The event is in it’s 7th year, and is the largest gathering of cleantech companies, investors and energy users in the Southern Hemisphere.

With speakers from businesses such as Peony Capital, Generation Investment Management, Hunter Hall Investment Management, Siemens, AGL and Cleantech Ventures, the event will focus on capital allocation, capital attraction, strategies for maximising cleantech ROI and commercialising clean technology.

The Forum, which will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, will also showcase the latest in cleantech innovation.

So far, registered attendees are coming from Venture Capital Firms, Private Equity Firms, governments, law firms, investment banks, cleantech companies and cleantech solution providers.

In the lead up to the event, CleanTech TV’s Green Business Reporter Giles Parkinson has spoken to some of the event’s key speakers.

Mina Guli is the Executive Director of Peony Capital. The company is working with China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels.

In the interview with CleanTech TV, Mina discusses the difficulties of becoming more ecologically sustainable in the face of rapid urbanisation. Mina presents incredible statistics about China’s growth and change, and insists that Australian businesses are missing out on the huge opportunities that are coming out of the “greening of China’s economy”.

She tells viewers about her main messages at the upcoming Cleantech Forum, and says that ultimately, we need to put the “green back into the green and gold”.

Giles also spoke to Michael Walsh, the Head of Strategy and Development at Hunter Hall Investment Limited, who will also be presenting at the conference.

Michael talks about Australia’s position in the cleantech sector, and our renewable energy potential.

Giles and Michael delve into investment and pricing carbon. At the Forum, Michael will be speaking on the ‘Fund Management Panel’. His interview with CleanTech TV is a good introduction to his ideas and the possibilities associated with investing in the cleantech sector.

For more information on the Forum, visit their website.

Australian policy makers show no signs of tiring from their unflinching belief in centralised power stations.

The article, ‘The new pillars of power’, looks at alternatives to this belief.

Giles cites the recent announcement by the City of Sydney Council to generate its own power through mini-gas power plants. The plan is explored in detail in our recent blog, ‘Mini power plants: making a big difference’.

‘The new pillars of power’ then goes on to further explore Dr. David Mills’ research which suggests that the need for baseload power has expired. Dr. Mills presented his research at the Australian Solar Energy Society’s (AuSES) ‘Solar2010′ Conference in Canberra on the 1st of December.  Giles explains Dr. Mills’ research:

The study that Mills has completed with Weili Cheng and Phillippe Larochelle found that wind and solar could have covered – on an hour by hour basis – the entire electrical load for the US in 2006. No baseload required.

Mills gave further details on how this would work in his keynote address in Canberra on Wednesday night at the Australian Solar Energy Society’s conference, expanding on his idea of replacing the concept of baseload and peaking power with a new system based around flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms.

In Mills’ view, the task is to match higher-cost flexible technologies with lower-cost inflexible technologies, and in doing so he challenges the accepted view of energy sources by lumping  wind and solar PV in the same category as coal, gas and nuclear.

“The components in each of these two buckets – inflexible technologies and flexible technologies – must compete in price with each other, not with elements from the other bucket. They do different jobs,” he says.

‘The new pillars of power’ includes some of Dr. Mills’ diagrams to help explain his conclusion that “baseload is no longer a relevant prerequisite for a modern generating system.”

Giles Parkinson’s original exclusive pre-conference interview article with Dr. David Mills: ‘Is baseload power necessary?’

Read: ‘The new pillars of power’ for follow up coverage.

The new power plants will initially be powered by gas, but have the potential to utilise forms of biogas. The SMH article explains:

Sydney will become the first Australian city to start weaning itself off coal-fired electricity, with the business district and much of the inner city preparing to switch to small, gas-driven power plants in the next 20 years.

The City of Sydney master plan, to be published today by the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, will identify 15 “low carbon zones” based on trigeneration plants that create electricity and also generate heat and cold for airconditioning.

The switch could save up to $1.5 billion in state government spending on new infrastructure for bringing power from coal-fired plants, a report commissioned by the council said.

This innovative plan is part of the City of Sydney’s aim to make the city centre carbon neutral by 2050.

The full article can be read on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald. It is also available online here.

The plan is further explained in ‘People try to put him down, but he’s just talkin’ about trigeneration’, also published in The Sydney Morning Herald today. The article by Nicky Phillips, explains how the City of Sydney could utilise Sydney’s industrial past. Unlike our “primitive past”, however, this new plan would not sacrifice health and the environment for growth and development. Phillips writes:

Allan Jones is the man Sydney council has hired to turn its Sustainable Sydney plans, under which the city would produce 100 per cent of its energy locally within 20 years, into reality.

”Doing a Woking” is how people in the industry describe Jones’s task, a reference to the small city in Surrey, England, that he took off the grid to produce 98 per cent of its own electricity.

As in that town, Jones wants to install a series of trigeneration plants throughout Sydney, which would produce 360 megawatts of power combined that would not only be greener but also cheaper than electricity from coal-fired power stations.

Trigen’s main draw card is efficiency. Using generators slightly bigger than a car motor, a trigen plant can simultaneously produce power, heat and cooling from a single fuel source – thus the name.

The article goes on to describe the various ways this plan would save power:

Coal-fired power stations, which supply most of Sydney’s electricity, lose up to two-thirds of the energy that goes into making electricity as heat, he says. In trigen this heat is not wasted. Instead it is captured and used to warm buildings or sent through a device called an absorption chiller to form cold water that can be used in air-conditioning, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the city’s present energy consumption.

Unlike coal-fired power stations, which are located outside big cities to be close to cheap and plentiful coal sources, trigen plants are placed within the city, often in building basements. They can supply heat, cooling and power to a single dwelling or group of buildings, called precincts.

With the electricity having to travel a shorter distance from the source to the end user, energy usually lost through transmission wires is also conserved.

The full article can be found here.

So how are the media approaching and discussing this divisive issue? How does what’s happening at the AuSES conference fit into the debate?

US Solar Ambassador, Larry Kazmerski, spoke to Fran Kelly on ABC’s Radio National this morning. Kazmerski said that it is “the best of times and the worst of times” for the solar industry in terms of moving forward. He explained that even though people across the world, particularly in the United States, have started to accept, and indeed advocate for, solar energy – the recent economic crisis has slowed its potential progress. Kazmerski thinks that “the problem with solar has been an inconsistency of support and governments really wanting to bring these technologies on board”.

Yet, as politicians, academics and solar experts aim to rectify this at Solar2010, the nuclear debate is continuing. In an article published today in The Australian, Joe Kelly and Lauren Wilson look at how the Prime Minister is approaching the energy debate. ‘Julia Gillard plays down nuclear power push’ looks at how renewable sources compare to the nuclear alternative according to the PM:

The Prime Minister said today that she welcomed the debate on nuclear power, but warned that those arguing for its consideration in Australia’s future energy mix faced a “tough argument”.

“The Labor Party has got a very clear policy here and it’s a really long standing policy of opposition to nuclear power,” she told 3AW…

“I’d have to say anybody who’s arguing to overturn our long standing policy is setting themselves up for a pretty tough argument. But I’m not going to be there saying to people don’t come and put your view.”

Kelly and Wilson also quote Senator Christine Milne, the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens. Senator Milne said that “nuclear is too slow, too expensive and too dangerous”. Milne also believes that the Australian Labor Party is taking a significant step backwards in even considering nuclear power.

You can read the full article here.

Milne also spoke at the AuSES Solar2010 Conference today. In her presentation this morning she said that she is ”frustrated that debate in Australia is always about what we can’t do”. She urged attendees to view solar as a “can do”.

The viability of nuclear power in Australia was also dismissed by Matthew Wright at the conference. He said that “nuclear is a very complicated way of boiling water”.

Furthermore, ‘Nuclear likely to be priciest option’ an article by Paddy Manning in the Sydney Morning Herald today looked at Dr. Mark Diesendorf’s research:

NUCLEAR energy will be more expensive than most forms of renewable energy by 2020, according to the University of NSW energy expert Mark Diesendorf.

A paper by Dr Diesendorf, to be delivered at a solar industry conference in Canberra today, finds the cheapest renewable energy sources – including landfill gas, onshore wind, conventional geothermal and hydro – are already cost-competitive with conventional nuclear energy power plants.

The papers and presentations at Solar2010, including Dr. Diesendorf’s, are helping to further the debates about Australia’s energy future. Manning’s article can be read in full here.

The issue is also discussed by Emma Rogers in ‘Labor right in fresh nuke push’ on ABC News online. Rogers further draws on Prime Minister Gillard to explore the debate:

“In this country, as we look at where we are today, nuclear power doesn’t stack up as an economically efficient source of power.”

For the full article, visit ABC News Online.

Australia, and indeed the world, are obviously still grappling with “what to do next” in terms of agreeing on an ongoing, sustainable energy source. Yet, in his presentation at Solar2010 this morning, The US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich said that “solar power is just about the most perfect energy solution you can get”.

Solar2010 is running until the 3rd of December.

Doctor David Mills will be presenting his research findings and new energy model tonight at the Conference Dinner at Australia’s Parliament House. Mills will argue that it is entirely possible for the US (and therefore Australia and China) to be run almost exclusively from solar and wind.

Check back here for more information as Solar2010 continues.

You can also keep up to date with the AuSES Solar2010 Conference by following the Australian Solar Energy Society on Twitter.

What else is out there? How do we replace fossil fuels? Nicholson, Biegler and Brook break down the alternatives:

We concluded that technology options for replacing fossil fuels, based on proven performance and reliable cost projections, are much more limited than is popularly thought. We identified only five proven low-emission technologies that met a set of objective fit-for-service criteria to supply baseload power. They were: pulverised fuel (PF) with carbon capture and storage (CCS); integrated (coal) gasification combined cycle (IGCC) with CCS; combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) with CCS; nuclear; and solar thermal with heat storage and gas turbines. IGCC is relatively new technology not yet in operation in Australia. CCS is still only in pilot stage anywhere in the world.

It might come as a surprise to some that wind, solar photovoltaic and engineered geothermal systems (EGS), also known as hot rocks, did not qualify to be fit-for-service for baseload. Wind and solar PV need either extensive gas backup or large-scale energy storage for baseload operation. The associated extra costs will depend on plant location and are difficult to assess accurately.

The article goes on to say that:

The only renewable technology that met our fit-for-service criteria was solar thermal with heat storage and gas backup for cloudy days… The solar industry is ever hopeful that costs will fall, but current costs are about twice other low-carbon alternatives so they have a long way to go. Future cost reductions for any technology are inherently uncertain and should not be relied on.

Emission reductions are not blowin’ in the wind concludes that the Australian government needs to rethink its stance on nuclear power. According to this collaborative study, Australia is out of step with the rest of the world and “all the arithmetic adds up to nuclear”. The article has sparked divided reader debate.

Here, it is worth revisiting Giles Parkinson’s interview with Dr. David Mills, Australia’s foremost expert in solar thermal technology. Is baseload power necessary?,  looks at Mills’ new model which aims to do away with baseload power completely.

In stark contrast to the nuclear conclusions drawn by Nicholson, Biegler and Brook, The Climate Spectator article looks at just how efficient and effective renewable energies can be:

Using hourly data for energy use of the entire United States economy in 2006, Mills will demonstrate how it could have been powered almost exclusively by wind and solar (with storage and the help of biofuels for aircraft and some biomass capacity for certain smelting operations).

Mills suggests that there is actually a surprisingly small difference in costs between baseload and renewables. One again differing from the arguments in The Australian, Mills argues that we need to stop focussing on baseload power:

“What we are suggesting is a new paradigm. The traditional paradigm of flatline baseload does not exist in this scenario, but you need to understand that the replacement for baseload power is not another baseload, it’s a system of flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms based around wind and solar and other sources.”

Both articles are worth reading as the debate on carbon costing and emissions reductions continues.

Dr David Mills will be the dinner speaker at the Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) Solar2010 Conference which starts in Canberra tomorrow.

For further insight, have a read of Jennifer Foreshew’s article System sheds light on renewable forecasts: energy which looks at making predictions for renewable energy schemes more accurate.

In the lead up to the conference, David spoke to Giles Parkinson from the Climate Spectator. Although he’s saving the main data for his presentation in Canberra at Solar 2010, David suggests we need a new paradigm when we think about energy sources and consumption:

Using hourly data for energy use of the entire United States economy in 2006, Mills will demonstrate how it could have been powered almost exclusively by wind and solar (with storage and the help of biofuels for aircraft and some biomass capacity for certain smelting operations).

The details of his findings, including capacity and costing estimations, will be released when he addresses the Australian Solar Energy Society’s annual conference in Canberra next week. But in an exclusive interview with Climate Spectator, Mills gave a broad outline of his conclusions and suggested there was a surprisingly small difference in costs.

David is trying to shift mainstream thinking from a latent “this should be done” to a more active and optimistic “this COULD be done”. The article, Is baseload power necessary? was only published on Climate Spectator on Wednesday. Yet it has attracted a load of reader comments. David and Giles have got people talking, debating and thinking – as well as linking to a number of interesting articles and websites.

Have a read of Climate Spectator article here.

Giles also interviewed David Mills for CTTV. Watch the thought provoking interview here.

David will be presenting his new model and preliminary research findings at the AuSES Solar 2010 Conference next week. It will run from 1 – 3 December in Canberra. Click here for more information and to register to attend.

To keep up to date with the Conference and wider solar energy issues, follow the Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) on Twitter.

John Grimes, CEO of Australian Solar Energy Socity (AuSES) says up to 2000 jobs are at risk. As quoted in the article entitled “AuSES rallies against NSW solar feed in tariff cut” published on Eco Generation today:

“This decision by the NSW government has underestimated the impact on the solar industry. They have swung the tax too hard and jobs will be slashed and businesses ruined” said AuSES CEO John Grimes.

“Businesses are reporting that they have lost 80 to 90 per cent of their work, and people have already been laid off” Mr Grimes continued.

AuSES proposes that the New South Wales Government finds a middle ground regarding the solar rooftop feed-in tariff, and have proposed that 45 cents per kilowatt hour would be a reasonable remuneration sum.

Read the full article on EcoGen website

NSW now has the lowest feed-in tarrif across the whole of Australia. Giles Parkinson of Climate Spectator has been reporting on the impact of this drastic change in solar policy. In his opinion article (pub on the 29th Oct) entitled “What really killed NSW solar?” Giles looked into the report prepared for the NSW Government during their review of the Solar Bonus Scheme:

It seems that the massive take-up of rooftop solar under the excessively generous NSW feed-in tariff was not the middle class indulgence that it was thought to be.

The review into the Solar Bonus Scheme prepared for the Keneally government by the Department of Industry and Investment dismisses the perception that solar panels were a privilege reserved for affluent homeowners in Sydney’s northern and eastern suburbs and the inner west.

It turns out that the greatest demand in Sydney for solar PV under the scheme came from the western and south-western “Aussie battler” suburbs of Prospect, Seven Hills, Mt Druitt and Liverpool.

Also worth noting, the report warned of the potentially harmful impact of a radical cut to the feed-in tariff on the local residential solar industry:

The report also reveals that the Keneally government appears to have ignored the report’s advice that a low cap on rooftop solar would cause the state’s solar industry to come to a shuddering halt.

The report recommended a cap to keep a lid on costs, but warned that placing too low a cap would create a boom-bust scenario, and a heavy loss of jobs.

Read the full article on Climate Spectator.

In response to the 100s of emails flooding into AuSES from small to medium to large business owners who’s livelihood is in jeopardy or NSW homeowners who are frustrated with now being penalised for having installed rooftop solar, the Australian Solar Energy Society – in partnership with Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) & The Australian Manufacturer’s Workers Union (AMWU) have called a SOLAR CRISIS RALLY being held at Sydney Town Hall tomorrow at 10am.

Read the full press release on the AuSES website.

They also have information of how to get more actively involved in the campaign:

http://www.auses.org.au/solar-crisis-rally/

And you can follow them on twitter:

www.twitter.com/AUSolarEnergyS

The United States is on the verge of a solar boom that could provide 4.3 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

There’s just a 12-figure catch: Investors need to put $100 billion into the solar industry to keep the generation of solar electricity growing by 42 percent a year for the next decade to expand capacity from the current 1.4 gigawatts to 44 gigawatts.

“Policy measures such as tax credits, capital expenditure grants, generation incentives and renewable electricity credits will remain a key driver of solar uptake in the U.S. for at least the next three years,” according to the report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research and consulting firm. “The current drop in solar costs is taking place just as such policies are being implemented by the federal and various state governments, which is expected to lead to rapid growth in commercial, utility and residential solar power.”

From Bloomberg New Energy Finance report:

Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that the US solar market for photovoltaic and solar thermal electricity generation will grow annually by 42% to reach 44GW by 2020 – as long it can attract $100bn of investment in the period. …
Rapidly declining equipment costs combined with stronger government support have set the stage for explosive growth in the US solar market over the next decade, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the world’s leading provider of research and analysis into clean energy and the carbon markets.

Read more on Bloomberg New Energy Finance & GRIST.

A paper released last week (30 September) by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) identifies changing legal frameworks as the biggest obstacle to private investment in technologies needed to create the shift to a low-carbon economy.90% of asset managers surveyed for the paper by international law firm Norton Rose said that changing policy and so-called retrospective legislation, without providing guarantees for existing investments, halt investment in renewable energy.

For instance, Spain’s decision to reduce its feed-in tariffs for solar installations has alarmed investors who are concerned about indications that Madrid is now considering a retroactive reduction of tariffs, the paper says.

In addition, 55% of the interviewees identified permitting and planning problems and 45% singled out grid access and infrastructure issues as barriers to investment.

The survey also suggested that the EU’s emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) is not yet capable of shifting investment towards less carbon-intensive products. Less than 10% of respondents said the EU’s flagship climate instrument provides long-term price signals.

Giles Parkinson, in his article “Avoiding Europe’s mistakes” published on Climate Spectator today, has addressed the findings of the report:

Europe is widely regarded as the pace-setter in climate and energy policies. It has had an emissions trading scheme for more than five years, it has championed the most ambitious emissions reduction targets, and individual countries have made enormous investments into renewable energy technology.

But a survey has found that, for all its policy initiatives, Europe has failed to provide a strong enough signal to encourage private investment to switch away from carbon-intensive technologies: investment has been deterred not just by a weak price signal from the emissions trading scheme, but by the mish-mash of complimentary policies across the region.

The failure of the EU ETS to deliver a meaningful price on carbon was initially due to a massive over-allocation of allowances, and then because of a slump in industrial production caused by the financial crisis. Now it is thought to lack ambition, particularly in light of the massive shift in capital in Asian countries such as China, South Korea and Japan. The European carbon price is currently trading at around €15.40 ($A21.80), but even that is insufficient – a price close to €30 or more is considered necessary to drive the scale of change required.

The report, “Shifting private capital”, conducted on behalf of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents more than 50 pension funds and other asset managers responsible for some $8 trillion under of investments, suggests that this is only part of the problem: despite having a regional trading scheme, the EU policy on climate and energy is piecemeal, and unless the mix of policies on energy efficiency, renewable energy, grids and fossil fuel subsidies are crafted with a long term vision, then private capital will not come to the party.

Click here to download the report from IIGCC website

And, from the Cleantech Open website, here’s an excerpt from Chris Leyerle’s “The Global Race for Cleantech Dominance“:

Around the world, more countries every day are instituting policies to promote domestic development and adoption of cleantech. Plenty of politicians are using high-minded rhetoric to exhort consumers and businesses to act, which more are, reaping real benefits. Not words, however, but deeds characterize the emerging winners in the competition for global cleantech leadership. The actions that speak loudest, and which attract business and investor attention, entail financial support from government that lowers costs or boosts revenue for cleantech development. Such support can take many forms, and various countries and governments are trying a myriad of approaches seeking the most effective in realizing the benefits of stimulating the cleantech industry.

Many things have been tried, and an enormous number of countries’ governments have made investments in developing a cleantech industry within their national borders. Approaches run the gamut: relaxed regulations, expedited permitting, market development, research and development clusters, demonstration centers, low-interest loans, loan guarantees, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, tax breaks, mandates, import/export restrictions, renewable portfolio/energy standards, direct investment, and grants. By one estimate, 15 governments committed $188B of green stimulus funding in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, with 45% coming from the Asia-Pacific region.

]]> http://www.cleantechnologytv.com/lessons-from-europe-strong-investment-requires-policy-clarity-report-shows/feed/ 0 http://www.cleantechnologytv.com/whos-afraid-of-the-green-economy/ http://www.cleantechnologytv.com/whos-afraid-of-the-green-economy/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:19:06 +0000 CTTV Producer http://www.cleantechnologytv.com/?p=1389 The following article entitled “Who’s afraid of the green economy?” was written by Giles Parkinson for Climate Spectator (pub. 30th Sept):

Anthony Pratt, one of the country’s three richest men, rarely ventures into the public arena. As head of one of the country’s biggest private companies, he has no need to. But this week he agreed to speak at the Forbes Global CEO conference, privileged company indeed, on the topic of the ‘green economy’.

The green economy is a relatively new subject to such talk-fests – which is progress of sorts – but it still tends to be tacked on at the end of the day, when even the attention spans of multi-billionaires wander and delegate numbers are thin on the ground. And in the media room, reporters are packing up or on the phone to news editors to discuss how to cover the story of the day, which, somewhat inevitably, is from the preceding session and the incredibly bullish forecasts for Australia’s bulk commodities and just about anything else that China wants to buy.

There’s no doubt that’s a big story, but it’s not necessarily good news, as Peter Seligmann, the chairman and CEO of Conservation International, pointed out to the audience. He said the biggest challenge for the world is to find some way of doubling its output of energy, food and water, while deforestation rates reach record levels and stocks of certain fish species plunge by up to 90 per cent. “We are in that place where there are a lot of shifts taking place, a lot of stress,” said Seligmann. “You just can’t say stop. We need to think creatively, how to redesign the way the economic engine works. This is the moment to get it right. This is the era of green economy.”

That is an unsettling concept for lots of people, because ‘green economy’ and ’sustainability’ are taken by many to mean the end of economic growth. The key message from Anthony Pratt, though, and it is an important one, is that there needn’t be a trade-off between the environment and a growing economy. It simply will take industries to think differently about their business and their opportunities.

His industry is a case in point. Paper manufacturing is a energy-intensive business, usually associated with the felling of trees and the generation of a lot of waste. But Pratt says Visy now sees more opportunities in avoiding waste – and landfill costs – by recycling it to make more paper, or to provide an energy source.

Every tonne of landfill voided avoids two tonnes of greenhouse emissions – and increasing fees. The company now sources one third of its energy from biomass plants powered by its own waste. The goal is to generate all of its energy from its own waste and effectively implement a closed loop system. “These things are relevant because there will be carbon taxes and landfill fees are going up, so in that sense clean energy is going to be a compelling business,” Pratt said. “We think there are tremendous opportunities in the sustainability space.”

Read more on Climate Spectator.