Category: Renewable Energy
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Sunday, April 07, 2013
Queen Merkel Still Loves Green Power / Politics / Renewable Energy
SHE MIGHT NOT LOOK ECOLOGICAL
Angela Merkel has stayed faithful to alternate, renewable and energy-saving green themes and dreams since 2011, which is a long time in politics. One major reason (we know its paradoxical) is that Germany has been radically increasing its coal-burn, this winter, which itself is delaying large increases of power prices to consumers. Other reasons are also to be found there, in the power sector.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Green Energy Stocks 90% Price Collapse / Companies / Renewable Energy
TIME WAS
In late 2007 the RENIXX index of 30 leading clean energy stocks reached its peak: since then it has almost constantly fallen, and to early December 2012 has lost more than 90% against the peak.
Friday, November 30, 2012
How to Pick Renewable Energy Stocks in Changing Markets / Commodities / Renewable Energy
It's impossible to generalize when it comes to renewable energy investments. Therefore, investors must approach opportunities on a case-by-case—and state-by-state—basis. But Jacob Securities Senior Vice President of Research John McIlveen knows how to pick his plays in any market environment. In this interview with The Energy Report, John McIlveen names his best bets. As always, safety first.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Clean Energy Mercantilism And The Low Carb World / Commodities / Renewable Energy
CLIMATE CHANGE MOVES ON
Until late 2012 the climate change policy line of OECD leaderships was stuck in the rut of claiming that global warming from human CO2 emissions was a crisis, mitigating this needed urgent measures to "monetize carbon", and this financing would help fund the also-urgent energy transition to clean energy. The policy line was market liberal; the policy goals only focused energy, the environment and climate. The concept of "the sustainable economy" was left for conference speakers and academics to play around with. Using clean energy to bolster state revenues and attack the fiscal crisis at home, or change global trade relations and the economy worldwide, was off the menu.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Renewable Energy: The Global Clean Tech Bubble - Part 2 / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Those who advocate for a complete shift to renewables often state that it would be possible if only the political will to fund the transition were available. In fact, funding programmes have been introduced in many jurisdictions, often on a very large scale. Capital grants and long term Feed-In Tariff (FIT) contracts have been introduced in many European countries and in other regions. Feed-In Tariffs, which typically offer a twenty year guaranteed income stream in order to overcome the investment risk, have often been the economic tool of choice. Some of these have been very generous, and the subsidy regimes have driven large investments in renewables for many years. The costs have been in the hundreds of billions of dollars, with projections for many times that much in the future, both for generation capacity and for the necessary infrastructure to service it:
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Sunday, October 28, 2012
Renewable Energy: The Vision And A Dose Of Reality - Part 1 / Commodities / Renewable Energy
In recent years, there has been more and more talk of a transition to renewable energy on the grounds of climate change, and an increasing range of public policies designed to move in this direction. Not only do advocates envisage, and suggest to custodians of the public purse, a future of 100% renewable energy, but they suggest that this can be achieved very rapidly, in perhaps a decade or two, if sufficient political will can be summoned. See for instance this 2009 Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables:
A year ago former vice president Al Gore threw down a gauntlet: to repower America with 100 percent carbon-free electricity within 10 years. As the two of us started to evaluate the feasibility of such a change, we took on an even larger challenge: to determine how 100 percent of the world’s energy, for all purposes, could be supplied by wind, water and solar resources, by as early as 2030.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Don't Give Up Yet: US Solar Companies can Compete with China with a Bit of Innovation / Companies / Renewable Energy
The US solar industry is undergoing some serious growing pains, with bankruptcies and mergers a necessary part of that process; meanwhile, competition from Chinese solar panels has many believing that American solar simply cannot compete. Not so.Solar's track record is certainly not inspiring: The past couple of years have seen a number of high-profile bankruptcies, including Solyndra, Q-Cells, Evergreen Solar and Abound Solar. At the same time, while Chinese solar companies have managed to avoid bankruptcy, they are in trouble and are posting sharp losses, and debts are not government-owned as most might think. Perhaps the Chinese government will bail these heavily subsidized solar companies out, but not necessarily as such a move would further imbalance the solar market.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Cleantech Consolidates Before The Next Big Push / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Cleantech, green energy and sustainable development technology are coming of age, into a changing and difficult world. The conclusion by many analysts at this time is that only those businesses that target a comprehensive and diverse energy strategy, which really balances out the risks and rewards will create and maintain enough competitive advantage and industrial momentum to gain lasting success in the resource-constrained world of today. The rearview mirror image however looks good: 2011 was a record year for investment flows and government support to the very broadly defined "clean energy and sustainable development" space.
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Friday, May 18, 2012
The Five Best Solar Power Stocks / Companies / Renewable Energy
Solyndra famously imploded, the price of polysilicon dropped 60%, and a glut of natural gas has made it the "new" alternative energy source.
But make no mistake about it: alternative energy stocks are going to be long-term winners-especially for solar power investors.
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Beyond Zero Emissions: What's Wrong with Big Green Tech / Politics / Renewable Energy
Ilargi: The following is a guest post by friend of TAE (and our kind present host) John Isaacs-Young, who is active in Transition Sunshine Coast, a region located about halfway up the eastern coast of Australia. There's a lot more wrong with Big Green Tech - and the Beyond Zero Emissions movement - than the specific points John addresses here (and he knows that too), but that's a story for another day.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Germany Set to Invest $260 Billion in a Renewable Revolution / Companies / Renewable Energy
Dr. Kent Moors writes: The moment Germany announced its highly publicized decision to phase out nuclear energy in the wake of the Japanese triple disaster; observers began to ask one very important question.
Just what energy source would replace such a huge swath of power in Europe's dominant economy?
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Hydrokinetic Power is the Next Wave in Cheap Energy / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: In an era of cheap capital, emerging technology companies could provide investors the biggest bang for the buck we've seen in years.
The key is finding a market that already has billions of dollars in pent up demand - like cheap energy.
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Friday, February 17, 2012
Fears Coalition Government Reforms May Destroy the UK Solar Industry / Politics / Renewable Energy
James Burgess writes: Young industries such as the renewable energy sectors rely heavily on government funding and incentives to help them achieve a level of competition with the well-established industries out there.
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Sun Down On Green Energy / Politics / Renewable Energy
The message nailed high on the greasy pole of Great Causes, by small and failing politicians in the 2006-2010 period was that green energy transition is urgent because climate catastrophe is certain unless we cut CO2 emissions by huge amounts, fast. Behind the scenes and off the teleprompters, the real concern of oil at $130 a barrel (the Goldman Sachs nice price for 2012) also powerfully drove the elite stampede for cranking up green energy.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Making Green Energy Credible / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Can we make green energy credible ? Not so much a victim of its own succees, but victim of its own failure, green energy still hangs on and hangs in among the mix-and-mingle of dominant government and elite ideologies in most OECD countries, and several G20 and Emerging economies led by China and India. One reason for this is really basic: there are no other ideas on the subject of "After we run out of cheap oil, what do we do ?"
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Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Investment in African Renewable Energy Reaches $3.6 Billion in 2011 / Commodities / Renewable Energy
First, the bad news.
Although Africa has vast fossil and renewable energy sources, only twenty percent of its population has direct access to electricity and in some rural areas, four out of five people are completely without power. According to the UN, over 600 million Africans currently do not have access to electric power. A depressing 70 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's population is living without access to clean and safe energy for their basic needs such as cooking, lighting and heating, making energy poverty among the most urgent issues facing Africa. Worldwide, more than 1.4 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity, and 1 billion more only have intermittent access.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Solar Energy Breakthrough: Cheap Quantum Dot Solar Paint / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Researchers have reduced the preparation time of quantum dot solar cells to less than an hour by changing the form to a one-coat quantum dot solar paint.
How?
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Thursday, December 22, 2011
Germany's Mindbending Green Energy Plan / Politics / Renewable Energy
PROLIFERATING PLANS
Germany's plans to abandon nuclear power includes worries about nuclear proliferation, but the nuclear exit plan itself only appeared on the radar screen as the Japanese Fukushima reactor complex went down under tsunami storm surges. Until December 2010, Angela Merkel's coalition government was handing out 10-year life extensions for nuclear plant operators like anywhere else in the world of "cheap clean and safe" low carbon nuclear energy. Fukushima only added another strand to Germany's mindbending plans and programmes for achieving huge cuts in CO2 emissions, with the percentage cuts from a 1990 baseline programmed right through to 2075-2085, when Germany should have almost totally quit using fossil fuels - or will have found ways of totally capturing and sequestering carbon emissions from fossil energy.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
German Solar Dreams - So Long Or Goodbye ? / Politics / Renewable Energy
IS IT SO LONG - OR GOODBYE ?
Solon SE, in 1998, was Germany’s first listed solar photovoltaic producer. In Frankfurt trading on 15 December it stock price fell 46 percent to around 50 euro cents. The Berlin-based company had filed for insolvency after failing to reach an “arrangement” with banks and investors, its brief statement said. This was the first publicly traded German solar cell-making company to file for insolvency. Analysts noted the company had failed to cut costs fast enough and was unlikely to repay a 275-million-euro loan from Deutsche Bank and a group of seven German banks, due by 31 December.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
India Embraces Solar Power, Says Price Will Equal Thermal Power in Five Years / Commodities / Renewable Energy
Economic South Asian superpower India has firmly embraced solar power, advancing the target date by five years for selling solar-generated electricity at the same rate as electricity generated by fossil fuel plants, from 2022 to 2017.
According to government officials, the reason for moving the date forward is plummeting tariffs in the latest solar development projects, a trend that they believe is likely to continue.
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