Green energy reaches record level

7 July 2011 Last updated at 13:12 GMT By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News India saw a 25% increase in renewables spending, with investment reaching $3.8bn in 2010 Global investment in renewable energy sources grew by 32% during 2010 to reach a record level of US$211bn (?132bn), a UN study has reported.

The main growth drivers were backing for wind farms in China and rooftop solar panels in Europe, it said.

It also found that developing nations invested more in green power than rich nations for the first time last year.

The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011 report was prepared for the UN by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

"The continuing growth in this core segment of the green economy is not happening by chance," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

"The combination of government target-setting, policy support and stimulus funding is underpinning the renewable industry's rise and bringing the much needed transformation of our global energy system within reach."

In 2010, developing economies spent more on "financial new investment", pumping $72bn into renewable projects compared with the $70bn outlay by developed economies.

China topped the table of investors again, spending $48.9bn - up 28% from 2009. There were also sizeable increases in investment from other developing or emerging economies:

South and Central America: up 39% (from 2009 levels) to $13.1bnMiddle East and Africa: up 104% to $5bnIndia: up 25% to $3.8bn

However, the report stated, there was not growth in all sectors. There was a 22% decline in the investment in large-scale projects - such as windfarms - within Europe, where the funding fell to $35bn.

But there was a surge in small-scale projects, such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, especially within Germany, where investment in a "micro-solar boom" had increased by 132% to $34bn compared with 2009 figures.

As the renewable technologies continued to mature, the report added, the cost per megawatt (MW) continued to fall. It said that the cost of PV modules had fallen on a per-MW basis by 60% since 2008.

The authors forecasted: "Further improvements in the... cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years."

Mr Steiner said that there was a number of key gatherings coming up over the coming 12 months that would help maintain the momentum towards renewables.

He said: "The UN climate convention meeting in Durban, South Africa, later in the year, followed by the Rio+20 summit in Brazil in 2012, offer key opportunities to accelerate and scale-up this positive transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient green economy."

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Energy saving plan comes closer

2 June 2011 Last updated at 10:36 GMT The cost of the work will be added to electricity or gas bills The government has revealed more details of its Green Deal scheme to help people pay for home insulation and other energy saving measures.

The plan should be launched in the autumn of next year.

Under it, authorised companies will pay for the insulation work and homeowners will repay the money, plus interest, through additional charges on their energy bills.

The government hopes people will repay loans of up to ?10,000, over 25 years.

Climate change minister Greg Barker said: "The Green Deal is the government's flagship energy saving plan to transform the country's homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run.

"From next year, people will be able to access up to ?10,000 upfront to pay for energy efficiency work, repaying the costs through savings on energy bills."

Legal changes

The scheme still requires a lot of work before it is ready to start.

A few firms such as Marks & Spencer, B&Q, Tesco and British Gas have expressed an interest in marketing the scheme and providing the finance.

But the law will need to be changed so that energy firms will be obliged to collect the repayments from homeowners via their energy bills.

The law will also need to be altered so that anyone who buys after the work has been done, but before the bill has been fully paid, is obliged to take on the debt and repay it.

These legal changes are included in the current Energy Bill, which is going through parliament and should receive its Royal Assent this July.

It has also not yet been decided just how much interest will be added to the loans.

How will it work?

The firms who eventually market the Green Deal will employ assessors to estimate just how much a householder can save through various insulation or heating measures.

These may include loft insulation, condensing boilers, draught proofing, solar panels and double glazing.

Once the work is assessed and agreed, the installation work will be contracted out to accredited installers.

Then the homeowners will have to start paying.

A key feature is that homeowners must be able to save more on their energy bills than they pay back.

What is the attraction for the big firms that the government hopes will market the scheme?

"Companies will see it as a marketing opportunity to sell other things," said a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Anne Robinson, of the price comparison website Uswitch, said: "People who have the Green Deal will be paying a lot less for their energy after a year or two."

But Richard Lloyd, of the consumers' association Which?, warned against the dangers of shoddy workmanship.

"Our latest research into cavity wall insulation uncovered inadequate inspections and poor advice," he said.

"For this scheme to be a success, Green Deal assessors need to be held to the highest standards."

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Germany 'to set energy example'

30 May 2011 Last updated at 23:36 GMT Germany has relied on nuclear power for almost a quarter of its electricity German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said a decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 can make her country a trailblazer in renewable energy.

Ms Merkel said Germany would reap economic benefits from the move.

Germany is the biggest industrial power to renounce nuclear energy, in a policy reversal for the governing centre-right coalition.

Mrs Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.

The crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami in March, led to mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany.

The anti-nuclear drive boosted Germany's Green party, which took control of the Christian Democrat stronghold of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in late March.

Analysts say Mrs Merkel may be eyeing a future coalition with the Greens.

'Opportunities' Continue reading the main story Stephen Evans BBC News, Berlin

Nearly a quarter of German's electricity comes from nuclear power so the question becomes: How do you make up the short-fall?

The official commission which has studied the issue reckons that electricity use can be cut by 10% in the next decade through more efficient machinery and buildings.

The intention is also to increase the share of wind energy. This, though, would mean re-jigging the electricity distribution system because much of the extra wind power would come from farms on the North Sea to replace atomic power stations in the south.

Protest groups are already vocal in the beautiful, forested centre of the country which, they fear, will become a north-south "energie autobahn" of pylons and high-voltage cables.

Some independent analysts believe that coal power will benefit if the wind plans don't deliver what is needed.

And on either side of Germany is France, with its big nuclear industry, and Poland, which has announced an intention to build two nuclear power stations.

Mrs Merkel said that in its "fundamental" rethink of policy, Germany could set an example for other countries.

"We believe we as a country can be a trailblazer for a new age of renewable energy sources," the German chancellor was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

"We can be the first major industrialised country that achieves the transition to renewable energy with all the opportunities - for exports, development, technology, jobs - it carries with it."

She also said that electricity in the future should be "safer and at the same time reliable and affordable", linking the decision to step back from nuclear power to the crisis in Japan.

"We learned from Fukushima that we have to deal differently with risks," she said.

Under the German plan the country's seven oldest reactors - which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis - would never be used again.

An eighth plant - the Kruemmel facility in northern Germany, which was already offline and has been plagued by technical problems - would also be shut down for good.

Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022.

The previous German government - a coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens - decided to shut down Germany's nuclear power stations by 2021.

However, last September Ms Merkel's coalition scrapped those plans - announcing it would extend the life of the country's nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years.

The decision to extend was unpopular in Germany even before the radioactive leaks at the Fukushima plant.

Following Fukushima, Mrs Merkel promptly scrapped her extension plan, and announced a review.

Germany's nuclear industry has argued that an early shutdown would be hugely damaging to the country's industrial base.

Before March's moratorium on the older power plants, Germany relied on nuclear power for 23% of its energy.

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Welsh leader hails 'energy decade'

26 May 2011 Last updated at 16:37 GMT The Welsh Government wants more renewable electricity Wales has to move to a green economy as fast as possible, says First Minister Carwyn Jones.

The next 10 years must be "Wales's energy decade", he told a conference.

At the same event, Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan said politicians and businesses could not ride roughshod over local people's opinion.

They spoke two days after hundreds of campaigners descended on the Welsh assembly to protest against wind energy plans for mid Wales.

Mr Jones told a renewable energy conference in Cardiff that he had taken personal responsibility for energy policy within the Welsh government.

He said: "We see the next 10 years in Wales as our country's energy decade and we must exploit its full potential. It will be a decade when we press ahead with growth of the renewable and low carbon energy sector."

His administration wants to double the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2025 and to satisfy almost all Wales's energy needs from low-carbon sources by 2050.

"We've got to shift to a resource-efficient, green economy as fast as possible. That move is vital, both to play our part in the global fight against climate change and also to promote greener, sustainable jobs."

In a nod to this week's protest, the first minister also said it was essential people understood "what is happening and why it is happening".

Around 1,500 people objecting to controversial power and wind energy plans for mid Wales protested on the steps of the Senedd on Tuesday.

'Low-carbon economy'

Dozens of pylons, some measuring 154ft (47m), and a substation are earmarked to connect with about 10 wind farms.

The Welsh government has identified seven areas across mid and south Wales as potential sites for wind farms.

In mid Wales, it could mean a line of 50 metre (164ft) pylons carrying 400,000 volt electricity cables from north Powys to near Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Mrs Gillan said the UK government was determined to transform Britain permanently into a low-carbon economy, but the protest showed how controversial wind farms were.

Onshore wind power has a role to play, she said, but added: "That does not mean that politicians or developers can ride roughshod over local opinion.

"Rather, they should work with communities to ensure that proposals have local support and are sympathetic to the environment around them."

The Welsh government wants decisions over big renewable energy schemes between 50 and 100 megawatts devolved to Cardiff. But Mrs Gillan said the UK government had no plans to change the current systems.

"We need to ensure that the decisions we make are consistent across England and Wales," she said.

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New method 'confirms dark energy'

19 May 2011 Last updated at 21:27 GMT By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News One type of observation measured a pattern in the distribution of galaxies First results from a major astronomical survey using a cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of mysterious dark energy.

Dark energy makes up some 74% of the Universe and its existence would explain why the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate.

The finding was based on studies of more than 200,000 galaxies.

Scientists used two separate kinds of observation to provide an independent check on previous dark energy results.

Two papers by an international team of researchers have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.

One type of observation used by the astronomers involves measuring a pattern in how galaxies are distributed in space. This pattern is known by the term "baryon acoustic oscillations".

The second type of observation involves measuring how quickly clusters of galaxies have formed over time. Both of these techniques confirmed the existence of dark energy and the acceleration in the expansion of the Universe.

The concept of dark energy was first invoked in the late 1990s by studying the brightness of distant supernovas - exploding stars.

Einstein was right

To explain why the expansion of the Universe was speeding up, astronomers had to either rewrite Albert Einstein's theory of gravity or accept that the cosmos was filled with a novel type of energy.

"The action of dark energy is as if you threw a ball up in the air, and it kept speeding upward into the sky faster and faster," said co-author Dr Chris Blake of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

"The results tell us that dark energy is a cosmological constant, as Einstein proposed. If gravity were the culprit, then we wouldn't be seeing these constant effects of dark energy throughout time."

The Anglo-Australian telescope was used in the galaxy survey

The latest findings have come from a galaxy survey project called WiggleZ, which began in 2006 and finished this year. WiggleZ used data from Nasa's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) space telescope and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia.

The survey mapped the distribution of galaxies in an unprecedented volume of the Universe, looking eight billion years back in time - more than half the age of the Universe.

Cosmologist Bob Nicholl, who was not involved with the research, told BBC News: "This is a major step forward. These guys are serious, major scientists and we've been waiting for this result for some time.

The professor of astrophysics at Portsmouth University, UK, added: "It's re-confirmation of dark energy, it gives us another data point to fit our theories around and it shows us the way to the future. More astronomers are going to be doing this in years to come."

While dark energy makes up about 74% of the Universe, dark matter - which does not reflect or emit detectable light - accounts for 22%. Ordinary matter - gas, stars, planets and galaxies - makes up just 4% of the cosmos.

However, despite scientists being able to infer the existence of dark energy and dark matter, these phenomena still elude a full explanation.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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