Week in Renewables: Glowing and Grim Reports, a New Bank, and Big Wind
Start with a bang, end with a whimper. That was the story for green technology this week, after opening with a report that investing in the sector was up 10 percent over last quarter in what looked like the beginnings of a recovery.
By the end of the week, a second report was making the rounds. Cleantech investment, it said, had fallen 9 percent since last quarter.
It’s a testament to how mature renewable energy has become that both reports could be absolutely true. The first referred to venture investment — everything from a company’s seed capital to the money for a pilot plant. The second report was more concerned with the latter stages of funding, when government and big finance step in.
News that cleantech is struggling is not really news at all; any big power project needs bank financing, and the banks have been down for the past year. But like the recent government report that showed unemployment still rising despite reports of recovery, it’s confusing and painful for cleantech companies to see their industry struggling despite its bright prospects.
Still, there were some good spots to the week. US Bancorp, one of the few big banks to navigate fairly smoothly through the financial turbulence, announced a doubling of its solar panel installation fund with SolarCity, to $100 million, and an overall expansion of its clean energy program.
Based on tax equity, the program requires the funding bank to be making a profit before it makes any sense, but other banks are reviving and will likely take an interest.
There’s also some speculation that the government will enact a Clean Energy Deployment Administration, basically an in-house clean energy bank. The number is a bit bigger here: $100 billion in revolving loans. But to pass, the CEDA’s Democrat backers will likely need to attract some Republican support, potentially by buying old coal plants or funding nuclear power.
Even without funding, renewables will see a steady improvement in their outlook — if only from the losses of others.
That’s if the EPA wins its bid to regulate CO2, anyway. It chose the past week to announce that it is considering an endangerment finding on CO2, which would require all carbon-emitting sources to use the best technology available to limit their emissions.
Such a move would indisputably raise costs for most power, but it would also indirectly raise the profit margins for solar, wind, and other non-emitting energy sources.
If not for all the high-level action, the biggest news item of the week may have been the completion of the world’s new largest wind project, encompassing 627 turbines that produce 781.5 megawatts, spread over 100,000 acres in Texas. It’s owned by E.ON Climate & Renewables, which, not content to rest on its laurels, is busy erecting even more turbines.
There was also the introduction of the first dimmable home LED light from Lemnis Lighting, and an announcement from PG&E that it was buying another 830 megawatts of power, including solar — though not from whom.
And finally, First Solar was helped out against the stock bears by being included in the S&P 500. Next stop, Dow 30?
Chris Morrison, a reporter on energy, renewables and climate change, is the former lead cleantech writer for VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter.
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