The 4th annual Solar Leadership Summit is now open for registration!  There are some great Keynotes scheduled for this engaging 2-day event including an informative talk about current, future, and long-term views on the U.S. solar market by FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff and Keynote Dinner address by Chairman Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

Click here to take advantage of the early bird rate $375 for SolarTech members which has been extended to Solar Summit partners and their members.  That is 20% off the non-member early bird price and 30% off once the early bird rate ends on 2/1!  To receive the discount, please use this code when registering: CAL2012.

The Summit invites you to engage via the Solar3.0 platform to identify the Top 100 US Cities in 2012 poised as market tipping points.

The 2012 Summit will harness industry, financial, and political capital in a very focused series of sessions that lead to a blueprint for pushing 100 US Cities closer to grid parity faster through implementation of national best in class cost reduction strategies.

Please mark your calendars for March 7^th & 8^th, 2012 at Hayes Mansion in San Jose, CA for the 4th Annual Solar Leadership Summit, presented by SolarTech. – Event Details

From Environmental Performance Indexes of 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012; Chart by The New York TimesAs the Yale-Columbia rankings of national environmental performance have evolved, some countries have moved rapidly upward (or downward, in the case of the United States).

Watching the rankings of countries by environmental performance over the last six years has been an occasion for admiration, mingled with bursts of skepticism and even disbelief. It is seldom a surprise that Scandinavian countries occupy at least four spots in the top 15, given their lauded environmental sensibilities (excepting, perhaps, Norwegian whalers and Danish fishermen).

But it was always a surprise to someone who lived in the former Soviet Union that Russia, whose Communist forebears oversaw the dewatering of the Aral Sea, the emergence of pervasive air pollution in cities like Dniepopetrovsk and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, ranked just a few notches below the United States — or in one case, above — in the 2006, 2008 and 2010 Yale and Columbia’s Environmental Performance Index.

So it is a relief to find that such counterintuitive findings are not repeated in the 2012 edition, which was released in tandem with the World Economic Forum’s gathering in Davos, Switzerland, this week.  Largely because of worsening air quality, Russia has plummeted in the rankings to 106th out of 132. And it came in dead last in a new analysis ranking countries by their environmental trajectory.

Russia “has suffered a severe breakdown in environmental health as well as performance declines related to overfishing and forest loss,” the report said. “It shows declines in every category except for slight improvements in sulfur dioxide emissions, though levels are still far below” the goals set for the countries being evaluated.

At the other end of the scale, Switzerland and Latvia benefited from policies that have improved their air quality, benefiting people and ecosystems. (The report’s basic measurements are divided into two overall categories: environmental health and ecosystem vitality.)

Comparing countries at very different stages of development and with very different economic realities is obviously problematic, as the creators of the index acknowledge. “Economic development matters,” the 2012 report notes. “The environmental health scores, in particular, reveal a significant relationship with G.D.P. per capita, although there is a diversity of performance within every level of economic development.”

What is less intuitively understandable are some great leaps forward for some countries. Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic with a population of two million, jumped from No. 21 to No. 2 even though it scored high in only three of the 11 categories on which the overall score is based. (Its strong suit was how its air quality is benefiting its ecosystems.)

Comparisons of rankings in previous years reveal a surprising amount of volatility in the top tier: only seven of those currently in the top 15 slots have consistently been in that elite company: Iceland, Switzerland, France, Costa Rica, Austria, Britain and New Zealand. (New Zealand led the first index in 2006.)

And Canada, No. 8 on the pilot 2006 list, dropped to No. 46 in 2010 before rebounding to No. 37 this year — even though it ranked No. 1 in environmental health based on its air and water quality. It’s hard to fathom how the rankings can change so sharply in the space of two years, given that environmental changes are often measured in decades.

The United States has risen somewhat from its lowest rank — No. 61 in 2010 — and now ranks 49th, dragged down largely by the low score it gets for its approach to climate change. On that measure, it is in 121st place.

It is not alone; “our analysis suggests that some issues are being successfully addressed at a worldwide scale, although performance on some other challenges, notably climate change, has declined globally,” the authors write.

The report shows that some of the most underperforming countries fall into regional groups, like those in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia), sub-Saharan Africa (including Congo, Nigeria and Cameroon) and southwestern Asia. (Iraq, where air quality and water availability continued to decline, came in dead last, and Iran, Kuwait, Yemen and Pakistan, with their ever thirstier ecosystems, weren’t far ahead.)

The individual scores of the countries can be found at a Web site hosted by Yale University. The report is prepared by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network.

The two fastest-developing economies in the world ranked poorly, with India 125th out of 132 and China 116th. Both suffer from unhealthy air. It might come as a surprise to those familiar with the choking pollution around Beijing, which the government desperately tried to alleviate before the 2008 Olympic Games, that India’s air quality ranks lowest, with China’s a few notches above at No. 128.

Suntech Power Holdings Co. Chief Executive Officer Zhengrong Shi said solar will reach parity with fossil fuels on electric grids by 2015.Vestas Wind systems A/S expects its turbines to compete without incentives “in the coming years,” said Peter Brun, head of governmental relations.

“Wind in some cases already is, or can in coming years, be fully cost-competitive with fossil fuels,” Brun said yesterday by e-mail from theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Fossil-fuel prices will continue to rise, and that increases the competitiveness of new technologies. We are preparing the whole industry for getting off the subsidy-need.”

Caught between oversupply and tumbling prices, the companies are reminding governments that their products are taking the biggest share of new power generation and increasingly rivaling oil and gas. That’s pushing green growth up the agenda as Germany and Japan close nuclear reactors and President Barack Obama defends U.S. support for renewables.

Renewables Boom

New electricity generation from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion in 2010 compared with $157 billion for added capacity from natural gas, oil and coal, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the first time investment in renewables has exceeded that of fossil fuels.

“Renewables are the energy of the future, and there’s been a larger investment in renewable energy than conventional energy,” said Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council in Brussels, who first attended Davos in the early 1990s as a lobbyist for Greenpeace when clean energy companies were tiny.

Subsidies to renewables totaled $66 billion worldwide in 2010, according to the most recent figures from the International Energy Agency. Incentives must be retained to meet existing targets of diversifying the energy supply, the Paris- based group said.

Power from solar panels costs more than triple natural gas, according to levelized cost of energy data from New Energy Finance. Onshore wind is close to parity with coal, and about a quarter more pricey than gas.

‘Very Competitive’

Solar power will be “very competitive” within a decade, and in some places, it’s already near “grid parity,” meaning it can compete without subsidies, Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL) Chief Executive Officer Jifan Gao said in an interview in Davos. He spoke through an interpreter.

“We see costs coming down and manufacturing efficiency being improved all the time,” said Gao, whose company is the fifth biggest maker of silicon-based solar panel. “In places likeAustralia, this year they will reach grid parity; next year Italy will, and in 2014 regions likeCalifornia.”

Gao’s comments support those of Suntech’s Shi, who told Bloomberg television that with government support, the industry has made “tremendous progress,” and solar prices have been cut in half in a year.

“We believe that by 2015, there will be around 50 percent of countries where it reaches grid parity,” Shi said.

Vestas Aims

Brun at Vestas said that the cost of wind power is “site- specific” and that the technology may reach grid parity in the breeziest areas by 2020. He declined to say where. Governments and the industry should consider re-allocating subsidies to turbines in areas with lower wind speeds, and offshore, where winds are stronger and costs are higher, he said.

With incentives for wind and solar power under threat in the U.S. and the European Union as governments tighten budgets, Davos serves as a forum for industry executives to remind governments of the need to promote renewables as part of the effort to stem climate change, said Tulsi Tanti, chairman of Suzlon Energy Ltd. (SUEL), India’s biggest wind-turbine maker.

“Davos is the one place the most important decision makers of the world — be it government or business — converge,” Tanti said in e-mailed answers to questions. “The most crucial issue this year will be to argue for policy certainty despite the economic environment.”

In the U.S. the wind industry is threatened by the loss of a tax credit which expires at the end of this year. Vestas has said it may fire 1,600 U.S. workers if the credit isn’t renewed, and Obama in his State of the Union Speech on Jan. 24 urged Congress to “pass clean-energy tax credits.”

“I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy,” Obama said.

(Image credit: Advanced Energy Economy)

A trade organization dedicated to advancing wind energy in the United States says that 2011 was a strong year for the industry, and forecasts steady demand throughout this year.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) found that slightly over 6,810 megawatts (MW) were installed domestically in 2011, an increase of 31 percent for the year. 8,300 MW are under construction this year, it says.

California has the highest MW installations, followed closely by Illinois, according to AWEA. Kansas has the most MW under construction for 2012, and Ohio was gusting ahead as the fastest growing state in wind power for 2011. The leading vendors were Generic Electric, Vestas Wind Systems, and Siemens, respectively, Bloomberg reports.

“This shows what wind power is capable of: building new projects, powering local economies and creating jobs,” said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. “Traditional tax incentives are working. This tremendous activity is being driven by the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) – which leveraged an average of more than $16 billion a year in private investment over the last several years and supported tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.”

The PTC is slated to expire at the end of 2012 if Congress does not renew it. President Obama asked Congress to act during his State of the Union address, but there is substantial opposition to its extension within the Republican Party.

Only New Gingrich has expressed support for the PTC’s renewal out of the GOP Presidential candidates. The wind energy sector attracted US$74.9 in private equity last year, second only to solar power.

(Photo Credit: AWEA)

Money raised by the bond will fund seven energy-efficient and renewable-energy projects in Fresno, Palm Springs, Clovis and Exeter, California. “PACE bond financing provides property owners fixed-rate, property value based and no credit check financing,” stated Mahesh Shah, CEO of Figtree. “The taxable municipal bond was sold to the capital markets without any state or federal funding assistance — a 100% private program,” Shah continued.

Under Assembly Bill 811, California property owners in special assessment districts may enter into voluntary contractual assessments against their properties to finance energy and water efficiency products. The financed amount incurred by the property owner is repaid over time through annual property tax assessments with the charge appearing as a line item on the property tax bill.

The primary goals of the bill are environmental — to lower greenhouse gas levels and reduce energy and water consumption. However, PACE financing is also seen by cities and counties as a stimulus program that spurs local economic growth and creates new jobs.

“Commercial and industrial property owners are facing high energy costs and environmental regulations. They need a way to purchase energy efficient products right now to improve their bottom line and remain competitive,” stated Joseph Oldham, Sustainability Manager for the city of Fresno, California. “Money from PACE bonds will pay for energy efficient products like solar panels, HVAC systems, insulated roofs and lighting systems; reducing costs and creating jobs for the local economy,” Oldham said.

With the successful issuance of the state’s first multijurisdictional land-secured municipal bonds under Assembly Bill 811, Figtree is now poised to help any and all cities in California with their goals for energy-efficiency and job creation.

Figtree Energy Resource Company of San Diego, California is the program administrator. The joint powers authority used by the participating municipal agencies is Pacific Housing & Finance Agency. The underwriter is O’Connor & Company Securities, Inc. of Newport Beach, California. Bond counsel is Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP of Los Angeles, California.

There might be more money in the first year of California’s cap-and-trade program than expected. Governor Brown’s 2012-2013 budget includes $1 billion in revenue from the state’scap-and-trade program, ramping up this year as part of California’s 2006 climate legislation, known as AB 32.

That might seem surprising since 90% of initial permits to emit greenhouse gases will be given away to industry. But number-crunchers at the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) says that selling just ten percent of allowances at auction could generate that much cash. The price for an emission allowance has not been set, but projections range from $10-$40 per credit, which means that the state might garner even more than $1 billion in the bargain.

While more money couldn’t hurt a cash-strapped state like California, there are still some concerns about how this new revenue will be spent. Tiffany Roberts, Senior Fiscal and Policy Analyst for Energy and Climate Change at the LAO, explained to me that there are legal restrictions on how revenues from cap and trade can be used. “These revenues can’t go to fund general tax purposes,” Roberts said. “They have to be used either to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or to mitigate the adverse effects of greenhouse gas emissions.”

That means this revenue won’t help much with underfunded needs like schools and people with disabilities. However, the Brown budget indicates that $500 million of the total cap-and-trade revenue would supplant existing general fund outlays for programs that meet the requirements of AB32. That could potentially free up some general fund money for other programs, but the Governor’s budget provides none of those details.

The Governor’s budget indicates that he’s looking to spend in four broad categories:

• Clean and Efficient Energy
• Low-Carbon Transportation
• Natural Resource Protection
• Sustainable Infrastructure and Development

If the Brown administration can make the case that all the new and existing programs they want to fund fall within the purview of the law, they could be in the clear. If not, the money tussle could end up in court.

Roberts expressed concern over the lack of a timely, detailed plan laying out how the revenues would be spent. “It’s very important that such a plan be submitted to the legislature during the budget process with adequate time for the legislature and the public to scrutinize it,” said Roberts. But the budget says that no detailed expenditure plan will be released until after theCalifornia Air Resources Board (CARB) holds its first auction of credits in mid-August. At that point ARB will know how much money it brought in and can plan how to spend it. But August is well past the deadline to sign a budget, which means that the “uncategorized” revenues from cap-and-trade will be part of that budget without any legislative, or public, review of where they will go.

It’s a question that best be settled. Even if a billion dollars seems like small potatoes, economists have projected that once fully implemented several years from now, carbon trading could represent a $15 billion annual haul for the state.