Credit: Navigant Research

The U.S. is now the largest wind power market, and a U.S. company is the world’s number 1 supplier, according to a new industry report by Navigant Research.

This is a big shakeup in the global wind market. Danish wind manufacturer Vestas had been the world leader from 2000 to 2011 but in 2012, GE Wind grabbed 15.5 percent of the market share. Vestas dropped to 14 percent.

The U.S. also snuck ahead of China as the the biggest wind power market last year.

The United States recaptured its title as the worldʹs largest market with 13,124 MW of new wind power installed in 2012. China came a close second with 12,960 MW, followed by Germany, India, and the U.K.

The same is true regionally:

Europe lost its position as the world region installing the most wind power, recording 28.5% of all new installation in 2012, a 4% increase on 2011, but 12.5% less than five years ago. Driven by the US, Canada, and Brazil, wind installations in the Americas grew by 12.3% compared with 2011. The American continent represented 35.2% of the global wind market in 2012.

Globally there is 285.7 gigawatts in wind power capacity, and 44.9 of those were installed in 2012 — an 18.6 percent increase. Concretely, this means nearly 23,350 new wind turbines were erected in 60 countries. Navigant’s numbers are different than those reported by the Global Wind Energy Council, which came out last month.

More fun facts from Navigant:

• According to the forecast, the total value of the wind market will grow from $74.2 billion in 2012 to $109.8 billion in 2017.
• We can expect wind power to generate more than 2.62 percent of the world’s electricity in 2013, and 4.9 percent in 2017.
• The average turbine installed in 2012 was 1,847 kW. Offshore turbines installed last year got even larger too: 3,793 kW.
• Direct drive turbines — which transfer energy from the rotor to the generator without a gearbox — are becoming more popular, which make offshore wind more feasible because they are cheaper and more scalable.
• Wind companies are diversifying their product lines, with specialized options for low wind speed areas, for operation in high altitudes or in cold climates.

While it may be true that U.S. production and installation numbers spiked last year as the wind industry stutter-stepped in anticipation of the expiring wind production tax credit, the industry has been growing stronger. With another year on the clock for the wind PTC, the industry shouldn’t contract, but it may slow a bit.

The global wind forecast for the next five years dropped 10 percent, with 241,620 megawatts expected to be installed through 2017. This is mainly due to expected slower growth in the next two years — after 2015 the market should grow strongly again. It’s possible that the market is even reacting to the right sorts of stimuli, per Navigant:

Concerns about security of electricity supply and manmade climate change continue to be the main drivers for increased use of wind energy.  This reportʹs market prediction for the 2018‐2022 period indicates an improved average growth rate of 8.9%.

Success stories like this are a welcome but too-infrequent sight. If the U.S. wants to see them happen more often, it should make the wind production tax credit permanent, which would provide this roaring new industry the same sort of regulatory stability that the oil and gas industry has relied on for decades.

This weekend, Senate Democrats passed a federal budget for Fiscal Year 2014. In order to do so, Senate rules allow for consideration of any amendment that is brought to the floor. Senators introduced hundreds of amendments, which resulted in a “vote-o-rama.”

Many conservatives offered amendments to undermine existing and potential public health safeguards, particularly those that would attempt to reduce climate pollution. Below are seven deadly amendments to curtail protection for our children’s health and heritage. As usual, these conservatives are focused on protecting dirty energy companies profits at the expense of public health.

• Blunt #261: This amendment would have blocked future legislation to impose a carbon tax or fee to reduce industrial carbon pollution and raise revenue. Specifically, the amendment would create a “point-of-order” against any carbon tax measure that could only be overcome with a three-fifths vote of legislators. While it would have been a mostly symbolic move, the fossil fuel industry’s friends in the Senate are reiterating their opposition to government action on climate pollution. However, the impacts of climate change have already been felt across the country — in 2011 and 2012, the United States suffered from 25 climate related storms, floods, heat waves, drought, and wildfires that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion. The Blunt amendment would allow these damages and costs to grow unchecked. Result: FAILED 53-46
• Coats #514: This amendment would have struck down key Clean Air Act protections by authorizing the President to exempt any industrial facility from complying with air toxics standards for two-year periods. Essentially, the amendment would have given a free pass to coal-burning power plants from EPA’s 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were put in place due to the well-documented health risks of mercury, arsenic, and the millions of pounds of additional hazardous chemicals. Methylmercury from coal pollution accumulates in fish, poisoning pregnant women and small children. Mercury can harm children’s developing brains, including effects on memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills. Upgrades to the aged and dirty coal plants will also significantly reduce harmful particle pollution, preventing hundreds of thousands of illnesses and up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. “The ‘monetized’ value of these and certain other health benefits would amount to $37–90 billion per year,” the Environmental Protection Agency determined. Republicans are once again trying to protect the dirty energy industry over our children’s health. Result: FAILED 46-53
• Alexander #516: This would “repeal … the wind production tax credit.” The PTC provides a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity to encourage investment in clean wind energy. A CAP analysis determined that “wind power helps lower electricity prices.” Along with state renewable portfolio or electricity standards, the PTC has enabled “the wind industry … to lower the cost of wind power by more than 90% [and] provide power to the equivalent of over 12 million American homes.” A Navigant Consulting analysis predicted that eliminating the PTC would cost 37,000 jobs. Some argue that we should end tax provisions for clean technologies, including wind. However, this ignores the fact that the oil and gas industries have received $80 in support for every $1 for wind and other renewable energy sources over the past 95 years. In addition, the Alexander amendment would ignore the annual $4 billion in special tax breaks for big oil companies. Result: Did not come to the floor for a vote.
• Inhofe #359: This amendment would “[prohibit] further greenhouse gas regulations for the purpose of addressing climate change.” This would have prevented the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that EPA is required to regulate carbon and other climate change pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. EPA proposed the first carbon pollution standard for new power plants in 2012. After it is finalized, EPA must set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants — responsible for two-fifths of U.S. carbon pollution. Such reductions are essential to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. Result: FAILED 47-52

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Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley

By Howard Marano and Michael Conathan

For the moment at least, the U.S. offshore wind industry has a new capital: Annapolis. By an 88 to 48 vote, the Maryland House of delegates handed Governor Martin O’Malley one of his most desired legislative victories — enactment of a bill that would earmark $1.7 billion for development of a wind farm in federal waters off Maryland’s coast, with the funding coming from up to a $1.50 monthly surcharge on consumers’ electricity bills. The bill, which passed the Senate earlier this month now heads to the Governor’s desk for signature into law.

The Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 has been one of O’Malley’s top goals for years, as he’s sought to take advantage of Maryland’s expanse of shallow water, its “outstanding” wind resources, and its existing industrial infrastructure — all of which make Maryland an ideal place for offshore wind.

Despite these prime features, development of offshore wind in Maryland, as in the rest of the country, has been a long time coming. In two previous legislative sessions O’Malley attempted unsuccessfully to shepherd his bill though the legislature, demonstrating the political hurdles standing in the way of development even in an environmentally friendly state. At first, opponents were able to torpedo the bill due to its cost. Then when proponents lowered the price cap to $1.50 in 2012, political wrangling sunk the bill as the clock expired on the legislative session.

Since O’Malley’s bill was first introduced in Maryland, the American onshore wind industry has seen tremendous growth. In fact, with the installation of 13,000 megawatts of new capacity, 2012 was a banner year for wind in the U.S. In contrast, not a single wind turbine has been installed off America’s coasts in that time. While the offshore wind industry in the U.S. has struggled to overcome financial, political, and bureaucratic hurdles, offshore wind in Europe and Asia has continued to expand. Maryland’s Offshore Wind Energy Act is meant to help reverse that trend.

Like its predecessors, the current bill would require that, within Maryland’s renewable energy portfolio standard program, a certain percentage of electricity be supplied by offshore wind starting in 2017. In order to protect consumers from excessive rate increases resulting from the higher costs of wind energy production, the bill creates a “window of maximum rate impacts for both residential and nonresidential electric customers.” Currently, this would amount to $1.50 per month for a household and a monthly surcharge of 1.5 percent for businesses. The new law is the first of its kind requiring direct subsidies from ratepayers, and was made politically palatable by a 2013 poll showing 72 percent of Maryland residents would be willing to pay $2 more per month for their electricity bills to develop an offshore wind industry.

The benefits of offshore wind in Maryland would still be substantial. The Governor’s office estimates the project would create 850 construction jobs and 160 supply and operation and maintenance jobs. According to an analysis completed by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, a 200 megawatt project would create $1.3 billion in economic activity over a five year period, generating $5.6 million in state tax revenue. And data from the National Academy of Sciences suggests Maryland stands to gain $17 million in annual public health benefits as a result of reduced fossil fuel use for electricity production.

The return on investment from any first-in-class offshore wind project will be just the tip of the iceberg. The Center for American Progress released a report in February detailing the overall benefits of developing a commercial scale offshore wind industry in the U.S. The report found that the investment required to develop an offshore wind industry would be far less than the federal government has spent on subsidizing fossil fuel industries, and that the cost to ratepayers could be as low as $0.25 per month.

While passage of the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act represents a victory for advocates of offshore wind, substantial obstacles still remain. Concessions made to secure the bill’s passage have caused industry analysts to warn that any project will be reliant on additional tax incentives to become profitable. Even Governor O’Malley has recognized this concern at a press conference, saying “I don’t believe any one state can do this by itself.”

Fortunately, Maryland won’t have to act on its own. Under President Obama, the Department of Energy has prioritized offshore wind, pursuing its “Smart from the Start” program that has already identified wind energy areas off the coasts of several northeast and mid-Atlantic states. And just last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced the latest step in granting the Commonwealth of Virgina a research lease for a wind energy area off its coast. Even Congress has gotten into the act, passing a one-year extension of key tax credits that move the industry a step closer to offshore wind production.

From Denmark to China, other countries have already realized the benefits of generating electricity from strong, consistent offshore winds and revitalizing sagging coastal economies. O’Malley’s legislation is an excellent step forward on both counts for his state and for the country.

Howard Marano is an intern with the Ocean Program and Michael Conathan is Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

By Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

Anti-wind farm activists around the world have created a silent bogeyman they claim can cause everything from sickness and headaches to herpes, kidney damage and cancers.

This “infrasound” exists at frequencies too low for the human ear to detect but is present almost everywhere from offices and roadsides to waves tumbling on ocean beaches. These low frequencies can crawl menacingly from the back of your kitchen fridge or from your heart beating.

Despite the ubiquitous nature of infrasound, anti-wind farm groups such as Australia’s Waubra Foundation like people to think that it’s only inaudible infrasound from wind turbines which might send residents to their sick beds.

But two new studies suggest the cause of health complaints by people living near wind farms could in fact be down to the scare campaign of the anti-wind groups and reports about such scares in the media.

The first study, “Can Expectations Produce Symptoms From Infrasound Associated With Wind Turbines?” was published earlier this month in Health Psychology — a journal of the American Psychological Association.

The researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand wanted to find out if simply exposing people to warnings that turbines might make you ill was enough to cause them to report typical symptoms such as headaches and nausea.

Using 54 people, the researchers showed half the group five minutes of footage of people complaining that wind farms had made them ill. Some of the footage was taken from this Australian Broadcasting Corporation report (watch it here) into “Waubra disease” where residents were filmed complaining about a wind farm at Waubra in Victoria. Footage was also taken from this CTV Network report from Canada about a wind farm in Ontario.

This group was called the “high expectancy group” because the information they were given had led them to expect they might experience certain symptoms if exposed to infrasound. The other half of the group was shown interviews with experts stating that the science showed infrasound could not directly cause health problems.

The researchers then told each person they were going to be exposed to two 10-minute periods of infrasound in a special acoustic room when, in fact, for one of those periods they would be exposed to no sound at all, or “sham infrasound” as the researchers describe it. So what happened?

The response from the “high expectancy” group was to report that the “infrasound” had caused them to experience more symptoms which were more intense. This was the case whether they were exposed to sham infrasound or genuine infrasound. The report explains that “the number of symptoms reported and the intensity of the symptom experienced during listening sessions were not affected by exposure to infrasound but were influenced by expectancy group allocation.”

In the low expectancy group, the infrasound and sham infrasound had little to no effect. In other words, the study found that if a person is told that wind turbines will make them ill then they are likely to report symptoms, regardless of whether they are exposed to infrasound or not.

Clearly, this points the finger at anti-wind farm campaigns as a potential cause of people’s symptoms, rather than “infrasound” from turbines. The research added: “The importance of findings in this study is that symptom expectations were created by viewing TV material readily available on the Internet, indicating the potential for such expectations to be created outside of the laboratory in real-world settings.”

Writing about her research on The Conversation, lead author Fiona Crichton says:

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Last month, I was on a panel with someone who kept kept saying “current renewables” were inadequate to address the climate problem and what we needed to do is invest in ”future renewables.” By that he meant increased research and development, of course, and not continued aggressive deployment.

I began my comments with this metaphor:

“There’s no useful intellectual distinction between ‘current’ and ‘future’ renewables. It’s like saying my daughter, who’s six, is not the same person once she becomes an adult. The only way she won’t grow is if I don’t feed her.”

The point is that continuing the amazing price drops and learning curves for renewables requires that we keep feeding them and help them keep learning – by expanding production, as the International Energy Agency has explained (see “The breakthrough technology illusion“). Many other studies back this up (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

[In fairness to renewables, solar power is at least a junior in college, and wind power has already graduated. My daughter just happens to be six.]

Here’s a figure that shows what I’m talking about for solar power (learning curve in upper right):

Note that the price drop (and production increase) has continued since 2011 (see “Chinese Companies Projected To Make Solar Panels for 42 Cents Per Watt In 2015“). And we are also dropping the price of financing solar — see “How Crowdfunding Lowers The Cost Of Solar Energy” —  which is just what you would expect as an industry becomes larger and more mature. Indeed, it’s one reason for learning curves — most things are cheaper when you scale up (except, sadly, nukes).

Similarly, a little over a year ago, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analyzed the cost curve for wind projects since the mind-1980′s and found that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14% for every doubling of installation capacity.

So while I was glad to see the excellent NY Times climate reporter Justin Gillis launch his monthly print column for Science Times, I was disappointed that he rehashed the tired myth pushed by Bill Gates and a few others in his article, “In Search of Energy Miracles.”

First, though, the good news. Gillis doesn’t fall into the trap of most of the miracle mavens and breakthrough bunch — the trap of advocating an R&D-centered policy:

Two approaches to the issue — spending money on the technologies we have now, or investing in future breakthroughs — are sometimes portrayed as conflicting. In reality, that is a false dichotomy. The smartest experts say we have to pursue both tracks at once, and much more aggressively than we have been doing.

An ambitious national climate policy, anchored by a stiff price on carbon dioxide emissions, would serve both goals at once. In the short run, it would hasten a trend of supplanting coal-burning power plants with natural gas plants, which emit less carbon dioxide. It would drive investment into current low-carbon technologies like wind and solar power that, while not efficient enough, are steadily improving.

And it would also raise the economic rewards for developing new technologies that could disrupt and displace the ones of today. These might be new-age nuclear reactors, vastly improved solar cells, or something entirely unforeseen.

In effect, our national policy now is to sit on our hands hoping for energy miracles, without doing much to call them forth.

Actually, coal is being supplanted by gas and wind (see “Wind Beats Out Natural Gas To Become Top Source Of New Electricity Capacity For 2012“). And efficiency and demand response have slowed electricity demand growth to under 1% a year.

A stiff price for CO2 would tip the balance even more toward sources like wind that are carbon-free and hence don’t destroy a livable climate. After all, BNEF concluded its wind study:

Assuming specific learning rates for these components, we expect wind to become fully competitive with energy produced from combined-cycle gas turbines by 2016 in most regions offering fair wind conditions.… Any increase in the cost of gas, which will consequently raise the cost of energy of gas-fired turbines, would bring forward the timing of grid parity for wind.

And yes, I’ll get to the so-called intermittency problem.

Where Gillis goes astray is when he buys into Bill Gates’ energy miracles nonsense:

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Cross-posted from the Center for American Progress.

In his State of the Union address last month, President Barack Obama touted the growth of the American renewable energy sector that has occurred during his time in office—particularly the doubling of “the amount renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar.” He pointed out that “Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America.” These metrics are proof that the renewable energy sector is capable of boosting economic growth while moving us away from the dirty energy sources of the past.

Yet despite the booming expansion of onshore renewable energy facilities, the United States still lags behind many other industrialized countries when it comes to development of a resource that we have in abundance in close proximity to some of our areas of greatest demand for electricity: offshore wind. As we have stood on the sidelines over the past two decades, other countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, and even China have leapt ahead of us, recognizing the inherent value of this strong, commercially viable, renewable resource. As of June 2012, the rest of the world boasted 4,619 megawatts of installed offshore wind energy capacity, while the United States has yet to begin construction on its first offshore wind turbine.

Under President Obama, the Department of Energy announced its intention to close that gap by developing 54 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 — more than 10 times the amount currently installed worldwide — and has begun taking proactive steps to achieve this target. In just the past five months, the administration has made major strides toward encouraging renewable energy development on the outer continental shelf. In October the Department of the Interior signed its first lease under the “Smart from the Start” program with NRG Bluewater Wind for a wind farm off the coast of Delaware. In November the department announced the first-ever competitive lease sales, giving multiple companies the opportunity to bid for leases on previously identified “wind energy areas” in federal waters off the coasts of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. And In December the Department of Energy announced that it will fund seven offshore wind technology demonstration projects, including Fishermen’s Atlantic City Windfarm in New Jersey; pilot projects in California, the Great Lakes, Connecticut, and Maine; and two turbines off the coast of Virginia.

Despite these advances and pledges of support, critics of the offshore wind industry insist that the technology is too expensive to fully compete with traditional sources of energy — fossil fuels—without massive subsidies. To put that theory to the test, the Center for American Progress, the Clean Energy States Alliance, the Sierra Club, and the U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative commissioned a study from the Brattle Group — a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts — to investigate the costs and benefits of developing a commercial-scale offshore wind industry in the United States.

To date, most studies of offshore wind energy development tended to analyze individual projects, focusing on the specific costs and benefits of building a particular offshore wind farm. Since the next offshore wind farm built in the United States will actually be the first, and first-in-class products or projects of any kind are inherently more expensive, the results of these analyses don’t accurately account for the broader economic impact of developing an entire offshore wind industry the way that the Obama administration and the Department of Energy have suggested. Therefore, we asked the Brattle Group to develop estimates of the overall investment that would be required to develop such an industry in the United States and how that investment would affect the price of electricity. Read more

By Kenneth Bossong

According to the latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects, 1,231 MW of new in-service electrical generating capacity came on line in the United States in January 2013 — all from wind, solar, and biomass sources.

– SUN DAY Campaign News Release via RenewableEnergyWorld.com

While global investment in clean energy fell by 11 percent in 2012, the dip still left last year as the second most successful year ever for the sector. And despite the speed bump, the planet’s installed capacity to generate wind power shot up from 238 gigawatts to slightly more than 282 gigawatts last year, according to numbers compiled by the Global Wind Energy Council.

The increase was driven by China and the United States, which both installed roughly 13 gigawatts a pop, bringing their cumulative totals to 75.6 gigawatts and 60 gigawatts, respectively. The GWEC’s numbers for the spike in U.S. wind capacity are a bit higher than the 10.7 gigawatts reported recently by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — but even under that lower estimate, wind’s newly installed capacity beat out every other form of American power.

Overall, the 2011 to 2012 jump reported by the GWEC was almost 20 percent:

Source: The Guardian, from data compiled by the GWEC

How much power these new installations generate? In 2010, American wind power utilized 27.4 percent of its nameplate capacity. But that’s the nature of wind, and the increase in capacity is a sign of wind’s economic viability. Bloomberg New Energy Finance just released new research concluding that wind power in Australia is already cheaper than coal and natural gas — and its cost superiority remained even when the price Australia charges polluters to emit carbon is discounted.

Breaking down the numbers by global region, Europe’s wind capacity continued chugging along the steady upward trajectory it’s been on for the last eight years. North America’s annual capacity additions have been on a much more dramatic upward swing, and after dropping in 2010 and 2011, shot back upward dramatically, topping Europe for the first time. Asia, too, has been rising very rapidly over the last few years, though its new capacity in 2012 fell a bit from highs of over 20 gigawatts in 2010 and 2011.

Source: GWEC

The GWEC chalked Asia’s 2012 slowdown up to market consolidation in China and “a lapse in policy” in India. The North American spike was driven by a last minute dash in the U.S. to take advantage of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind: 8 gigawatts of the country’s total 13 gigawatts were installed in the final quarter of last year. Wind’s PTC was anticipated to die with the arrival of the “fiscal cliff” — which would’ve likely damaged both jobs and the progress of renewable energy in America — but the January deal that averted the cliff also extended the tax credit for another year.

The fight over the PTC led to a split in the GOP, as Republicans from states with high levels of wind power development lined up behind extending the tax credit in opposition to the rest of their party. Tea party Rep. Steve King (R-IA), of all people, told a recent policy forum that Congress has “got to be a more reliable partner” in promoting renewable energy.

According to the latest research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, electricity from wind power can now be supplied more cheaply in Australia than power from either coal or natural gas — and solar and other forms of renewable energy aren’t far behind.

Older coal-fired power plants from the 70s and 80s still compete at lower prices than renewables — but only because their construction costs have depreciated. For the deployment of any new power generation in Australia, renewables now appear to be the way to go.

Australia currently charges polluters $23 in Australian dollars per metric ton of carbon they emit, but the study concluded that wind power would still undercut fossil fuels even without that correction of the market’s failure to properly build in the costs of carbon pollution:

The study shows that electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm at a cost of [$80 per megawatt hour in Australian dollars], compared to [$143 per megawatt hour] from a new coal plant or [$116 per megawatt hour] from a new baseload gas plant, including the cost of emissions under the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme. However even without a carbon price (the most efficient way to reduce economy-wide emissions) wind energy is 14% cheaper than new coal and 18% cheaper than new gas.…

Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s research on Australia shows that since 2011, the cost of wind generation has fallen by 10% and the cost of solar photovoltaics by 29%. In contrast, the cost of energy from new fossil-fuelled plants is high and rising. New coal is made expensive by high financing costs. The study surveyed Australia’s four largest banks and found that lenders are unlikely to finance new coal without a substantial risk premium due to the reputational damage of emissions-intensive investments – if they are to finance coal at all.

Here’s a graphic of BNEF’s findings, courtesy of Renew Economy:

So the study expects both coal and natural gas to rise in cost over the next two decades. Among other things, coal power consumes more water than any other source of energy. That will drive up coal’s cost, as fresh water becomes scarcer due to the very climate change driven by coal power’s carbon emissions. And in America, at least, there’s evidence that the major proven natural gas reserves will peak out within the time frame of BNEF’s analysis, rendering the boom in that energy source decidedly temporary.

Meanwhile, while the costs of solar and other forms of renewables are currently lagging, they’re dropping fast:

BNEF’s analysts conclude that by 2020, large-scale solar PV will also be cheaper than coal and gas, when carbon prices are factored in. By 2030, dispatchable renewable generating technologies such as biomass and solar thermal could also be cost-competitive.

According to companies like Ratch Australia, the cost of deploying new solar photovoltaics is already down to between $120 and $150 per megawatt hour, suggesting it may be dropping even faster than BNEF concluded. Kobad Bhavnagri, head of BNEF’s clean energy research in Australia, expects that by 2020 or 2030 “we will be finding new and innovative ways to deal with the intermittency of wind and solar.” And since Australia is most likely set for baseload capacity until at least 2020, when solar as well as wind will be undercutting fossil fuels, “it is quite conceivable that we could leapfrog straight from coal to renewables to reduce emissions as carbon prices rise.”

The world’s biggest manufacturer of wind turbines already has 50 percent of Australia’s market, which it expects to hold. And China’s largest manufacturer is eyeing the market as well. The deployment of rooftop solar is already dramatically reshaping the energy market in southern Australia, and the Green Party in Western Australia recently proposed installing solar panels on all public housing homes.

And while a move towards renewable energy by Australia’s economy certainly won’t fix global warming on its own, it’s a step in the right direction, away from the rash of heat waves and wildfires — worsened by the climate change driven by fossil fuels’ carbon emissions — that have recently slammed the nation.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

by Stephen Lacey via GreenTechMedia

It’s nearly impossible to get Congress to agree on anything.

But at a clean energy policy forum today, two congressmen — one Republican and one Democrat — agreed on three things: renewable energy is necessary, government should help leverage private investment in the sector, and the upcoming congressional showdown over sequestration and the debt ceiling may seriously hurt what’s left of federal support.

“We’ve got to be a more reliable partner,” said Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King. “We do all of this [wind, solar, biofuels] and our country becomes more energy secure. […] It’s the right thing to do.”

King was speaking to a packed crowd of policymakers, renewable energy companies, and investors on Capitol Hill at the American Council on Renewable Energy’s yearly policy forum.

His comments come after a political fight over the production tax credit, which pitted conservative Republicans like Rep. King against their own party during an election year. King was one of a handful of Republicans representing states with high wind penetrations who stood firmly in support of the tax credit. He has also been a major proponent of keeping the renewable fuels standard in place, even as members of his own party seek to repeal that target as well.

His speech touched on the importance of federal clean energy policies — mostly on biofuels, but also on wind and solar — that weren’t nearly as controversial five years ago as they are today among conservatives in Congress.

“The central theme that I’d like to address here is that we want to attract risk capital. Wise investment money. There has to be a reliable partnership. [...] When you hear people on the other side say, ‘Just cut out all the subsides’ and ‘Free enterprise will sort it all,’ you think about all the money for M16s and bulletproof vests we spend [to get energy]. That’s a subsidy.”

But when talking to reporters in the hall after his speech, the Congressman didn’t have much good to say about Congress’ ability to ensure that reliability.

“Congress has a lot of important things to do and we aren’t very good at multi-tasking. We’re sitting here looking at sequestration, the debt ceiling and the national debt. [...] I don’t think it becomes less politicized.”

King’s Democratic colleague, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, agreed wholeheartedly. The intensifying debate in Congress over automatic budget cuts and the country’s borrowing limit — commonly described as a “self-inflicted wound” — could end up hurting existing federal programs for clean energy.

“We’ve got some rocky moments ahead, most of them self-inflicted,” said Van Hollen in a speech. “The across-the-board cuts at the Department of Energy will hit ARPA-E, hit important efforts for renewable energy at EERE, and also have a negative impact on the 1603 [grant] program.”

Those cuts — part of $1 trillion in automatic spending reductions — will occur because of the 2011 Budget Control Act Congress passed in order to force an eventual deal on deficit reduction. However, because lawmakers haven’t yet agreed on a deficit reduction package, those cuts could happen after a self-imposed deadline of March 27.

Along with cuts to R&D programs and scaling back grants to companies that have already qualified, the “overall hit to the economy” of such a drastic measure will decrease demand for clean energy, said Van Hollen.

“In this era of divided government, it’s going to be hard to deal with these issues. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look longer-term. And I would encourage you all not to give up. If we stop talking about it, we’re never going to get it,” said Van Hollen, ending his otherwise gloomy speech on the state of congressional politics.

– Stephen Lacey is a senior editor at GreenTechMedia.  This was reprinted with permission.

Related CP Posts:

• 46 Republicans Claim Wind Credits Are Too ‘Costly’ After Voting To Retain Billions In Big Oil Subsidies
• Koch-Affiliated Group Campaigns To Make Wind Tax Credit ‘So Toxic’ Republicans Won’t Back It