Electricity Prices Decline 50% - Bloomberg

Electricity Prices Decline 50% - Bloomberg:

A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy.
With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE), has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year and Exelon Corp. (EXC) called off plans to expand two nuclear plants. Michigan utility CMS Energy Corp. (CMS) canceled a $2 billion coal plant after deciding it wasn’t financially viable in a time of “low natural-gas prices linked to expanded shale-gas supplies,” according to a company statement.
Mirroring the gas market, wholesale electricity prices have dropped more than 50 percent on average since 2008, and about 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a Jan. 11 research report by Aneesh Prabhu, a New York-based credit analyst withStandard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC. Prices in the west hub of PJM Interconnection LLC, the largest wholesale market in the U.S., declined to about $39 per megawatt hour by December 2011 from $87 in the first quarter of 2008

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Monbiot on feed-in tariffs as a 'useless, middle-class subsidy'

The green deal is a useless, middle-class subsidy | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

"Two years ago, I warned that the feed-in tariff, a tax on energy bills which pays for people to produce their own low-carbon electricity, would be deeply regressive. To install solar electricity, for example, you would need your own roof plus £10,000 or more in cash. If you were lucky enough to possess both these assets, you would be making, at other people's expense, one of the most lucrative of all possible investments. It would give you a state-guaranteed return of 5-8%, fixed for 25 years, which was both index-linked (making a nominal return of 7-10%) and tax free.


Those who angrily denounced my analysis claimed that it could in fact be a progressive scheme, as communities of poorer people could be helped to cash in. They're still claiming it, even though the facts deserted them long ago. Today, Andrew Pendleton of Friends of the Earth insists in the Guardian that there are "countless" examples of community feed-in tariff schemes in the UK.


They're not countless; they've been counted by the energy regulator, Ofgem, in its annual report. There are 403 such schemes, as opposed to 29,265 domestic installations. "

Read the entire column at the Guardian

My fellow residents of Ontario should question whether the NDP is the least bit relevant as the party of Greenpeace, instead of the party of social justice.

Garbage In, Anti-Nuclear Propaganda Out: The 14,000 Death Fukushima Lie - Forbes

Garbage In, Anti-Nuclear Propaganda Out: The 14,000 Death Fukushima Lie - Forbes:

"In trying to make a case against nuclear power, the authors have succeeded only in embarrassing themselves. They are asking us to believe that radiation released from a plant in Japan (where no one died) somehow traveled 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S., where it haphazardly killed (or in some cases saved) thousands of Americans by a process that is utterly implausible—all by manipulation of dubious statistics. Nice job, guys."

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Testing of India's fast breeder reactor by September - Yahoo!

Testing of India's fast breeder reactor by September - Yahoo!:

"Chennai, Jan 11 (IANS) Systems testing of India's own 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) is expected to commence in September this year -- by when the construction work is expected to be over, a senior nuclear power official said Wednesday."

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AMO backs EFW: Notes Feed-In Tariff Insanity

A great point made by East Garafraxa Mayor Allen Taylor, as the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) gets behind Energy-From-Waste projects (AMO)


Orangeville Article: AMO throws its weight behind DEEP project, indirectly:

"Taylor finds it more disheartening the province is dishing out more money to those who recover landfill gas than it is willing to consider for EFW.
“I can’t see it as good business, paying people more to produce landfill gas than you would pay them to prevent putting stuff in the ground in the first place,” he said. “I just don’t understand the logic of that.”"

Read the entire column at the Orangeville.com

Giant, floating wind turbines set to conquer deep ocean final frontier - Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

Giant, floating wind turbines set to conquer deep ocean final frontier - Governors' Wind Energy Coalition:

Last month, the first offshore turbine ever to be installed without using heavy lift vessels gently floated away on a platform built at a shipyard in Portugal and was towed by a boat 217 miles to the coast of Aguçadoura for a year-long test. It’s a regular 2-megawatt turbine made by Denmark’s Vestas bolted on one of three columns of a triangular floating platform made by Seattle-based Principle Power. 

“We are making a similar leap towards new energy resources as the oil and gas industry did in the 1970s when it began using floating structures...”

Windstream Offshore: A Recap of the Day's Reports

This morning a press release announced that Windstream had signed a binding agreement with Siemens - either a very bold move considering the moratorium introduced on offshore wind projects prior to last year's election, or an indication that the moratorium was never anything but an election stunt to begin with.
WCO reported on that release here.

Within hours another article appeared, from The Canadian Press, which seemed to support the implication the moratorium was a stunt.  That release had the McGuinty government hallmark of questionable job claims and the location of assembly buildings.

Perhaps the most informative article appeared in an online renewables site, RECHARGE.  The article includes information on both the turbine selection, and a reported strategy Windstream is implementing in moving on the Feed-In Tariff contract they had been awarded prior to the moratorium.

Mississauga MPP Delaney on DRC: Irrelevant and Wrong

Hydro debt retirement: Time for the truth:

The Debt Retirement Charge exists to retire the residual stranded debt.

The residual STRANDED debt has nothing to do with any expenses that followed the breakup of Ontario Hydro.

The ONLY thing the government needs to do is to have the Minister of Finance say what the figure for the Residual Stranded Debt is. He can't and now the whole team is sent out to lie to their constituents instead.

The main change between Ontario 2003 and Ontario 2011, for electricity production, was the additional 23 million MW of generation from nuclear (the previous PC government instigated the return of 2 units at Pickering and 2 at Bruce A), and 10 million MW less demand in Ontario - most of that reduction not being related to the previous PC government.

The Liberals can accept responsibility for the reduction in electricity reduction that has come from gutting the industrial sector.

I'd have no problem with that.
With this article, Delaney is hopefully irrelevant - and he is certainly wrong.

Stress on the High Seas: Germany's Wind Power Revolution in the Doldrums - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Stress on the High Seas: Germany's Wind Power Revolution in the Doldrums - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International:

"The energy industry is currently under more stress than almost any other sector of the German economy. The country's utilities are being forced to completely change their focus: away from nuclear power; away from their centralized structure; and away from their accustomed business models. The quartet of E.on, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall, which for so long have been spoilt by enormous profits, has had to implement tough cost-cutting measures, and countless jobs have been sacrificed. E.on alone is shedding up to 11,000 of its workers, and the industry as a whole could ax more than 20,000 jobs in all.

At the same time, the sector is forging aggressively into the business of regenerative sources of energy -- or at least that was the plan. Now it's becoming increasingly clear that the promised expansion will not progress as hoped due to a lack of the necessary conditions for its success."

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The Breakthrough Institute: Top Ten Breakthrough Moments of 2011

The Breakthrough Institute: Top Ten Breakthrough Moments of 2011:

"1. Bipartisan support grows for making clean energy cheap. Back in 2007, Breakthrough was almost alone among greens in arguing that the focus of climate policy should be on making clean energy cheap, not on making fossil fuels expensive. Four years later, innovation has become the watchword for much of the progressive movement. In his 2011 State of the Union, President Obama highlighted the critical role of innovation to economic growth, citing the technologies Breakthrough had highlighted in "Where Good Technologies Come From," and calling for increases to R&D funding. A few months later we co-authored "Climate Pragmatism," whose framework is increasingly treated by policymakers in the United States and around the world as the future of climate policy. "Breakthrough took an idea that was heresy just five years ago," noted Armond Cohen, Executive Director of the Clean Air Task Force, "and made it mainstream.""