China's National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on June 30 a plan to raise consumer electricity rates by 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH). A tiny fraction of the additional charge, 0.1 cent per KWH, will be used to develop renewable energy (RE), a senior NDRC official told Xinhua a few weeks later. This was unprecedented, the official said. The money would be used to cover the portion of RE development costs that are higher than the average for conventional energies. The practice complies with the principle enshrined in the Renewable Energy Law (REL) that the extra costs of renewable energies should be shared by all end users of electricity across the country.

Canadian manufacturer of solar cells and modules Photowatt (PHWT) filed to go public last week; its prospectus contains an overview of the renewable energy industry, and trends in solar energy. The excerpt below is from the company's F-1 filing:

“I want to say a word of caution here. I know the excitement [over renewable energy or alternative energy] but it’s not the only solution. Practically, alternative energy would not alter fossil fuel use,” said Medabalmi. He said it is important to note that “the existing power grid will never be completely replaced in the foreseeable future.” As such, he said that, although focus is given on the options presented by alternative energy, the focus must also remain on the stability and reliability of the existing infrastructure.

TSUKUBA, Ibaraki -- The Tsukuba municipal government has decided to pull the plug on a wind generation project after spending hundreds of millions of yen on wind turbines designed by Waseda University that turned out to be a flop.

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., Japan's biggest wind power supplier, may scrap a plan to build turbines in the north of the country after the regional utility said it will cut purchases of wind-generated power because supply is unreliable.

Only state-owned companies took part in a tender this month to build wind farms, highlighting shortfalls in the country's investment plan to promote clean energy sources.

Touted as an alternative energy source that does not emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, wind power has spread quickly. The combined capacity of wind power turbines nationwide broke the 1-million-kilowatt mark last fiscal year ended March. Regional electric utilities, however, argue that a surge in the supply of wind-generated electricity could degenerate the quality of electricity.

The [Japanese] Environment Ministry is urgently trying to find ways to stop migrating birds from crashing into wind turbines amid government plans to dramatically increase this form of power generation.

But the RPS law has not been effective to increase wind power because electric power companies are negative about such power generation. "Output is unstable because it depends on wind, obstructing stable power supplies," said an executive at a power company.

Environmentalism is no longer the province of the left. Conservative politicians and big business have both jumped on the bandwagon.

The Environment Ministry has decided to ease restrictions on wind power generation within national parks and promote clean energy supplies in an effort to combat global warming, government officials said Friday.

MADRID: Even as Britain, following a detailed review, mulls the need for increased nuclear capacity, Spain has the bit between its teeth as it champions renewable energy.

The lure of China's huge but underexploited market, the government's drive for renewable energy and low production costs for exports to fast-growing bigger markets in the United States and Europe have foreign and domestic firms rushing to set up wind farms or build production plants across the country.

With 20% of the world's population, China now consumes 10% of the world's energy. This would suggest that just to come up to the international average, China will need to double its energy consumption. With an economy growing at 9% per year, China is on track to do just that, and consequently they are developing every source of energy they possibly can.

Tsukuba, the town that prides itself as Japan’s most hallowed scientific research centre, is the site of perhaps the world’s worst electricity wind farm: in the 12 months it has operated, its windmills have consumed 43 times more power than they have generated.

The project to make Tsukuba a self-sufficient showpiece for green energy has failed, heaping scorn upon the central government programme to test alternative sources. It is likely to be used as ammunition by sceptics elsewhere, including Britain, where the Government this week published its energy review. Tsukuba is now locked into a spiral of civil litigation, criminal investigations and an unprecedented attack on the academic reputation of Waseda University, Japan’s most respected seat of learning.

Chinese developers unveiled the world’s first full-permanent magnetic levitation (Maglev) wind power generator at the Wind Power Asia Exhibition 2006 held June 28 in Beijing, according to Xinhua News..

A breeze of just over 5 kms an hour is sufficient to start the machine, which means it can operate for many more hours than traditional wind turbines, said Zeng Zhiyong, president of the Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology which developed the turbine with the help of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou.

The protest erupted over plans for a wind-power plant that used village lands and required significant landfill in a bay where the people have for generations made a living fishing. Before that, nearby village land had been used for the construction of a coal-fired power plant.

Police said the wind turbine generator of the unit exploded last night and caught fire. The splinters from the turbine, located a few kms from the Koodankulam Nuclear Power project site, spread over one sq km after the explosion.