.

The company confirmed it has secured a €300m (£260m) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) that will allow it to begin work on 55 3MW turbines to be erected 46km off the coast of Belgium.

The first phase of the project, which will result in Belgium's largest offshore wind farm, is expected to be completed by 2011 and will contribute towards the government's target of delivering six per cent share of electricity from renewable energy sources.

Meanwhile, it looks as if Texas could beat a raft of east coast states in the race to become home to the first offshore wind farm in the US.

The Texas General Land Office has awarded leases to energy startup Baryonyx to build three new wind farms, two of which are offshore. The company said that combined, the three sites – two in the Gulf of Mexico and one on land in the Texas panhandle – could become home to a fleet of giant 5MW turbines capable of generating up to 3GW of power.

Baryonyx chief executive Ian Hatton said that the aim was to use the energy generated by the proposed developments to power datacentres in the region, adding that server farms now account for 1.5 per cent of global energy consumption and provide an attractive target market for renewable energy developers.

"The grant of these leases are an important milestone for… demonstrating a way forward to reduced reliance on imported energy and simultaneously increasing the environmental sustainability of technology that has become core to the modern economy," he said.

The company will now begin environmental and engineering evaluation of the sites with a view to filing planning applications for the projects.

The initiative comes as Greenpeace unveils new figures showing that local councils run by the Conservative party block more than three times as many wind farms as they approve. Labour-controlled councils meanwhile approved marginally more projects than they turned down between December 2005 and November 2008, according to the campaign group.

Both issues are important because Vestas, the UK's only major wind turbine maker, is threatening to close its manufacturing plant on the Isle of Wight this week blaming some of its woes on "faceless nimbies" and a lack of a vibrant domestic market.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, will argue that the £1bn of loans organised through the partly state-owned banks and the European Investment Bank (EIB) will kick-start 1 gigawatt of onshore wind schemes delayed by the credit crunch – enough to power 2 million homes. The government does not want the loans to be seen as a specific attempt to save the Vestas plant, which is at the centre of a sit-in by workers.

"Earlier this month we laid out a transition plan to a low-carbon economy that included a massive expansion of green wind energy," Miliband will say. "The resources we are announcing back up our plans with clear actions to ensure we deliver. The money for the development of offshore wind manufacturing will help us generate green jobs on top of our success as the leading country in the world for the generation of offshore wind.

"Alongside these proposals, we are reforming planning laws, finding new ways of working with local communities and are determined to persuade people that we need a significant increase in onshore wind as part of the UK's future energy mix."

The £1bn cash arranged by the government is part of the additional £4bn of EIB lending to support UK energy projects announced in the spring budget. The government has been urged by environmentalists and thinktanks to use the state equity stakes in banks – gained when they had to be bailed out last autumn – to push them towards green projects.

But the loans are unlikely to change the decision of Vestas to close its manufacturing plant at Newport on the Isle of Wight. The Danish group exports the turbines from there to the US, but the blades are unsuitable for the UK market and America will in future be served from a new production line in Colorado.

Vestas was considering investing in a new type of blade for the UK market but said the credit crunch, soft pound and endless delays in planning projects had made this uncommercial.

Greenpeace claimed last night that its study of publicly available information provided to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that Tory councils approved 44.7 megawatts of onshore wind schemes but blocked 158.2MW. Labour-controlled councils approved 68.3MW and rejected 62.6MW.

"One of the reasons Britain's green industrial revolution is yet to take off is the lack of domestic demand for wind turbines, and a key reason for that has been the attitude of many Conservative councils," said John Sauven, Greenpeace's executive director. "They need to be offered incentives to stop blocking wind developments, while David Cameron could make a difference straight away by making a crystal-clear commitment that a Tory Britain would meet the target to generate 20% of our energy from renewables by 2020."

Vestas has insisted it will take no decision on the future of Newport and another facility at Southampton until the end of this month, when a formal consultation with its 600 staff ends. But the government seems resigned to the closure.

A research and development base at Newport will keep going and Vestas is expected to be one of the beneficiaries when a £10m R&D fund is distributed by the DECC, perhaps as early as this week. A second £10m fund will be launched by Miliband today and Vestas will also be eligible for funding from that.

Testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, G.E. Vice Chair and Energy Infrastructure President and CEO John Krenicki called for any federal RES passed this year to be significantly stronger than proposals now on the table.

Legislation passed by the House and a Senate committee last month, Krenicki said, fall far short of what is needed and would have “disastrous” consequences for the domestic wind industry in the near term. Current proposals, due to carve-outs in definitions and calculations of the standard, do not drive new renewable energy deployment in the near term.

“While the U.S. struggles to determine the future of clean energy, other countries around the world are setting aggressive near-term and long-term standards and incentives to create large domestic markets for renewable energy,” Krenicki said. “Both the RES passed by the House of Representatives and the RES approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month are far too weak to drive growth. The current RES proposals for 2012 – anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of total U.S. electricity generation – are essentially equal to or below the status quo.”

“Massive new investments in manufacturing will not be made in the U.S. today based on the hope of a strong carbon price signal 10 years from now,” explained Krenicki. “It would take a 12% renewable electricity standard by 2012, with reasonable percentages to be satisfied by energy efficiency measures, to enable U.S. wind deployments to continue on the current growth trajectory,” Krenicki said. “Such a standard would also help drive dollars to small companies and developers waiting for stimulus checks to begin rolling out, and help sustain a domestic industry that cannot wait for longer term carbon legislation to come into effect.”

The Senate is currently holding hearings on climate and energy legislation and is expected to mark up legislation in September. The House passed its version of the bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, late last month. Leading voices in the wind industry echoed Krenicki’s call for more robust U.S. policy to support renewable energy.

“The U.S. wind industry is on the cusp of either expanding upon the rapid gains made in recent years or giving up those gains to foreign competitors, and national energy policy – namely, a strong RES – will make the difference,” said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). “Unfortunately, the current RES proposals do not seize the historic opportunity we have today to build up the nation’s manufacturing base and revitalize our economy.”

AWEA last week released its annual “20% Wind Report Card,” which showed that while wind accounted for 40% of the nation’s new energy generating capacity in 2008, wind farm development in 2009 is expected to slow as a result of the economic downturn, leading to a drop in wind turbine and wind turbine component orders. Meanwhile, strong RES targets have the ability to produce hundreds of thousands of jobs in the near and long term, according to a recent study by the Blue-Green Alliance. The U.S. wind power industry added or expanded more than 70 manufacturing facilities in the past two years (2007-2008), including over 55 in 2008 alone, according to AWEA.

“We are at an extraordinary point in the U.S. wind energy industry today, with the U.S. having pulled into #1 position last year and invested in a record number of manufacturing facilities,” said Sampson A. Brown, President/CEO of Knight & Carver Wind Group, a blade manufacturing and repair company with facilities in California and South Dakota. “Congress needs to lock in the industry’s momentum with a strong RES. Now is the time for decisive action – not only for our company and our industry, but for the nation’s energy future.”

Both Europe and China have publicly committed to strong renewable energy policies in the near term. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive commits member nations to an average of 25% renewables between 2011 and 2012. China has doubled its wind power capacity in each of the last four years, and expects to have 30,000 megawatts of wind installed by the end of 2010 – 10 years ahead of a target set last year. The U.S. currently has over 28,000 megawatts of wind power capacity.

“A strong RES is a pro-jobs policy that we can’t afford to pass up,” said Parthiv Amin, President of Winergy, a company based in Illinois that manufactures gearboxes for wind turbines. “A robust RES would send a clear signal in the US market, and would unleash a wave of investment and job creation in our domestic manufacturing base.”  

Source: American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)

# # #

 About the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA):
AWEA is the national trade association of America’s wind industry, with more than 1,900 member companies, including global leaders in wind power and energy development, wind turbine manufacturing, component and service suppliers, and the world’s largest wind power trade show. AWEA is the voice of wind energy in the U.S., promoting renewable energy to power a cleaner, stronger America.  Look up information on wind energy at the AWEA Web site. Find insight on industry issues at AWEA’s blog Into the Wind. Join AWEA on Facebook. Follow AWEA on Twitter.

Directions:
Hilton Minneapolis
1001 Marquette Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 55403

Please visit our site today to find out more: http://www.renewableenergyindiaexpo.com/sectors.html

"Wind energy will be a critical factor in achieving the President's goals for clean energy, while supporting news jobs," said Secretary Chu. "While the United States leads the world in wind energy capacity, we have to continue to support research and development as we expand renewable energy deployment."

DOE's new report, a comprehensive overview of developments in the U.S. wind power market released today, found that wind power capacity increased by 8,558 megawatts (MW) in 2008. This $16B investment in wind projects made the U.S. the fastest-growing wind power market in the world for the fourth consecutive year. Wind power contributed 42% of all new U.S. electric generating capacity in 2008; for the fourth consecutive year, wind power was the second-largest new resource added to the U.S. electrical grid in nameplate capacity.

The report, which has been issued annually since 2007, analyzes a range of developments in the wind market, including trends in wind project installations, turbine size, turbine prices, wind project costs, project performance, and wind power prices. The report also details trends in project financing, a key concern for the wind industry in the current economic climate, as well as trends in project ownership, public policy, and the integration of wind power into the electrical grid. DOE's report provides the wind industry, state and local policy makers, and the general public with valuable information on the state of wind power in the United States.

Some of the key findings of the report include:

• The U.S. continues to lead the world in annual capacity growth and overtook Germany to take the lead in cumulative wind capacity. For the fourth straight year, the United States led the world in wind capacity additions, capturing roughly 30% of the worldwide market.
• The cumulative wind capacity installed in the U.S. at the end of 2008 would, in an average year, be able to supply roughly 1.9% of the nation's electricity consumption.
• Soaring demand for wind has spurred expansion of wind turbine manufacturing in the U.S. As a result of this continued expansion, the American Wind Energy Association estimates that the share of domestically manufactured wind turbine components has grown from less than 30% in 2005 to roughly 50% in 2008, and that roughly 8,400 new domestic manufacturing jobs were added in the wind sector in 2008 alone.
• Texas led all states with 7,118 MW of total wind capacity installed, followed by Iowa (2791 MW) and California (2517 MW). Seven states now have more than 1,000 MW installed, and 13 have more than 500 MW.
• Iowa and Minnesota have the highest levels of wind penetration (in-state wind generation as a percentage of all in-state generation). Seven states have wind penetration levels greater than 5%; six utilities have in excess of 10% wind on their systems.
• Wind power remained competitive in wholesale power markets in 2008, with average wind power prices at or below the low end of the wholesale power market price range, although upward pressure on wind power prices looks set to continue.

Download the full 2008 Wind Technologies Market Report.

Award Selections Announced recently. Award amounts are subject to final negotiation.

Supporting Wind Turbine Research and Testing

• Alpha Star Corporation – Advanced Composite Wind Turbine Blade Design Based on Durability & Damage Tolerance (Long Beach, CA) - $200,383
• Analatom, Inc. - Remote Structural Health Monitoring and Advanced Prognostics of Wind Turbines (Sunnyvale, CA) - $200,000
• Bayer Material Science, LLC - Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Polyurethane Composites for Wind Turbine Blades (Pittsburgh, PA) - $750,000
• Board of Regents, Univ of Nebraska-Lincoln - Online Nonintrusive Condition Monitoring and Fault Detection for Wind Turbines (Lincoln, NE) - $380,398
• DNV Global Energy Concepts, Inc. - Supporting Wind Turbine Research and Testing - Gearbox Durability Study (Seattle, WA) - $399,616
• Dow Corning Corporation - Lifetime Lubricating Fluid for Gearboxes to Increase Efficiency and Durability of Wind Turbine Drive Trains (Midland, MI) - $745,189
• General Electric - Wind Turbine Manufacturing Process Monitoring (Niskayuna, NY) - $697,769
• Honeywell International, Inc. - Condition Based Monitoring for Wind Farms (Golden Valley, MN) - $626,086
• Michigan Aerospace Corporation - Turbine Reliability and Operability Optimization Through the Use of Direct Detection LIDAR (Ann Arbor, MI) - $748,002
• Native American Technologies Company - Automated Welding, Forming, Coating for On-Site Fabricated, Self-Erecting Utility Scale Wind Towers (Lakewood, CO) - $749,739
• Northern Power Systems, Inc. - Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain Automation (Barre, VT) - $683,388
• PPG Industries, Inc. - Wind Blade Manufacturing Innovation (Shelby, NC) - $741,754
• QM Power, Inc. - Advanced High Power Density Permanent Magnet Wind Generators (Greenwood, MO) - $398,005
• University of Massachusetts Lowell - Effect of Manufacturing-Induced Defects on Reliability of Composite Wind Turbine Blades (Lowell, MA) - $499,886

Transmission Analysis, Planning and Assessments

• Areva Federal Services - Best Practices and Advances in Strategies and Decision Support Systems for Integrating Wind Energy for Reliable Grid Operations (Bethesda, MD) - $275,610
• Western Electricity Coordinating Council - Balancing Authority Cooperation Concepts to Reduce Variable Generation Integration Costs in the Western Interconnection (Salt Lake City, UT) - $319,200
• Electric Power Research Institute - Integrating Midwest Wind Energy into Southeast Electricity Markets (Knoxville, TN) - $399,135
• EnerNex Corporation - Documentation, User Support, and Verification of Wind Turbine and Plant Models (Knoxville, TN) - $749,868
• Hawaiian Electric Company - Hawaii Utility Integration Initiatives (H.U.I.) to Enable Wind (Honolulu, HI) - $750,000
• Illinois Institute of Technology - WINS: Market Simulation Tool for Facilitating Wind Energy Integration (Chicago, IL) - $749,877
• Regents of New Mexico State University - Investigating Short Circuit Models for Wind Turbine Generators (Las Cruces, NM) - $272,816
• Regents of the University of Michigan - Techniques for Voltage Control and Transient Stability Assessment (Ann Arbor, MI) - $413,534
• Tennessee Technological University - Multi-Level Energy Storage and Controls for Large-Scale Wind Energy Integration (Cookeville, TN) - $265,677
• The Regents of the University of Colorado - Upstream Measurements of Wind Profiles with Doppler Lidar for Improved Wind Energy Integration (Boulder, CO) - $233,082
• University of Texas at Austin - Techno-Economic Modeling of the Integration of 20% Wind and Large-scale energy storage in ERCOT by 2030 (Austin, TX) - $510,688
• University of WI-Milwaukee - Lithium-Ion Ultracapacitors integrated with Wind Turbines Power Conversion Systems to Extend Operating Life and Improve Output Power Quality (Milwaukee, WI) - $422,266
• V&R Energy Systems Research, Inc. - Improving Reliability of Transmission Grid to Facilitate Integration of Wind Energy in Tri-State G&T and AECI (Los Angeles, CA) - $195,002
• WINData, Inc. - Use of Real-Time Off-Site Observations as a Methodology for Increasing Forecast Skill in Prediction of Large Wind Power Ramps One or More Hours Ahead of Their Impact on a Wind Plant (Great Falls, MT) - $398,966

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy

The group estimates 3,000 to 5,000 jobs could be created from attracting companies that make components for wind turbines or that erect them on the massive wind farms that are dotting the prairies.

Wind-related industries could also pump $8 billion into Minnesota’s economy over the next 20 years, according to the analysis by Minnesota 2020, a “think tank” based in St. Paul.

“I think my estimate is conservative,” said Nathan Paine, a research fellow with the organization, who used economic models developed by University of Minnesota economists.

Minnesota has a good base to build upon when it comes to developing industries involved in wind power, said Joe Sheeran, a Minnesota 2020 spokesman.

The state ranks fourth in terms of its installed wind-energy capacity, about 1,800 megawatts, or enough to power 450,000 homes, according to Minnesota 2020’s figures.

Also, the state has a highly skilled work force, including in welding and manufacturing, that could be put to work building components for wind turbines, Sheeran said.

Minnesota already produces parts for wind towers, including turbines, housings for the gearboxes and bolts for the towers.

The severe recession has taken a toll on jobs in Minnesota, which has shed 35,000 or more positions in the past year, Sheeran said.

Although state and federal subsidies, including the production tax credit, make wind power economically viable, renewable energy sources will become more affordable if fossil fuels are subject to a carbon tax, he said.

Moorhead Mayor Mark Voxland said the city is working toward the goal of installing a third municipal wind turbine. The two towers, becalmed in the gentle breeze Wednesday morning, were visible in the background as the wind proponents spoke.

“We’ll use as much as we can,” the mayor said, noting that every kilowatt generated by wind turbines means the city’s customers don’t have to buy power elsewhere. More than half of Moorhead’s electricity comes from hydropower, but that does not count as a renewable source, he said.

As utilities scramble to meet the 25 percent renewable energy standard by 2025, more wind farms will be needed to meet the demand.

“I’d like to see a lot of these projects built in Minnesota,” Paine said.

Cuenot, whose office is in Chicago, spoke at the second annual WIndiana conference this week.

A Danish company, Vestas is building a supply chain in the United States to avoid having to import turbines here from Europe.

"We buy metal commodities," Cuenot said.

Wind turbine components include rotors, shafts, gear boxes, brakes, motors, fiberglass blades, steel towers, bearings, pumps, weldings, castings, transformers, sheet metal, hydraulics, pumps, plastics, wires and cables.

Vestas is seeking dual or multiple suppliers for the various components because of explosive growth in the wind energy industry.

The U.S. wind energy industry installed more than 8,300 megawatts in 2008, expanding the nation's total wind-power generating capacity by 50 percent and surpassing Germany as the world's largest producer of wind energy.

However, the U.S. still derives only two percent of its electricity from wind, while Denmark obtains 20 percent of its electricity from wind.

"Why anyone would import things of this size and weight is a mystery to me," Gov. Mitch Daniels said during the two-day conference.

Some components, like the steel towers, are relatively easy to make, while others require fine machining and are as difficult to make as submarine parts, said Marguerite Kelly, a senior project manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

A typical wind farm requires hundreds of thousands of tons of aggregate and tens of thousands of cubic yards of concrete -- all purchased locally -- for foundations, access roads and other construction needs, said Ryan Brown of Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy, whose parent is a Portuguese company.

Oliver Viehweider, managing director of VAT Getriebetechnik, based in Germany, spoke on supply chain basics during the conference attended by more than 600 people.

VAT-Energies and VAT-Service are starting up new businesses in Delaware County to service wind turbines and manufacture solar/wind-powered street lights and wind turbines.

An Italian company, Brevini, is locating a wind-turbine gearbox manufacturing plant in Delaware County.

Brevini's Jacopo Tozzi spoke about supply chain nuts and bolts during the conference.

The governor said Indiana was honored that Brevini and VAT chose Delaware County.

With Indiana's low cost of doing business, including low taxes, and its pro-business climate, "we hope to be a premier home for this industry," Daniels said.

"This agreement between enXco and IPL builds on the experience our two companies attained through the development of the 106 MW Hoosier Wind Project in Benton County, Indiana which is currently under construction. Both projects have excellent access to the high-voltage network in the Midwest allowing customers in Indianapolis to benefit from two of the premier wind-energy basins in the country. We are pleased to extend an already successful relationship with IPL and to continue to add renewable resources to the energy supply mix in the Upper Midwest,” said Tristan Grimbert, president & CEO of enXco.

The Lakefield Wind Project, which is subject to the approval of the IURC as well as the Minnesota Public Utility Commission (MPUC), is the result of an RFP issued by IPL in December 2008.

About enXco, an EDF EN Company:

enXco (www.enxco.com) - an EDF Energies Nouvelles Company (www.edf-energies-nouvelles.com) - develops, constructs, operates and manages renewable energy projects throughout the United States. For more than two decades, they have been a leader in wind-energy focusing on large-scale wind projects. enXco’s portfolio includes solar and biomass technologies, in an effort to help drive the transition to a sustainable energy economy. enXco has grown to be a significant owner and developer of wind-energy installations in the United States, and is the largest third-party operations and maintenance provider for wind farms in North America.

About Indianapolis Power & Light Company (IPL):

Indianapolis Power & Light Company (IPL - www.IPLpower.com), provides retail electric service to about 470,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Indianapolis, as well as portions of other Central Indiana communities surrounding Marion County.

in 2008. Yet, about 30% of its wind power assets are not in use--much of that not even connected to the transmission grid--a result of Chinese power companies turning to wind as the cheapest, easiest way to satisfy on paper government requirements to boost renewable energy capacity. Whether the massive new building push will be any more efficient is an open question, given that much of it is slated for out of the way places, mainly in the north, making it uneconomical to build the lengthy extensions to China's grid that would be required to transmit the power to distant population centers.

China has been actively developing wind energy over the past three years. The country added 6.3 gW of capacity in 2008, doubling its total wind power capacity to 12.2 gW, in the process becoming the world's second-biggest wind turbine buyer behind the U.S. and the world's fourth-biggest producer of wind power after the U.S., Germany and Spain, according to the annual report of the World Wind Energy Association.

In July, the government of the arid northwestern province of Gansu began construction of a wind power station in the former Silk Road outpost of Jiuquan, the first of seven 10-gW wind power bases planned by provincial authorities around the country. The other six have yet to receive the green light from the country's top planning authority, the National Development and Reform Commission.

Citigroup estimates China's wind power capacity could easily grow to 130 gW by 2020. "Yet, the most important question is whether wind energy in China is efficient," said Pierre Lau, Head of Asia-Pacific Utilities Research with Citi.

So far, the answer has been "no."

The world's largest producer of carbon emissions has been doubling its wind power capacity every year since 2006; it was the world's second-largest buyer of wind turbines

Aesthetic concerns have stalled the Cape Wind project, which would erect 130 turbines 5 to 13 miles from Cape Cod and Nantucket. But technological advances in recent years are allowing developers elsewhere to consider building wind turbines farther from shore, where they would be less visible.

Announcing the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, Lord Mandelson said that the global market for low-carbon goods and services was already worth £3 trillion but could grow to £4.3 trillion by 2015 and may expand even faster if a climate change deal is reached in Copenhagen later this year.

He said that the Government would help to fund a new wave and tidal energy demonstrator facility in Cornwall, Wave Hub, with a £30 million grant.

The programme would also include the £15 million Peninsula Research Institute for Marine Renewable Energy, a joint initiative by the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth.

Further funding would be directed into low-carbon technologies via the South West Regional Development Agency.

Other low-carbon economic areas would be established in due course, the report said.

Britain aims to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent by 2050 — a plan that will require a massive shift in the way the country produces, transmits and consumes energy.

Britain’s low-carbon sector will be one of the few areas of the economy that will expand during the economic downturn, the report said.

It also set out plans to make £120 million available for the development of a British-based offshore wind industry, as part of efforts to install 3,000 wind turbines off the UK’s shores by 2020.

There will be up to £15 million capital investment to establish a Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and a £4 million expansion of the Manufacturing Advisory Service to provide specialist advice to industry on low-carbon opportunities.

A further £10 million will be spent on acceleration of the infrastructure for charging electric vehicles.

It looks like an abstract sculpture or metallic lawn art, and its promoters say that installing several can turn an ordinary backyard into a wind garden.

Green energy advocates in this state say the Windspire, a power turbine that spins in an upright position in a confined space, could represent a major breakthrough for wind energy. Instead of using towers 100 feet tall or higher for conventional windmills, the Windspire is just 30 feet tall.

Wind energy has long been a nonstarter in this state because the best wind speeds are found in ecologically sensitive areas: Appalachian ridge tops and pristine coastlines. Today in Raleigh, a Senate committee of the General Assembly is scheduled to debate a proposal to ban commercial wind power development in the mountains.

Steven Chu, the American energy secretary, and Gary Locke, the commerce secretary, are coming here to discuss clean energy and global warming with Chinese leaders, and to see if progress can be made toward getting China to agree to specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gases. Agreement proved elusive during the Group of 8 summit meeting last week in Italy.

But Mr. Chu and Mr. Locke arrive as Western companies, especially Europeans, are complaining increasingly about Beijing’s green protectionism.

China has built the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry by exporting over 95 percent of its output to the United States and Europe. But when China authorized its first solar power plant this spring, it required that at least 80 percent of the equipment be made in China.

When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data.

This spring, the Chinese government banned virtually any installation of wind turbines with a capacity of less than 1,000 kilowatts — excluding 850-kilowatt designs, a popular size for European manufacturers.

Lu Hong, the program officer for renewable energy in the Beijing office of the Energy Foundation, a nonprofit group seeking to support sustainable energy, said that China was willing to invest heavily in renewable energy industries precisely because it helps the Chinese economy.

“The Chinese government won’t consider such a big solar industry without considering the building up of the domestic industry,” she said, adding that China’s policies will also help address global warming.

Zhou Heliang, the president of the China Electrotechnical Society, a government entity that plays a broad role in national and provincial technology policy, predicted at the Wind Power Asia conference here on Friday that Chinese-owned companies would increase their share of the Chinese market by an additional 10 or 20 percentage points this year.

That would give them almost three-quarters of the domestic market, compared with a quarter for European and American companies — the reverse of the ratio four years ago.

This year, China passed the United States as the world’s largest market for wind energy. It is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece, using extensive low-interest loans from state-owned banks.

By comparison, T. Boone Pickens delayed his plans to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas, once promoted as the world’s largest.

Some foreign companies, particularly European businesses, are starting to express misgivings about China’s promotion of the local manufacturers.

European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

European turbine manufacturers are especially disappointed because they built factories in China in order to comply with the country’s requirement that turbines contain 70 percent local content, Mr. Wuttke said. Yet all the multinational manufacturers were disqualified on technical grounds within three days of bidding for wind farm contracts this spring, even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved, he said.

European solar power companies are also unhappy. “This is not a level playing field,” said Boris Klebensberger, the chief operating officer of SolarWorld AG, which is based in Bonn.

Mr. Wuttke said he was encouraged that Premier Wen Jiabao of China told Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in a telephone call on June 25 that China would not discriminate against foreign enterprises, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But no new Chinese renewable energy regulations have been issued since then on local content requirements or other rules.

American companies play a smaller role in the global renewable energy industry, but some of them are also growing exasperated with the Chinese market. “That has been a tough market for non-Chinese manufacturers,” said Victor Abate, General Electric’s vice president for wind energy.

Kevin Griffis, a Commerce Department spokesman, said that the agency had not heard from American companies about difficulties in the Chinese market for renewable energy.

World Trade Organization rules ban countries from using local content requirements to force companies like the wind turbine manufacturers to set up factories in a country instead of exporting to it. But much of China’s power industry, although publicly traded, is majority owned by the government.

Other rules are also making it hard for foreign manufacturers and investors to compete in China.

China’s renewable energy standard requires that renewable energy account for at least 3 percent of the generating capacity of each large power company, excluding hydroelectric power, by the end of next year. But the rules do not dictate how much electricity must actually be generated from that capacity.

So power companies have an incentive to buy the cheapest wind turbines available, so as to increase their renewable energy capacity — even if the turbines break down frequently and do not produce that much electricity.

Turbines from Chinese-owned companies tend to have slightly lower purchase prices than foreign-brand turbines, but have higher repair costs, so the life cycle costs are similar, according to Chinese experts. United Nations data from the trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.

Financial regulations for wind farms also make it harder for foreign-owned farms than domestic-owned farms to borrow money or to sell carbon credits. Even well-connected international funds like Nature Elements Capital have to look hard for projects, while less-connected funds have struggled to find any at all.

Mr. Zhou said that China was also working hard to develop its own capability to manufacture high-tech materials that can withstand the torque, humidity and other stresses that affect wind turbines.

Two American companies are leading suppliers of materials: PPG Industries of Pittsburgh, the leading maker of fiberglass and protective coatings for the wind turbine housings and blades, and the Zoltek Corporation of Bridgeton, Mo., the world’s dominant supplier of carbon fiber for the support struts inside the most high-tech blades.

A report last month by IHS, a global data company, concluded that Chinese wind turbine makers would soon start exporting. That is because Chinese wind farm installations could level off temporarily as the power grid struggles to install enough high-power lines to use all the electricity wind produces.

Asked whether European turbine manufacturers risked sharing Detroit’s overconfidence in the 1970s in the face of challenges from Japan, Mr. Wuttke said that European makers believed that their reputations for quality and reliability would protect them.

More to follow..

"This is a small step in the right direction," Ken Anderson, Tri-State's general manager, said at a news conference on the statehouse steps.

Tri-State, based in Westminster, supplies wholesale power to 44 electric cooperatives in four states, including 18 in Colorado.

The project — 34 turbines on 6,000 acres northeast of Burlington generating 51 megawatts — will be the eighth wind farm in Colorado providing power to utilities.

The cost of the Kit Carson Windpower Project is "north of $100 million," said Wouter Van Kempen, president of Duke Energy Generation Services.

"This is another important step forward for Colorado's New Energy Economy and will be a boon for the Eastern Plains," Gov. Bill Ritter said at the news conference.

The price Tri-State will pay for the energy is confidential, company spokesman Jim Van Someren said.

Colorado wind farms generate 1,060 megawatts — enough to power about 850,000 homes, according to the Intrawest Energy Alliance, a trade group.

Almost all the wind power goes to Xcel Energy, the state's largest utility, which generates 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources and must, under state law, reach 20 percent by 2020.

Municipal utilities and cooperatives, such as Tri-State, have a state-mandated 10 percent renewable target by 2020.

The Kit Carson project will raise Tri-State's renewables to a little more than 3 percent of the cooperative's power supply, with 70 percent coming from coal,Anderson said.

It will be a challenge to revise the cooperative's power portfolio because utilities are capital-intensive and generating plants long-lived,Anderson said.

"We need 15 to 25 years to retool ourselves," Anderson said.

The project is targeted to be on line by the end of 2010 and will link directly into Tri-State's existing transmission lines.

"Transmission is the big issue in the West," said Duke's Van Kempen. "We've been locating our projects close to existing lines."

Duke has two wind-farm projects in Wyoming, both near transmission lines, Van Kempen said.

For Kansas and other states of the windy, sparsely populated High Plains, it means utilities will spend billions of dollars to build high-voltage lines.

Last month, Prairie Wind Transmission and ITC Great Plains agreed to split a project to build a 200-mile-long 765-kilovolt line that links western Kansas with Wichita and lines from Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The two competed against each other before agreeing to each take half of the project after the state strongly encouraged them to reach a compromise.

Prairie Wind is a partnership of Westar Energy and Electric Transmission America — a joint venture of subsidiaries of American Electric Power and MidAmerican Energy Holdings. ITC Great Plains of Topeka is a subsidiary of ITC Holdings, which is based in Michigan.

The lines must first get approval from the Kansas Corporation Commission and the Southwest Power Pool, before they are built. The Southwest Power Pool is a federally sponsored cooperative of more than 50 utilities in nine states that regulates the operation of the grid.

It will take four to 10 years to get the lines into operation, said Carl Huslig, president of ITC Great Plains

The 765-kilovolt lines are the largest capacity lines built in the country. They carry great loads of power a long way with relatively little loss, say the utilities.

Other utilities are seeking to construct such lines in order to reinforce the nation's power grid and facilitate alternative energy.

The western Kansas power lines would also carry energy generated by the proposed 895-megawatt Sunflower Electric coal plant near Holcomb.

The project is necessary to develop the state's wind potential, say the utilities.

"There is not really the capability left in the system to develop much more wind in western Kansas," said Kelly Harrison, president of Prairie Winds and Westar's vice president for transmission operations.

Why new lines>

The key things to know about wind power are these:

* To cut carbon emissions, the amount of wind energy supplied by utilities all over the country is likely to grow dramatically over the next decade.

* The greatest amount of wind is on the High Plains.

* It can't be stored and has to be consumed immediately. Because wind generation dies when the wind dies, utilities typically estimate that only 20 percent of their power demand can be supplied by wind.

Kansas has just entered the top 10 for wind generation, with slightly more than 1,000 megawatts of capacity, but it has the potential to be third with thousands more megawatts, according to studies.

The untapped potential, plus the political demand for up to 20 percent of the nation's energy supply to be renewable, is expected to lead to new wind farms in western Kansas and the western sides of other Plains states over the next decade. That growth, however, has been temporarily shut off by the credit crunch.

Our newest export>

Much of that power will be exported out of Kansas to other states in the region.

The area covered by the Southwest Power Pool has the potential for more than 70,000 megawatts of wind potential, Huslig said.

"We can't consume it, so we'd have to export it to other parts of the country," he said.

The power would go to the other utilities of the Southwest Power Pool, and beyond.

The electricity will displace existing electricity generated in those markets and send it farther east. Ultimately, the wind power produced in western Kansas will be credited with reducing carbon emissions on the East Coast.

The cost of the line is $600 million to $800 million, but Harrison and Huslig said they will seek approval to spread the cost over the ratepayers of the entire Southwest Power Pool, rather than just those in Kansas.

That includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and parts of Missouri, Mississippi, Texas and New Mexico.

Harrison said that Westar ratepayers would be liable for 12 percent of the cost.

The benefit for Kansas ratepayers is that generating and then transferring the excess wind energy out of the Southwest Power Pool is almost like exporting any other product.

The power will be sought by other regions who have to meet mandated minimums for alternative energy, said Huslig.

Those sales would serve to reduce rates for Kansas ratepayers.

So, Huslig said, Kansas could see more wind farms, more wind farm manufacturing plants and lower rates in the future.

But it depends on getting the power lines, say the utilities.

"Kansas will not be able to develop its wind potential without this, period," Harrison said.

"It's better late than never," he said. "If everybody would try to do a little bit, we'd contribute to the national energy problem in a great way. It's exciting to harness free energy."

Although Metro Detroit isn't identified by the Wind Energy Resource Zone Board, which was created by a 2008 state law, as a region with the most potential to harvest wind and create energy, a growing number of communities are trying to stay ahead of the "green movement" curve by developing wind turbine ordinances. Port Huron implemented a wind turbine ordinance in August 2007, followed by officials in Taylor and Ray Township, who adopted ordinances last year.

An ordinance will go before the Canton Township Board of Trustees in July; Waterford Township officials have created a rough draft that will likely be ready for a vote by the end of the year, and Howell officials are revising its ordinance regulations. Officials in Commerce, Harrison and West Bloomfield townships are researching wind turbines.

Those property owners in communities that don't yet have a wind turbine ordinance on the books may still be able to get one by seeking a variance from the zoning board of appeals, experts say.

"I think what we're seeing is the beginning of a wave of change," said Chuck Hersey, manager of environmental programs at the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. "As we're trying to move toward a cleaner economy and a more sustainable environment, these various changes in how we produce and use energy ... make all kinds of sense. It's going to require some revisiting of how (governments) do things."

Hersey said the aim of a wind turbine ordinance, like all ordinances, is to set parameters to protect neighbors and a community's character. While every community will set its own guidelines, most will regulate height, noise frequency and maximum wind speed.

Despite some communities' efforts to adopt such ordinances, many say few residents have taken advantage because the structures are expensive. They start at around $6,000, but costs could come down as new systems come out on the market and advances are made to the technology, said Wayne Beyea, associate director of citizen education with the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute.

"It's an innovation explosion right now," he said.

That's why Port Huron city planners adopted their wind turbine ordinance that allows for structures in any zone with a special approval use permit as long as the property is at least 2 acres. The structures must have an automatic braking system.

They are researching rooftop-mounted wind turbines to determine if those should be included in their ordinance, which allows only for ground-standing towers, said Kimberly Harmer, planning and community development director. Those may be better suited for residential homes instead of the towers, she said.

Only one wind turbine has been installed in Port Huron: St. Clair County Community College installed a 65-foot tower in September, Harmer said. Still, she said city officials are happy to be ahead of the curve since wind turbines are a fairly new concept.

Canton Township resident Jim Demarest hopes the township will adopt an ordinance. The manufacturing representative who sells heat-treating equipment said he would like to purchase one within the next five years.

"Hopefully, in the next five years, GM will have a nice electric vehicle," said Demarest, 37. "I could be charging my batteries when the car is parked here rather than being on the grid. It makes good sense to have wind and solar energy charging my battery."

In Ray Township, officials adopted their ordinance last fall after receiving a lot of inquiries from residents, Supervisor Charles Bohm said. While they stand behind the ordinance -- which allows turbines as a special land use to stand at a maximum height of 150 feet -- the problem lies with the economy.

Bohm said no one has applied to install a wind turbine because they are expensive. The city of Taylor has already seen benefits from its 45-foot-tall, 2.8-kilowatt wind turbine at Heritage Park Petting Farm on Pardee. Not only has it educated children, but it has also cut the electric bill by about 40 percent to 50 percent combined with the solar panels, said Bob Mach, superintendent of building maintenance, vehicle, compost and alternative energy. "Energy costs are so high, everyone is trying to jump on the bandwagon. It's the right thing to do," Mach said.

REpower has been active in France since the end of 2001, and the country is now its second biggest market after the U.S.

The cost of electricity would then be determined not by consumer demand, but by how hard the wind is blowing.

When it is windy power will be so cheap that other forms of generation will be unable to compete, the report says.

If accepted by government, these key findings could strongly influence the UK's future energy supplies.

The study was done for National Grid, Centrica and others. The researchers reviewed 2.5 million hourly weather reports on wind speeds all around the UK.

Idle time

If the wind were to drop everywhere round the UK (as happened during the January high pressure cold snap), other generators would make their money by switching on back-up fossil fuel power stations for a very short time, charging extremely high prices, it predicts.

Dr Phil Hare from Poyry said these back-up generators might stand idle for years without making a profit - so the government might need to find a new way of ensuring they were funded.

The study bases its assumptions on current levels of subsidy. It concludes that thanks to the wind subsidy through the "Renewable Obligations Certificates" issued by regulator Ofgem, electricity prices would be negative if the wind were blowing hard.

"The market will have to evolve to accommodate the wind. The average output of a wind turbine is only about a third of its full capacity. So when the wind is blowing strongly you'll have to turn some of the wind power off; otherwise it will swamp the system," Dr Hare said.

"Nuclear power stations will have to be built with variable output so they - like gas and coal plants - can occasionally cut their power when the wind is blowing most strongly. It does look as though nuclear, coal and gas are competing for the same share of the market."

Dr Hare said the study answered another key question: whether we could move to widespread intermittent power from the wind, waves and tides together.

"Some people were worried that the complexity stemming from intermittent wind with an overlay of tidal power peaking twice a day might simply have been too much change for the grid to bear. But our research shows the grid can cope."

The study amplifies a recent paper from National Grid itself stating that a move towards wind power would not necessitate widespread investment in expensive back-up power plants fuelled by gas or coal.

This is a key finding which helps remove one of the main barriers to the advance of wind (although some will remain sceptical).

But it comes with a warning. Dr Hare said: "It will cost more. There is no such thing as cheap green power - that is a myth."

The authors of a report from the Royal Society this week made the same point. But politicians are still reluctant to pass on this message to the public.

The U.S. so far produces no electricity from offshore winds, putting it far behind the United Kingdom, Denmark and other northern European countries that have been developing offshore wind for nearly 20 years.

"We are entering a new day for energy production in the United States - a time of clean energy from renewable domestic sources on our Outer Continental Shelf," Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar said in a statement.

"Other nations have been using offshore wind energy for more than a decade," Salazar said. "We made the development of offshore wind energy a top priority for Interior. The technology is proven, effective and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil."

Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are the world's largest producers of electricity from offshore winds.

The exploratory leases would allow wind companies to measure wind speed and intensity and other factors from towers built six to 18 miles offshore. The next steps would be to apply for a permit for a test turbine, and then there would be more government reviews before they could construct turbines, a process that could take several years or more, said Interior spokesman Frank Quimby.

The leases went to Bluewater Wind New Jersey Energy; Fishermen's Energy of New Jersey; Deepwater Wind and Bluewater Wind Delaware.

Willett Kempton, a professor at the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, lead a study in 2007 that examined the wind potential from North Carolina to Massachusetts.

The study, which appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, found that if wind was tapped offshore with turbines in water up to 100 meters (330 feet) deep, which is just within technological reach, the coastal states would produce enough electricity to satisfy all electrical needs, power all light vehicles and replace heating fuel for all buildings.

According to Kempton, Delaware's average offshore winds have the potential to power between 1.2 million and 1.5 million homes.

Kempton said the leases Salazar announced were "the first concrete step of the development of what I believe will be a very large industry in the Northeast initially and then around the coastal regions of the country."

Texas, already the No. 1 wind state, has been working since 2005 to be the first state with offshore wind as well. Texas waters extend seven miles offshore, unlike the three-mile limit in other states. The state granted five exploratory leases in 2005 to a Louisiana company, Wind Energy Systems Technology, which built a scientific measurements tower seven miles off Galveston. As yet, not electric production has begun.

Kempton said that existing technology doesn't allow for turbines that could withstand Category 5 hurricanes because it was developed in Denmark, where they're not an issue, but such turbines could be built, he said. "It's not that hard to engineer."

Cape Wind, a wind farm planned off Cape Cod, Mass., is still under review by the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department.

For a productive working environment, the architects proposed interior and exterior features that would encourage a balanced working style. The interior of the office includes an adjustable ventilation system for comfort, as well as surface lighting that will provide more even illumination than traditional lighting. The outside of the building is designed with a verdant green roof and central courtyard — both to invite employees outdoors and to create opportunities for mingling.

To make this development eco-friendly, the architects approached energy efficiency in three ways: first, conservation through efficient insulation; second, re-use by converting kinetic energy into electrical energy (although the proposal does not give specific details about this process); third, clean energy production through the use of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines.

RAU Architects is currently working to implement the Green Office 2015 concept in three different locations.

Speaking at the British Wind Energy Association conference, he said: “We’re already the world’s number one offshore wind power. With the right support, we can grow the industry even further, supporting tens of thousands of high value, green manufacturing jobs.”

The Government estimates that offshore wind, as well as supporting the UK target of 15% renewable energy by 2020, could generate up to 70,000 new jobs and annual revenues of £8 billion.

Any new wind farms should also find it easier to connect to the national grid with the start of the new £15 billion licensing regime. The new Ofgem-administered competitive tender process could save generators around £1 billion, says the Government.

“The Crown Estate is delighted that 25 GW has been confirmed and also agreement on the ‘Go-Active’ date has been reached for the offshore transmission regime,” said Rob Hasting, director of the Marine Estate at the Crown Estate. “These are significant milestones.”

The latest round of leasing for offshore wind farms will take the total capacity to 33 GW by 2020 – a quarter of the country’s electricity demand.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth welcomed the move but is calling on the Government to secure funding for further wind expansion and develop a new supergrid.

“At last the Government is starting to recognise the enormous potential of the UK’s offshore wind power and its crucial role in slashing emissions and securing a national energy system based on clean, safe, renewable energy,” commented campaigner Nick Rau.

Lord Hunt also announced at the conference that the UK would be joining the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which it had previously refused to do in case it undermined the efforts of the International Energy Agency (IEA). However, the Government has changed tack and says it will be signing the official agreement as soon as possible.

For further information:
www.decc.gov.uk/
www.foe.co.uk/
www.irena.org/
www.iea.org/

The clean energy sector has certainly been on a tear in recent years, and there will be a lot more money flowing in to meet government-backed demand.

Here's the "but":

The recession has walloped the clean energy sector like every other, and no one is going on a hiring spree right now. Companies have shelved plans for wind farms, solar parks and biofuels plants. Some have laid off workers. Others have been forced to seek bankruptcy protection.

Still, this is a growth field, and most agree business will pick up later this year or in 2010.

Renewable energy provides a small fraction of electricity used today but the wind and solar sectors are among the fastest growing in the United States.

Between 1998 and 2007, renewable energy employment grew by about 9.1 percent, according to a recent study by The Pew Charitable Trusts that was based on an extensive jobs database. That still totals only about 770,000 jobs, or about one half of 1 percent of all jobs in the United States, according to the study. And the period under study ended before the recession struck, so it remains unclear how well the new energy sector has fared since then.

Yet there are early signs that, in addition to government funding, venture capital continues to pour into renewable energy.

Here are some questions and answers about the industry, including what kind of jobs are available.

Q: What kinds of renewable energy jobs are there?

A: Just about any job found in a traditional industry can apply to renewables. But a few fields stand out.

Solar and wind turbine manufacturing plants will need assembly line workers. Mechanics, electricians and maintenance workers will be needed for wind farms, solar parks and biofuels plants. And many types of science and engineering positions will be central to the growth of the industry.

Q: How is the federal money being allocated?

The package includes about $21 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy manufacturers, which has been a key source of funding to help them lure additional investments.

About $11 billion is being earmarked for improving the nation's overcrowded, aging electricity system.

Other allocations include: $6 billion, energy efficiency projects; $5 billion, weatherization program for low-income housing; $2 billion, advanced battery technology; $500 million, job training; $300 million, fuel-efficient vehicles for federal government use.

Q: What particular parts of the renewable energy sector are hiring?

A: About 65 percent of the jobs today are with companies that recycle waste, cut greenhouse gas pollution and handle water conservation, according to the Pew study released this month.

There also has been job growth this year at major utilities that are quickly adding a big solar component to the business, said Neal Lurie of the American Solar Energy Society.

Q: What kind of experience is needed?

A: Many types of jobs require little or no additional training and transition smoothly to the green industry — accountants, stock clerks, security guards or electricians are all represented in the field.

Community colleges are offering training classes for more specialized jobs, such as solar panel installation, wind turbine repair and biofuels processing.

An electrician, for example, can spend a couple of weeks in training and then begin installing solar panels. A plumber can be trained in a few weeks to install solar thermal water heaters, said Roger Bezdek, president of consultancy Management Information Services Inc.

Q: What is the salary range?

A: A study released this year by Management Information Services and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics detailed some median annual salaries:

Insulation worker, $30,800; recycling worker, $26,400; energy audit specialist, $40,300; environmental engineer, $76,000; environmental engineer technician, $42,800; microbiologist, $64,600; physicist, $93,300.

Q: What's the best way to break into the field?

A: Do a little research to figure out where your interests lie, think about your work experience, and consider what sector is growing in your region, or in a place where you'd be willing to relocate. Volunteer at nonprofit organizations or tour businesses to see the technology and how it works.

There are a number of Web sites that list renewable energy jobs and job hunting tips, such as the American Solar Energy Society, Renewable Energy Jobs.Net.

Q: Do I have to move to find a green job?

A: Maybe. There are states with a stronger green energy base and, historically, more green jobs per capita.

Oregon is tops for green, with more than 1 percent of the state's total job base in the clean energy sector, according to Pew researchers. Once again, though, the recession complicates matters: In Oregon, 33 of the state's 36 counties had unemployment rates of at least 10 percent last month, the state reported Monday.

There are, however, some states to keep an eye on when the economy does rebound.

Maine is a close runner-up to Oregon for green jobs per capita; Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Idaho and California also have a higher-than-average number of jobs in the field. Colorado is big on wind, and Arizona, not surprisingly, attracts solar types. But so does New Jersey — that state is pursuing solar energy aggressively, and utilities there are plowing millions into new sun-powered projects.

• American Solar Energy Society: http://www.ases.org/
• Renewable Energy Jobs.Net: http://www.renewableenergyjobs.net
  

All told, if wind turbines miles above the planet were tethered to 10 percent of the world's land, there is enough energy in these jet stream winds to meet world demand 100 times over, researchers said.

Jet streams are meandering belts of fast winds at altitudes between 20,000 and 50,000 feet. They shift seasonally, but are otherwise persistent features in the atmosphere. Jet stream winds are generally steadier and 10 times faster than wind near the ground, making them a potentially vast and dependable source of energy.

But how to capture the wind so high?

Kites and tethers

A number of technological schemes have been proposed to harvest energy from these high-altitude winds, including tethered, kite-like wind turbines lofted miles high. Up to 40 megawatts of electricity could be generated by current designs and transmitted to the ground via tether.

Using 28 years of weather data, the researchers developed the first-ever global survey of high-altitude wind energy.

"We found the highest wind power densities over Japan and eastern China, the eastern coast of the United States, southern Australia, and north eastern Africa," said researcher Cristina Archer, an atmospheric scientist at California State University in Chico.

These specific areas generate roughly 10 kilowatts per square meter or more. "This is unthinkable near the ground, where even the best locations have usually less than one kilowatt per square meter," Archer added.

The analysis also looked at some of the world's largest cities: Tokyo, New York, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Mexico City. New York proved a prime location, as did the East Asian cities.

"For cities that are affected by polar jet streams such as Tokyo, Seoul and New York, the high-altitude resource is phenomenal," Archer said. "New York, which has the highest average high-altitude wind power density of any U.S. city, has an average wind power density of up to 16 kilowatts per square meter."

Tokyo and Seoul also have high wind power density, as they are both affected by the East Asian jet stream. Since Mexico City and Sao Paulo are located at tropical latitudes, they are rarely affected by the polar jet streams and only occasionally by the weaker sub-tropical jets. As a result they see lower wind power densities than the other three cities.

Issues remain

Another issue is whether implementing such devices on a wide scale could alter general air circulation patterns and thus impact local and global climate. Their simulations hint that if carried to unlikely extremes, blanketing the entire planet with such devices would cool the Earth's surface, reduce precipitation and boost sea ice levels. However, if deployed at levels comparable to total global electricity demand, there seemed to be no detectable effect on the climate even after 70 years.

Also, fluctuating wind strength still presents a challenge when it comes to exploiting this energy source on a large scale, just as it does on the ground.

"While there is enough power in these high altitude winds to power all of modern civilization, at any specific location there are still times when the winds do not blow," Caldeira said. Even over the best areas, the wind can be expected to fail about 5 percent of the time.

"This means that you either need back-up power, massive amounts of energy storage, or a continental or even global scale electricity grid to assure power availability," he added. "So, while high-altitude wind may ultimately prove to be a major energy source, it requires substantial infrastructure."

The report, which is now open for industry consultation, says new network technology could play a strong role in managing renewable energy variability instead of back-up generation alone.

“This most comprehensive view yet of how Britain could balance electricity supply and demand in the future moves the debate firmly beyond the simplistic view that we just need more back-up generation,” says Chris Bennett of National Grid.

Smart meters and grid would allow electricity demand to be actively managed – for example by automatically shifting demand to off-peak times. Smart grid technology could allow fridges and freezers in homes and businesses to turn on and off throughout the day to save energy.

Electric vehicles could also be used as a storage option or another block of demand that can be moved to off-peak times.

The report also cites other new technologies such as batteries and supercapacitors, which could make it much easier to store large quantities of electricity, and even large flywheels or compressed air.

Increasing interconnection with the rest of Europe could also have advantages, says the report, by allowing intermittency from wind power to be balanced over a much larger area.

Environmental and renewable energy groups have welcomed the report.

“It’s great that National Grid has produced a report that shows that variability need not be seen as a stumbling block in the journey towards a low carbon power sector,” says Keith Allott of WWF-UK.

“It knocks on the head the myth that large amounts of capacity of "hot" standby is the only way to deal with the variability of wind,” adds Maria McCaffery, chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association.

For further information:
www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Operating+in+2020
www.nationalgrid.com
www.wwf.org.uk/
www.bwea.com/

l The total tax credit you can claim for many energy-efficiency home improvements made during 2009 and 2010 has increased from $500 to $1,500. That's a cumulative total of $1,500, so you can break it up between the two years however you choose.

l You may now claim a tax credit for 30 percent of the purchase price for a variety of home improvements, up to the $1,500 limit. Credit for installation costs is also allowed in certain cases, such as for HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, biomass stoves, water heaters, solar panels, geothermal heat pumps, wind energy systems and fuel cells.

Tax credits for many energy-efficiency home improvements that were previously allowed in 2006 and 2007 but then disallowed in 2008 are once again eligible during 2009 and 2010. Some common covered expenses include:

l Home shell improvements designed to prevent heating and cooling leaks, including insulation, metal and asphalt roofs, exterior and storm windows, doors (including patio and sliding glass), skylights and weather stripping.

l HVAC systems, including central air conditioning, air-source and geothermal heat pumps, and natural gas, propane and oil furnaces.

l Gas, oil, propane, solar and electric heat pump water heaters.

l Biomass (plant matter) stoves.

l Other renewable energy technology including small wind generators and photovoltaic systems.

l Hybrid, diesel, battery electric, alternative fuel, fuel cell and plug-in electric cars.

Note that there are specific requirements and restrictions for each of these products, so be sure to do your research before purchasing them. For example, with vehicles, there are only a finite number of credits available per manufacturer, so verify with the dealer.

A good resource for rules is the government's Energy Star Web site, which has detailed information on the various tax credits available www.energystar.gov/taxcredits.

A few additional tips:

l Experts agree that before making major investments like HVAC systems or solar panels, you should first improve your home's insulation. Proper insulation can reduce your heating and cooling bills by 20 percent or more.

- Save all receipts and ask contractors to separate labor and materials costs in case you are ever audited. Also keep copies of manufacturer certification statements for your records.

l Even though they aren't covered under the federal tax credit program, many other Energy Star appliances like refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers may qualify for certain state and local rebate programs. These energy-efficient appliances consume up to 50 percent less electricity and water than standard models. Ask for details where you buy the appliance.

Feel good about the impact you can have on the environment - and on your wallet - by taking advantage of these energy-efficiency tax credits.

Four of the world’s top five wind turbine companies - Vestas Wind Systems (Denmark), GE Energy (US), Gamesa (Spain), and Suzlon Energy (India) - were rejected early in the bidding process. Companies engaged in alternative energy production have been anxiously anticipating the implementation of China’s stimulus package. Investments in areas such as wind power are expected to be a high priority due to China’s efforts to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels - Beijing has said that wind-generated energy in the country will increase tenfold over the next decade.

But foreign companies are calling foul over their exclusion from the process. Despite going to great lengths to meet the country’s ‘localisation’ requirements - rules requiring that a minimum of 70 percent of a given manufacturer’s equipment be sourced and built in the country - foreign companies say they continue to be shut out of state wind energy projects.

Foreign companies also say that an initiative to eliminate sub-1 megawatt wind turbines from China is discriminatory to foreign firms as large capacity units are less common outside the country. But officials insist that this preference is based on local conditions, rather than an effort to buoy local manufacturers.

”The size of the turbine isn’t a strict government policy, but it is a market decision made by enterprises,” Shi Liyan, the head of renewable energies at the National Energy Administration, told Reuters. “It is about wind conditions and the use of land, and investors are willing to choose bigger turbines.”

Beijing counters that Chinese companies are similarly blocked from major investment deals around the world. This sentiment was bolstered last week when the multinational mining company Rio Tinto abandoned talks with Chinese metals giant Chinalco, in favour of a deal with Anglo-Australian miner BHP Billiton.

China’s wind power is not the only sector under scrutiny by foreign firms. These critics also charge that similar conditions were faced when US$2 billion in contracts were awarded to the rail sector and others have complained that the country’s use of tax rebates is a veiled form of protectionism.

China is not a party to the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement - the plurilateral agreement designed to prevent discrimination against foreign companies when awarding state contracts. However, Beijing does have observer status.

Governor Carcieri’s office said Thursday that he supports the Senate version of the bill, which calls for a slightly lower payment for National Grid for the renewable energy it buys.

The legislation is considered vital to giving the Ocean State the first offshore wind farm in the country and, supporters hope, making the state the nexus for wind energy-related jobs in the United States.

Carcieri vetoed a similar bill last year. But that was before he signed a deal with Deepwater Wind Rhode Island for the offshore project. National Grid and Deepwater officials met for two days to hammer out the versions approved Wednesday evening.

“The compromise legislation has protection for rate payers and addresses the other issues of competition,” said Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe.

Members of the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources and the Senate’s Environment and Agriculture Committee didn’t get to see the revised bills until just before the vote.

J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, was one senator who made it clear he was voting for the proposal to get it to Senate floor, but expected answers to some of his questions by then.

At Wednesday’s Senate hearing, there was no opposition to the proposal.

“It addresses the issue of the long-term contracts in a way that’s supported by environmentalists, developers and utilities,” said Jerry Elmer, staff attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, who said the environmental group is “here standing shoulder to shoulder with Grid, supporting the bill.”

“This is the legislation that creates the foundation for us to move forward,” said Jim Lanard, managing director of Deepwater Wind. “This will put us in the forefront of offshore wind.”

When he vetoed the renewable energy bill last year, Carcieri expressed three concerns.

One was that it gave National Grid a 3-percent profit from its long-term contracts with alternative energy suppliers. Currently, when National Grid buys power, it passes the cost to the consumer without a markup.

The governor thought 3 percent was too high. The Senate version brings that down to 2.75 percent. The House version has kept the 3 percent profit, the only difference between the two bills.

The 2.75 percent markup still prompted questions from the Senate committee, with members asking why there needed to be any markup at all.

National Grid’s Ronald Gerwatowski explained that banks regard such long-term contracts as a risk to the company and, as a result, they may charge higher interest rates. The extra profit is designed to compensate for those higher borrowing costs.

“Rhode Island is really going out on an aggressive program,” he said, adding that if all the renewable-energy proposals being weighed by National Grid were to come to fruition, it would make up 15 to 25 percent of the power consumed in the state.

“That is unheard of in any other part of the country,” said Gerwatowski. “This is [the risk] the rating agencies see, and this is how we get downgraded.”

Elmer stressed that the 2.5-percent fee “only kicks in when the ratepayer gets the benefits and the electrons are flowing.”

Another concern raised in last year’s veto message was that the legislation singled out solar energy by mandating that solar make up at least five megawatts of the renewable energy mix. Solar power is generally more expensive than wind.

The amended bill retains the requirement but drops the requirement to three megawatts.

Bill Fisher, spokesman for Allco Renewable Energy, said his company lobbied for a solar mandate because solar is easier to develop than wind. “The green jobs are going to come from solar first,” he said.

Allco is planning an eight-megawatt solar power facility at the former Picillo pig farm Superfund site and will seek a contract with National Grid in July 2010. It could potentially be the first utility-scale solar farm east of the Mississippi.

The governor’s third objection: last year’s bill would have allowed National Grid to fulfill the requirements of the law by buying all its renewable energy from out-of-state sources.

Carcieri wanted the energy to be produced in Rhode Island so the state would benefit from the jobs created by the new technology.

The amended bill contains no new language on that issue.

Supporters say the matter is addressed in a provision of both the new and amended bills saying that all projects “regardless of their location, [shall] provide other direct economic benefits to Rhode Island, such as job creation, increased property tax revenues or other similar revenues, deemed substantial” by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

That provision still allows National Grid to buy renewable energy generated outside the state.

Deepwater’s Lanard said the amended bill is designed to open up the process. “All the other renewable energy projects will have the opportunity to work with National Grid,” and that provision, although not in the best interest of his company, was important to the coalition drafting the new version.

In fact, Rhode Island may reap most of the jobs-related benefits anyway because Deepwater has a big head start in Rhode Island thanks to the deal it signed with the state earlier this year.

The company, as part of its Block Island Wind Farm project, plans to have five to eight turbines generating 20 megawatts in state waters sometime in 2011.

By 2013 or 2014, it wants to have 100 additional turbines producing 385 megawatts for the state. That’s a more complicated project because the turbines would be erected in federal waters, 15 miles or so from land.

That Rhode Island Sound Wind Farm is expected to create 800 jobs.

The biggest objections, for now, seem to be coming from the PUC, which would have to oversee all of this.

Commissioners Elia Germani and Mary Bray, in letters to the heads of both committees, questioned the 2.75 percent profit National Grid would get from the projects.

“We don’t believe any incentive is necessary,” Germani said in an interview Thursday.

In addition, the PUC is supposed to determine the economic benefits of renewable energy projects. That “is beyond the scope of the Commission’s expertise and traditional ratemaking principles,” Germani and Bray warned in their letters.

Lanard said the PUC will need to move quickly.

Because of the worldwide economic downturn, European turbine manufacturers are facing a lull in demand, he explained. “Some of the orders for 2011 turbines were moved to 2012,” creating an opportunity for Deepwater to pluck its units off the assembly line much sooner than it would normally be able to get them.

That would make Rhode Island’s offshore project the first in the nation and the hub of offshore wind-power development in the United States — if the state can move quickly.

The truly new element of the amended legislation calls for setting up a rate system that would allow Block Islanders to tap power from both the Deepwater project and National Grid, reaping big savings on their electric bills.

That’s because Deepwater’s Block Island wind farm proposal calls for laying a transmission cable between the island and the mainland.

When the wind is blowing, islanders would take advantage of the electricity coming from the turbines. When it isn’t, the juice will flow in the other direction, and they will be able to get electricity from the mainland instead of polluting diesel generators.

Island residents now pay about 39 cents per kilowatt hour, said David Milner, general manager of Block Island Power Company. That’s more than two and a half times the cost on the mainland.

In addition, the transmission cable will have fiber-optic lines, allowing high-speed Internet, phone and television signals between the island and the mainland.

A study, due to be published in August in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that average and peak winds may have been slowing across the midwest and eastern states since 1973.

The authors of the study note that their findings are preliminary and some of their data is ambiguous. But the study, based on measurements gathered from wind towers across the midwest raises the possibility of yet another new side effect from global warming: declining wind speeds.

"We have noted there have been some periods in the past ... where there was a pretty substantial decrease in wind speed for 12 consecutive months," Eugene Takle, the director of the climate science initiative at Iowa State University and one of the authors of the study, said. "We suspect that it's some large-scale influence that we don't yet understand."

Areas of the midwest have seen a 10% decline in average wind speed over the past decade. Some places – such as Minnesota – have seen a jump in the number of days where there was no wind at all.

Takle said climate modelling suggested a further 10% decline in wind levels could occur over the next four decades. "Generally we expect there will probably be a decline in wind speeds due to climate change."

The sharpest fall off in wind speeds recorded in the study occurred in the eastern United States including Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, northern Maine, western Montana and Virginia.

Other areas, like west Texas, which is the heart of America's wind power industry have been relatively unaffected, the study found.

The yet-to-be-published study was first reported by the Associated Press which also noted that the research was preliminary.

Takle noted that data could be skewed by changes in instruments for measuring wind, or reforestation, which could also slow wind speeds.

Other scientists have also raised doubts about the findings.

But if the findings are borne out, the dying winds could deliver a serious setback to plans to expand the use of the renewable energy.

The US is the world's largest producer of wind power, and investment in the sector had explosive growth before the economic downturn, hitting $17bn last year. Wind turbines are now a common sight on high rises across many American states.

But a 10% fall in peak winds could translate into a 27% reduction in energy, Takle said. "On moderately windy days when wind turbines are struggling to get as much as they can out of the wind available and they are not letting any extra power go through that could make a big difference."

Wind industry analysts downplayed the potential impact of a reduction in wind levels in some regions of the US. "I don't think that at this point you could definitively say there are going to be across the board decreases in wind," said Michael Goggin, an industry analyst for the American Wind Energy Association. "The abundance and diversity of wind resources in the United States is so great. We are called the Saudi Arabia of wind for a reason. There are enough different climate regimes that even if some are negatively affected – and at this point that is speculative – others could do better."

Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, told the Guardian the study had yet to establish a clear pattern of declining winds, and that it was too soon to be thinking of the effects on wind energy industry.

"It's still very preliminary. My feeling is that it is way too premature to be talking about the impact that this makes.

Source: The Guardian

In the Southeast, too, “offshore wind really represents a huge opportunity,” said Brandon Blevins, the wind program coordinator for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, whose recent report on renewables in the South includes offshore wind. The Carolinas and northern Georgia have especially strong winds, he said.

Offshore wind power is expensive, and the projects have to date made more economic sense in places like the Northeast where power prices are already high. The Northeast coast also has higher population densities, so there are more customers for the power. And there is the small matter of hurricanes.

On the more positive side, said Mr. Blevins, the outer continental shelf extends at least 30 miles off the Southern coasts — and the relatively shallow water would make it easier to install turbines. Off the coast, the winds blow strongly in the afternoons — a convenient time, because that is when Southerners crank up their air-conditioning.

The Southern Company, a large utility that is heavily reliant on coal, is currently applying for leases from the Minerals Management Service, a federal agency that oversees offshore wind power, to put up three towers that will collect weather data in the waters off Savannah, Ga., according to Jason Cuevas, a company spokesman. The Southern Company is also applying for a lease that would allow it to collect data on the wind along Florida’s panhandle east of Penascola, Mr. Cuevas said.

South Carolina’s energy office, along with the state-owned utility Santee Cooper and a local university, plans to put buoys off the state’s coast to measure the weather. The installation has been held up by choppy waves, but hopefully will go into the water in the next few weeks, said Laura Varn, a Santee Cooper spokeswoman.

And North Carolina is considering offshore wind near its Outer Banks.

Mr. Blevins said that federal energy and climate regulations would help drive development — particularly a potential national carbon emissions cap and renewable energy requirements.

As for costs, offshore wind is “going to be cost-competitive with the new nuclear generation,” he predicted.

Source: New York Times

"But ultimately it depends on demand. We manufacture thousands of units a year, whereas others, like the auto industry, are in the millions," he told a renewable energy conference.

Wind power developers at a Madrid conference on Monday said that turbine costs had to come down, especially when the future of subsidies was unclear.

"The price (of turbines) could clearly come down. At a time of excess demand, the price of the machine itself has gone up 20 percent," director for Spanish power company Endesa's renewable energy division Fernando Ferrando said on Monday.

Spain is the world's third-largest producer of wind energy, behind Germany and the United States, with about 17,000 megawatts of installed power, which provide some 11 percent of the country's electricity.

The current subsidy scheme for wind power is due to expire in 2012. Producers say a new law enacted last month did not specify whether new wind farms will receive aid after 2010, when total capacity is expected to reach government targets of 20,150 MW.

Producers say Spain will need 45,000 MW of wind power -- 5,000 MW off shore -- installed by 2020 to reach European Union targets for renewable sources to supply 20 percent of energy consumption.

Source: Reuters

Statoil says that the floating turbines will be connected to mainland power grids by cables stretched across the ocean floor.  The use of long, high-voltage cables places practical limits on just how far offshore the company can place its turbines

Shi Lishan, deputy director of renewable energy at the National Energy Administration, said in the article that wind power is “vital” because it is the cheapest form of renewable energy. About 80 percent of China’s power is produced from coal.

China Longyuan Electric Power Group, which accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s wind-power capacity, plans to boost capacity to 6,000 megawatts by next year and to 20,000 megawatts by 2020, according to the Bloomberg article. The renewable-energy unit of China Guodian Corp. was capable of generating 2,630 megawatts of electricity using wind turbines last year.

China is also working on a stimulus plan to develop renewable energy.

Spanish energy company Grupo Guascor announced it will build a $2.4-billion wind power park in southern Argentina, which will produce between 600 and 900 megawatts.

The Planning Ministry official cited in the article said the wind park should produce 300 megawatts by the end of 2010 and the rest will be operational by the end of 2011. The plant will be twice the size of the largest plant operating in Europe, according to the state news agency Telam.

It’s estimated that Argentina has about 29 MW of wind power capacity, equivalent to about 1 percent of the grid.

A report being released Monday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs concludes that the Midwestern economy can capitalize on its wind resource and expertise in areas such as vehicle technology and energy efficiency if the United States passes limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the region's heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants - a key source of carbon dioxide emissions - the report says: "The Midwest has too much at stake to remain inactive. Preserving the past is no longer an option. There is much the region can do to prepare for a carbon-constrained future and begin turning those challenges to its competitive advantage."

Another report last week from the conservation group Wisconsin Environment reached a similar conclusion, calling on Wisconsin to follow the lead of neighboring states and seek to get 25% of power from renewable sources by 2025.

In 2008, Wisconsin witnessed both the windfall of economic promise and blowback, as the growing wind industry experienced growing pains.

By many accounts it was a banner year for the state. Record development of wind power took place, with the opening of four large wind-power projects by companies including We Energies, Invenergy and Wisconsin Power & Light Co.

Eight times as much wind power is being generated today as there was a little more than a year ago. But electricity from the wind still accounts for only about 5% of the state's power supply.

Hurdles to growth have been many, including:

• Stalled projects. More than a dozen wind projects around the state have been slowed by local opposition, wind industry advocates say.

Wisconsin has faced more challenges from local opponents in part because the windy parts of the state - such as the Fox River Valley - are more densely populated than southwestern Minnesota and Iowa, where the Great Plains winds are sending a gust of investment in new wind projects. During a public hearing last month, homeowners upset about wind-power projects testified in Madison about problems caused by turbines.

Curt Kindschuh of Brownsville said people who have been impacted by noise and other problems living close to wind turbines "have lost their faith not only in local government, but our state government as well. There are many people that have been affected negatively by the improper siting of wind turbines in the area. The PSC dropped the ball by approving turbines 1,000 feet from people's homes."

But wind developers say local ordinances around the state are blocking hundreds of megawatts of projects from being built, sending investment to other states. Several wind companies based in Wisconsin are now working on projects exclusively out of state because of restrictive local ordinances that at times require setbacks of a mile or more from a wind turbine.

"That just outlaws windmills. That's what it does," said Rep. Jim Soletski (D-Green Bay), head of the state Assembly Energy and Utilities Committee.

The state won't come close to meeting its renewable energy targets if the current system isn't changed, Soletski said. He and state Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) are lead sponsors of a bill to set up uniform siting standards for all wind farms that would be built in the state.

"The last project that was approved by local government happened in March 2007. We've gone through more than two years without approval of a local project," said Michael Vickerman, executive director of the renewable-energy advocacy group Renew Wisconsin.

In response to concerns raised at last month's nine-hour public hearing, Soletski said several changes to the bill may be made before it is adopted.

• Transportation difficulties. Permitting hurdles with the state Department of Transportation have slowed the transport of oversize wind components across the state.

That contributed to a sharp drop in wind-power components being shipped to the Port of Milwaukee last year, said Betty Nowak, the port marketing director.

Nowak spent three days in Chicago at the American Wind Energy Association's conference trying to convince wind-turbine makers that the state was "open for business" again.

The permitting issues have been addressed, said Zach Brandon, executive assistant at the state Department of Commerce. In letters to the wind industry in recent months, state officials have outlined a series of changes designed to streamline the process for moving big components on state roads.

• Budget cuts. Even as the state is trying to restore its standing with wind developers, the state is cutting back on funding for renewable energy.

In Wisconsin Rapids, Energy Composites Inc. is looking to expand into a new factory to make wind-turbine blades. The company received a $1 million community development block grant loan via the Wisconsin Energy Independence Fund.

But applications for grants from that fund are now on hold, the department said, after the Joint Finance Committee shifted $14.85 million from the energy fund to the general fund as part of the state's budget deliberations.

The state hopes to tap federal stimulus funding to replenish the energy fund, Commerce Department spokesman Tony Hozeny said.

• Competition from other states. The state has lagged behind other states in marketing itself to the wind industry.

Wisconsin has been bypassed by international manufacturers of turbines and blades that have been opening factories in the United States in recent years. Major plants have opened in Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania.

State officials say they're working hard to try to change that perception and to address concerns raised by the wind power industry. Doyle attended the wind industry's annual conference in Chicago and spoke at a wind power supply-chain conference this year.

The Commerce Department is trying to build on a network of companies already in the business of providing components for the wind industry. The goal: to tap into Wisconsin's history of being a supply-chain state - whether for components used in farm machinery or automobiles - and re-tool it to make wind-power components.

The American Wind Energy Association estimates there are at least 8,000 components in a wind turbine. That creates a lot of room for suppliers to get into the act, given a desire by the industry to have fewer components imported.

Brandon, of the Commerce Department, said the state hopes to tailor a portion of the state energy grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act toward companies looking to expand or locate in the state to produce wind-power components.

The state, Brandon said, is seeking to move beyond addressing problems that the wind industry has raised to making Wisconsin a welcome home for component-makers looking to ramp up for growth in the wind sector that's expected across the upper Midwest.

Making up ground

The state may have started slow, but it's making up ground as it competes against other states for an industry that clearly has big growth prospects, Brandon said.

"We're making it up at the right time," he said. "We're going to make sure we're tailoring our incentive dollars to these industries. That allows us to brush off the concerns of the past."

But a lot needs to be done, renewable energy advocates say.

Said Vickerman, of Renew Wisconsin: "I don't see much likelihood of utilities or developers hanging around Wisconsin in a couple years, if we don't put our permitting house in order."

Moog executives have been drawn to the wind energy market because they see opportunities to use the company’s motion control technology on issues facing turbine makers.

Wind turbines have been getting bigger, now spanning as much as 240-feet in diameter and capable of generating 1.5 megawatts of electricity. That increasing size can create a challenge to control motion on those turbines, Moog executives have said. “Our strategy is to advance the design of the wind industry’s motion controls by creating new, high-performance solutions, ranging from pitch control to rotor monitoring,” said Steven Huckvale, the president of Moog’s industrial systems business.

LTi had $136 million in sales during the last 12 months. Moog expects LTi to contribute about $60 million in sales during the four months remaining in the company’s fiscal year, which ends in late September.

Moog in January paid $16 million to buy a 70 percent stake in Insensys Ltd., a British company that makes components used in wind turbines. That deal expanded the line of products that Moog makes for wind turbines, mainly equipment that stops and shuts down the turbines and also regulates their power output.

Insensys makes pitch control and rotor blade monitoring systems. Pitch control systems adjust the angle of the turbine’s blades to improve its efficiency and control its load. Monitoring systems can extend the turbine’s life and reduce maintenance costs.

Grajales said the project will take around three years to complete and will boost the percentage of power generated by windmills to 5% of Argentina's energy matrix.

The Planning Ministry official said the wind park will be producing 300MW by the end of 2010 and the rest will be operational by the end of 2011.

"Private Spanish funds will be responsible for 100% of the investment," the Ministry official said.

The power will be sold to local industry, Grajales said, adding that funding will come from local and international investors, including 30% from Guascor itself.

The project would entail a sudden and remarkable turnaround in the fortunes not just of the wind power industry in Argentina, but of the wider power sector, which has been beset by unfriendly pricing structures, excessive bureaucracy and a lack of access to credit.

Argentina has about 29MW of wind power capacity, equivalent to about 1% of the grid. Guascor could not be reached for comment.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez was expected to sign the authorization documents to purchase the land for the wind farm later Monday, according to Telam.

The plant will be built in the wind-swept Santa Cruz province, where the political career of the president and her husband, Nestor Kirchner, began.

Initial permits are being sought and construction could begin in 12 months time, Grajales said.

President Fernandez on Monday also authorized construction of a 500 kilowatt power line, without which, said Grajales, the wind farm couldn't be built.

Investment in alternative energy may exceed 2 trillion yuan by 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, said in 2007. Wind power is “vital” as it is the cheapest form of renewable energy, Shi said. About 80 percent of the country’s power is produced from coal.

“The on-grid price for wind power is about 0.5 to 0.6 yuan per kilowatt-hour compared with about 0.2 to 0.4 yuan per kilowatt-hour for coal,” Shi told reporters.

China Longyuan Electric Power Group, which accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s wind-power capacity, plans to boost capacity to 6,000 megawatts by next year and to 20,000 megawatts by 2020, Vice President Huang Qun told reporters.

Longyuan, the renewable-energy unit of China Guodian Corp., one of the country’s five state power producers, was capable of generating 2,630 megawatts of electricity using wind turbines last year, he said.

Huang was accompanying a delegation of media, industry and government representatives on a tour of the 100-megawatt Rudong wind farm operated by Longyuan.

Government Spending

The government has allocated 210 billion yuan for energy- saving and carbon-reduction projects under its 4 trillion-yuan economic stimulus package, the planning commission said in May.

China is separately drafting a long-term plan to develop renewable energy to replace coal and oil with cleaner-burning fuels. Details will be released “soon,” Han Wenke, head of energy research at the commission, said last month.

The stimulus plan will accelerate the upgrading of power grids, Shi said today. There will be no new preferential policies for wind power projects, he said.

The Asian nation became the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels in 2006, followed by the U.S., Russia, India and Japan, according to U.S. Department of Energy data on Bloomberg.

Private Investment

China Resources Power Holdings Co., the third-biggest Hong Kong-listed mainland electricity supplier by market value, said today it received government approval for two wind projects in Gansu and Guangdong provinces totaling 221 megawatts in capacity.

It will cost about 8,000 yuan to add 1 kilowatt of wind capacity in China, about 30 to 50 percent less expensive than in Europe, Shi said.

“It normally takes 10 years for local developers to see returns on their investments in wind farms,” Chen Tao, an adviser at China Energy Conservation Wind Power Investment Co., said by mobile phone from Beijing.

The world’s third-largest economy will increase its wind power capacity by fivefold to 100,000 megawatts by 2020 from at least 20,000 megawatts next year to help fight climate change, Zhang Guobao, director of the energy administration, said May 26.

About five megawatts is sufficient to power about 1,000 households in China on average, Hu Zhaoguang, vice president of the State Power Economic Research Institute, said by telephone from Beijing today.

China could pass Europe, Japan and the U.S. to become the world’s biggest renewable energy consumer by 2010, Washington- based researcher WorldWatch Institute said in November 2007.

Source: Bloomberg

If conditions such as renegotiating several existing contracts are met, GE will be joined in the project by Plutonic Power Corp. (PCC-T) a small Vancouver run-of-river hydro power developer. Plutonic and GE are working together on several run-of-river projects north of Vancouver. (A run-of-river system does not require a large reservoir to provide power.)

About $100-million has been sunk into the EarthFirst wind project. An earlier EarthFirst budget suggested it will cost another $250-million to complete.

GE has been looking at the EarthFirst project since late last year, after Calgary-based EarthFirst filed for creditor protection.

"We are seeking ourselves to grow in Canada, in the renewable energy category especially," said Andy Katell, a spokesman for GE Energy Financial Services.

GE and Plutonic would be 50-50 equity partners, while mostly funding the completion of the project with debt financing. There is a second phase of the project that has been submitted as a bid for a new call for green power from BC Hydro, in which GE-Plutonic have put in a massive bid for a $4-billion run-of-river project.

"Plutonic is very much a growth-orientated company," Donald McInnes, chief executive officer of the firm, told investors and analysts yesterday.

"We're always looking for other opportunities."

Plutonic shares jumped 19 per cent yesterday.

Investors were excited because the wind deal shows Plutonic's connection with GE is "very strong" and diversifies Plutonic's potential revenues, according to analyst Tania Maciver of Haywood Securities in Toronto.

B.C. is the only province in Canada without any installed wind power. The country has about 2,600 megawatts of wind capacity, enough to power 750,000 homes, about 1 per cent of Canada's electricity demand.

The first B.C. wind power project, backed by AltaGas Income Trust, is expected to be ready later this year.

GE also has a partnership with another Vancouver upstart, Finavera Renewables Inc., which has four projects totalling 295 megawatts proposed to BC Hydro.

Results of BC Hydro's call for green power are expected in the next month or two.

The GE move comes several months after Eddie O'Connor, an Irishman who is one of the world's successful wind entrepreneurs, joined forces with privately owned Alberta Wind Energy Corp. on an $850-million project in Alberta's southwest.

"AEP is advancing a less carbon-intensive energy future by increasing deployment of renewable resources where they are most viable, driving the development of extra-high voltage transmission to most efficiently deliver energy, and developing advanced clean-coal technologies, including carbon capture and storage," Michael Morris, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in a release.

AEP plans to invest billions in transmission infrastructure to move the new renewable energy from where it will be produced to where it would be consumed. The company wants the federal government to pass legislation to support construction of a national transmission system to help meet the country's renewable goals.

"Without significant extra-high-voltage transmission investment, our national renewable aspirations cannot be achieved," Morris said in the release.

The renewable RFP is part of AEP's goal to add 2,000 MW of new wind or other renewable energy by the end of 2011 as part of its strategy to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

AEP said the proposals must be interconnected to PJM or Southwest Power Pool grid and be operational no later than Dec. 31, 2011. AEP will conduct pre-bid webinars for potential bidders June 16 for PJM bidders and June 18 for SPP bidders.

AEP's wind energy portfolio currently is 1,783 MW, including 310 MW of wind generation owned and operated by AEP in Texas and 1,473 MW of wind energy acquired through long-term power purchase agreements.

AEP, of Columbus, Ohio, owns and operates nearly 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states.

The figures show that just 0.7 per cent of wind capacity in all 27 EU member states was installed here in 2007 – well short of what was needed to meet the target of 40 per cent for renewables by 2020.

“We need to start accelerating project delivery so we do not end up in a bottleneck as we approach 2020 and miss out on a significant employment opportunity for the Irish economy,” Dr Walsh said.

Noting that Ireland, along with Scotland, has the best wind resources in Europe, he said that with wind energy’s market share of only 1.4 per cent here we are not delivering on anything like our potential.

Given the comparative levels of wind resource, Ireland should be significantly outperforming continental Europe, where wind had an average 6.6 per cent market share (excluding newer EU states).

Dr Walsh said the lack of alternative natural energy resources in Ireland also meant that we were highly sensitive to imported energy prices and this should be an added impetus to expand wind.

At the current rate of installation, he said, it was likely that we would have to bring in companies from abroad to carry out work that Irish companies should have been able to do cheaper and sooner.

The IWEA intends to mark Global Wind Day on June 15th by outlining a road map that would set out a future for the industry and steady increases in activity per year over the next decade.

Seven wind farms will be open to the public on the day and Dr Walsh urged members of the public to visit these.

Further information on Global Wind Day is available on www.iwea.com

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times

"The ultimate goal is to feed information from sensors into an active control system that precisely adjusts components to optimize efficiency," said Purdue doctoral student Jonathan White, who is leading the research with Douglas Adams, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of Purdue's Center for Systems Integrity.

The system also could help improve wind turbine reliability by providing critical real-time information to the control system to prevent catastrophic wind turbine damage from high winds.

"Wind energy is playing an increasing role in providing electrical power," Adams said. "The United States is now the largest harvester of wind energy in the world. The question is, what can be done to wind turbines to make them more efficient, more cost effective and more reliable?"

The engineers embedded sensors called uniaxial and triaxial accelerometers inside a wind turbine blade as the blade was being built. The blade is now being tested on a research wind turbine at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service laboratory in Bushland, Texas. Personnel from Sandia and the USDA operate the research wind turbines at the Texas site.

Such sensors could be instrumental in future turbine blades that have "control surfaces" and simple flaps like those on an airplane's wings to change the aerodynamic characteristics of the blades for better control. Because these flaps would be changed in real time to respond to changing winds, constant sensor data would be critical.

Research findings show that using a trio of sensors and "estimator model" software developed by White accurately reveals how much force is being exerted on the blades. Purdue and Sandia have applied for a provisional patent on the technique.

"The aim is to operate the generator and the turbine in the most efficient way, but this is difficult because wind speeds fluctuate," Adams said. "You want to be able to control the generator or the pitch of the blades to optimize energy capture by reducing forces on the components in the wind turbine during excessively high winds and increase the loads during low winds. In addition to improving efficiency, this should help improve reliability. The wind turbine towers can be 200 feet tall or more, so it is very expensive to service and repair damaged components."

Sensor data in a smart system might be used to better control the turbine speed by automatically adjusting the blade pitch while also commanding the generator to take corrective steps.

"We envision smart systems being a potentially huge step forward for turbines," said Sandia's Rumsey. "There is still a lot of work to be done, but we believe the payoff will be great. Our goal is to provide the electric utility industry with a reliable and efficient product. We are laying the groundwork for the wind turbine of the future."

Sensor data also will be used to design more resilient blades.

The sensors are capable of measuring acceleration occurring in various directions, which is necessary to accurately characterize the blade's bending and twisting and small vibrations near the tip that eventually cause fatigue and possible failure.

The sensors also measure two types of acceleration. One type, the dynamic acceleration, results from gusting winds, while the other, called static acceleration, results from gravity and the steady background winds. It is essential to accurately measure both forms of acceleration to estimate forces exerted on the blades. The sensor data reveal precisely how much a blade bends and twists from winds.

The research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through Sandia National Laboratories.

Source: Sustainable Business

30 farm families will have the biggest shareholding in the new company -