The German feed-in system, called the Erneuerbare Energieen Gesetz (Renewable Energy Law or EEG) guarantees producers of sustainable power a fixed price per kWh fed into the grid. Since the introduction of the EEG in April 2000, the amount of renewable energy in Germany has more than tripled. Last year saw the production of 20,000 GWh of wind power and 18,000 GWh from other renewable sources. The share of renewables in the electricity mix has increased from 3.01% in 2000 to 10.53% in 2006. The target for 2012 is 20%. At the same time, the increasing share of renewables confronts the power sector with growing pains. They are facing an increasing input from highly variable sources. For instance, in 2004 the grid feed-in from renewable sources has varied between 1.8 and 14 GW.

THESE should be heady times for Vestas, a Danish firm that makes more than a quarter of the world's wind turbines. The wind business is booming, and the company said last week that it had swung into profit in 2006, thanks to an 8% rise in revenue. But there is "significant unexploited production capacity", Vestas says, due to shortages of high-quality turbine components. Other companies grumble about a lack of gearboxes and bearings. Wind firms' worries echo those in the solar-power business, which is also booming but where a shortage of polysilicon has hampered growth. Silicon is made from sand, which is abundant, but there are not enough refineries to turn it into solar-grade polysilicon. As a result, prices for silicon contracts have more than doubled, to $70 or $80 per kilogram, in the past three years, says Jesse Pichel, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. In both industries demand has rocketed and supply cannot keep up. The wind business is growing by more than 30% a year worldwide, with America leading the way. (This week Energias de Portugal became the latest European utility to invest in American wind farms, with the $2.2 billion purchase of Horizon Wind Energy.) And when a solar incentive scheme took hold in Germany in 2004-05, demand in Europe roughly doubled, says Ron Kenedi of Sharp, the biggest solar-cell maker.

Councillor Jimmy Harte has called for a more structured plan to encourage the development of wind farms in the county following a recent decision by County Council to refuse planning permission to two potential wind-farm developers. "I don't quite think we've grasped the idea of wind energy here in Donegal yet. We need to designate certain zones or areas where we either do or do not allow the development of wind farms," stated Councillor Harte at this week's Letterkenny Electoral Area meeting. "As it is at the moment, farmers and investors; potential developers of these wind farms do not know where they stand."

VALLETTA, Malta (di-ve news) -- March 21, 2007 -- 1115CET -- The construction of a large scale wind farm on land would not be justified when considering its impact and the electricity generated, Minister Ninu Zammit said. In reply to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Charles Mangion on Tuesday, the Minister for Resources and Infrastructure tabled the report compiled by Mott MacDonald on 'Renewable Energy in Malta'. Minister Zammit said the report studied a number of sites on land for the generation of electricity from wind and the impacts associated with such wind farms. When considering such impacts, and in view of the fact that such a wind farm would only generate 1.06 per cent of electricity consumption in 2010, the Government concluded that the construction of large scale wind farms on land would not be justified.

Officials said that the Commission was still unsure about how it will share the burden among member states, after EU leaders agreed earlier in March to have 20% of their overall energy needs covered by renewables by 2020. The European Commission is currently working on a methodology to calculate precisely how much each member state will take up of the 20% overall renewable "burden", EU officials said on 16 March 2007.

A third of electricity used in Ireland will come from renewable sources by 2020, the government said on Monday as it unveiled plans to reduce dependence on imported fuels and protect itself against supply disruptions. "By 2020 one third of electricity consumed in this economy will come from renewable sources," natural resources minister Noel Dempsey said in a speech following publication of a policy document on sustainable energy. Official figures for 2006 are not yet available but a ministry spokesman said about 8 percent of electricity consumed last year came from green sources, versus 6.8 percent in 2005. With nuclear power generation banned in Ireland and limited potential for hydroelectricity, the country would have to rely on natural gas for 70 percent of fuel needs in 13 years time if steps were not taken to encourage more diverse energy supplies. "Wind energy will provide the pivotal contribution to achieving this target," the government said in its policy paper.

Along with specials to Luxor and Sidney, French tour operator Voyageurs du Monde is pitching a more unusual offer: For an extra $40, clients can help offset their share of Earth-warming carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by airliners jetting them to holiday getaways.

In a sop to France and the Czech Republic, a country's nuclear power capability will be taken into account when calculating national commitments to renewable energy. France produces 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power stations and insisted that this "noncarbon" source of fuel should be taken into consideration. French diplomats believe this will lessen the EU demand for more renewable sources such as wave, wind and solar power.

A draft final statement at a European Union summit on Friday set a binding target of 20 percent of renewable sources in EU energy consumption by 2020 in an ambitious strategy to fight climate change. The compromise circulated by EU president Germany offered flexibility on how the 27 member states contribute to the common pan-European goal for renewables such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power. The wording appeared aimed to win over states reliant on nuclear energy, led by France, or coal, such as Poland, or small countries with few energy resources, such as Cyprus and Malta, by adding references to the national energy mix.

Policymakers have settled on 'emissions trading' as their favorite global-warming fix. But it isn't working.

March 12, 2007 issue - Global warming isn't the only debate that may be over. Governments and policymakers around the world also seem to have settled on a solution. "A responsible approach to solving this crisis," Al Gore said recently at New York University's Law School, would be "to authorize the trading of emissions ... globally." Emissions trading, also called carbon trading, is being expanded in the European Union and Japan. And in many places where it's yet to take hold, like Sacramento, Sydney and Beijing, politicians are embracing it. Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank and Europe's foremost political expert on global warming, predicts that the value of carbon credits in circulation, now about $28 billion, will climb to $40 billion by 2010.

This should be great news for the environment, but many experts have their doubts. The notion that emissions trading is going to make a significant dent in global warming is deeply flawed, they say. Current emissions-trading schemes have proved to be little more than a shell game, allowing polluters in the developed world to shift the burden of making cuts onto factories in the developing world.

The United States has pushed Spain out of the top spot as the number one country worldwide to invest in renewable energy, according to the latest “Ernst & Young Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indices ” for the third quarter of 2006. India, the UK and Germany remain 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively. The US scored 71 in the ‘all renewables index’, with individual scores per renewable technology of 72 for wind, 75 for solar and 64 for investment in biomass energy. Spain scored 68 for investment in ‘all renewables’, coming in just below the US which moves up from second place.

Spain’s wind power industry said on Monday new government regulations would knock its growth on the head, while the industry minister accused the sector of defending oversized profits. Spain has almost 12,000 megawatts (MW) of wind generation and the government wants to reach 20,000 MW by 2010 as part of its renewable energy plan. Boosting renewable generation is key to Spain’s efforts to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, which have swollen by 50 percent since 1990, the base year for the Kyoto agreement on global warming. But the Industry Ministry wants to curb the premiums paid to wind generators and argues that these will be a burden on the consumer in future years.

High wind-power production in Germany one Saturday night helped extend a blackout across Europe. Last month, the Conservative government joined the long line of governments around the world subsidizing the production of wind power. Meanwhile, new information about wind power from Europe raises the spectre of unexpected blackout risks, high costs, unreliable production and even questionable environmental benefits. Concerns over wind power used to focus on whether enough wind would blow to keep wind generators busy and electric power grids supplied. Now, after a major power blackout in Europe in November that left 15 million households in the dark, concerns over wind power come from an entirely opposite direction – fear that wind power can unpredictably produce more power than a system can handle.

Since the oil shocks of the 1970s, governments around the world have paid plenty of lip service to renewable energies such as wind and solar power. But only a few governments have been able to engineer policies that have begun to bring alternative energies into wider use. Renewable fuels provided 18% of the world’s total electricity supply in 2004, according to figures from the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organization. Almost all of that, though, came from hydropower, a source with limited growth potential because of geographic constraints. The use of wind and solar power is growing, but they still generated only 1% of global electricity production in 2004, the latest year for which figures are available.

The Environment and Public Works Ministry is in favor of developing wind farms on Greek islands but wants to place strict restrictions on such development. The Greek islands, buffeted by winds for most of the year, have great potential as wind park locations. Ministry officials estimate that as many as 7,000 turbines could be installed, producing about 14,000 megawatts of energy annually. Private investors are fighting over prime locations. The islands also happen to be among Greece’s major tourist attractions. An overdevelopment of wind farms would create both aesthetic conflicts and great noise pollution, as anyone who has visited a wind park can confirm. Thus, the new land use plan for renewable energy sources being prepared by the Environment and Public Works Ministry would limit wind parks to 4 percent of a municipality’s area (versus 8 percent on the mainland and on the island of Evia), which should limit the number of wind turbines to 2,000, producing some 4,000 MW of energy.

FEW subjects seem less suited to the intoxicating air of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference than nuclear energy. Aging, expensive, unpopular, and still vulnerable to catastrophic accidents, it is the antithesis of the kinds of cutting-edge solutions that beguile the wealthy and well intentioned, who gather each winter in this Alpine ski resort. And yet nuclear energy is suddenly back on the agenda — and not just here. Spurred on by politicians interested in energy independence and scientists who specialize in the field of climate change, Germany is reconsidering a commitment to shut down its nuclear power plants. France, Europe’s leading nuclear power producer, is increasing its investment, as is Finland. At a time when industrialized countries are wrestling with how to curb carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear energy has one indisputable advantage: unlike coal, oil, natural gas, or even biological fuels, it emits no carbon dioxide. That virtue, in the view of advocates, is enough to offset its well-documented shortcomings.

Making solar panels on the cloudy Welsh coast may seem an odd choice for a politician turned investor like Robert Hertzberg, who hails from a sunny and environmentally aware state, California, and hobnobs with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But a commitment by European governments to budding clean-energy entrepreneurs is creating a more welcoming environment than in America, where erratic support and onerous financial rules have given pause to some start-ups and investors.

The European Commission has set out a comprehensive package of measures to establish a new Energy Policy for Europe to combat climate change and boost energy security. A ten-point action plan sets out a series of ambitious targets on greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy, along with proposals to create a more competitive energy market across the economic bloc, and includes a report on the implementation by the Member States of the internal market for gas and electricity as well as the results of an enquiry of the state of competition; a plan of for priority interconnections to create a European grid; proposals to promote sustainable power generation from fossil fuels; a roadmap and other initiatives to promote renewables, and; an analysis of the situation of nuclear energy in Europe. Based on the three central pillars of: a true internal energy market; accelerating the shift to low carbon energy; and energy efficiency, the mainstay of the new policy is a core objective for Europe to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 with the aim to increase this target to a 30% reduction by 2020 and 60-80% by 2050.

The European Commission on Wednesday called for a “new industrial revolution” via increased investment in renewable energy and nuclear power to combat climate change and curb Europe’s energy dependency. The proposals come as concerns over Europe’s energy security are making headlines as a bitter dispute between Russia and Belarus has disrupted the transit of oil supplies to Europe. The commission’s proposals are based on a forecast that the region’s energy imports will jump to 65% of consumption by 2030, when 84% of gas and 93% of oil will come from overseas, and sets out ways to reduce the block’s dependence on Russia and other suppliers. As its main measure, the paper proposes a 20% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from the European Union’s energy consumption by 2020 and calls for a sharp increase in the use of renewable and biofuels.

Spain plans to cut subsidies for wind power generation, while increasing support for other renewables. Under the proposals, wind generators would see their feed-in tariffs reduced from about €97 ($129) per megawatt hour to between €67 and €87/MWh. However, the government proposes boosting the level of support for other technologies, such as solar. “Wind power subsidies were exaggeratedly high,” said Spanish energy minister, Ignasi Nieto, “especially since the technology has developed in the last year and costs have fallen.”