The Chinese Government has blocked General Motors attempt to sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, a private Chinese company that manufactures heavy vehicles and road-building equipment. As a result, General Motors will now dismantle the brand.

John Smith, General Motors’ Vice President of Corporate Planning and Alliances, said that "GM will now work closely with Hummer employees, dealers and suppliers to wind down the business in an orderly and responsible manner."

The Chinese Government did not give details of its reasons for blocking the purchase but according to Yale Zhang, a China auto-industry market analyst "The purchase of this brand is not a match for China. The Government’s general policies about efficiency and environmental protection …  This purchase does not match those."

 (Public domain photo via Wikimedia)

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Despite Australia’s enormous potential for renewable energy (see "100% Renewable Energy by 2020"), six months after Australia’s introduction of  legislation supposed to encourage the development of renewable energy, not a single major wind or solar project has commenced.

The failure of the scheme has been blamed on poor design of the legislation which promotes domestic solar hot water systems and rooftop solar panels at the expense of large projects.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said ”What we have is the retail market stymieing the commercial market. It needs to be addressed quickly or we have no large-scale clean generation capacity in three years.”

Projects that have stalled since the scheme was passed include AGL Energy’s 174-turbine wind farm planned for Macarthur in western Victoria

Wind turbine maker Keppel Prince Engineering said it had to decide this week whether to sack up to 150 workers at its plant at Portland in Victoria’s south-west. Managing Director, Steve Garner, said that "We’re finishing off our last project and we don’t have another wind farm to continue on with.”

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Beyond Zero Emissions has issued a summary of a report which shows how Australia could use solar and wind power technologies, which are available now, to produce 100 percent of its electricity within 10 years. The full report will be released in coming months.

Australia now gets nearly 80 percent of its electricity from coal with only 1 percent coming from wind power and less than half of 1 percent from solar energy.

The report says that 40 percent of Australia’s electricity could come from wind turbines. Concentrating solar power plants, with molten salt energy storage, could provide 60 percent of total electricity.

Worldwide, some thirty utility-scale concentrating solar power plants are under construction. None of the concentrating solar power plants are in Australia, although Australia has some of the world’s best potential sites. Solar researchers from Melbourne University and Australian National University have already identified 12 sites with a capacity of 3,500 megawatts each.

The report claims that suffiecient concentrating solar power plants could be installed in just four years, from 2011 to 2015, to provide 20 percent of the Australia’s electricity.

The report says that biomass co-firing would be needed to back up solar plants in winter and that new transmission lines between the solar- and wind-intensive areas and population centres would be needed. However, all coal and gas fired power plants could be eliminated and nuclear power would no be needed.

The cost of quitting carbon entirely is estimated at around $36 billion per year - about 3.5 percent of Australia’s annual GDP.

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Brian Walsh, director of winemaking at Yalumba, has told business leaders in Adelaide that a rise in temperatures could prevent the growth of some cooler grape varieties, such as shiraz and riesling, for which South Australia’s Barossa Valley is famous. ”Basically, the Barossa will disappear,” he said.

A similar observation has been made by viticulturist, Frank van de Loo, at the Mt Majura vineyard near Canberra. 

Mr van de Loo has recorded grape harvest days each year. "Over the last 20 vintages, this is our 21st vintage, we’ve been coming in at an average of 2.4 days earlier each year," he says. "Of course the curve bounces around a lot from year to year depending on the individual season, but it has a very clear trend. Before long, we’ll have to quit growing chardonnays."

Mr Walsh pointed out that regions in Italy and France grow wine in hot arid conditions similar to Australia, and peolple there choose wine from a particular region. But Australians choose wine based on the grape varieties, like shiraz, reisling or chardonnay and in the future it may not be possible to grow these varieties in regions like the Barossa.

He said that winemakers need to start looking at varieties for hot, dry climates now and not wait 30 years and say ”I wish I’d done something”.

”It’s a risk strategy and out of some of those times we might just stumble across something which is a fantastic idea we haven’t thought of yet," he said.

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In an interview with BBC, Carlos Ghosn, the head of Renault-Nissan, has outlined how he is pinning the future of his company on the electric car.

"I think the trends we’re seeing are all pointing in the same direction," he said. "Oil is a challenge, both price and availability. Regulations about environments are going to get tougher and tougher. I think the new generation is much more demanding about respect for the environment than we have ever imagined."

Mr Ghosn believes that the only technology which could compete with electric cars is the hydrogen fuel cell car but these are currently too expensive. On the other hand, he thinks that the cost of electric cars can eventually be reduced to one third of the present price.

Renault-Nissan is planning to build 500,000 electric cars per year - and will begin mass marketing in 2011. Renault and Nissan will each have a selection of four electric cars meeting different requirements. But he says that Renault-Nissan is the only company investing in that kind of capacity.

He believes that this will result in American, European and Japanese car makers having to merge while at least one Chinese and one Indian company will become a major supplier on the world market within a decade.

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The New South Wales Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, has approved a $190 million wind and solar farm near Scone in the Upper Hunter Valley.

The Kyoto Energy Park will include 34 wind turbines, a mini hydro-electric generator using recycled water, up to 100 hectares of solar panels and a visitor education centre. It will provide enough renewable power for more than 47,000 homes and create the equivalent of 15 full-time jobs.

Despite extensive community consultation and Government assessment of the farm’s noise, flora and fauna and visual impact - resulting in its scaling back and the attachment of 67 conditions to its approval, some local residents continue to protest at its construction. Carmel Lymbury says the Mr Kelly has ignored community concerns about its noise and visual impacts and thoroughbred horse breeder, Mike Thew, says that he fears the giant wind turbines will ruin the rural landscape.

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The French nuclear power company, Areva, has acquired the concentrating solar-power plant manufacturer, Ausra, for an undisclosed price. Ausra was founded by Australian, David Mills, who developed the technology when he was head of the Solar Energy Group at the University of Sydney. Dr Mills moved to California to secure funding from venture capitalists including Vinod Khosla.

Ausra’s Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector technology captures the sun’s power to produce electricity. Mirrors focus sunlight to heat water in  pipes and the resulting steam drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Because concentrating solar power systems produce steam to make electricity, Areva believes that the technology is more closely aligned with its nuclear engineering business, which also uses steam to generate electricity, than with other solar businesses in which photovoltaic cells convert light to electricity.

Areva believes that the market for engineering services around concentrating solar power will expand rapidly this decade and is forecasting a 20 percent per annum growth rate to an installed capacity of over 20 gigawatts by 2020.

The acquisition means that Ausra’s technology is more likely to be deployed on a large scale because utilities and financiers are typically reluctant to work with technology start-ups.

Fresnel solar concentrators

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Contrary to expectations in the light of the global economic turndown, wind power installations grew strongly in 2009.

China was the world’s largest market in 2009, more than doubling its wind generation capacity from 12.1 gigawatts to 25.1 gigawatts at the end of 2009.

The US installed nearly 10 GW in 2009, increasing the country’s installed capacity by 39% to 35 gigawatts.

Europe also exceeded expectations inn 2009 with 10.5 gigawatts of new wind generaion capacity installed, bringing the total installed in Europe to 76 gigawatts.

Within Europe, Spain installed the most with 2.5 gigawatts of new wind generating capacity, bringing its total to more than 19 gigawatts. Germany installed 1.9 gigawatts in 2009, bringing its total installled wind generating capacity to 25.7 gigawatts. The UK and France also installed more than a gigawatt of new  capacity each.

Australia installed 0.4 gigawatts of new wind generating capacity bringing its total installed capacity to 1.7 gigawatts, while New Zealand installed 0.17 gigawatts of new capacity for a total of almost 0.5 gigawatts installed.

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EU member states have approved a plan to share out €4 billion ($au6.3 billion) to develop carbon capture and storage and fund some other high tech renewables projects.

At least eight carbon capture and storage projects will receive funding. Ocean thermal energy conversion technologies and systems to convert cellulose from plant waste into biofuels, biogas or electricity will also be considered.

Specific proposals for projects to be up and running by 2015 must be submitted this year. The European Investment Bank will assess the proposals and determine which projects will receive funding during 2011. It is expected that most of the funding will go to the carbon capture and storage projects. 

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A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital technology to control appliances at consumers’ homes to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency. Many governments see it as a way of addressing energy independence, global warming and emergency resilience issues.

The United States Department of Energy estimates that modernization of US grids with smart grid capabilities would save between $US46 billion and $US117 billion over the next 20 years in that country alone. As a result, the Obama administration has committed $US7.1 billion to development of a smart grid.

But the US is far from being the only country making a big investment in smart grid technology. China is expected to invest $US7.3 billion in smart grid loans, grants and tax incentives this year. China’s State Grid Corp. has set a goal of building a smart grid by 2020. It is estimated China will need to spend as much as $10 billion a year through 2020 to achieve this.

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