The grand U.S. ambitions of Indian wind-turbine manufacturer Suzlon Energy Ltd. are facing mounting problems. The Indian company -- the world's fifth-largest wind-turbine maker by sales -- earlier this year acknowledged that 65 giant blades on turbines it had sold in the U.S. Midwest were cracking because of the extreme gusts in the region. The company is reinforcing 1,251 blades, almost the total it has sold in the U.S. Now, other problems are emerging, in part because the company quickly ramped up U.S. sales to meet burgeoning demand for alternative energy. ...

The chief executive officer of Suzlon Energy Ltd., the world's fifth-largest wind-turbine producer by sales, has resigned amid growing questions about the Indian company's fast-paced growth. Andre Horbach, a former senior executive for General Electric Co. in Europe, stepped down on Friday, 16 months after taking the job. ...Suzlon has benefited from a global shortfall of turbines from more-established producers like GE and Denmark's Vestas AS, the world's largest producer in terms of sales. ...But Suzlon is also facing headwinds. Blades on turbines that it has sold to power producers in the U.S. have begun cracking. The company says only 45 blades have been affected, but it plans to spend $30 million on repairs and to strengthen almost all the blades it has sold in the U.S. Suzlon's efforts to upgrade its technology have also run into problems.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February, Edison Mission Energy, a unit of Edison International, said the 144-foot-long windmill blades it recently bought from Suzlon have begun to split at three wind-power sites it operates in the Midwest. Suzlon has recalled 1,251 blades from its top-of-the-line turbines, which represent the majority of blades the company has sold to date in the U.S.. Its troubles don't end there. A year ago, the company bought a controlling stake in a large German turbine manufacturer, REpower Systems AG, in one of India's biggest overseas acquisitions. ...Now, Suzlon can't get its hands on the blueprints. Hamstrung by a German corporate law, Suzlon must offer to buy out minority shareholders before it can demand REpower's designs. It's unlikely that the company could make a tender offer until 2009, say people with knowledge of the companies. ...Mr. Kher blamed the cracks on the Midwest's unexpectedly violent changes in wind direction. Though Mr. Tanti says that only 45 blades have cracked, Suzlon says it will add an extra lamination layer to almost all of the blades it has shipped to the U.S. To repair cracked blades and reinforce the rest, the company expects to spend $30 million.

In what implies a Rs.1 billion ($25 million) hit on its balance sheet for the current quarter, leading wind power equipment-maker Suzlon Energy will refit wind turbine blades for a project in the US, the company said Monday. “The company will do a retrofit programme to resolve blade-cracking issues discovered during the operations of some of its S88 turbines in the US,” the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange Monday.

Wind turbine makers face a ``major challenge'' getting equipment due to surging demand and probably won't be able to cut delivery times for three years, said Suzlon Energy Ltd., India's biggest wind farm construction company. Lead times to supply wind turbines, which have reached at least 15 months, will take time to reduce as suppliers clear order backlogs and add an ``unprecedented'' amount of new capacity, Andre Horbach, Amsterdam-based chief executive officer at Suzlon, said today in Melbourne. Suzlon has a $3.5 billion order backlog, he said.

A strong bias toward local producers and rigid price controls hinder European investors from making significant inroads into China's vast energy sector ... "Energy is sometimes also a national battlefield in Europe. But China is even more so." This nationalism, Wuttke said, was reinforced by an antitrust law passed last week that set rules to protect big state power firms from foreign acquisitions and to require potential international investors to meet strict national security criteria. Beijing also requires investors to use 70 percent Chinese equipment in foreign-invested wind farms, and a similar local content requirement was recently slapped on the booming petrochemical sector, which Wuttke said went against China's commitments in 2001 when it joined the World Trade Organisation.

From Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to E.ON, the world's largest companies are investing in wind power, the best-performing energy in the past year. Led by Vestas Wind Systems and Iberdrola of Spain, utilities and governments in the United States, China and Europe will spend as much as $150 billion on wind projects in the next five years, according to CLSA Research. Lawmakers are providing financial incentives because windmills are non-polluting and cost less than solar projects. "Wind has the biggest potential to meet renewable energy targets over the next decade, compared with solar and biofuels," said Philippe de Weck, who started the Pictet Clean Energy fund last month for Pictet in Geneva.

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.

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.

Wind turbines that can operate through cyclones and earthquakes are increasingly being installed on small, isolated islands that seek improved energy independence, a wind power producer said on Friday. France's fifth largest wind power producer Aerowatt this week launched a 3.85 megawatt-wind farm on the small cyclone-prone French Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, enough to provide power to 12,000 inhabitants out of a total of 700,000. "This is the first wind farm installed on Reunion," Jerome Billerey, head of the company, told Reuters. But installing wind turbines on remote islands can often be complex due to poor logistics, limited port infrastructure and the hurdle of regular cyclones.

A U.N. conference working to fix long-term rules to fight global warming beyond 2012 "as soon as possible" was split on Tuesday over whether that meant an accord should be struck in 2008, 2009 or even 2010. Industrial investors, weighing options ranging from coal-fired power plants to wind energy, are frustrated at the possibility of years of uncertainty about rules for fossil fuel emissions upon which carbon markets depend.

On the occasion of the 5th World Wind Energy Conference taking place from 6-8 November 2006 in New Delhi/India, the International Association for Wind Engineering IAWE and the World Wind Energy Association WWEA signed today a Memorandum of Agreement on closer cooperation and coordination.

Carbon offset schemes are designed to neutralise the effects of the carbon dioxide our activities produce by investing in projects that cut emissions elsewhere. They work through the rapidly growing trade in carbon credits, each worth the equivalent of a tonne of carbon. Offset companies typically buy carbon credits from projects that plant trees or encourage a switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy. They sell credits to individuals and companies who want to go "carbon neutral". Some climate experts say offsets are dangerous because they dissuade people from changing their behaviour.

Green consumers and businesses who want to neutralise their carbon emissions face being ripped off by unscrupulous operators who exploit the growing market in carbon offset schemes, a Guardian investigation has revealed. The surge in interest in such schemes, which invest millions of pounds in forestry and clean energy projects in the developing world, has created a lucrative market in carbon, which is unregulated and subject to little scrutiny. Campaigners and analysts say independent standards are urgently needed to protect consumers and to ensure the promised carbon savings are delivered. Francis Sullivan, a carbon offset expert who led attempts by banking group HSBC to neutralise its emissions, said: “There will be individuals and companies out there who think they’re doing the right thing but they’re not. I am sure that people are buying offsets in this unregulated market that are not credible. I am sure there are people buying nothing more than hot air.”

OSLO, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Wind power could generate almost 30 percent of the world's electricity by 2030 and is growing faster than any other clean energy source, a wind business group and environmental lobby Greenpeace said on Wednesday.

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:

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

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.

President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to increase the number of nuclear reactors in Russia from 29 to 59 and to upgrade old power stations to extend their lives. Mr Putin is expected to provide more details of the rebirth of nuclear at the forthcoming G8 summit of leading economies in St Petersburg next month.

Cracks are developing among environmentalists. They hate nuclear power but like renewables. Sun is not always reliable. Wind, often lazy and slow. They are unreliable and add totally a small percentage. If we need power that is always available, we have to have it from coal or natural gas or nuclear.