Energy
March 13, 2011
The Tsunami Nuclear Energy Disaster which is unfolding in Japan highlights that Nuclear Energy can cause some very serious damage though the safety of the nuclear reactors are highly touted in the media by the Nuclear Energy Industry.These Nuclear Plants in Japan are quite old but so are most of the Nuclear Energy facilities in the West.Most of these Nuclear Plants are susceptible to serious natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.In case of a nuclear meltdown the radiation from the Nuclear Plants can not only cause more deaths and injuries from natural causes but also make the area around the Nuclear Plant uninhabitable for hundreds of years.India and China are on a major Nuclear Energy Building Spree even though their nuclear plants have faced minor accidents in recent years.With this Nuclear Disaster,the protests in the se countries are set to grow with NIMBY becoming the biggest hurdle.Already protests are being held in Jaitapur in Maharashtra over damage to the ecology,expect the Japan's nuclear reactor incident to basically kill this Areva-NPCIL plant.Nuclear plants in the US and Europe are already facing huge cost and time overruns.This new problem should cause those projects to also die off.
March 13, 2011
Tidal Waver Energy is still an immature technology with most of the plants built around the world being pilot/demonstration ones.However Tidal Wave Energy holds big potential though it is still a decade away from reaching large commercial scale just like Algae based Biofuel and other forms of Green Technology.Tidal Wave Energy essentially works by converting the energy generated by tidal waves into electricity energy.Tidal Generators are used to convert energy from tidal energy into a more useful form.Here are the following ways Tidal Generators are involved in producing Tidal Power.
March 13, 2011
The Pros of Wind Energy far outweighs the Cons of Wind Power leading to massive amounts of wind power capacity being installed in almost every part of the world.Wind Power already generates majority of the electricity in countries like Denmark and almost 1/5th in countries with proactive renewable energy policies such as Spain,Germany and Portugal.Wind Power has great potential in USA,China and India which are driving the growth of Wind Power in the world.South America particularly Brazil are also showing strong interests in building up wind farms in the country.The recent increase in the price of oil and the dangers of Nuclear Energy further emphasize the importance of Wind Power Energy.
March 10, 2011
India had set up around 500 MW of Biomass Capacity by 2007 and has increased it by almost 150 MW since then to reach around 1 GW capacity today.Most of Indias' Biomass Electricity is being generated in Andhra Pradesh,Maharashtra,Tamil Nadu,Karnataka and Rajasthan.A lot of new capacity is being built in Punjab and Chattisgarh as well.India with a total biomass capacity of around 1 GW is planning to increase it by 10 times to 10 GW by 2020 by setting up a number of 1-2 MW biomass plants around the country.Around 400-600 acres of land are required to support 1 Mw of Biomass Capacity and 200-300 acres using energy intensive crops.This is much more than what is required for even thin film solar energy which is around 10 acres.The large land requirements make Biomass Energy Scalding a difficult proposition,however it has a great use in niche applications where there is a large amount of crop and animal residue/waste
Biomass Energy is clearly seeing a massive investment of private capital by a number of Green Energy companies.A number of these companies are backed by Private Equity Players.Almost all Sugar Companies in the country co-generate biomass power at their sugar plants.The size of the segment is quite large and has not been listed here.In India 3 types of companies are focused on biomass electricity - Sugar Companies,Rice Companies and Green Energy Utilities.The first 2 categories will be successful as their cost of feedstock is essentially zero while the the success of the third kind will depend on the management and execution.
March 10, 2011
Solar Companies have proliferated in the last decade as the Solar Energy Industry has seen a 50% CAGR in the past 10 years exploding by almost […]
March 10, 2011
CPV companies have recently started winning some utility scale power plant projects in recent times with Amonix wining a deal to supply 30 MW for a project being built for Xcel Energy.Now speciality wafer French company Soitec subsidiary Concentrix has won a massive 150 MW solar plant order from Tenaska Solar Ventures to produce 150 MW which will be supplied to Californian utility San Diego Gas & Electric under a PPA signed earlier.Note California has a RPS to generate 33% of its electricity from Renewable Energy Sources.Soitec will also build a new factory in the San Diego region to manufacture its proprietary CPV modules with 200 MW capacity.Note this will be the largest CPV plant in the world when built by 2015 much bigger than any CPV plant on the drawing board right now.This also pushes Soitec ahead of the other US CPV companies like Amonix,Solfocus
March 9, 2011
The Costs of Biomass Energy Production fall in a very wide range because of the wide variety of feedstock it uses.The costs of biomass energy also depend on the distance of the feedstock from the biomass power plant.Great distances lead to the biomass plant being unfeasible.Also some forms of Biomass are more expensive than others.Urban Waste and Waste Wood are some of the cheapest forms of biomass available.Similarly,Biomass plants also can be built over a wide range of investments.Co-generation plants or CHP plants are the cheapest biomass plants while standalone biomass plants which can use a variety of feedstock are quite expensive in nature.Note unlike solar and wind power,the investments in power plants based on biomass are not fixed.Some of the technology like boilers and turbines for generating biomass energy are common industrial equipment.The costs of a biomass energy can also depend greatly on how the feedstock is procured,managed and used up by a biomass plant.A good manager of a biomass plant is very important to lower running costs of a biomass plant.
March 9, 2011
Biomass Power Plants are increasing rapidly as the costs of fossil fuels go up and the need for renewable energy is increasing.Biomass Power is attractive because of its clean character and supplies a large portion of the energy needs in rural communities.With advancements in gasifier technology and energy conversion,biomass power plants have become quite popular.Biomass Power Plants are increasing in scale from around 20-50 MW to more than 100 MW as the technology has advanced quite a bit.The only problem for these large plants is securing feedstock for these power plants and storing them.Biomass Energy has a number of advantages over conventional forms of energy and depending on the feedstock cost can be generated at prices on par with fossil fuels.Biomass Energy also leads to higher energy security as biomass is almost always secured locally.
March 9, 2011
Biomass Energy is highly under-appreciated as a renewable source of energy despite being the most important source of energy during most of human history.Till the 19th century biomass energy used to account for 70% of the world's energy consumption and still accounts for around 10% of the world consumption.In developing countries the share of biomass energy is still quite high at 30% and it is the major source for energy for rural and backward communities.Biomass primarily consists of
March 8, 2011
Solar Energy in Japan has a long future dating back to 1994 when the government introduced capital subsidies to boost solar energy installations on rooftops.Till 2004,Japan was the largest solar market in the world after which it was overtaken by Germany.After 2004,the growth in the solar industry tapered off as the government reduced the subsidies for solar panels to almost zero.The huge domestic market gave rise to Japanese companies like Sharp,Mitsubishi,Kyocera,Panasonic-Sanyo become top solar panel producers in the world.However the low cost Chinese solar module producers have pushed back most of the Japanese companies.Since the last year,the Japanese government has again started giving generous solar subsidies and feed in tariff to boost the renewable energy production in the country which remains far off targets.This has led Japan to become the top non-European market after USA and the growth seems set to continue in the future as well.Japan has relatively low installations costs and is much nearer to grid parity.Also lack of wind energy makes solar energy more attractive as a renewable energy choice.While large scale solar installations in Japan are almsot absent,there remain large numbers of rooftop solar installations.
March 8, 2011
The US is the world's largest electricity producer and consumer with a total electricity capacity of around 1 Terawatt.The share of Solar Energy in the US Electricity Production is negligible compared to around 19% for Nuclear Energy and around 2-3% for Wind Energy.However Solar Energy in the US is set to grow at high double digits over the next 2 decades as the Costs of Solar Energy Decline with prices of other Energy Forms set to rise.In some states like Hawaii and California,solar energy prices are already at grid parity with retail electricity prices.Some states like New Jersey,Colorado,Arizona have seen sharp increases in solar energy adoption over the last 2-3 years boosted by state specific government policies and subsidies.With the US Federal 30% Cash Grant on System Costs and falling systems prices for solar systems,the growth in inevitable.The US Solar Market has seen the rise of a number of innovative and fast growing system integration and installers.Some companies have come up with innovative financial solutions to solve the high initial investment hurdles in solar systems through leasing and financing plans.Here are a list of Top US Installers/System Integrators.Note the list will keep expanding in the coming years as the size of the US Solar Energy Market Grows.
March 7, 2011
CLP India which is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Power Company CLP is one of the largest private power generation companies in India The company is the biggest wind farm operator in India with around 450 MW of capacity which it plans to raise by another 50% to around 640 MW.Two New Wind Farms will be built in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradhesh.The company will use i WTG supplier Enercon with whom it has long relationship.Note India has seen a sharp jump in Wind Energy growth in 2010 due to state and federal subsidies.With Wind Power forming almost 70% of India's current Renewable Energy Capacity,around 1.5-2 GW of new Wind Capacity will be built each year.CLP plans to add around 200-300 MW every year to keep up its pole position.
March 7, 2011
Coal Demand in India is surging as the power companies set up thermal power plants at an astounding rate to triple the power capacity over the next decade.Soaring Coal Prices have already made the Global Electricity Prices shoot up and its probably going to increase more in the coming decade.China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal accounting almost for the 50% of the world's output at 3 Billion Tons.India is far behind at 400 million tons but will fast catch up given the prodigious rate of power plant building that is happening.The Environment is probably going for a toss as India has allowed "No-Go" Forested Areas to be mined.This plus China and India are importing more and more coal from Australia,South Africa and the USA.The recent looking in Australia saw coal prices shoot up alarmingly.Coal India the world's largest coal producing company recently increased the coal price from its shockingly low price leading cement makers and utilities to raise prices more than 5-10%.While its strange for a green blog to recommend coal stocks,the opportunity does exist over the next 10 years till renewable energy comes to grid parity and policymakers don't come to their senses.Here is a list of coal stocks/companies in India .Note there are not many major private coal companies as in the early 1970s, all privately owned coal producing companies were nationalized under the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act.
March 7, 2011
Siemens derives almost 30-35% of its annual 20 Billion Euros in revenues from its Environmental Portfolio.The company is looking to spin out its LED Lighting OSRAM business in an IPO later this year.Siemens has a market capitalization of around $116 billion so doing a simplistic analysis the market cap of its Green Business would be around $35 billion dwarfing the market cap of First Solar or Vestas.
March 6, 2011
India has around 300,000 Telecom Towers around the country , a large portion of which is not connected to the electricity grid.Another large portion does not have access to reliable electricity implying they have to install backup power systems in order to run without interruptions.Diesel Generators have been the choice of telecom operators despite their high carbon imprint.This is because of the ease of buying and installing diesel generators as well as the lower fuel costs as the government in India heavily subsidizes diesel.Note India's Fossil Fuel Subsidies have led to hundreds of distortions in the economy.Corruption,Pilfering,Adulteration is carried out on a large scale due to government subsidies.In fact a senior government official was burnt alive by the Kerosene Mafia a direct outcome of this subsidy policy.But that is a separate issue.
March 6, 2011
Blackrock the Giant Asset Manger with $3.6 Trillions (yet it is Trillions) has decided to join hands with Irish Company NTR to form a new JV.The purpose of this JV will be to invest directly into cleantech assets and infrastructure.The JV will be a part of the Alternative Energy division of Blackrock which already has $110 billion in cleantech funds.Note NTR is an Irish firm with interest in waste management,ethanol,biomass energy and solar thermal energy.It recently ran into major problems as its subsidiary Tessera Energy faced major delays in implementing 2 Solar Thermal Plants in USA (Imperial Valley and Calico) despite getting US Govt approvals.Tessera problems had a dire effect on the parent company financials resulting in the selling of these 2 solar thermal projects.
March 6, 2011
Rooftop Solar Energy in Australia sees a Boom leading to Subsidy Cut Pressure in Spain,Czech Deja Vu
Other states are looking to do so as well.Like other Solar Subsidy Programs elsewhere in Czech,Germany,Spain,Australia too has seen solar energy costs fall much faster than subsidies.This has led to a boom in solar installations as the returns become very high.These costs are ultimately passed on the customer electricity bills drawing howls from the states.Large Wind Energy Producers like Origin Energy have also seen the prices of RECs decrease so that is not feasible to build new wind farm projects.On top of all this confusion,the Australian government can't make up its mind on a Carbon Tax which will help it to meet the 2020 20% Green Energy Target.
March 6, 2011
India has been trying to build tidal power plants in order to take advantage of around 8 GW of potential tidal wave power capacity potential in India.Note Gujarat has been at the forefront of these efforts with most of the tidal power capacity Gulf of Cambay and Gulf of Kutch.While there have been reports of the go-ahead for these tidal energy plants,nothing concrete has come out of it .Note Tidal Energy is in a very immature stage compared to other forms of Renewable Energy like Solar,Wind and Biomass Energy.Tidal Energy like Wave Energy is still in the demo stage even in developed countries of the West where technology innovation is much higher.
March 6, 2011
A Clean Technology REIT is about to be launched which is going to invest in real estate which generates clean energy.The strategy is simple to invest in properties which have green energy power plants.Note Clean Tech Investing has yielded terrible results for public investors in the last couple of years.The failure of Copenhagen,Cancun Climate Meets and the Lehman crisis has led to a bloodbath for Green Investors.Don't know how successful this strategy will be for I don't know how much alpha a Clean Tech REIT can generate over a normal REIT.However the performance of DLR has been quite awesome over the last few years.
March 6, 2011
There exists a reasonable number of ETFs in the US Stock Market which are dedicated to Clean Technology.However the performance of these ETFs has been quite […]
March 5, 2011
Solar Farms or Giant Solar Power Projects consisting of thousand of solar panels installed on acres of land are increasing rapidly in the USA.While the European governments are discouraging the use of large installations of solar panels,the US is going the opposite way in installing these power plants.The US government recently approved of a number of Solar Thermal Power Projects worth several gigawatt recently.
March 5, 2011
France has had a rocky relationship with solar energy.Unlike other European countries France gets a huge amount of electricity from renewable sources namely nuclear energy.Its electricity prices are one of the lowest and it even exports electricity to neighbors.So the driver for increasing solar electricity is quite low in France compared to others like Spain and Italy.However France has seen a massive boom in solar installations in 2010 making it the 7th largest market in the world.France installed over 720 MW of solar in 2010 and faces a massive backlog of applications.The government got overwhelmed and called a sudden stop to all applications.The French government stupidly blamed Chinese solar panels for the solar deluge when it was its faulty solar Feed in Tariff Policy which was too generous.
March 5, 2011
Note China's Solar Market is a highly competitive and protected one with outside solar companies hardly having any presence similar to Japan's market.First Solar which signed a massive gigawatt contract to build a plant in Ordos has seen only delays as Chinese solar manufacturers opposed the plant.First Solar is still trying to build the plant signing a new JV with one of China's 5 big utilities.eSolar another CSP company got a contract to build a plant with China but till date construction does not seem to have begun there also.The Chinese government seems mostly interested in high-tech technology (First Solar,eSolar) rather than run of the mill players.Even these technology companies have failed to make much headway.Remains to be seen whether SkyFuel Succeeds.
March 5, 2011
I have been consistently writing that Solar PV has leapfrogged far ahead of Solar Thermal Technology in the last couple of years.The entry of the low cost Chinese with huge scale and the fall in polysilicon costs have suddenly made the future survival of Solar Thermal Technology suspect.The Solar Thermal Advantages of energy storage is also overrated because it is cheaper to add energy storage to Solar PV as the following article shows.Note Solar PV has many other advantages of Solar Thermal anyway.The Rapidly Declining Costs of Solar PV in fact pose a massive threat to all other forms of Solar Technology including Thin Film which has recently seen a number of players gone bankrupt.The recent conversion of Solar Thermal Plants by Tessera,the losses being made by Solar Millenium due to delays are further evidence of the decline and possible obsolescence of Solar Thermal Technology.
March 5, 2011
Indian Privately Owned Power Utilities are furiously expanding their capacities as India looks to treble its Power Generation Capacity in the next decade.The major power companies like Adani Power and Reliance Power are giving Tata Power a tough fight for the position of the biggest private Indian Utility.While these companies cannot hope to overtake state owned giant NTPC in this decade,they may do so in the next one.Note some of these companies are expected to grow almost 20 times in the next 10 years.Here are the main contenders
Note most of the power plants being built in India are coal ones with the power providers aggressively buying up coal mines in Indonesia,Australia and South Africa to increase fuel security.However in case of any global disruptions,India remains very vulnerable.However India's policymakers are sleeping on this issue.It makes more sense to concentrate on those sources whose fuel security is high such as solar and wind power.Coal also faces the prospect of high carbon taxation as global warming becomes acute.Environmental issues related to power plants has already resulted in some being halted as local citizens agitate against the thermal plant's negative effects on livelihoods and health.
March 4, 2011
The Indian Government’s launch of the ambitious Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission(JNNSM) was done with much fanfare with a target of reaching 20 GW of Solar Capacity by 2022 under 3 phases from the 81 MW currently.While the government had the best intentions and had laid down a well defined 10 year plan with subsidy support for both Solar Thermal and Solar PV Technology,it has already run into problems.Due to high interest the government went in for bidding of projects which led to irrationally low bidding from unknown firms.This has put the entire exercise in question with the the biggest private utility saying JNNSM is a failure.Without extensions of deadlines it looks highly unlikely whether the 37 winners will actually put up the plants.
March 4, 2011
Solar Inverters are a crucial component of the overall solar system accounting for around 10% of the overall costs.Solar inverters connect the solar panels to the grid converting the DC to AC which is used by the grid.Solar inverters have become highly sophisticated with features like optimization and monitoring etc.The efficiency of solar inverters are a major factor in their purchase as well as the quality and reliability.Inverters comes in various sizes and can be as large as 1 MW for utility applications.Unlike Solar Panels,the Solar Inverter Market is much less crowded though competition is growing as the size of the market increases rapidly.The ~$2.1 billion market in 2009 with 7 GW of installations has increased by more than 130% to around $5 billion in 2010 as the solar panel demand globally increased to around 17 GW.Note Solar Inverter Companies have done much better as competition is much lower and the annual price declines in solar inverters has been much lower at around 10% compared to the 50% decline in solar panel in the last 2-3 years.Here is a list of the major solar power inverter companies
March 3, 2011
German Development Bank Kfw which is owned by the German government is planning to invest 800 million Euros in Indian Renewable Energy Sector.Note Kfw is one of the biggest funding institutions in Germany for renewable energy projects giving concessional interest rates.The Bank will use its extensive expertise in the alternative energy and energy efficiency areas to extend its business in India as well.Renewable Energy in India is expected to see a massive expansion in the next decade and will require massive amounts of debt and equity.Kfw alongwith other developmental institutions like ADB and World Bank have a big role to play.Note Debt is quite expensive in India and these institutions provide loans at a much cheaper rate making renewable energy projects viable.ADB has already formed a JV with NTPC and is looking to rescue JNNSM as well.IFC is funding numerous clean projects in India following its developmental mandate as well.