Through June of 2012, renewable energy was right behind natural gas in terms of the most new energy generating capacity being installed in the United States, with wind making up most of the renewables push. And now Business Insider has flagged the numbers for the remainder of the year.

Last week, they reported that wind ultimately pulled ahead of natural gas to become the leading installer of new capacity in 2012, at 10,689 total megawatts.

Those numbers came from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s report on the trends and highlights in U.S. energy for the past year. According to FERC’s update, natural gas installed 8,746 megawatts of new capacity, coal installed 4,510 new megawatts, and solar came in fourth with 1,476 new megawatts. Here’s the relevant table from the report, conveniently highlighted by Business Insider:

One thing to note here is the issue of capacity factor: That’s how much power an installation actually produces as a percentage of its theoretical capacity. (Which is what’s listed in the table.) Natural gas plants do quite well in this regard: Their median performance tends to come out to at least 80 percent, and they max out at 93 percent, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s cost database.

Unfortunately, wind power doesn’t perform as well, due to the intermittency of, well, wind. Its median tends to be around 40 percent offshore. Onshore it’s been at 30 percent, though arguably onshore performance is pulling alongside offshore. And both max out at 50 to 54 percent. So even though wind beat out natural gas for new capacity in 2012, the new natural gas installation will almost certainly wind up generating more total electricity.

The good news for wind is that it’s still a relatively young technology, with lots of room to improve. The energy it does deliver is produced much more efficiently in comparison to natural gas — the former loses less than one percent of its energy as waste heat, while the latter can lose as much as 54 percent. Natural gas production in the U.S. may be on track to plateau, leading to predictions of rising prices, which will give wind power a further economic opening.

And, of course, there’s the fact that, while cleaner than coal, natural gas remains a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions both through leaks and combustion.

By Dr. Mark Boslough, via HuffPost

Benjamin Franklin, the first American Ambassador to France, was both a statesman and a scientist. On September 3, 1783 he co-signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hotel d’York, in which the British acknowledged the American Colonies to be free and independent States, ending the American Revolution.

Franklin’s political eye was focused, but his scientific eye was attentive too. All was not well in the French countryside, where one of the worst environmental calamities of modern history was just beginning to unfold. That summer was the hottest on record, and a mysterious “dry fog” had settled across Europe. The combination of heat and air pollution was too much for the weak and elderly. Mortality spiked among farm workers and laborers across the continent.

According to British naturalist Gilbert White, “the sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon.” When rising and setting, it was “particularly lurid and blood-coloured.” The heat was so intense that meat went bad the day after it was butchered, and swarms of flies made life miserable.

The seeds of climate science in America were very possibly being planted as Franklin observed the changes 200+ years ago. Conditions went from bad to worse as Europe and North America were plunged into a deep freeze that winter. In its first peacetime year as an independent nation, the United States had to contend with more extreme weather than the colonies had ever experienced. New England suffered a record below-zero weather streak. The Mississippi River froze as far south as New Orleans. Ice appeared in the Gulf of Mexico.

Other parts of the world were also in trouble. Monsoons in Africa and India were extremely weak, and rain barely moistened the African Sahel. Agriculture collapsed in the Nile Valley leading to mass starvation. Volney, the French historian, wrote, “Soon after the end of November [1784], the famine carried off, at Cairo, nearly as many as the plague; the streets, which before were full of beggars, now afforded not a single one: all had perished or deserted the city.” Within a year, Egypt had lost a sixth of its population.

Franklin watched this extreme weather with great interest and concern. In December, 1784, he presented his ideas in a paper entitled “Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures.” He described the dry fog, even though he was uncertain of its source, “During several of the summer months of the year 1783, when the effect of the sun’s rays to heat the earth in these northern regions should have been greatest, there existed a constant fog over all Europe, and great part of North America.” He observed the effect the fog had on the sun’s rays: “They were indeed rendered so faint in passing through it, that when collected in the focus of a burning glass, they would scarce kindle brown paper. Of course, their summer effect in heating the earth was exceedingly diminished.”

He drew some important conclusions: “Hence the surface was early frozen. Hence the first snows remained on it unmelted, and received continual additions. Hence the air was more chilled, and the winds more severely cold. Hence perhaps the winter of 1783-4 was more severe, than any that had happened for many years.” Franklin was arguably the first American scientist to recognize the sensitivity of climate to changes in radiative forcing, and to propose that the Earth can respond in a way that reinforces the change (now known as ice-albedo feedback).

Franklin speculated about the source of the fog.

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By Jessica Goad

Newly-minted Washington Governor Jay Inslee has been lauded for his impassioned views on environmental issues from climate change to renewable energy.  Indeed, his first official act as governor was to write a letter to a clean energy company inviting it to relocate to the state.

In his first press conference as governor last week, Inslee addressed another aspect of the climate change fight in the Pacific Northwest:  proposed coal export terminals that would allow for the shipping of 150 million of tons of coal every year from public lands in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin abroad.

In response to a question about whether or not federal government analyses of the terminals should take into account the carbon emissions that will come from the burning of the coal exported through the terminals, Inslee said:

It is clear that there are ramifications ultimately if we burn the enormous amounts of Powder River Basin coal that are exported through our ports… It is an enormous number of tons of carbon dioxide that will be released into the atmosphere, it doesn’t matter where it’s burned, it ends up in Puget Sound.  That is a physical fact.

The challenge is to figure out, frankly, for our state from a policy standpoint is where you sort of draw the line in evaluating those impacts from any carbon-based system.  I think that’s a challenge for us. I will say that from what I know, this is the largest decision we will be making as a state from a carbon pollution standpoint certainly during my lifetime, and nothing comes even close to it.  So I’m going to be giving some thought to this.

Watch it:

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Obama Knows It is ‘Global Climate Disruption’ And Without Mitigation And Adaptation, All You Get Is ‘Misery’

I attended the Environmental and Clean Energy Inaugural Ball in DC Monday night. That is the smaller, wonkier ball, the one without Will.i.am.

A number of White House and Cabinet officials made clear that Obama meant it when he emphasized action on climate and clean energy in his second inaugural. For instance, Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, told the crowd, “Energy and climate policy are going to be a top priority” in Obama’s second term.

Zichal asserted “We are going to achieve the President’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.” There are really only two plausible ways that can be done with certainty — a carbon tax or aggressive use of EPA authority to control emissions from existing power plants and industrial facilities. And the carbon tax  (presumably as part of some overall deficit or tax reform deal) would need Congressional approval, which makes it far harder.

Zichal did not spell out the details. She told The Hill:

I am not going to get in front of my boss on this one. I think you will, in due time, see a really aggressive agenda on the energy and climate initiative in line with what the president talked about today.

Interestingly, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised “more detail about what [Obama] wants to do in the State of the Union” address.

Obama science adviser John Holdren said that “President Obama knows that global warming is a misnomer. It is global climate disruption,” a term he and other scientists have been using for over 15 years.

Holdren repeated his statement that humanity has three choices in the face of global climate disruption — “mitigation, adaptation and suffering” — noting “the more mitigation and adaptation, the less suffering there will be.”

If we keep listening to the disinformers and delayers, we will keep doing little mitigation and adaptation, leaving us with maximum misery. This is just another way of saying what his boss said Monday, “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

America’s “finest news source” has this hilarious Science and Technology “news brief”:

NEW WASHINGTON—Marveling at how dire things seemed in the relatively stable days of 12 years ago, Alan Gibson, 41, a local man of the year 2024, wistfully recounted on Wednesday the then-record temperatures recorded in the United States in 2012. “To think that we were concerned about a 55.3-degree average is almost comical, but then, I guess at that point we must have still had some kind of perceivable ozone layer,” Gibson said fondly while reapplying the full-body coat of UV-resistant resin he and his fellow citizens of the 43 contiguous United States wear at all times. “Today, you wouldn’t think twice about a 96-degree day in the middle of February, but a mere decade ago you would look up at the skies waiting for snow. Christ, those were the days, man”….

Of course, we know that the variability of winter temperatures will overwhelm the (likely) slow average warming for decades to come, and, of course, sea levels won’t rise that fast, but still….

The cost of crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) panels in the US continues to fall despite the imposition of anti-dumping and illegal subsidy tariffs on imports from China.

By Andrew Burger, via Cleantechnica

US imports of crystalline silicon solar cells and channels from China fell to their lowest level in at least two years even amid the peak, year-end selling season based on federal government data, the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) yesterday announced in a press release.

US imports of c-Si cells and modules from China totaled $50.5 million in November, down from $75 million in October, and less than one-fifth the $278 million from October 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s “US Imports of Merchandise” database, CASM reported. Silicon PV cell and module imports from China are expected to be about one-third lower in 2012 than they were in 2011. Imports from China totalled about $1.7 billion through November this year, down from $2.4 billion in the year-ago period.

Solar PV system costs continued their seemingly inexorable decline all along the value chain in 2012, according to industry data….

Though imports from China have dropped substantially, the sharp rise in prices foreseen by some have yet to materialize.

The unsubsidized cost of renewable power produced from solar and wind energy will be no more expensive than that from oil, natural gas, and coal by the end of the decade, Energy Secretary Steven Chu predicted during a speech at a Pew Charitable Trusts event late March before the Commerce Deptartment and ITC had made their final determinations on Chinese import duties. Chu pegged installed solar PV grid parity at around $1 per watt.

This would mean reducing the cost of solar modules, or panels, to around $0.50/W, with corresponding reductions in remaining balance-of-system (BOS) costs of solar PV system installations. A GTM research report from late July forecast that this will happen a lot sooner, by 2016.

Prices for solar PV modules and panels have been falling fast from 2008 right on through 2012, according to industry data. The marginal weekly spot price of silicon solar modules (panels) was $0.654 per Watt, with a low price of $0.54 and a high of $1.00 per Watt as of January 16, 2013, according to PV Insights data.

The median installed price of residential and commercial PV systems in California dropped between 3% and 7% during the first six months of 2012, following year-over-year reductions of between 11% and 14% in 2011, according to the most recent Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s “Tracking the Sun” report.

Overall, installed costs for home solar PV panels for all of 2012 ranged between $1750 and $2500 per kilowatt (kW), or $1.75–$2.50 per watt, according to Renewable Green Energy Power data.

By Andrew Burger, excerpted from Cleantechnica with permission

Related Posts:

• The Year In Solar Power: Prices Crash, Sales Soar, Industry Restructures, Saudis Leap In, CSP Suffers
• Three Charts That Illustrate Why Solar Has Hit A True Tipping Point

The Republican Party wasted no time in siding with polluters against our children.

Yesterday, Obama explained in his second inaugural address that failure to respond to the threat of climate change, “Would Betray Our Children And Future Generations.” Politico reports today that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) thinks being against climate action and clean energy is a winning issue.

The NRSC “will press Democratic senators up for reelection next year in red states to distance themselves from President Obama’s promise to tackle climate change.” Politico’s Morning Score — “Your guide to the permanent campaign” — writes:

Votes for cap-and-trade sunk a bunch of House Democrats from coal country in 2010, and GOP leaders think this remains a winning issue in states with major domestic energy industries – including Louisiana, Alaska, Colorado and Montana. Energy is one of several issues, including guns, that Republicans hope Obama will force Democrats in competitive states to take unpopular positions on. “We hope that 2014 Democrats like Mary Landrieu and Max Baucus enjoyed the party circuit in Washington last night,” NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh tells Score, “but given President Obama’s vow to pursue a left-wing environmental agenda that will kill jobs in their states and others, voters deserve to know exactly where their Senators stand.”

We may be in a permanent campaign, but Politico is definitely pushing its permanent rewriting of history. Back in November 2010, Brad Johnson debunked this narrative  the first time Politico pushed it (see “Ignoring Evidence, Politico Spins Climate Vote As Electoral Loser“). In fact, Democrats who voted against clean energy were more than three times as likely to lose their seats than those who voted for it:

• 81 percent of Democrats voting for the climate bill won their races.
• 64 percent of Democrats voting against the climate bill lost their seat.
• Of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill, only one was punished by the voters

Indeed, Stanford public opinion expert Jon Krosnick analyzed the 2010 congressional election and found that Democrats taking “green” positions on climate change “won much more often” than those remaining silent.

It is ironic, if not tragic, that the GOP thinks this is a winning issue in states that have already been among the hardest hit by the impact of global warming — and stand to suffer the most if we keep taking no action — Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, and Montana.

And if the 2010 election proved anything, it’s that in Senate races, climate denial is a political loser:

• If Obama Looks to Sen. Bennet (D-CO) for Winning Strategy, He Needs to Make a Major Issue of Global Warming and Clean Energy
• Did Ken Buck’s global warming denial cost the Tea Party favorite a Senate seat?
• After Inhofe’s endorsement, Carly Fiorina challenges climate science.
• Politico on CA Senate debate: “Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23.″

Fiorina was crushed by climate hawk Barbara Boxer.

Last year, Stanford’s Krosnick said candidates “may actually enhance turnout as well as attract voters over to their side by discussing climate change.” The only losing strategy for Democrats is running away from the climate and clean energy issue.