China Pushes Renewables

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CHINA PLOWS AHEAD WITH RENEWABLES IN RURAL AREAS

China is "sparing no effort" in developing renewable energy sources to serve its rural communities while "easing energy shortages and environmental problems," the Xinhua news agency reported April 16. Currently, it said, renewables provide 5% of energy used in rural areas--the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal annually.

Further efforts are planned in the future, the article said, noting that the country's total potential wind resource is some 250,000 MW [an amount of wind capacity that would be capable of generating some 500 billion kWh per year]. At present, it said, China has only about 200 utility-scale wind turbines in place, with a combined annual production of about 100 million kWh.

Solar heating, photovoltaic electricity, household methane gas production from animal wastes, geothermal power, and even tidal power are all being tried out in various areas of the country, the article said. China hopes to boost renewable energy use to the equivalent of 80 million tons of coal annually by the year 2000.

"There's no question that economic growth throughout south and east Asia is going to open up a large potential market for wind and other renewable energy sources," commented AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. "China, India, Indonesia and other populous nations in the region have announced plans to double or triple their energy supply over the next 10 years, and that means increased demand for all types of energy equipment."

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The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has authorized me to offer an electronic edition of its newsletter, _Wind Energy Weekly_, from which the above article is excerpted (from a back issue), at no cost.

For those of you who have not previously seen excerpts from back issues, the _Weekly_ reports on the outlook for renewable energy, energy-related environmental issues, and renewable energy legislation in addition to wind industry trade news. The electronic edition normally runs about 10kb in length.

The free electronic edition of the _Weekly_ is intended as an educational publication for those without a commercial interest in the wind energy industry. If your interest in wind is commercial in nature, please write to windmail@mcimail.com for more information about AWEA membership and publications.

If you would like a free electronic subscription, send me an e-mail request. Please include information on your position, organization, and reason for interest in the publication.

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Tom Gray
tomgray@econet.org
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Support renewable energy! Visit the Electronic Lobbyist for Renewable Energy Web Site:

http://www.serve.com/stevie2/doorway.html

RENEWABLE R&D VITAL TO NATION'S FUTURE: DOE OFFICIALS

Congress's plans to substantially reduce federal research funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies (in multi-year budget projections) are "a blunder of . . . potentially historic proportions," according to an article by two high-ranking U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials in the April issue of ATLANTIC MONTHLY magazine.

Joseph J. Romm, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Charles B. Curtis, Deputy Secretary of Energy, describe two future energy scenarios--one negative and one positive--developed by prestigious organizations. Pursuing renewables and efficiency, they write, can help the U.S. recover from the former and better position itself to take advantage of the economic and employment growth prospects likely to be offered by the latter.

The first scenario, from DOE's own Energy Information Administration (EIA) for the year 2005, portrays "a world in which the Persian Gulf control[s] two-thirds of the world's oil for export, with $200 billion a year in oil revenues streaming into that unstable and politically troubled region, and America . . . importing nearly 60% of its oil, resulting in a $100-billion- a-year outflow that undermine[s] efforts to reduce our trade deficit."

Romm and Curtis note that little can be done at this point to alter this fundamentally gloomy picture of the next decade. But they add that the development of new technologies that can diversify the nation's energy supply and stretch out its fossil fuels could help to reduce the additional shock of a new oil price rise if one should occur during that time period.

Multi-year research and development (R&D) budget cuts proposed by Congress, they say, "all but guarantee that if an oil crisis comes, our national response will be reactive, uninformed, and unduly burdensome. Having abandoned the technological means to minimize the crisis, the nation will be left in the next century with little more than its usual responses . . .: price controls or other rigid regulations, or unplanned, ineffective attempts to deal with the effects of sharp price or supply fluctuations."

While acknowledging that the probability of a new oil shock remains unclear, Romm and Curtis observe that the fundamental conditions for one--steadily rising global oil demand and increasing concentration of world reserves in the Persian Gulf-- are already in place.

In particular, they note that the industrialization of some of the most populous developing countries, China and India among them, will place new demands on global supplies, as farm workers move to the cities to seek employment: "The fundamentals of urbanization--commuting, transporting raw materials, constructing infrastructure, powering commercial buildings--all consume large amounts of oil and electricity.

"At the same time, fewer farms will have to feed more people, and so the use of mechanization, transportation, and fertilizer will increase, entailing the consumption of still more energy and oil. An analysis by one of [DOE]'s national laboratories found that a doubling of the proportion of China's and India's populations that lives in cities could increase per capita energy consumption by 45%--even if industrialization and income per capita remained unchanged."

The second, more positive scenario, is for the longer term-- through the middle of the next century--and is one of two planning forecasts developed by Royal Dutch/Shell Group last year. It depicts "a world in which fossil fuel use has begun a slow, steady decline; more than a third of the market for new electricity generation [is] supplied from renewable sources; the renewables industry [has] annual sales of $150 billion; and the fastest-growing new source of power [is] solar energy," according to Romm and Curtis. Additionally, they point out, the Shell scenario does not assume either that fossil fuel prices will rise--although there is a case to be made that such rises will occur--or that governments will incorporate environmental costs into fossil prices, "even though every single independent analysis has found that fossil fuel generation has much higher environmental costs than non-fossil fuel generation has."

Instead, the forecast is based on the current trend of technical improvements and falling prices of renewable energy technologies. Biomass and wind, Romm and Curtis write, have already reached the stage where they are competitive with coal and traditional energy sources for wholesale power generation.

The future outlook for these technologies, they argue, will be strongly influenced by federal R&D: "Federal investments clearly make a difference in technology development and global market share. Consider the case of photovoltaics. In 1955, Bell Laboratories invented the first practical PV cell. Through the 1960s and 1970s investments and purchases by NASA [the National Aeronautics and Space Administration], the Pentagon, and the National Science Foundation helped to sustain the PV industry and gave America leadership in world sales. In 1982, federal support for renewable energy was cut deeply, and within three years Japan became the world leader in PV sales. The Bush Administration began to increase funding for solar energy and, in 1990, collaborated with the American PV industry in efforts to improve manufacturing technology; three years later the United States regained the lead in sales in this rapidly growing industry . . .

" Renewable energy technologies, Romm and Curtis write, "may well be the single largest new source of jobs in the next century," since most manufacturing industries are now mature.

Conclude the two, "Some of the most pressing national needs in the coming decades are to reduce the country's huge and growing trade deficit in oil, to minimize any economic or political threat . . . from . . . growing world dependence on Persian Gulf oil, to prevent pollution, to avoid irreversibly changing the global climate, and to capture a large share of the enormous potential market for energy and environmental technologies.

"Remarkably, a great many of the same R&D investments can simultaneously achieve all these ends while cost-effectively reducing the energy bills of businesses and consumers."

The ATLANTIC MONTHLY article is posted on the World Wide Web and can be reached through AWEA's Web site at http://www.igc.apc.org/awea/aweapol.html. A newspaper article summarizing the Shell future energy scenario is available at the same address.

___________________________________________________________________________

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has authorized me to offer an electronic edition of its newsletter, _Wind Energy Weekly_, from which the above article is excerpted (from a back issue), at no cost.

For those of you who have not previously seen excerpts from back issues, the _Weekly_ reports on the outlook for renewable energy, energy-related environmental issues, and renewable energy legislation in addition to wind industry trade news. The electronic edition normally runs about 10kb in length.

The free electronic edition of the _Weekly_ is intended as an educational publication for those without a commercial interest in the wind energy industry. If your interest in wind is commercial in nature, please write to for more information about AWEA membership and publications.

If you would like a free electronic subscription, send me an e-mail request. Please include information on your position, organization, and reason for interest in the publication.

____________________________________________________________________________

Tom Gray
tomgray@econet.org

____________________________________________________________________________

Support renewable energy! Visit the Electronic Lobbyist for Renewable Energy Web Site:

http://www.serve.com/stevie2/doorway.html

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