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1. The Daily Sprout
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2. $19B at Stake With Renewable Energy Tax Credits
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3. Brazil's Cosan Thanks Low Sugar Prices For Tepid Earnings
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4. MIT Researchers Deliver Solar Energy Storage Breakthrough
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
DOE Puts $36M More into Carbon Capture: The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it is granting $36 million to 15 different projects researching carbon capture from coal-fired power plants. The DOE is still looking to invest over $1 billion in carbon capture in the next year - DOE Press Release.
States Threaten to Sue EPA Over Lack of Emissions Regulation: California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania and New York City sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today threatening a lawsuit if it does not regulate emissions from ships, aircraft and off-road vehicles - AP.
Google Lobbying for Low-Income Insulation: Dan Reicher, Google’s green energy guru, was on Capitol Hill yesterday pitching a plan to weatherize some 10 million low-income homes in the U.S. to help save on gas and electricity. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said he’d include the proposal in a bill later this year - NYTimes Dot Earth.
“You Know Gas Prices Are High When Texans Start Driving Golf Carts”: The land of big oil and big trucks is seeing more miniature electric cars on the road - Wall Street Journal.
$19B at Stake With Renewable Energy Tax Credits
Craig Rubens - Policy
When it comes to renewable energy, it seems we have a new Do-Nothing Congress up on Capitol Hill. The Senate yesterday failed once again to renew the investment and production tax credits that facilitate millions of dollars of private funding into solar and wind energy projects. Set to expire at the end of this year, investors are already pulling back from financing solar and wind projects for fear that Congress won’t provide the coveted long-term extension.
At stake are the country’s burgeoning solar and wind energy industries. A report from Navigant Consulting on behalf of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) estimates that the expiration of the tax credits will cost the solar and wind industries a combined $19 billion and roughly 116,000 jobs in just one year. All of this comes as the Department of Labor is expected to issue a report putting the total number of jobs lost so far this year at over 500,000.
On the positive side, the AWEA is expected to announce in its second-quarter market report that the U.S. has surpassed Germany in wind energy generation to become the world’s leader. An AWEA spokeswoman tells Earth2Tech that while Germany still has more installed capacity than the U.S., an estimated 22,000 megawatts to our 17,000 megawatts as of 2007, the U.S. is windier and is producing more actual power. Add to this estimates that the U.S. will add another 6,000 megawatts of capacity this year to Germany’s 1,600, and the U.S. should be able to solidify its spot as the global wind leader by the end of 2008.
But all of that explosive growth could come to a screeching halt if Congress doesn’t provide the industry with some regulatory certainty. And this means extending the tax credits far longer than one year, which was the length of the proposal voted down yesterday. With Congress heading into a long August recess on Friday, it doesn’t look like we’ll see a definite extension any time soon.
Graph courtesy of AWEA.
Brazil's Cosan Thanks Low Sugar Prices For Tepid Earnings
Kevin Kelleher - Big Green
Despite record oil prices, it has not been a great year for making money from ethanol. High corn prices are killing corn ethanol companies in the U.S., while Cosan, the world’s largest sugar company as well as its leading maker of sugar-based ethanol, has had the opposite problem: a glut of sugar has caused sugar prices to remain low.
In the wake of tepid earnings, Cosan’s U.S. shares fell 5.7 percent to $13.09 Thursday. The company said sugar prices declined 33 percent last season, causing a net loss of $3.4 million for the three months through April 30. That followed a $30 million loss in its most recent fiscal year.
In an era when many commodity prices are skyrocketing, sugar has defied the trend. But sugar prices have been rallying in the past few weeks on expectations that the situation will change: Countries like Russia are expected to increase exports, while exporters like India and Brazil will see smaller crop yields.
In its earnings announcement, Cosan suggested that shift may continue, but not dramatically so.
“Despite the recent sharp increase in sugar prices in the futures market, there are still significant discounts in the physical market… although we are optimistic regarding price trends throughout the 2009 fiscal year, we do not expect either sugar or ethanol prices to climb by more than 15 percent.”
Reuters is also reporting that a Cosan executive said the company will improve exports of ethanol, especially into the United States.
The group’s ethanol exports should account for 25 percent of the expected output for the season, compared with less than 20 percent in recent years, said Cosan’s commercial vice president Marcos Lutz.
Cosan’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange last summer had a rocky start, raising only half the $2 billion it had initially hoped for. Sugar prices was one factor, as was the concern among new shareholders that their voting rights were unfair.
Still, Cosan has vastly outperformed some of the ethanol plays in the U.S. Its stock listed at $10.50 and rallied as high as $15.75 in early March. Even with the declines, it’s up 3.6 percent so far this year, while Pacific Ethanol and Verasun are both down 60 percent or more.
MIT Researchers Deliver Solar Energy Storage Breakthrough
Katie Fehrenbacher - In the Lab
The process hinges on a catalyst made up of cobalt metal and phosphate that’s attached to an electrode placed in water. By running solar energy through the electrode, the catalyst produces oxygen. Another catalyst-like platinum can produce hydrogen from water. The release says that, “[T]he system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.” The key is the catalyst’s simplicity, the researchers say. It works at room temperature and doesn’t require strong basic solutions, just water.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://techtv.mit.edu/scripts/pokkariPlayer.js?ver=2008010901"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://techtv.mit.edu/syndication/write_player?skin=js&posts_id=1297&source=3&autoplay=true&file_type=flv&player_width=&player_height="></script> <div id="blip_movie_content_1297"> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://techtv.mit.edu/file/get/Newsoffice-DanielNoceraDescribesNewProcessForStoringSolarEnergy256.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_1297(); return false;"><img title="Click to play" alt="Video thumbnail. Click to play" src="http://techtv.mit.edu/file/get/Newsoffice-DanielNoceraDescribesNewProcessForStoringSolarEnergy256.flv.jpg" border="0" title="Click To Play" /></a> <br /> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://techtv.mit.edu/file/get/Newsoffice-DanielNoceraDescribesNewProcessForStoringSolarEnergy256.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_1297(); return false;">Click To Play</a> </div> "This is just the beginning," Nocera said in a statement. The work now will focus on integrating this technology into existing intermittent renewable energy systems. But he’s confident that within 10 years, people will be able to power their homes during the day with power coming off their solar panels, and to store extra energy via a fuel cell that they can then use at night. His hope is that it will make distributed generation a reality and force electricity-by-wire from a central source into obsolescence.
The project is part of MIT’s Solar Revolution, an initiative with the goal of making large-scale deployment of solar energy a reality within a decade. The initiative was launched with $10 million from the Chesonis Family Foundation. Additional funding for Nocera’s research came from the National Science Foundation.
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