Cross posted from Scaling Green
Cancun - When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business. Public demand, technological advances and an inevitable price on carbon were going to drive cleantech to dominance over time. “Renewable energy,” it was often said, “will soon become just plain ‘energy’.”
As you know, I'm firmly (and rightly or wrongly) in the camp of those who are seriously disappointed with our current crop of leftwing politicians and who are quite pessimistic about the short term economic outlook. One of my diaries from this summer (Judging Obama) still sums up my views on the divide within the community and the positions of both sides.
One of the results of this mood of disappointment has been an inability to get worked up lately about politics, and to write anything much.
Another reason for my silence has been that I've been inordinately (and thankfully) busy at work. As you may remember, I created my own company earlier this year, after 15 years in the banking world, to help developers find money to build their renewable energy projects, in particular in the offshore wind sector where I've been involved in the past 5 years.
Well, I'm pleased to announce that the first transaction to happen with my new company's help was signed last week last week.
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As I keep on being extremely busy at work and with little time for blogging, the only thing I can find the time to write about is precisely what I'm working on, namely offshore wind and its financing. There was a conference on the subject last week in Atlantic City which I attended, and which generated a lot of attention (with over 1,500 attendees) and during which the federal lease for Cape Wind was signed.
While no turbine has been built in the US yet, there are high hopes that there will be some in the near future, and one of the ways to make that happen faster is to absorb the lessons from the European experience, where close to 2,500 MW have been built already. So here's my take on what can be usefully learnt.
Part of my series on Wind Power with the usual disclosure that my work (as an independent consultant) is to advise offshore wind projects find debt financing.
The choices facing us are stark. One option, the one I favor, is to free ourselves of both fossil fuels and the political influence bought with fossil fuel money.
We must invest in new technology and renewable energy because new American jobs depend on it. China has now jumped ahead to become the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels - they are adding 100,000 new jobs a year in renewable energy as a result.
We could have what China has, too, but not going at things the way we have been.
There will be no recovery without jobs. It's just that simple. We've watched for thirty long years as the manufacturing jobs that made America strong were spirited away to countries with lax environmental regulations and little or no protection for their citizens. American workers were forced to compete with three hundred million underemployed Chinese who were willing to work for $132 a month.
We have to buy it here. We have to make it here. And unless those doing the making are themselves making it our downward spiral will continue.
We can make this change and local energy production is the first step we should take.
I had the pleasure of accompanying my most famous client to visit another offshore wind farm under construction with the same turbines. We took the train to lovely Harwich an hour and a half away from London, and set out to visit the soon-to-be largest offshore wind farm.
This is part of my wind series. As noted before, I advise wind farm developers on their financing needs, including, as noted in the first link above, US developers.
I'm not a wind industry financier, as is Jerome a Paris . .I'm just a fan of sustainable energy. I have been for 30 years. I tend to follow the news on these things. And while I like the way things are going in terms of the adoption of new energy generation technologies, particularly wind, I see a story such as the one reported today in WindPower Monthly, and I find it quite irritating. The city of Yumen in the northwest Chinese Gansu Province, has announced that they will be constructing a 500MW wind farm next month, and they will use nothing but Chinese built turbines. Why are the Chinese able to do that, but something so straightforward, so direct, to spur the U.S. industry is seemingly impossible?
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said Monday that Washington lawmakers are showing no consideration for future generations with deficit spending that is passing an "enormous burden of debt" on to America's children and grandchildren.
The article continues:
"I acknowledge that the system is broken, and if we just keep borrowing, we could destroy the entire system," Paul said. "Then, there would be no Social Security, no Medicare and no government because we will be drowning in the sea of debt or destroy the currency in the process."
Conservative politicians have long been invoking a tremendous concern for future generations while railing against deficit spending. But, the phrase “drowning in the sea” got me thinking: Does Dr. Paul’s concern for future generations extends to topics like climate change?