by Ed Struzik

Canada’s Nunavut Territory is the largest undisturbed wilderness in the Northern Hemisphere. It also contains large deposits of uranium, generating intense interest from mining companies and raising concerns that a mining boom could harm the caribou at the center of Inuit life.

Until her semi-nomadic family moved into the tiny Inuit community of Baker Lake in the 1950s, Joan Scottie never knew there was a wider world beyond her own on the tundra of the Nunavut Territory in the Canadian Arctic. She didn’t see the inside of a school until she was a teenager and didn’t venture south until she was an adult.

But that all changed in 1978, when a Soviet satellite carrying 100 pounds of enriched uranium for an onboard nuclear reactor crashed into the middle of the wilderness she knew so well, resulting in a military search that recovered some of the radioactive debris. Everything that Scottie learned about uranium after that convinced her she wanted nothing to do with a mineral that had the potential to cause such serious health problems or be used for military purposes.

So when a German mining company showed up at Baker Lake ten years later with a plan to extract uranium from an area that included a key caribou calving ground, Scottie and her Inuit neighbors weighed the environmental implications against the economic advantages and voted emphatically to say “No.” The German company eventually dropped its plans.

Now, however, the Inuit grandmother of two finds herself once again on the front lines of a grassroots movement trying to block several new companies from mining uranium from the same lodes near Baker Lake. And this time the playing field has changed.

The Canadian government has made it clear that Arctic mining will be one of the cornerstones of the country’s economic future. It is encouraging mining companies to exploit the deposits of gold, silver, zinc, diamonds, uranium and other minerals and metals found in abundance in the vast areas of the enormous Nunavut Territory, as well as the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

In spite of the global recession of 2008 and the March 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which caused some countries to reconsider nuclear power, uranium exploration is proceeding at a record pace in this part of the world. In Scottie’s backyard, the French mining giant, Areva — partnering with JCU Exploration of Canada and the DAEWOO Corporation of Korea — is actively exploring a major uranium lode at Kiggavik, the site of the former planned German mine, 50 miles west of Baker Lake. Other companies also are considering building mines in the surrounding tundra. In the territory of Nunavut alone, more than $322 million was spent on uranium exploration in 2011, up from $189 million in 2009.

The Inuit are split on the wisdom of large-scale uranium mining in their territory, with some saying their communities desperately need the economic development, while others are concerned about the environmental fallout from the industry. With a population of just 30,000 mostly Inuit people living in a territory the size of Western Europe, Nunavut — which contains a sizeable part of mainland Canada as well as most of the country’s Arctic Archipelago, extending nearly to the North Pole — remains the largest undisturbed wilderness in the northern hemisphere. Though some mining roads exist, not a single road connects its 25 communities. As a result, some of the biggest caribou herds in the world — ranging in size from 65,000 to more than 400,000 — migrate freely.

Scottie, other Inuit, environmental groups, some scientists, and the country’s environmental agency, Environment Canada, are concerned that a mining boom in parts of Nunavut will interfere with the calving and migration of caribou, which already are experiencing stress from a warming Arctic climate. These groups also worry about contamination from uranium mining, especially given the history in northern Canada of mining companies abandoning their mines and performing little, if any, environmental cleanup.

“What happened in the past is a concern,” says Ramsey Hart, who works for Mining Watch, an environmental watchdog based in Ottawa. “With uranium especially, we’ve seen prices rise and fall dramatically in relatively short periods of time. What happens to these open pit mines and roads and tailings if the mines are no longer economically viable? And what happens to caribou? Their numbers in the Arctic are already down dramatically.”

Last year, seven companies searching for uranium held 554 active leases to explore on the Beverly caribou herd's traditional calving ground. Only a fraction of these projects will be move forward. But experts say that by 2017, eight mines may begin production in the Kitikmeot region, which encompasses the northwest portion of mainland Nunavut.

Mining companies vow to take steps to minimize disturbance of Nunavut’s caribou herds and say that the development of a uranium mining industry will bring jobs and prosperity to this undeveloped region. Areva — which for its Kiggavik project is proposing one underground mine and four open-pit mines, as well as roads and a port to ship out concentrated uranium — says the project would create at least 400 jobs and would have an annual payroll of $200 million for nearly two decades. Areva spokesman Barry McCallum told The Canadian Press that the company’s mill to produce uranium concentrate could also attract other uranium mining companies to the region.

Tom Hoefer, the executive director of an industry group, the Chamber of Mines, has suggested that all this new interest in Nunavut will require the building of 400 miles of new roads and will lead to the revival of previously shelved mining projects. “Surely this presents a tremendous opportunity for local arrangements to construct, to maintain and to operate this infrastructure,” Hoefer said at a trade show in Nunavut in September.

Some Inuit enthusiastically support mining, especially now that the settlement of aboriginal land claims gives the Inuit the mineral rights to 10 percent of the 350,000 square kilometers of land they were given title to. The rapidly growing population is in desperate need of jobs, and the Canadian government, the Nunavut government, and the Inuit-owned corporations set up to manage the land-claims assets believe mining could address that need, as well as bring in revenues to native corporations. The Nunavut Impact Review Board is now studying the Kiggavik project, which is the farthest advanced of any of the proposed uranium mines in Nunavut.

The history of mining in Nunavut has been a short and disjointed one, thanks largely to high costs of fuel and transportation and the fact that there are scarcely any roads in the regions. There is just one mine — the Meadowbank gold mine near Baker Lake — currently operating in Nunavut territory.

Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of uranium, with three of the top ten mines in the world located in northern Saskatchewan near the Nunavut border. And uranium isn’t the only hot commodity in the Arctic; soaring gold prices are leading to a so-called “new gold rush” in the Yukon, where activity in 2011 was unprecedented in scope.

The scramble for uranium is a more complex story. No one knows where the uranium will go when and if it’s extracted. The industry is notoriously guarded about releasing such information. But most experts believe that China and several European countries that rely heavily on nuclear power — most notably France, home of Areva — will eventually drive up prices, which are now near five-year lows.

Looming over the current debate about mining in the Arctic is the legacy of past mineral extraction. The Canadian government is currently on the hook for an estimated $4.5 billion to clean up dozens of uranium, gold, sliver, and zinc mines abandoned in the northern territories, including two in Nunavut.

One of those mines, Eldorado Mining and Refining, was a government-run corporation that dumped some of the more than 750,000 tons of radioactive tailings from uranium mining into the pristine waters of Great Bear Lake. Located in the Northwest Territories just west of the Nunavut border, Great Bear is the third-largest lake in North America and the seventh largest in the world. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent cleaning up that site and on compensating aboriginal people whose health may have been affected by the contamination.

While the government of Canada has introduced legislation to ensure that at least some of the costs associated with reclamation are accounted for in future developments, critics believe there are still serious risks.

For Inuit like Scottie and the Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization, the plight of caribou — which have been central to the Inuit’s subsistence culture — lies at the heart of the issue. Caribou numbers were down dramatically in some places in the Arctic in recent years thanks largely to cyclical fluctuations that occur naturally. But a rapidly warming climate also appears to be taking a toll. Concerned about several issues — including mining’s impact on caribou — Environment Canada wrote to the Nunavut Impact Review Board about the Kiggavik project: “Environment Canada is of the opinion that there is the potential for the project to cause significant adverse environmental impacts.”

Scientists like Don Russell — a former Environment Canada researcher who now heads up CARMA, an international network that shares research data and information on caribou — said that new mining and energy development, coupled with regional climate change and more efficient hunting techniques used by the Inuit, may cause further caribou declines. That’s because almost everything scientists have learned over the past three decades suggests that these animals need space, especially when they’re calving.

In spite of the high stakes both for the economy and for the environment, neither the mainstream Canadian media, nor most environmental organizations, have paid much attention to an issue that promises to rewrite the future history of the Arctic.

“No one but us hunters and trappers are talking about what this all means to caribou and other Arctic animals,” says Scottie. “We already have one mine. Maybe another mine won’t hurt. But there are a lot of other companies up here who have big plans as well. What happens if they get their roads, their open mine pits, and their shipping ports. What happens then?”

by Brittany Gibson

The New Year is upon us, and President Obama has delivered his State of the Union address, which offered high-level insight on the energy sector in the US but was reminiscent of messages we’ve already heard. Now it’s time to turn our attention to another really important event of the year: the 2012 Super Bowl. As always, this year’s game will be a staggering display of athleticism and energy consumption (rather than verbiage and applause). These two things, generally not discussed in the same conversation, offer a more nuanced look at the energy sector here in America.

Every year the stats at the Super Bowl pile up like Tom Brady’s passing yards, including the kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed. The 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas, Texas set a record, becoming the most highly viewed television program in American history. Almost 16 million people tuned in, consuming roughly 11.3 million kWh through television sets alone, according to a report by General Electric. That’s enough electricity to power all the homes in three NFL cities – Green Bay, Pittsburgh, and Dallas – for 10 hours.

While many fans are focused on the number of touchdowns or turnovers, they’re generally unaware of the statistics they post in their own homes, through their electricity consumption. On a wider scale, this lack of awareness plagues the energy efficient home market, the consequence of forces on both the supply and demand side. Traditionally, consumers’ utility bills have not provided actionable information, making it difficult to interpret their consumption and how to reduce it. Simultaneously, home builders and renovators haven’t been able to articulate a sensible value proposition for energy-efficiency measures.

Appliance designs have made considerable gains in energy efficiency, but these gains are eclipsed by the proliferation of consumer electronics, like LCD televisions and digital video recorders (DVRs). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than 50 million U.S. homes have more than three TVs, and more than 45 million (40 percent) homes have a DVR. The power consumed by appliances and electronics grew from 17 percent of average home energy use in 1978 to 31 percent in 2005, according the EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Advances in energy efficiency have historically mattered less to the American consumer than the newest entertainment device.

There is a chance the American consumer has started to pay attention, however. Major organizations like the NFL have started highlighting residential energy efficiency – like investing in 800 free home energy audits in the Indianapolis area. And according to a recent Yahoo Real Estate poll the American homebuyer’s dream home might be more energy efficient and constructed of sustainable materials.

Currently, there’s little incentive for consumers to tune in to their energy consumption. Engaging the American public through the most popular entertainment forums (e.g. the Super Bowl) and by using devices and outlets they already love (e.g. televisions and social media) may be the ticket to unlocking the energy efficiency potential in the residential sector.

India is using auctions to drive down the price of solar. Combined with rising diesel prices and cheap Chinese solar panels, solar costs are down 28 percent since December 2010.

The average price of solar panels dropped 51 percent last year as the world's largest manufacturers doubled production capacity, reports Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

"Solar is going mainstream in India, helped by Chinese pricing," says Ardeshir Contractor, founder of Kiran Energy Solar Power, a local developer told Bloomberg.

Because India has so many black-outs, many factories and homes use emergency diesel generators as back-ups. That back-up power would be more cheaply supplied by or supplemented with solar.

Demand for electricity is about 14 percent higher than the country can supply during peak hours, and 400 million people have no access to power, according to the United Nations.

In its December auction, where utilities and developers compete on price, winners agreed to supply solar energy for an average rate of $0.17 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) by early 2013.

In contrast, even though the country subsidizes diesel, it costs double that, an energy analyst at HSBC Holdings told Bloomberg. Coal still provides the least expensive energy at about $0.09 per kWh, but users have to be connected to the grid to access it.

India's largest mobile phone company, BHARTI, is switching to solar for rural cell towers that aren't connected to the grid, and the world's biggest mango-puree producer, Jaine Irrigation, is completing a 8.5 MW solar plant. Jaine expects the pay-back period to be just five years.

Diesel accounts for 4 percent of the energy that powers India's 300,000 cell towers. This month, India's Telecom Regulatory Authority recommended a minimum of 75 percent of rural mobile towers and 33 percent of urban towers run on a combination of solar, wind and diesel by 2020, reports Bloomberg.

India's National Solar Mission has set a target of producing 10 percent of its energy - 20,000 MW - using solar by 2022, equivalent to 18 nuclear reactors.

The country gives the solar industry tax breaks, has a feed-in law (FiT) and guarantees its output will be bought by the government.

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

by Dave Levitan

With the industry’s support, new U.S. lighting efficiency standards went into effect this month. This move, along with similar actions in Europe and China, is helping spur new technologies that will change the way homes and businesses are illuminated.

Despite an outcry from U.S. conservatives that new lighting efficiency standards infringe on personal freedom, legislation mandating greater efficiency became law on January 1. Those new standards, along with major progress in lighting research and development, are helping usher in a technological revolution: Lighting companies — both large and small, in the U.S. and abroad — are rapidly building a better light bulb.

The incandescent bulbs that have lit the world since their invention by Thomas Edison are on their way out, to be replaced by newer technologies offering dramatic improvements in efficiency, energy use, and other environmental impacts.

Indeed, the way Americans think about a light bulb will have to change: Instead of a throw-away item worth merely a few cents, buying a light bulb will more closely resemble the purchase of a long-lived appliance. LED and CFL bulbs, along with other technologies, can offer one or two decades of use, rather than the paltry year of most traditional incandescent lights.

Lighting companies in the U.S. support the new standards, which, beginning this year, will gradually phase out traditional bulbs like the 100-watt in favor of new technologies that use at least 28 percent less power. These changes bring the U.S. in line with many other countries, including those of the European Union, which began a phase-out of inefficient bulbs three years ago. China’s ban on 100-watt bulbs takes effect this year, followed by efficiency improvements for lower wattages through 2016.

The U.S. changes are long overdue. Efficiency standards for other technologies, such as refrigerators and washing machines, have been around since the Reagan Administration. With lighting accounting for around 15 percent of residential electricity use (and 35 percent in commercial buildings), phasing out the inefficient old bulbs represents a huge economic and environmental opportunity.

“There are about four billion screw-in sockets out there [in the U.S.], and today only a quarter of them have an energy-saving bulb in them,” said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “When the standards are in full effect, we’ll cut our nation’s electric bill by about $12.5 billion a year and eliminate the need for 30 large power plants and all the pollution that comes from them. It’s a big deal.”

The new U.S. lighting standards are part of the Energy Independence Act of 2007, signed into law by President Bush with broad bipartisan support. The lighting provisions remained uncontroversial until last year, when they became a Tea Party rallying cry. “The American people want less government intrusion into their lives, not more, and that includes staying out of their personal light bulb choices,” said U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Some members of Congress falsely claimed that the legislation would ban all incandescent bulbs and require the purchase of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). In fact, the legislation does not ban any class of bulbs, but rather requires that a 100-watt bulb now use a maximum 72 watts to give off the same 1,600 lumens. In December, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives managed to defund enforcement of the new legislation until October of this year, but despite that, the lighting industry is moving ahead with the new standards.

“The legislation is in effect, it has not been repealed, it has not been changed,” said Terry McGowan, the director of engineering for an industry group, the American Lighting Association. “We made all the decisions for this back in 2007. Once you start investing money and changing production lines, that’s very hard to turn off, and also very expensive.”

The new U.S. standards come as lighting companies — ranging from leaders like GE and Philips to smaller companies such as Venture Lighting, GrafTech, and Vu1 Corporation — are developing a host of new technologies. These include a new generation of incandescent bulbs, called halogen incandescents: 72-watt bulbs are available now, for only a few dollars and with light output close to standard 100-watt incandescents, and can screw into existing sockets.

“It’s a bulb that costs only marginally more,” said Brian Howard, co-author of a book on new lighting technologies, Green Lighting. “You get the same color, temperature, light that we’re used to. So really the only disadvantage is that they don’t last quite as long as fluorescents.” The lifetime of halogen incandescents is about two to three years, compared to six years and more for CFLs.

“I don’t think we would have these new improved incandescents on the market if it wasn’t for the standard,” Horowitz said. “The industry has known how to do this for a long time.”

In the new lighting revolution, the controversial compact fluorescent bulb will almost certainly lose ground to newer technologies. The unfamiliarly shaped CFL bulbs gained infamy due to shortcomings in light color and quality, along with warm-up delays and an irritating hum. But prices have come down and many of the technical problems have been addressed. The efficiency improvement is undeniable: A 100-watt-equivalent bulb that produces 1,600 lumens uses only 23 watts and lasts up to 10 years.

One issue seized on by opponents is the small amounts of mercury inside CFLs. But Horowitz said that CFLs still release far less mercury into the environment than incandescent bulbs. “While incandescents don’t have mercury in them, they cause three times more [mercury] emissions at the power plant than the CFL does,” Horowitz said. “And CFLs are down to two to three milligrams of mercury, which is the size of a pen point, and it stays inside the bulb.” When a CFL burns out, consumers do need to recycle them properly, but Home Depot, Lowes, and others offer such services for free.

Howard and industry experts say that CFLs are likely to be replaced in the coming decade by LEDs, or light-emitting diodes. A solid-state technology, LEDs feature electroluminescence from semi-conductors, rather than thermal radiation coming off an electrical filament as with an incandescent bulb. LEDs provide light nearly equivalent in quality and color to incandescents, while offering both efficiency and lifetime improvements over CFLs. They also are completely programmable and will allow for smarter management of a home’s lighting. Their drawback, for the moment, is sticker shock: Instead of a quarter for an incandescent bulb, a typical LED still costs more than $20.

That is changing fast. Sylvie Casanova, a spokesperson for Philips Lighting, said her company’s standard LED bulb (equivalent in brightness to a 75-watt incandescent bulb, though requiring only 17 watts) was released about a year ago at almost $40, and is already down to $24.99. GE, Sylvania, and others have similar prices for their 75-watt-equivalent LED products. With rebates now available in some states, that can come down to $15.

“Fifteen dollars for a bulb that is going to save you $142 over the life of the bulb, which is 20 to 25 years, and your break-even point is at three years,” Casanova said. “But the consumer doesn’t consider what it is going to cost them to run that light bulb. They just look at the upfront cost.”

Those upfront costs will most likely keep consumers away from some other technologies for the moment, but these may end up playing a role in the market in various ways. Electron-stimulated luminescence bulbs, or ESLs, for example, are efficient bulbs made by the Vu1 Corporation with a quality of light similar to incandescents. They make use of accelerated electrons that stimulate phosphor on the surface of the bulb, which emits light. The company says this results in 70 percent efficiency improvements over incandescents. So far, only a 65-watt-equivalent floodlight bulb is commercially available, but other versions are in the works.

Howard said that plasma lighting is also useful, especially for large commercial or industrial spaces. One company, Stray Light Optical Technologies, produces plasma bulbs with a stunning 23,000-lumen output and a 50,000-hour lifetime. They work by converting electrical power to radio frequency power, which turns a gas inside a tiny bulb to a plasma state that generates light.

Among the technologies that may enhance or reduce the cost of LEDs are organic LEDs, or OLEDs, and quantum dots. The former, already used in television screens and other displays, provides the electroluminescence from a layer of organic compounds that responds to a current flowing through it. Quantum dots, meanwhile, are tiny bits of semi-conducting material that allow for precise tuning of the light’s wavelength. Effectively, that means that a LED bulb could approach even closer the light quality and color of a traditional incandescent bulb.

Casanova, of Philips, as well as the ALA’s McGowan, acknowledged that the industry generally views LED dominance as inevitable. But not everyone thinks that is a foregone conclusion. Horowitz said that each of the main technologies — CFLs, LEDs, and new incandescents — has its advantages, and which one comes out on top is far from guaranteed.

One thing is certain, experts say: Consumer savings will start to pile up quickly. “Many people have 20 to 40 sockets in their home, so it really adds up,” Horowitz said. “The average consumer... once they switch out their bulbs could save 100 to 200 dollars per year.”

Even small steps have big ripples in this field: According to the U.S. Energy Star efficiency program, if every home replaced just one bulb with a more efficient version, the country would save $600 million a year.

Photo by John Loo/flickr/Creative Commons

Verdant Power has been awarded a 10-year license for a tidal wave energy plant in New York City's East River.

Verdant, which has been pushing the project forward since 2002, has tested six turbines there, which is actually a tidal strait between the New York Harbor and the Long Island Sound. The power produced by that demonstration project powered a Gristedes supermarket and a parking garage on Roosevelt Island.

This is the first time FERC has awarded a tidal wave license. This "pilot" license will allow Verdant to demonstrate commercial viability, while also determining potential environmental impacts.

When FERC gives a pilot license, the project must be able to be removed and be built in locations that aren't environmentally sensitive.

The 1,050-kilowatt Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project would supply electricity to 9,500 homes on Roosevelt Island, which sits in the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens.

Verdant places turbines on the river's floor to tap its tidal flow. It plans to have five turbines in place by late 2013 and 50 by 2015. During this pilot period, the company will study the impact on fish and the river's sediment as well as demonstrating commercial viability.

If all goes well, Verdant will apply for a commercial license.

In 2010, Verdant received an award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for a pilot demonstration of three, more advanced turbines and an improved channel-mounting system in the East River.

In 2010, the company signed the first memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China for marine renewable energy. The MOU says Verdant will develop projects with China's state-owned renewable energy developer - the China Energy Conservation Environment Protection Group.

US Marine Energy Potential

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently the most rigorous assessments of the potential for marine renewable energy in the US.

The reports conclude that marine energy has the potential to provide 15 percent of US electricity by 2030.

The Pacific Ocean off the West Coast (Washington, Oregon and California) and Alaska have the most wave energy resources, and there are numerous "hot spots" for tidal energy across the US, mostly along the east and west coasts.

DOE concludes the US has the marine resources to create new industries, jobs, an American leadership in an emerging global market.

Mapping and Assessment of the United States Ocean Wave Energy Resource report

Assessment of Energy Production Potential from Tidal Streams in the United States: includes a geographic information systems (GIS) tool available for public use.

Website: www.verdantpower.com

by Silvio Marcacci

On March 10, 2011, Japan was planning on a nuclear power future. Never blessed with a wealth of domestic energy resources, the country was only 16 percent energy sufficient, the third-largest net importer of crude oil in the world, and the largest global importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal.

By late 2010, nuclear energy represented 29 percent of Japan’s electricity supply and it was the third biggest nuclear power generator in the world. A government master plan aimed to increase this mix to 41 percent by 2017 and 50 percent by 2030.

But on March 11, 2011 when the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit and caused the world’s worst nuclear power plant meltdown in 25 years, Japan’s energy sector abruptly shifted from a nuclear-powered state to one without certainty about how to power its future.

If any good comes from Fukushima, it may be a shift toward clean energy that weans the country off imported fossil fuels, symbolically shown by the wind farms that kept running when most other power sources tripped off or were shut down.

Japan currently generates about ten percent of its electricity from renewable sources, including eight percent from hydropower. It is the world’s fourth-largest solar market with 3.8 gigawatts (GW) installed capacity and has 2.5 GW installed wind power capacity, largely the product of a direct subsidy program.

But that direct subsidy program, which had paid a third of the costs for renewable energy projects, ended in 2010. The reverberations of the program’s end rippled through the wind power industry, evidenced by a 68 percent decline in new wind power installations for the year ending March 2012.

Fukushima quickly shifted the country’s focus to renewables, though, and in August 2011 Japan passed a feed-in-tariff to incentivize development of wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal energy. The tariff will take hold in July 2012 and require utilities to buy renewable generation at above-market rates for 20 years, as much as 20 yen (about 26 cents) per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

These rates compare favorably to the average grid electricity price of 14 yen per kWh, according to Japan’s Natural Resources and Energy Agency. The subsidy for solar may be even higher, due to an existing tariff that prices solar energy generated by homes at 42 yen per kWh and solar energy generated by businesses and schools at 40 yen per kWh.

As can be expected with such favorable terms, Japan’s solar market is set to boom. The head of the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association recently predicted domestic shipments of solar panels may increase ten-fold. China’s Suntech Power Holdings, the world’s largest module maker, expects sales to double in Japan this year. Not to be outdone, U.S. solar developer SunEdison is working on plans to deploy 1 gigawatt (GW) of new solar capacity over the next five years, at an estimated cost of $4.6 billion.

The shift toward renewables is especially focused in the regions hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami. Japan’s Environmental Ministry recently announced a series of feasibility studies for renewables in areas hit by last year’s earthquake and tsunami. The $5 million dollar effort includes eight projects (four wind, three solar, and one geothermal) and the study is expected to be released this Spring.

Distributed generation is also picking up speed. Japan’s natural gas companies expect a 56 percent jump in sales for residential fuel cell systems, and several groups are working on experiments to build self-sufficient neighborhoods. One of the most promising of these projects is the “Eco Town” near Tokyo which aims to build 400 homes powered exclusive by local renewable energy. Each of the homes would include solar panels, a household battery system and smart meters, while the community would be supplied by its own 2-3 megawatt solar array.

Ultimately though, the key to Japan’s clean energy future will likely be an entirely new government master plan that turns away from nuclear power. Proposals are circulating in the national legislature to incorporate a mix of energy conservation, renewable energy, and customer choice in power supply. The master plan options are due by the end of March, and the new plan will take shape over the summer.

by Timothy Hurst

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign kicked off with its first television commercial of the 2012 campaign yesterday [see video below] and the President picked up where he left off in 2008 by focusing on jobs — more specifically, on green jobs.

Fresh off rejecting the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have carried oil from Canada's tar sands through the US to the Gulf of Mexico, and spurred by a falling national unemployment rate — a rate that was still at a relatively high 8.5 percent for December 2011 — Obama is putting his chips on one of the principal policy themes of his last candidacy: growing a clean energy economy. Considering the economic downturn that somewhat stifled green job growth over the last three years, the move is a bold one for the Obama campaign. But it was a global economic downturn that kept green job growth from reaching its potential, not some kind of fatal flaw in the policies or vision. And as the new ad points out, America's clean energy industry has 2.7 million jobs and is expanding rapidly. So while the US economy may still be slowly regaining its footing, the clean energy economy is not only one of the few bright spots, the Obama campaign still thinks it is the keystone to getting this country's overall economy back on track.

by Lauren Craig

A world leader in fossil fuels will soon be generating power from another one of its abundant natural resources—the sun. The Supreme Council of Energy (SCE) of Dubai (the second-largest emirate of the United Arab Emirates) has announced plans to develop a 1-gigawatt (GW) solar farm in the desert outside Dubai by 2030.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park will roll out in phases, with the first 10-megawatt (MW) phase scheduled to be completed by 2013. The photovoltaic (PV) power plant, which is named in honor of the vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, will be the first utility-scale solar energy plant of its kind in the region.

The project is part of Dubai’s Integrated Energy Strategy 2030. According to Saeed Al Tayer, vice chairman of SCE and CEO of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), the plan requires that DEWA generate 1 percent of Dubai’s energy with solar power by 2020, and 5 percent by 2030. The rest of the emirate’s energy production will come from nuclear power plants (12 percent), coal (12 percent) and natural gas.

Diversifying Dubai’s resource mix is one of the emirate’s top priorities. Other key objectives of its energy strategy include meeting the needs of both present and future generations and creating an urban infrastructure with sustainable resources. “We recognize that preserving our energy resources will be one of the greatest challenges in our drive towards sustainable development,” said bin Rashid Al Maktoum. “This, however, will not materialize unless the different facets of our society adopt energy conservation principles in their core values. The future generations will be the chief beneficiary of our achievements and the best judge of what we accomplish in this field.”

According to UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, “the UAE is striving to develop and boost its rich resources and expertise in the international energy markets and enhance its leading role as a world center for renewable energy research and development.” Recent trends suggest that the UAE is emerging as a leader in clean technology. Last April, Dubai held the first Dubai Global Energy Forum, dedicated to highlighting the environmental and sustainability issues affecting the region, and providing a forum for world energy leaders and experts to share information on energy policies, programs, technologies and investment opportunities.

This month, the UAE is also hosting world energy leaders at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. At the conference, Scotland, Europe’s offshore renewable energy leader, will sign a landmark partnership agreement with Abu Dhabi’s government-backed Masdar corporation—developer of the famed zero-emissions Masdar City. While it is unclear exactly what sorts of “green technology products” the two parties will collaborate on, the possibilities seem endless.

by Charis Michelsen

The German airline Lufthansa has ceased its domestic trials of biofuel – but not because the trial failed. On the contrary, 1,471 tons of CO2 have been saved on over a thousand domestic flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg. Lufthansa is capping off its trial run with a transatlantic biofuel powered flight.

Burning the Biosynthetic Kerosene

The flight in question is a Boeing 747-400, from Frankfurt to Washington DC, and carrying 40 tons of a biosynthetic fuel mix. The expected CO2 emissions reduction compared to standard fuel is 38 tons. The international flight is the final step of Lufthansa’s test run, which used a 50/50 mix of standard fuel and biosynthetic kerosene.

The trial ran from July to December of last year, using a total of 1,566 tons of the biokerosene mix to save 1,471 tons of CO2, and has been declared a success. Not only were carbon emissions reduced, but the higher density of the biofuels also reduced fuel consumption during flights.

Joachim Buse, vice president of aviation biofuel at Lufthansa, as reported by Business Green, spoke briefly about ending the trial:

“Our burnFAIR project went off smoothly and to our fullest satisfaction. As expected, biofuel proved its worth in daily flight operations.”

It Was Great, But No Thanks

With such positive results, one might think that Lufthansa would be switching all their flights to the biofuel mix, but that would be totally wrong. While the biofuel itself performed admirably, the problem once again comes back to sustainability.

The biofuels available to today’s consumers and companies are neither sustainable nor, apparently, affordable. As reported by Business Green, Buse also noted that despite the need for emissions reduction, Lufthansa will not be using alternative fuels until they can get one that’s more sustainable:

“As a next step, we will focus on the suitability, availability, sustainability and certification of raw materials. However, Lufthansa will only continue the practical trial if we are able to secure the volume of sustainable, certified raw materials required in order to maintain routine operations.”

Food, Fuel, and the Ongoing Debate

It all comes back to the question of how to cheaply and safely produce biofuels without growing energy crops on land slated for producing food. One solution suggested by the transportation industry is to supplement standard fuel with biofuel rather than replace it (which is a wishy-washy sort of compromise). Another is to develop biofuel that doesn’t impinge on food production (so much easier said than done).

The sheer abundance of recently discovered natural gas resources in the U.S. could drive down gas and electricity prices in the next few decades, yield an overall increase in energy use, and stunt the nation’s still-emerging renewable energy sector, a new report says. Using economic modeling, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that relatively cheap natural gas — much of it to be extracted from underground shale formations — could represent an increasingly large share of U.S. electricity use, particularly in the face of a weak national climate policy. By 2050, the report says, this growth could cause national energy use to increase, possibly leading to a jump in greenhouse gas emissions of 13 percent above 2005 levels. Absent this supply of natural gas — which has become increasingly available as a result of improved drilling methods, including the emergence of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — the U.S. could have expected emissions to decline 2 percent, the report says. The ascendance of natural gas could also retard the development of carbon capture technology, the report says.