Greenwood Geothermal

Archive for October, 2011

RenewableEnergyWorld.com’s Meg Cichon spent the week in Hong Kong at the 2011 Eco Expo Asia. When the event wasn’t showing off the latest cleantech gadgets, it was advocating residential renewable accessibility and the importance of a vibrant trade market. It is widely known that Hong Kong and much of developing Asia suffers from heavy pollution; this fair offered valuable solutions to combat the problem – and renewables play a big role. International companies were present and eager to ship their solar panels, wind turbines or biogas systems, offer development services for residential systems, or simply educate attendees. The most impressive and promising displays were from Hong Kong utilities, such as CPL, that highlighted a renewable future and efforts to transition into the clean sector. As a whole, the expo was a refreshing display of the international effort to promote a clean energy future.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

For the second time this month, an international energy giant has jumped full throttle into renewable energy.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

As part of the campaign to gain support for the American Jobs Act, the Obama Administration has recently identified 7 major transmission projects for expedited permit streamlining. According to Nancy Sutley of the Council on Environmental Quality, this move will “speed the creation of thousands of construction and operations jobs while transforming the nation’s electric system into a modern, 21st century grid that is safer and more secure, and gives consumers more energy choices.”
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Get ready to celebrate the industry’s achievements. At RenewableEnergyWorld.com, we are ready to accept nominations for the Excellence in Renewable Energy Awards. These awards recognize the best companies, people and projects in the North American renewable energy industry.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Walking the exhibit hall at the 2011 Geothermal Expo in San Diego, Calif., you’d be hard-pressed to find anything but high energy and enthusiasm — impressive for an industry that only saw one project go online in the U.S. in the past year. But hope is prevalent as each company strives to carry on and plan for the future. 
“We’ve got another 700 megawatts (MW) of projects that are in the active building and construction phase right now,” said Karl Gawell, director of the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA). Watch more of Gawell’s industry outlook below.

The project pipeline looks full, and companies are well aware of what needs to be done to get the line flowing: policy standards and simplified permitting procedures. While a call for policy is prevalent across all renewables, permitting troubles have hit the geothermal industry especially hard. Many projects take at least three to five years to get past the paperwork. “We need to cut project times in half without short-circuiting our own safeguard. I think the government, Secretary Salazar, has made a commitment to do that, and we’re trying to make sure they push through,” said Gawell.
While many are pushing Washington for industry standards, others are preparing the workforce. The National Geothermal Academy made its scholarly debut this summer with an intensive eight-week course on all aspects of geothermal development, including how to find resources, build a plant and make a business model.
“We hope to target both scientists and engineers. But we also had some business and policy people as well. The diversity of content is really hitting all aspects of geothermal. It’s a small community; everyone in it wears multiple hats. They get to see the geology, the engineering, and a little about the policy and management side as well,” said Wendy Calvin, director at the Center for Geothermal Energy. Learn more about the program by watching the video below.

Despite its challenges, the industry continues to grow and evolve — it’s not going anywhere. Said Gawell, “It’s not going to be easy…building a geothermal project is really a struggle, but we’re doing it. We’re building new projects, and what’s really exciting is the new technology, new people, new companies, and a world market that’s really blossoming.”
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
Australia’s government is trying to initiate a new era of clean energy and facing such powerful opposition that some renewables companies that will benefit from the policy are scared to proactively campaign for it.

The debate around Australia’s new Clean Energy Future legislation has seen conservative parties here — as in the USA — take a stance that is not just oppositional, but dangerously radical. They now oppose traditional conservative measures such as carbon trading and corrections to market failure and a substantial minority are vocally anti-science.
“We can repeal the tax, we will repeal the tax, we must repeal the tax. This is a pledge in blood. This tax will go,” says opposition leader Tony Abbott.
What Abbott is calling ‘the tax’ is a comprehensive suite of measures, the Clean Energy Future package. If implemented, the CEF it will stimulate tens of billions of dollars of investment, create jobs and increase Australia’s long-term energy security. But Australia’s conservatives have seemingly abandoned their traditional role as advocates of effective markets and technological progress.
The Washington Post’s Brad Plumer blames Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for undermining Australia’s progress towards market-based, technological solutions to climate change;
On many of the underlying structural dynamics, Australia resembles the United States pretty closely. Coal and agricultural interests wield a lot of clout. Per-capita carbon emissions are high. There’s a well-developed network of climate denialism — the country’s best-selling newspaper, the Australian, regularly gives voice to skeptics of global warming.
As in the U.S., Australian conservative parties have been the target of a take over by self-styled Tea Party radicals in recent years. In the past, the intellectual leadership in conservative politics came from smart executives and well-educated professionals. 

Conservatives are increasingly led by a more shrill, less educated set, who are more likely to be small business owners or from the resource sector. To these climate denialists, renewable energy is part of a global conspiracy to destroy prosperity and Western values. Solar and wind, whether they like it or not, are being defined as a politicised brand in Australia, wrongly associated with radical green values.
Unsurprisingly, some think tanks on the conservative side of politics are now linked with the notorious climate denial and astroturf efforts of the Koch brothers.A new low point was reached recently, when Australia’s opposition finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, made an uninformed attack on the integrity of the clean technology sector. In an interview with the Age, Robb accused the clean technology sector of being “white-shoe salesman” and “vested interests.”
Robb alleged that corrupt deals have been struck between renewable energy companies and the Labor Government and the Australian Greens. He is pursuing “what backdoor promises and commitments have already been made and to whom,” in an ill-advised witch hunt against some of America’s and the world’s smartest technology companies.
The practical implication for investors and technology companies is that he reiterated the opposition’s determination to axe the $ 10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which is a centerpiece of Australia’s whole climate legislation package.
Informed commentators are almost unanimously in favor of the corporation and the rest of the package. The Guardian’s Bryony Worthington praises the policy, writing ‘This is very good news. It has been an uphill battle, with the opposition and business lobby all but claiming that the sky would fall in should the bill be passed.’
Worthington says that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and related measures are not just good policy but also good politics;
It will also be used to stimulate investment in new clean energy technologies leading to new jobs and increased inward investment. Hopefully over time this will boost Labour and the Greens’ popularity, so ensuring that the policy is protected – despite opposition leader Tony Abbott’s “blood promise” to repeal the legislation.

Global warming is forcing conservatives in America and Australia to declare their hand. They a have to make a choice between the interests of the economy as a whole or the politically dominant fossil fuel sector of the economy. Australian conservatives have chosen to back coal, oil and gas interests, to the detriment of the Australian economy.
For more than a century, parties such as the Opposition’s Liberal and National Parties have been clearly aligned with the interests of capital against parties of the left, that were aligned with the interests of the working class or a broader, social majority. Big business supported the conservatives at most elections during the 20th century.
Over the past 10 to 20 years, Australian society has undergone social and technological transformations that make the old alliance between conservatives and business problematic. Enter the inconvenient truth of global warming and the system is pushed to a breaking point.
It is too early to say where these shifting tectonic plates will come to rest, but the political landscape is new. Every day there is a new innovation or major deal in the clean tech space internationally and Australia’s conservatives are left further behind.
Multinational technology and renewable energy companies now get a better hearing from the Australian Greens than the Liberal Party. This is despite the fact that the Greens are associated with the progressive values of the Occupy Movement and constantly under attack from Rupert Murdoch’s climate denial mouthpiece, the Australian.
Smart companies are political pragmatists. They are finding ways to exploit the new situation and forging working relationships with the Greens, because it benefits their economic interests. This is a foretaste of the emerging political economy, where the relationship between business and politics is more open and flexible than in the past.
In Australia, the best option for the renewable energy sector is to ‘man up’ as Sarah Palin would put it. It needs to define the agenda in the media and shape its political relationships. Something like 90 p[ercent of the Australian public supports renewable energy so if the industry wants to have electoral clout, it just has to get organized.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Work a bit slow today? And did you ever wonder just how hot it is miles beneath your cubicle? Luckily, the good folks at Google have you covered on both fronts.
Welcome to geothermal data heaven. Researchers at SMU’s Geothermal Laboratory have built a vast database detailing the geothermal potential way, way below the earth’s surface, and Google has taken that information and laid it atop its interactive Google Earth platform. 
Spend a little time with it — or a lot — and you’ll end up with all sorts of nuggets that will help you better understand Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and its immense potential in the United States. The experience will certainly give you a better sense of where the hot spots are. You probably didn’t need Google Earth to tell you that Firehole Lake in Wyoming was a rather good source of geothermal energy. But did you know that places like Louisiana and Mississippi also pack their fair share of heat? Or that West Virginia’s geothermal resource is equivalent to the state’s existing king of power — coal?
The goal of the 35,000 data sites is to help users deepen their knowledge of geothermal potential in areas not often associated with the energy resource. As technologies improve, methods such as EGS may one day tap into this often undiscovered source of clean energy.
In the meantime, you have some exploring to do. First, download the latest version of Google Earth and then download and open the file.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

For renewable energy in the U.S., the question of survival and growth is still unanswered. After all, the Department of Energy has been funding renewable energy research and development since its inception some 34 years ago from the consolidation of the Federal Energy Administration, the Federal Power Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was tasked to manage the nuclear weapon, naval reactor and energy development programs.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Chinese solar manufacturers came under fire last week with news breaking that SolarWorld and six unnamed American manufacturers were filing a trade complaint, alleging unfair trading practices and pushing for a tariff of 100 percent to be placed on all crystalline silicon cells and modules imported from China. The news broke while the solar industry convened at Solar Power International 2011 in Dallas, and the filing set the stage for a fast-moving process that could result in tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S. within six months. The news has drawn a sharp response from the Chinese government, which accused the American solar industry of protectionism.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

As renewable energy continues to carve out a bigger stake in markets across North America, it often straddles the line between new ideas and accepted practices. While large developments push the needle closer toward a path of sustainability, it’s often the projects taking uncharted roads that allow us to envision our energy future. Below is a look at projects in the solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal industries that are helping to reshape how we do business.
Geothermal Energy News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com