Wind Power to Increase in Sweden

The 30 largest wind power developers in Sweden are planning to develop wind farms amounting to approximately 18GW in power during next few years. This calculation considers approximately 6000 new towers, generating in total 55 TWh per year.
With increasing possibilities for EU member countries to count emission reductions from projects developed in other Annex I countries, this number may as well increase even further.

Further beneficial factors for the wind power industry are looming at the horizon, through a from a recent Swedish government proposal. According the proposal, bureaucratic obstacles will be removed, and the possibility for wind farm neighbors to appeal court decisions will be reduced.

Recovery through Infrastructure and Cleantech Investments

According to Cleantechies.com, infrastructure and alternative energy will be two areas which Obama's recovery plan will focus on.

There are signs of similiar strategies in other countries. If carried out, this may soften the fall of young cleantech companies even further.

Morphic Biogas Fuel Cell System

After successful pilot testing, Morphic will no start to market a complete system for biogas-to-hydrogen transformation. The reformer technology comes from their subsidiary Helbio S.A. and generates a hydrogen used in fuel cells from Exergy Fuel Cells, another subsidiary.
Naturally, biogas from waste disposal centres, farms and waste water treatment plants could be upgraded and used directly for heating, power generation or vehicle propulsion; it is not entirely necessary to convert it to hydrogen. But thanks to the conversion, the application is more versatile. The hydrogen can be used wherever fuel cells are necessary.
Read more about it here (in Swedish).

Biogas fuel cell applications, but with a rather different technology, have earlier been discussed here

Wave Power Competition

WaveRoller and WaveDragon, technologies that have been mentioned earlier in this blog, are far from alone in the quest for efficient utilization of the energy generated by waves and tides.
earth2tech providedes a neat summary of 12 other competitors.

Short term challenges, long term opportunities

No sector is immune to the current financial unrest, and also many cleantech companies will face hard times during the next year or two. And highly leveraged projects, as often is the case with many wind power, may be postponed or cancelled.

Still, there are reasons to believe that the cleantech sector will fare relatively better than other areas. And in the long term, the outlook is still positive. The reasons are several:

• Renewable, domstic energy is a measure to improve national security. It's a long-term necessity independent of the current financial unrest. Public funding will continue to reach the necessary goals.
  

• The possible physical mechanisms behind climate change are indifferent to a Wall Street crisis. Companies who embrace this fact will act accordingly and invest in renewable energy and related technology as a long term strategic resource. Further on, renewable energy will be a priority for public funding.

• Emerging economies will participate in the global emissions market. Sooner or later, giant economies like China and India need to share the burden and reduce the CO2/$ growth ratio.
  
  
• Higher living standards in emerging economies will increase consumer consciousness and the demand for a cleaner near-environment. When you are starving you don't have time to bother about smog or inadequate waste-management, but as conditions improve, these issues will come closer to the top of the agenda. That is good news for companies within these sectors.
  
  
• Energy efficient is more important than ever when times are hard and resources scarse.

In particular, projects and technologies that benefit from public funding will find less problems than others. So will those companies and projects financed by equity rather than debt. The situation is troubling, but there is no need to panic.

Volvo to resume development of gas vehicles?

Volvo CEO Stephen Odell has only been working for Volvo during a few weeks. According to a recent interview(in Swedish), Volvo may now reconsider their decision to not develop any more gas vehciles.

With their gas vehicles, Volvo had a relatively important part in the promotion of biogas in Sweden during the late 90's and early 00's. During these years the biogas sector developed considerably, with several technology companies starting up as a result. A few years later, Volvo informed about their decision to not develop gas versions of coming models. Until now, perhaps.

Wave Power Already Profitable?

According to a study by Olav Olsen A.S. on behalf of Norwegian Langlee Wavepower, wave power technlogy from Langlee and other companies may already profitable in some parts of Europe such as Great Britain, Ireland and Portugal. The reason for this is the high prices of other types of ocean based energy in these countries.

Langlee, partly (10%) owned by Swedish Borevind, is developing a wave power technology that can exploit the energy relatively small waves.

Publicera inlägg