As I discussed in a previous blog, renewable energy trade disputes are becoming a particularly contentious issue between many nations. The United States and China are facing off in one of the most publicized of these disagreements. Further action was taken last week as the U.S. Department of Commerce made its second ruling of the year on this issue, placing tariffs on solar photovoltaic (PV) imports from China.

A Suntech Power Holdings employee at a Chinese solar PV manufacturing facility. The Commerce Department ruling placed a 31.22% tariff on Suntech products. (source: China Daily)

The previous Department of Commerce ruling from March 2012 placed countervailing duties on solar PV imports in order to balance what the department determined to be illegal subsidies to solar PV manufacturers from the Chinese government. The initial tariff rates, which were set between 2.9 and 4.73 percent, came in much lower than what was expected by most experts.

The new preliminary ruling comes in response to the second set of claims by the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) that Chinese solar companies have been dumping their products in the U.S. market at below market value. The coalition, led by SolarWorld USA, looks to level the playing field for U.S. solar manufacturers against what they see as artificially cheap imports coming from China.

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Worldwide, the total square footage of green buildings (defined here as LEED certified buildings) is doubling every year, and 85 countries now have their own green building standards. But are we doing enough to harness the overwhelming benefits that come from boosting energy efficiency in buildings?

On January 25, Greg Kats, President of Capital E and the author of Greening Our Built World, presented on “Sustainable Solutions for the Planet’s Energy Challenge” as part of a new series from the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. In his talk, he discussed the many ways we can move sustainability forward in three target areas: transportation, industry, and building efficiency, which account for 28 percent, 26 percent, and 40 percent of U.S. energy use, respectively.

Among the obvious solutions to promoting a more sustainable economy, Kats noted, are increasing the production tax credit for renewable energy, pumping more money into energy efficiency financing, and incorporating more renewable energy into building and city designs. He pointed to positive patterns already emerging in the field of low-carbon technology: solar photovoltaic technology, for example, has seen an 80 percent price reduction in just four to five years. Similarly, the price of a plug-in hybrid vehicle is now near that of a non-hybrid in a similar class.

The benefits of building green

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Worldwatch researchers recently returned from Haiti as a part of the Energy Roadmaps for the Caribbean Project. One exciting idea that grew out of our meetings with government, utility, and private sector officials is the potential for wind and pumped-storage hydro systems on the island of Hispaniola.

A wind and pumped-storage hydro system is an old technology with a new twist, and it is a technology that is being explored on several small islands around the world.

A model of the wind and pumped-storage hydro system on El Hierro (Source: ThomasNet News and Gorona del Viento El Hierro)

For the past half century, countries including the United States have used excess electricity from fossil fuel and nuclear power plants during periods of low power demand to pump water uphill to be stored in reservoirs as potential energy. Then, when demand peaks the reservoirs are opened, allowing water to pass through hydroelectric facilities to generate the needed electricity to meet power demand.

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by Qiong Xie

China’s offshore wind industry is gaining momentum and entering the large-scale development phase. China’s National Energy Bureau plans to boost the country’s offshore wind capacity to 5 gigawatts (GW) by 2015. And by 2020, according to the Chinese government’s Renewable Energy Plan of the 12^th Five-Year Plan, China endeavors to further increase its offshore wind power capacity to 30 GW. Given the fact that China had only installed 142.5 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind turbines as of June 2011, reaching 5 GW in five years requires a big jump both for policymakers and companies.  Meeting these ambitious targets will require a vigorous renewable energy action plan and substantial financial investments. 

There are several reasons why China has turned its attention to offshore wind power. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011, China overtook the US in 2010 to become the world’s top energy consumer with a 20.3 percent share of global energy consumption. China also surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2006. In order to secure a sustainable energy supply, China is pursuing renewable energy and energy efficiency. Currently, coal generation accounts for 80 percent of China’s electricity production, much of which comes from old and inefficient plants that contribute to severe air pollution and other health and environment impacts. China has recognized the economic and environmental need to adopt renewable energy such as offshore-wind to generate electricity. At the end of 2008, clean energy including hydro, wind, solar, biomass, biogas, geothermal and ethanol contributed 9 percent of China’s total primary energy use. In 2009, total installed wind power capacity in China reached 26 GW.

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For the millions suffering through the recent heat waves blanketing the United States, geothermal heating and cooling systems may be of interest. Although such systems are by no means new, they have experienced tremendous growth recently. Last year alone, 50,000 new systems were built in the United States, increasing the total number of U.S. geothermal heating and cooling installations to 150,000.

The frequent and extreme heat waves and cold spells of the past decade have put utilities under greater pressure. Just last week, three regional transmission organizations (RTOs) set all-time highs for daily electricity demand. Unfortunately for electricity consumers, rising electricity demand also translates into rising electricity prices. So what does this have to do with geothermal energy? For home and building owners, geothermal systems offer an opportunity for cleaner and cheaper heating and cooling services.

What services can a geothermal heating and cooling system provide?

As the name might suggest, geothermal heating and cooling systems provide heating and cooling for buildings. Less obvious is that these same systems can also provide humidity control and water heating services. This means that installing a geothermal system lowers the demand on furnace, air-conditioning, and water heating units.

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Metros with clusters across the United States

There are 2.7 million clean economy jobs in the United States, according to a recently released report by the Brookings Institution entitled “Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment.” Brookings hosted an event to announce the release, at which one panel explored the fascinating and increasingly important role that Regional Innovation Clusters (RICs) play in fostering the clean economy.

The report shows that the majority of green jobs (defined as jobs with a direct or indirect environmental benefit) are in conventional sectors like manufacturing, waste management, and mass transit. But the fastest growing sector is clean technology, which includes renewable energy, smart grid, and energy efficiency. While 64 percent of green jobs in the U.S. reside within the 100 largest metropolitan areas (which hold 66 percent of the U.S. population), the same metros hold an outsized 74 percent of the clean tech jobs created from 2003 to 2010. The Brookings report takes this as evidence that metros have strong industry clusters that boost clean economy growth.

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Imagine if all these cars were charged with electricity from wind!

Governments on both sides of the Atlantic must make their transport sectors cleaner and more sustainable in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With 1,590 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year emitted in the United States, 145 million tons in Germany, and 5,470 million tons worldwide, transportation is one of the major contributors to global warming. In relative numbers, cars, trucks, buses, planes, trains etc. generate a third of the United States’, 17 percent of Germany’s and 23 percent of the world’s total CO₂ emissions.

There are multiple ways to reduce the sector’s emissions, such as encouraging people to use public transportation, convincing industry to switch from road to rail, or by making current transportation technologies and fuels less polluting. Regarding the latter, the efficiency of petroleum-based engines in cars has improved considerably, particularly in periods of high oil prices such as 1975-1987 and the last few years. However, in the future it is a new technology, electric vehicles, that is seen as the route to a low-carbon transportation system. If charged with electricity from renewable energy, these cars have the potential to make individual transportation almost carbon-free.

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It is well known that the two Chinese characters that comprise the word “crisis” translate into English as “danger” and “opportunity.” In the world of disaster relief and humanitarian aid, dangers are typically identified and dealt with expediently: get in, save lives, ensure stability, and deal with outstanding issues later. The approach is not a bad one—it prioritizes and puts first things first.

In this triage process, however, the environment is often overlooked as a key stakeholder, which can lead to further dangers down the road. But expanding the purview of humanitarian work to include the environment and long-range sustainability can create the opportunity to rebuild communities that are more environmentally and socially sustainable than those that existed before the disaster.

Without an environmentally sustainable plan, this emergency camp might do more harm than good.

Recently, the Environmental Change and Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center hosted the launch of the Green Recovery and Reconstruction Training Toolkit (GRRT), a collaboration between the American Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund. The GRRT comprises 10 modules aimed at the various facets of aid work, examining everything from project design to supply chains and livelihoods through the lens of sustainability. Over the past five years, the partnership has helped survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami rebuild their communities as well as the natural environments on which they depend.

Here at Worldwatch, we see this as an excellent opportunity to help promote the idea of sustainable development, particularly as we move forward with a plan to develop a Low-Carbon Energy Roadmap for Haiti, a country whose recent earthquake and other disasters pose daily dangers and opportunities.

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Innovations are always ahead of the times - Flickr Creative Commons / adesigna

The U.S. National Academies are researching current trends in innovation policy and how best to develop leading-edge technologies. To get the most valuable results, they have established an international dialogue on innovation programs and best practices. So far, the Academies have been working with Japan, India, and the Belgian region of Flanders. More recently, a high-level conference in Washington, D.C. took a closer look at U.S.-German innovation policy.

Life often is a zero-sum game: if I get a bigger slice of pie, you will get a smaller one; I win, you lose. The amount of pie is unchanged. In situations that are “win-win,” however, cooperation leads to benefits for both parties. Take the example of sponsorship: company X profits from being an official sponsor of the soccer World Cup, because it will raise sales and improve its image. Meanwhile, the world football association, FIFA, rakes in a huge amount of money. Both win.

But what about triple-win scenarios? A prominent example of a “win-win-win” situation is investing in the green movement. Not only does our planet profit from reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but the industry that invests in green technology also profits, as will a country’s energy security. A transition to renewable energy can promote energy security because the less energy a country imports, the more independent that country is, and the higher its energy security is.

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The quarrel between China, the United States, Europe, and Japan about China’s rare earth export policy has heated up again over the past week. Rare earth minerals are indispensable in the transition to a low-carbon world, as they are used in clean energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, and batteries. At the moment, the most troubling aspect of rare earths is the power that China—which mines 95 percent of the world’s supply—currently enjoys. China stopped delivering the minerals to Japan on September 21 and to the United States and Europe on October 18.

The race for rare earths is well underway - Flickr Creative Commons / Juanedc

The latest sparring began in Europe on October 22, when Werner Schnappauf, Director General of the Federation of German Industries, announced that German companies are facing shortages in the supply of lanthanum, a rare earth used in PV cells. Simultaneously, industrial giants Bosch and Siemens disclosed that they might face bottlenecks in their production if China continues its protectionist path.

On October 24, Japan’s trade minister urged China to resume exports of rare earth materials that are crucial for manufacturing. The next day, the United States banded with the EU and Japan to consider filing a World Trade Organization lawsuit to protest China’s illicit export restrictions. Simultaneously, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter to the G20 heads of government highlighting the “acute threat” of lack of open access to rare earths. On October 26, Germany asked France, which will assume the presidency of the G20 next month, to put raw materials at the top of the agenda for the group’s November meeting in Seoul, Korea—with the goal of drafting a strategy paper on combating China’s restrictive rare earth policy.

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