The Alternative Energy blog – green renewable alternative energy

The increased demand for palm oil as a  ”green” biofuel has a nasty side effect. It is leading to the destruction of endangered rainforests.

This week hundreds of Borneo tribes men armed with blowpipes blockaded roads in the Malaysian state of Sarawak to protest against companies they accuse of destroying their rainforests to grow oil palms for “green” biofuel.

The Penan tribe who live in the region have existed for centuries as nomadic hunter-gatherers living on fish, wild animals and plants but now the increased demand for palm oil is threatening their way of life.

“This is a last resort,” said See Chee How, a lawyer fighting land rights cases for indigenous people. “There have been allegations of rape by loggers, the rivers are being polluted and the Penan fear for their food supplies.”

Soaring demand for palm oil has pushed up the price by 45% this year, prompting companies to clear more rainforest and plant yet more palms. The latest expansion seems to have set off the blockades.

Twelve villages had united to send their men, clad in traditional hats pierced with hornbill feathers and carrying blowpipes, onto the jungle roads to block the timber lorries.

“These logging companies don’t clear the whole forest – they take the valuable trees and wreak a lot of destruction along the way,” said Miriam Ross, a British researcher for Survival International who has lived alongside the Penan.

“When the plantations are established it’s just rows and rows of palm oil, it’s not a forest,” she explained. “There’s not even any space for them, so they [the tribesmen[ can see it is a real threat.”

Stephen Corry, director of Survival, said the Malaysian government must recognise the land rights of local people and stop the companies operating without the tribe’s consent.

The blockades raised the stakes in a conflict that has unfolded for three decades on Borneo, an island treasure house of rare wildlife and plants that is also a rich source of timber and minerals. It pits indigenous tribes, broadly known as Dayaks, against governments and companies seeking to exploit resources.

Sarawak’s state government, which has been ruled by the same grandee, Abdul Taib Mah-mud, for 28 years, has presided over what environmental campaigners say is the systematic destruction of the rainforests.

Members of Taib’s family control or hold shares in several of the companies that have reaped generous rewards from licences, concessions or contracts issued by the state. The Taib family has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

However, threats and violence have beset resistance against companies granted licences by Taib’s government to exploit the rainforest. Two years ago the skull of Kelesau Naan, a troublesome village leader, washed up on a muddy riverbank. His disappearance remains unexplained. So does that of Bruno Manser, a Swiss campaigner, who vanished into the rainforest in May 2000.

“I believe the police and the government will have to handle these new protests carefully,” said an activist in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. “This time they know the world is watching.”

“The reality is that such projects generate large profits for a small number of people, the elites and the corporations,” said a coalition of Dayak groups.

Internet activists are now campaigning to boycott Malaysian products in protest.

In just over a decade China is expected to become  the world’s largest producer and consumer of alternative energy, according to experts. 

China’s installed wind capacity has doubled in each of the past four years.

In addition, in just a little over four years, a mix of government and foreign investment has transformed the Chinesport city of Tianjin city into the global manufacturing hub of the world’s wind power industry.

The country also has one third of the global solar panel market.

Many experts now seem reasonably optimistic that China could meet its ambitious renewable energy plans to derive at least 15 percent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020. The country also is striving to reduce energy intensity per unit of GDP by 20 percent over a five-year period.

All this in a country  that has some of the worlds most polluted air and water.

Ironically the country is poised to be at once the world’s leader in alternative energy — and its leading emitter of C02. 

Alternative energy as a percentage of the total energy mix is increasing, but it will complement — not replace — growth in coal power. In fact, in a decade coal is expected to supply about 70 percent of China’s energy. Because of the sheer scale, diversity, and complexity of China, it is possible for the country to take some great green leaps forward while at the same time having its rivers remain black and its air quality a health hazard.

China is set to rule the global solar panel market having already captured a third of the world market.

The credit crunch has hit solar power companies  in the West, but not Chinese firms.   They have taken advantage of the moment to flood the world with solar panels, driving down the retail price from $4.20 per watt last year to nearer $2 in what some say is a cut-throat drive for market share.

In addition Suntech Power from Wuxi has just broken the world record for capturing photovoltaic solar energy, achieving a 15.6pc conversion rate with a commercial-grade module.

The UK  can achieve grid parity for households by 2013, seven years sooner than expected says Jeremy Leggett, founder of Britain’s Solar Century. 

Its is believed that south-facing roofs and facades in Britain could one day provide a third of UK electricity needs.

Taiwan is to invest $1.4 billion in the island’s domestic renewable energy sector, its government said today, in a move it says will help the sector grow nearly eight-fold by 2015.

“The green energy sector can turn Taiwan into a major power in energy technology and production, as well as provide the creation of green jobs,” Taiwan’s Premier Liu Chao-shiuan said in a statement.

The statement did not say over what period the investment would be made.

Householders convinced that the UK does not have enough sunshine to effectively use solar panels are ‘wrong’, according to a domestic solar panel advisor.

The UK energy advisor Heat my Home has explained that the panels operate on solar radiation not sun rays and the UK gets enough of this to run solar.

Stuart Lovatt of Heat my Home said: “One unique selling point with solar is the longevity. A good quality system will easily last 30 years, so the long-term benefits of solar are obvious.

“How many things today can you buy with such a long lifespan, but solar does, and this makes it a perfect investment if you are thinking long-term such as retirement.”

Germany is the biggest installer of solar panels in Europe and shares a similar climate to that in the UK, both of which receive around 60 per cent of the solar radiation levels the equator does.

 A supply glut of polysilicon—the key raw material used in photovoltaic solar panels—promises cheaper solar panels in the years to come. In the short term the price drop has led to many solar panel manufacturers suffering large losses but analysts are hopeful the lower prices will make the technology more competitive with conventionally generated power.

The drop in polysilicon, though hurting earnings now, will be beneficial over the long termas it will make solar a more competitively priced alternative to other forms of power and boosts demand. In an Aug. 13 research note, UBS  analyst Robin Cheng said she expects photovoltaic electricity to be competitive with power from the grid by 2010 in those parts of Europe and the U.S. that get more regular sunshine, and by 2014 in regions that experience more cloud cover.

China is rushing forward with its wind energy plans with the pace surpassing even the most optimistic projections.

After setting an original goal of 30 gigawatts of installed wind power by 2020, the government recently said that could be raised to 100 gigawatts as installed capacity has doubled each of the last four years.

From almost nothing a few years ago, China had 12.2 gigawatts of installed wind power by the end of 2008 as power companies have rushed to meet government mandates to raise the proportion of energy they produce from renewable sources.

Investments  in green energy are set to rise says Ethical Corporation magazine.

It argues that the  impact of climate change will alter the shape of the global economy over the coming years resulting in an expanding  environmental technologies sector that will  provide both attractive and long term investment opportunities for global investors. 

A decade ago very few environmental technology investments were available for investors, other than those from a small number of pioneers specialising in this area. Today it’s a very different story. Institutional and retail investors have access to a wide range of environmental and climate change investment options, with an estimated $50bn invested in environmental market funds globally.

Experst says it will not only the renewable energy sector that will benefit from the changes required to deliver a low carbon economy.  Companies emerging from sectors such as energy efficiency, water infrastructure and pollution and waste control also have important contributions to make in addressing not only climate change, but the interrelated wider environmental threats facing society.

Fascinating article in Scientific American reports how mirrors are harnessing the sun to generate electricity in California.

Californian Power Tower

In southern California’s Antelope Valley, 24,000 silver-bright mirrors have been positioned to reflect light on two 50-meter-tall towers. And at 11:08 A.M. local time Wednesday, this concentrated light heated steam in those towers to turn a turbine— the first “power towers” in the U.S. to convert the sun’s heat into electricity for commercial use.

Dubbed Sierra SunTower, the power plant can produce five megawatts, enough to power roughly 4,000 local homes at full capacity—and provide the modular blueprint for larger plants in California and New Mexico, according to eSolar the Pasadena start-up behind the power plant.

“We call this a commercial demonstration,” says eSolar senior vice president of engineering Craig Tyner. “A 46-megawatt commercial design will incorporate 16 of these towers, two of which we have at Sierra” as well as more than 200,000 mirrors capable of generating at least 90 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year.