Regulating offshore wind development
The Department of Interior and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have signed a Memorandum Of Understanding to work on rules to regulate the development of offshore renewable energy projects.
The document provides a broad framework that would give FERC the authority to license ocean wave and tidal energy projects while the Interior Department would issue the final permits for solar and wind projects in areas beyond the state waters.
Currently both the Interior Department and FERC have oversights roles in approving offshore projects. The goal of the MOU is to establish which of those two agencies would get a final say in approving – or not- a project, reports GreenTechMedia.
Acoording to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar his staff will spend the next few month holding public hearings around the country and drafting rules for approving offshore projects. The Interior Department, with its oversight of one-fifth of the United States’ landmass and 1.7 billion acres (690 million hectares) offshore, is a key player in approving areas transmission lines and other key clean energy projects.
As reported by GER earlier this month Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced legislation that would overhaul the national electricity grid by establishing “renewable energy zones” that would become priority areas to receive national funding for new transmission lines. The legislation would bypass local regulators and give FERC the final say in approving a project if its construction is stalled by local and state regulators.
Obviously state regulators have responded cautiously to this proposal, which is designed to streamline the construction of a national electricity grid connecting clean energy production sites to consumers. For more on this, see here.
Although offshore wind projects are currently being developed in various states including, Massachusetts and New Jersey, there is a lack of good, reliable data to support the development of more offshore projects, something the U.S. Geological Survey and the Mineral Management Service are working on rectifying, says Salazar.
Go to the article from GreenTechMedia
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This week in green energy
Underscoring this reversal of fortune was Friday’s report that OptiSolar was shutting down its two plants, one in Sacramento and the other in Hayward, Calif. Just a year ago the company said it would build the massive 550 megawatts Topaz solar farm in California’s Central Coast. Pacific Gas and Electric had agreed to buy the plant’s electricity output. But even with this marquee backing, OptiSolar was unable to secure funding.
Earlier this month OptiSolar sold its pipeline of unfinished projects, including the Topaz farm, to First Solar in a $400 million all stock transaction. At the time, the company was counting on a $300 million federal loanguarantee to stay in business as a manufacturer of thin-film solar cells.
Earth2Tech draws an interesting parallel between the end of the clean energy boom and the dot com bust a decade earlier. It writes:
The fallen dotcom firms of the past made a variety of mistakes like building services no one was ready for yet (Pets.com and Webvan), or making margins so slim that the business wasn’t sustainable (kozmo.com: free delivery of discounted goods in an hour and no tips!). But the faults of the struggling cleantech firms have been largely both underestimating how expensive it is to manufacture “stuff” and not being able to reach a large manufacturing scale quick enough before the credit crunch hit. It seemed as if OptiSolar had announced it was building one of the largest solar photovoltaic projects ever built at 550 MW, before it had even disclosed its funders or explained how its technology was superior to any competitors.
Other clean energy companies announcing scale backs: Biofuel maker Imperium Renewables laid off 24 employees; Spanish developer Acciona Windpower cut 65 jobs in the U.S.
Oil companies are doing the same. Royal Dutch Shell said this week that it would drop all wind and solar investments, arguing returns were too small. BP, over the past year, has shut down a solar panel manufacturing plant in Australia and said it would only invest in wind projects in the U.S. and Europe.
Shut downs, lay offs…. consolidation. First Solar started the process a few weeks ago with its acquisition of the OptiSolar project pipeline. That same week Spanish developer Fotowatio bought projects from MMA Renewable Ventures. It continued this week with Recurrent Energy’s acquisition of a 350-megawatt project portfolio from Chicago-based UPC Solar. In Europe private equity fund HG Capital acquired controlling interests in three Spanish solar plants from AIG Financial Products, the embattled unit of insurer American International Group.
But, there are small rays of light. This week, the Department of Energy, acting on its pledge to speed up processing of renewable energy loan guarantees, distributed the first of these to Solyndra, a California solar panel maker. It plans to use the $535 million guarantee to grow production at its facilities in Fremont, Calif.
On the regulatory front, the Department of Interior and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) signed a Memorandum Of Understanding to work on rules to regulate the development of offshore wind and solar projects.
The Wall Street Journal also reported on Tuesday that the cap-and-trade system proposed by the Obama administration, could actually raise two-to-three times the White House’s $646 billion revenue estimate, generating roughly $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion for the 2012 -2019 period. As is, about $120 billion of the trading platform’s revenues would fund clean energy projects.