There is one thing that is certain about the climate change debate. It is that nothing is certain. Well, not totally certain. 95% certainty is now claimed for both climate change occurring and for it having been brought about by human actions. I'm intrigued to know how a figure of 95% certainty is arrived at, rather than, let's say, 93%. But then I'm not a scientist with access to a vast collection of supercomputers with all manner of modelling software. In fact, I'm not a scientist, period. Some of you may well be scientists. There may even, among you, be experts (by which I mean genuine experts) who understand the subject intimately, but I think it reasonable to assume that 95% of us (actually more) are not and so therefore, rather like the scientists, cannot be 100% certain.
Consequently, we draw on the endless arguments across the rising seas of climate debate, lifting from one report which says one thing and another report which says an entirely different thing. It is a debate that might be styled as the Mail-Guardian argument. The right says black, the left says white, or rather the right says it's all rubbish and the left says prepare to fry. It is an argument between flat-earthers and the rather more than four scientists of the Apocalypse. All I would ask is, could there please be adequate warning, so I can get hold of a few sandbags for when (if) the Mediterranean decides to rise to the extent that it is coming in the back door.
Armed with 95% certainty, leading British scientists want there to be a world "Sunpower Programme". One of these scientists is Sir David King, a name inclined to produce a frothing at the mouth among the Mailite tendency. Sir David doesn't necessarily do his cause a great deal of favour by writing in the anti-Mail ("The Observer" in this instance), but the call for there to be far greater emphasis on harnessing energy from the thing in the sky seems a pretty reasonable one. The sun is unlikely to pack in any time soon and might only be rendered redundant were nuclear winter to envelope the globe, and the certainty of this happening is, well, I have no idea.
But while Sir David is going around suggesting that all countries should participate in establishing some global solar power grid and while Ban Ki-moon is to invite world leaders to attend yet another summit at which they fail to agree to take unified action, both of them might take note of what Spain is proposing. You may recall this proposal, as I wrote about it recently. It is the one by which solar panels would be taxed, thus all but making them pointless; the same one by which, if householders fail to connect their panels to the regular supply, will result in their facing possible fines running into the millions of euros.
Spain, as noted previously, is the second largest producer of solar power in the world. It would, therefore, be in a position to be at the solar nexus of the grand King plan. But having all this sun power is problematic; there is just too much of it. Or it wouldn't be a problem were it not for the government's massive electricity tariff deficit and for major electricity suppliers to see a threat from solar. It is said that it was Iberdrola who put the idea of taxing so-called "autoconsumo" to the government.
It may be that the government doesn't go ahead with its mad scheme, but meantime one does have to wonder at the wisdom of Sa Pobla's infant school installing solar panels at a cost of 34,000 euros, only for it (or rather the town hall) to discover that it might have to pay tax on them. One does also have to wonder if the energy ministry is aware of the possibility of a tax, as it has helped to fund the project. It should know, because it has been the energy minister who has been doing most of the talking about the tax. Perhaps the public sector would be exempt; so no discrimination there then. But if it turned out the panels were to be taxed, I suppose the school could always just switch them off and use them instead as playtime slides for the kiddies.
Back to Ban Ki-moon, though, and assuming that Mariano is deemed to be a world leader, what might the Spanish premier think to the King plan? Apart from the electricity companies holding his arm up his back, he probably wouldn't think much to it. Mariano is a non-believer. His cousin, a physicist, once told him that climate change wasn't a problem, though whether he was only 95% certain I couldn't say.
Index for September 2013
Alcúdia's electricity history - 28 September 2013
All-inclusive bans: futile - 4 September 2013
Almonds - 14 September 2013
Asunta Basterra murder - 29 September 2013
Balearic parliament cut in deputies - 12 September 2013
Catalonia independence - 13 September 2013
Cost of education - 5 September 2013
Green taxes not to be introduced - 19 September 2013
Greenwich Mean Time in Spain - 22 September 2013
John Major Avenue - 2 September 2013
Madrid Olympic bid fails - 8 September 2013, 11 September 2013
Mallorca's tourism performance in 2013 - 10 September 2013, 17 September 2013
Micro-breweries - 16 September 2013
Muro brothel - 6 September 2013
Over-supply of bars and restaurants - 1 September 2013
Pine trees and forest management - 20 September 2013
Solar energy - 3 September 2013, 30 September 2013
Tourism history - 25 September 2013
Transparency bill - 24 September 2013
Trilingualism introduction - 7 September 2013, 9 September 2013, 15 September 2013, 18 September 2013, 23 September 2013, 27 September 2013
Winter tourism and other tourism travails - 21 September 2013, 26 September 2013
Showing posts with label Solar energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solar energy. Show all posts
Monday, September 30, 2013
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
The Sun Never Shines On Solar Energy
Between 2006 and 2008, almost 30,000 solar farms were built across Spain. They were the eco-friendly symbols of a renewable-energy policy that made Spain the second largest producer of solar power in the world and they were facilitated by subsidies and the anticipation of spectacular returns on investment. By 2009, police authorities, public prosecutors and investigating judges were reaping their own rewards from Spain's solar boom; they were gainfully employed in pursuing cases of "eco-corruption".
The boom was also fuelled by the issuing of licences to both build the farms and to connect to the grid system. Land where connection points were to be created to dump solar energy into the grid became highly sought after, as was the information as to where these connection points would be. Trafficking in licences resulted as did the trafficking of money; a bent construction industry was able to launder illegal earnings into this new boom market and to look forward to even greater earnings in the process.
At the end of 2010, the Spanish Government stated its intention to attack the so-called "tariff deficit", which is the debt incurred from the cost of running the nation's electricity system relative to revenues from the sale of energy. The government wished to do so in order to be able to cut consumers' energy bills by 2013. In May this year, the tariff deficit stood at 26 billion euros. At the end of 2010, the deficit was said to have been 14.6 billion euros.
An economic fiasco brought about by the apparently benign intention to develop clean, green energy was being forecast even before prosecutors started to dig into corrupt practices by public officials and construction companies eyeing up more than just nice little earners from solar. The Zapatero administration was being fingered for its economically unsustainable but ecologically idealistic policies. Subsidies in the form of the premiums paid for solar-generated electricity outstripped by ten times the payments for conventionally supplied energy. Though the Zapatero government decided to cut revenues earned by photovoltaic plants by 30% at the back end of 2010 (thus delivering a blow to the renewables industry and its own green policy), subsidies did not end. They have continued under the current government.
If government policy was already well under scrutiny before "eco-corruption" reared its ugly head, less attention was paid to the private sector and in particular to the role of the banks. As with other construction projects, the banks started to chuck money around to speculators. Spanish financial institutions are said to be in for some 20 billion euros worth of loans to renewables projects.
The banking system, still attempting to right itself from the fallout of debt toxicity brought about by its zealous funding of the construction boom and by cheap and unsupportable loans, now faces a further potential crisis - that of default by solar companies which will have subsidies slashed. Tackling the tariff deficit is one aim, another is to cut the amount of solar power that is generated - its capacity exceeds demand by 60%.
In the Balearics, there was a scheme by which the regional government was issuing grants of up to 30% of the cost of renewable-energy installations by householders. The period for applications for these grants ended in January last year. By this time, national government was already putting in place plans to tackle the deficit and excess solar capacity, part of which came from householders' own excess energy being sold to producers.
Such sales will now stop. But more than just stop paying householders to help supply the electricity system, these same householders will, under new laws, be obliged to connect solar panels to the grid. Why? In order to tax the use of solar panels. The result will be that it will become more expensive for households to use solar than to take from conventional energy supplies. And if consumers don't hook their panels up, they will be liable to fines running into the millions.
The absurdity of the situation beggars belief. Legal challenges are bound to result and they may include those in the Balearics, where there was the recent incentive scheme which now turns out to be all but worthless. It is a situation that has come about because of the government's desperate need to cut the tariff deficit, one that it, and not consumers, caused and because of governmental idealism that wished to use an energy supply that is available in such abundance. The sun always shines except when the government decrees that it shouldn't. Utter madness.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The boom was also fuelled by the issuing of licences to both build the farms and to connect to the grid system. Land where connection points were to be created to dump solar energy into the grid became highly sought after, as was the information as to where these connection points would be. Trafficking in licences resulted as did the trafficking of money; a bent construction industry was able to launder illegal earnings into this new boom market and to look forward to even greater earnings in the process.
At the end of 2010, the Spanish Government stated its intention to attack the so-called "tariff deficit", which is the debt incurred from the cost of running the nation's electricity system relative to revenues from the sale of energy. The government wished to do so in order to be able to cut consumers' energy bills by 2013. In May this year, the tariff deficit stood at 26 billion euros. At the end of 2010, the deficit was said to have been 14.6 billion euros.
An economic fiasco brought about by the apparently benign intention to develop clean, green energy was being forecast even before prosecutors started to dig into corrupt practices by public officials and construction companies eyeing up more than just nice little earners from solar. The Zapatero administration was being fingered for its economically unsustainable but ecologically idealistic policies. Subsidies in the form of the premiums paid for solar-generated electricity outstripped by ten times the payments for conventionally supplied energy. Though the Zapatero government decided to cut revenues earned by photovoltaic plants by 30% at the back end of 2010 (thus delivering a blow to the renewables industry and its own green policy), subsidies did not end. They have continued under the current government.
If government policy was already well under scrutiny before "eco-corruption" reared its ugly head, less attention was paid to the private sector and in particular to the role of the banks. As with other construction projects, the banks started to chuck money around to speculators. Spanish financial institutions are said to be in for some 20 billion euros worth of loans to renewables projects.
The banking system, still attempting to right itself from the fallout of debt toxicity brought about by its zealous funding of the construction boom and by cheap and unsupportable loans, now faces a further potential crisis - that of default by solar companies which will have subsidies slashed. Tackling the tariff deficit is one aim, another is to cut the amount of solar power that is generated - its capacity exceeds demand by 60%.
In the Balearics, there was a scheme by which the regional government was issuing grants of up to 30% of the cost of renewable-energy installations by householders. The period for applications for these grants ended in January last year. By this time, national government was already putting in place plans to tackle the deficit and excess solar capacity, part of which came from householders' own excess energy being sold to producers.
Such sales will now stop. But more than just stop paying householders to help supply the electricity system, these same householders will, under new laws, be obliged to connect solar panels to the grid. Why? In order to tax the use of solar panels. The result will be that it will become more expensive for households to use solar than to take from conventional energy supplies. And if consumers don't hook their panels up, they will be liable to fines running into the millions.
The absurdity of the situation beggars belief. Legal challenges are bound to result and they may include those in the Balearics, where there was the recent incentive scheme which now turns out to be all but worthless. It is a situation that has come about because of the government's desperate need to cut the tariff deficit, one that it, and not consumers, caused and because of governmental idealism that wished to use an energy supply that is available in such abundance. The sun always shines except when the government decrees that it shouldn't. Utter madness.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Solar park in Muro to start trials
A photovoltaic solar energy plant in Muro that occupies some 8.6 hectares of land and into which has been invested eight million euros is to commence trials shortly. The hope is that the plant will eventually be capable of supplying half of Muro's electricity.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Friday, April 22, 2011
The Body Electric: Cars and energy
At Puerto Alcúdia's recent spring fair, one of the exhibits was that of an electric car. The fairs are often the venues for environmentally-conscious propaganda and promotion. The local environment ministry is always to the fore with its recycling bags and leaflets. Planet saving has become a tradition of the traditional.
The local environment ministry has a thing about electric cars, or should I say electric buggies. They are described as buses, but they are like what you get on a golf course except bigger - the electric multi-people carrier. Not that these buggies would ever set wheel onto a golf course, if the environment ministry had its way, because golf courses, more of them, there would not be.
The regional government, courtesy of the environment ministry, bought three of these buggies in 2006. They cost 60,000 euros. Five years on and the three buggies are unused, as they have been unused ever since they were acquired. One of them would be especially hard to be usable. It was never actually delivered. Who was ultimately responsible for their purchase? Jaume Font, he of the new La Lliga, and then the Partido Popular's environment minister.
They were bought because ... . Well, why were they bought? No one seems to have really known what they were going to do with them. And they don't move very fast. Indeed, so slowly do they go that they weren't considered appropriate for somewhere with as slow a pace of life as the Albufera nature park. Visitors apparently would prefer their bird- and wildlife-watching on something with a bit more zip. Whether they would have even been suitable for the terrain is quite another matter. What about using them at the Mondragó park in Santanyí? Well, what about doing this? The buggies were despatched, and there they remained. Unused.
For two years, at a cost of 4,000 euros to rent a space at Mondragó, the two bus-buggies which did turn up stood idle. Finally, when the PSM Mallorcan socialists got hold of the environment ministry early last year, they had the good sense to move them again. Not that they were going to be used for anything, just that they were on their way to some government land where it didn't cost to store them. Maybe the university might now want them? Maybe it would. Or maybe the government should just sell them to a golf course at a no-doubt knocked-down price.
At a time when the cost of petrol rises by the week - it is now an average of 1.363 euros per litre - the attractions of electric vehicles grow. President Antich, one eye on the environmental vote no doubt and critical of the previous administration's lunatic purchase of vehicles that didn't do anything, has announced that he hopes that, by 2015, there will be some 7,500 electric vehicles knocking around the Balearics.
As ever, figures can be put on what this would mean. A 67% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, for example. How is the figure arrived at? Pass. But arrived at, it is. This fleet of quietly-moving vehicles, and it should be noted that electric vehicles are criticised on safety grounds because you can't hear them coming, would not solely be those of the government. Far from it. The car-hire sector has been engaged in discussions.
Electric vehicles are all well and good. They are well and good for the environment, potentially. But how is the electricity created? Currently, so we keep being reminded, the power station in Alcúdia is one of the main culprits when it comes to emissions. It may move to being fuelled by natural gas, but it would still emit pollutants, admittedly at lower levels than coal. And then there are the renewables, solar energy in particular.
The regional government, at a cost of nearly 200,000 euros, commissioned a study which suggested that it would be possible to generate all the Balearics' energy needs with clean renewables. When might this happen? Ever? A bit over one per cent is at present from renewables, and the prospects for much more, any time soon, aren't that great. They have not been helped by the fact that central government has turned down over 40 projects that might have contributed to increasing substantially the amount of solar energy in Mallorca.
Herein lies the rub. You can create greener vehicles, but the advantages of doing so need to be complemented by how you create their "fuel". There again, there is one way you can be sure of not polluting the atmosphere; that's to buy vehicles that you never use. Just ask the environment ministry.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The local environment ministry has a thing about electric cars, or should I say electric buggies. They are described as buses, but they are like what you get on a golf course except bigger - the electric multi-people carrier. Not that these buggies would ever set wheel onto a golf course, if the environment ministry had its way, because golf courses, more of them, there would not be.
The regional government, courtesy of the environment ministry, bought three of these buggies in 2006. They cost 60,000 euros. Five years on and the three buggies are unused, as they have been unused ever since they were acquired. One of them would be especially hard to be usable. It was never actually delivered. Who was ultimately responsible for their purchase? Jaume Font, he of the new La Lliga, and then the Partido Popular's environment minister.
They were bought because ... . Well, why were they bought? No one seems to have really known what they were going to do with them. And they don't move very fast. Indeed, so slowly do they go that they weren't considered appropriate for somewhere with as slow a pace of life as the Albufera nature park. Visitors apparently would prefer their bird- and wildlife-watching on something with a bit more zip. Whether they would have even been suitable for the terrain is quite another matter. What about using them at the Mondragó park in Santanyí? Well, what about doing this? The buggies were despatched, and there they remained. Unused.
For two years, at a cost of 4,000 euros to rent a space at Mondragó, the two bus-buggies which did turn up stood idle. Finally, when the PSM Mallorcan socialists got hold of the environment ministry early last year, they had the good sense to move them again. Not that they were going to be used for anything, just that they were on their way to some government land where it didn't cost to store them. Maybe the university might now want them? Maybe it would. Or maybe the government should just sell them to a golf course at a no-doubt knocked-down price.
At a time when the cost of petrol rises by the week - it is now an average of 1.363 euros per litre - the attractions of electric vehicles grow. President Antich, one eye on the environmental vote no doubt and critical of the previous administration's lunatic purchase of vehicles that didn't do anything, has announced that he hopes that, by 2015, there will be some 7,500 electric vehicles knocking around the Balearics.
As ever, figures can be put on what this would mean. A 67% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, for example. How is the figure arrived at? Pass. But arrived at, it is. This fleet of quietly-moving vehicles, and it should be noted that electric vehicles are criticised on safety grounds because you can't hear them coming, would not solely be those of the government. Far from it. The car-hire sector has been engaged in discussions.
Electric vehicles are all well and good. They are well and good for the environment, potentially. But how is the electricity created? Currently, so we keep being reminded, the power station in Alcúdia is one of the main culprits when it comes to emissions. It may move to being fuelled by natural gas, but it would still emit pollutants, admittedly at lower levels than coal. And then there are the renewables, solar energy in particular.
The regional government, at a cost of nearly 200,000 euros, commissioned a study which suggested that it would be possible to generate all the Balearics' energy needs with clean renewables. When might this happen? Ever? A bit over one per cent is at present from renewables, and the prospects for much more, any time soon, aren't that great. They have not been helped by the fact that central government has turned down over 40 projects that might have contributed to increasing substantially the amount of solar energy in Mallorca.
Herein lies the rub. You can create greener vehicles, but the advantages of doing so need to be complemented by how you create their "fuel". There again, there is one way you can be sure of not polluting the atmosphere; that's to buy vehicles that you never use. Just ask the environment ministry.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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