Transparent Solar Cells: The Future of Energy Production

This is a solar energy cell (source)

by Gaius Publius

The news about solar energy has been getting better and better for a decade or more. As storage schemes improve, so does the potential for completely replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

The latest information about solar energy cells, however, seems like a game-changer. In a nutshell, it's now possible to harvest and use the energy of the sun, not just as it strikes opaque surfaces, but also as it passes through transparent ones. Considering the number of transparent surfaces in the country — and in fact in the world — the potential for integrating light-harnessing energy cells into our lives and infrastructure, all of it invisibly, has increased by many orders of magnitude.

Consider that every pane of glass in every office building, house and apartment, every "gorilla glass" screen on every smart phone, every windshield of every car. and every other glass surface you can imagine — windows inside office buildings? mirrors? — can now be used to harvest energy from light and send it to be used or stored.

Then consider how much fossil fuel use that can replace. The developers of this technology say, eventually all of it. The story via Newsweek:

A new generation of see-through solar cell technology could soon be used to harvest the massive energy potential of building and car windows, cell phones as well as other objects with a transparent surface.

Scientists at Michigan State University detailed in a paper in the journal Nature Energy how highly transparent solar applications could “nearly meet U.S. electricity demand” and drastically reduce reliance upon fossil fuels.

“We will see commercial products become available over the next few years,” Richard Lunt, an associate professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU, tells Newsweek. “We are just beginning to hit performance metrics that make sense to scale up.” ...

The untapped electricity potential of this energy source, the researchers note, is vast. An estimated 5 billion to 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States could be used to meet 40 percent of the country’s energy demand, or “close to 100 percent” if energy storage is improved.

That journal article is here (subscription required).

The trick involves collecting the energy from non-visible wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light is just a part. In this case, the energy is collected from ultraviolet and "near infrared" wavelengths. Light from these wavelengths is then "guided to the edge of the surface they are on [and] converted into electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells."

The work is being done by a team at Michigan State University, which has previously published on this technology.

A few things to keep in mind. First, these cells don't replace glass, but fit over glass surfaces without reducing their transparency. In the announcement published by MSU, these cells are described as see-through "solar materials that can be applied to windows." This means already-installed windows won't have to be replaced in order to benefit from this technology.

Second, efficiency is obviously a factor in the amount of energy the technology provides: 

Compared to traditional solar cells, the transparent technology still has some catching up to do. Rooftop solar panels typically have an efficiency of between 15 and 18 percent, whereas the see-through solar cells record efficiencies of around 5 percent. However, Lunt says he expects to see a three-fold improvement in efficiency of the transparent solar cells.

Finally, the project is financed by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education (interestingly, not the Department of Energy). If this story gets wider attention and the potential of this technology becomes more publicly appreciated, will Betsy Devos' DoE pull funding for the project? That aspect is worth paying attention to as this exciting research starts making even more news.

GP
 

Will China Be the Enforcer of the Paris Climate Agreement?

Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants

by Gaius Publius

It's amazing what can be done by a government determined to do it. In the U.S., our approach to the climate crisis is to use the "invisible hand" of the market and be careful not to get in the way of "wealth creation" (for billionaires). The Chinese don't have those constraints. Yes, they want to make their billionaires wealthier, but that's not their primary goal. There's a very nationalist strain in China, and to a greater extent, I think, than in the U.S., the Chinese government wants what's best for China, and not just its wealthy.

Put differently, the economic policy of the Chinese government is to grow the country, including its billionaires. It often seems that U.S. economic policy is to grow our billionaires at the expense of the country. That may be no more evident than in the following story.

"You Talk about Fixing the Climate, But What about China?"

One of the main reasons the climate foot-draggers, in both parties, want to go slow on climate in the U.S. (aside both parties' allegiance to "wealth creation") is the China argument. In simple form, it says, "Whatever the U.S. does to save the climate will be undone by China, so why bother?" I don't think that argument holds true any longer.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in The Telegraph (my emphasis):

China is the low-carbon superpower and will be the ultimate enforcer of the COP21 climate deal in Paris

Chinese scientists have published two alarming reports in a matter of weeks. Both conclude that the Himalayan glaciers and the Tibetan permafrost are succumbing to catastrophic climate change, threatening the water systems of the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong.

The Tibetan plateau is the world’s "third pole", the biggest reservoir of fresh water outside the Arctic and Antarctica. The area is warming at twice the global pace, making it the epicentre of global climate risk.

One report was by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The other was a 900-page door-stopper from the science ministry, called the “Third National Assessment Report on Climate Change”.

The latter is the official line of the Communist Party. It states that China has already warmed by 0.9-1.5 degrees over the past century – higher than the global average - and may warm by a further five degrees by 2100, with effects that would overwhelm the coastal cities of Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou. The message is that China faces a civilizational threat.

Whether or not you accept the hypothesis of man-made global warming is irrelevant. The Chinese Academy and the Politburo do accept it. So does President Xi Jinping, who spent his Cultural Revolution carting coal in the mining region of Shaanxi. This political fact is tectonic for the global fossil industry and the economics of energy.

Until last Saturday, it was an article of faith among Western climate sceptics and some in the fossil industry that China would never sign up to the COP21 accord in Paris or accept the "ratchet" of five-year reviews.

They have since fallen back to a second argument, claiming that the deal is meaningless because China will not sacrifice coal-driven growth to please the West, and without China the accord unravels since it now emits as much CO2 as the US and Europe combined.

This political judgment was perhaps plausible three or four years ago in the dying days of the Hu Jintao era. Today it is clutching at straws.

Eight of the world’s biggest solar companies are Chinese. So is the second biggest wind power group, GoldWind. China invested $90bn in renewable energy last year and is already the superpower of low-carbon industries. It installed more solar in the first quarter than currently exists in France.

The Chinese plan to build six to eight nuclear plants every year, reaching 110 by 2030. They intend to lever this into worldwide nuclear dominance, as we glimpsed from the Hinkley Point saga.

Home-grown energy is central to Xi Jinping's drive for strategic security. China's leaders know what happened to Japan under Roosevelt's energy embargo in the late 1930s, and they don't trust the sea lanes for supplies of coal and liquefied natural gas. Nor do they relish reliance on Russian gas.

Isabel Hilton from China Dialogue says the energy shift has reached a point where Beijing has a vested commercial interest in holding the world to the Paris deal. “The Chinese think they can dominate low-carbon technologies,” she said....

Do read the rest; it's fascinating.

The Chinese Century & the Next Great Power Source

There are a couple of takeaways here. One relates to the fact that, as we all know, the U.S. has been competing economically with China to make sure the 21st century won't be the Chinese Century the way the 20th century was the American Century.

So the first takeaway is this — thanks to our billionaires and their control of the U.S. political process, that competition is over. In a world without a climate crisis, China will win economically. The U.S. has already, as part of an unspoken national economic policy, handed China control of the world's manufacturing, in exchange for major additions to American CEO bottom lines, like Phil Knight's at Nike. Put simply, U.S. national economic policy is to make China and Phil Knight rich at the expense of most Americans. Both China and Phil Knight have taken that deal.

The second takeaway is an insight from Kevin Phillips' book American Theocracy, that world power ("greatness") moves to the country that adopts the next great power source. For a while, the Dutch dominated with wind power (they really did), until coal power allowed the British to take their place as the world's leading nation. The U.S. ran its economy on oil, not coal, and supplanted the British. The next great energy source is going to be renewables (if we can get to a stable world run on renewables).

The Chinese are counting on that being true, that the first nation that owns and runs on renewables is the next great national power. They want to control the world's manufacturing and control the next-generation power source. They see this as their path to the Chinese Century, and they're going to try very hard to get there. Again, from the article: “The Chinese think they can dominate low-carbon technologies”. In a world without catastrophic climate change, it's likely they're right.

But the third takeaway is this:

• If I'm right that we have at most 10 years to start a massive conversion to zero-carbon power generation in the U.S....
   
• If warming of at least +1.5 °C is "baked in" and guaranteed no matter what we do, and not stopping means we can only go higher that that...
   
• If we don't soon have a national "wake up call" that motivates us to emergency action...

... then no one will own this century, not us, not the Chinese, not anyone, because it won't be ownable. If we're lucky, civilization will survive this century more or less intact. Period. Every nation will spend its energy in adaptation, not expansion; in survival and self-preservation, not dominance. Consider, for example, that if 45°N latitude is the cutoff point for livability in the second half of a hot next century, China's breadbasket, the North China Plain, at about 39°N could be at risk. That's where China will spend its time and money. We may have similar problems.

Dismissing the "China Argument"

It's true that we can't "fix" (mitigate, in climate-speak) or avoid the worst of the climate crisis without both the U.S. and China lending a serious hand. If the Chinese are going to do their part — and it looks like they are — it does come down to us then. The Chinese are not saying, "Let's wait for the U.S. before we get serious." They're taking a leadership role and acting. Time to take a page from that book and do our own part? Looks like the "China argument" just went away.

GP

Between Crackpot Republicans, Sold-Out Democrats And Lobbyists, Does Our Species Even Have A Chance?

This week Hart Research released polling on how millennials in battleground states feel about the climate-change debate. Short version: Bye-bye, Ron Johnson, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey. "[T]oday’s Millennials accept the established science around climate change and see it as a serious problem and a threat."

What is more, they are looking for a presidential candidate with a forward-looking vision to solving our country’s toughest economic problems--presenting clear potential for a candidate who has a bold plan around expanding clean, renewable energy to heighten their enthusiasm and capture their vote.

Our research indicates that large majorities of swing-state Millennials accept the science of climate change and recognize that it is a threat, with 78% saying it is a serious problem, including 92% of Democrats, 80% of independents, and a 59% majority of Republicans. Three-fifths (60%) of these young adults recognize that human activity is a major cause of the problem.

Millennials are looking for a bold solution to climate change and are solidly behind plans to expand clean energy in the United States. The overwhelming majority (73%) is favorable to setting a goal to power America with at least 50% clean energy by the year 2030 (including 52% who are very favorable). Furthermore, they see direct economic benefits to setting this goal. Sixty eight percent (68%) of Millennials believe that setting this clean energy goal would have a positive effect on America’s economy overall (only 10% think it would have a negative effect) and 68% say the same about jobs.

Creating jobs for the next century is a top priority for Millennials and offers a potential connection to expanding clean energy jobs. When presented with a list of various priorities a candidate for president might express, wants to make America a leader in creating jobs for the next century emerges as most important to these Millennials, with 82% saying this is very important to them personally (ratings of seven to 10 on a zero-to-10 scale). Millennials are also strongly supportive of proposals with an explicit connection to clean energy jobs. We found that expanding clean, renewable energy technology and creating more clean-energy jobs is an effective way to connect the problem of climate change with the more idealistic, optimistic goal of spurring the economy and creating good-paying jobs for the next generation of Americans. Expanding clean energy is seen as a multi- faceted solution: it will create jobs, grow our economy, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, while still addressing the problem of climate change. Participants throughout our focus groups also were able to envision a wide array of what “clean energy jobs” might look like-- from manual labor, to engineering and design, to sales and marketing-- indicating a belief that these jobs will benefit Americans across socioeconomic lines and be a driver of middle-class opportunity.

In fact, of several climate-related messages we tested, the idea that combating climate change will create the jobs of the future, spur innovation and investments in clean energy, and put young people to work in good-paying jobs tested among the top-tier, with two-thirds (66%) of Millennials in battleground states saying this was a strong reason (ratings of seven to 10 on a zero-to-10 scale) why climate should be an important issue in the upcoming presidential election. This includes large majorities of Democrats (79%) and independents (61%), as well as more than half (52%) of Republicans-- the only climate message to surpass the 50% threshold among the latter group. Even battleground Millennials who express only muted enthusiasm about the 2016 election respond very positively to this message: 59% of the least enthusiastic group say it is very important to them, as do 63% of those who are only fairly likely to vote next year-- the top-testing climate message for both of these groups.

...It is clear from our research not only that Millennials accept the science of climate change, but that a candidate who does not is at a disadvantage. We heard throughout our conversations with swing-state Millennials that climate denial is associated with stubborn or backward-looking thinking. And in our survey, 70% of Millennials say they would have major concerns (45% very major concerns) about a Republican candidate who disagrees with NASA, the US Military, and 97% of climate scientists that human activity is responsible for climate change, including 69% of independents and half (50%) of self-identified Republicans.

The Koch brothers, specifically, are viewed by Millennials in a very unfavorable light, especially when attached to a short identifier explaining who they are. At the outset, Millennials view the Koch brothers negatively by 19 points (8% positive, 27% negative), and a 55% majority know who they are. And after reading a description of a hypothetical candidate who is backed by the Koch brothers, the big oil billionaires who have a long record of environmental violations, who, along with their network of wealthy conservatives, have pledged to spend almost a billion dollars on the presidential election, 72% of Millennials (including 74% of independents) say they would have major concerns about supporting that candidate, with 47% saying they would have very major concerns. What is more, 74% of Millennials would have major concerns about a candidate who has close ties to the oil industry and supports tax breaks for oil companies, including more than half (52%) of Republicans-- reflecting the broader distaste Millennials have for the industry.

Expanding clean energy is extremely popular among Millennials who are already active on energy and environmental issues, and they can thus can be used to serve as “boots on the ground” to stoke engagement among their age group. Among Millennials who demonstrated an interest in energy and the environment via their Facebook activity, a whopping 84% say that expanding renewables and creating clean-energy jobs is an extremely important priority for them (ratings of nine to 10 on a zero-to-10 scale)-- by far the top-testing issue among this group-- along with 71% of those respondents who have already interacted with NextGen Climate by pledging to become “climate action voters.” And when presented with a list of various issue positions a candidate might take and asked which two or three would be most important when casting their ballot, both groups of “activists” are most likely to choose expanding renewable energy-- edging out not only unrelated issues such as student debt and equal pay, but also reducing carbon pollution, having a strong environmental record, and making corporate polluters pay.

What got me going on this was some bad news from the California legislature, where Democrats are ostensibly in charge, but where lobbyists with fat wallets exercise huge clout-- clout they are using to gut the historic legislation progressives have been working on to combat climate change. SB350, which aimed for a 50% reduction in petroleum use by 2030 and already passed the state Senate, fell victim to lobbyists and the bribe-hungry legislators they control.

California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, who authored the legislation, said Wednesday that a major lobbying campaign by the oil industry was largely to blame for the doubt that had emerged over the bill. “The fact that, despite overwhelming scientific opinion and statewide public support, we still weren’t able to overcome the silly-season scare tactics of an outside industry which has repeatedly opposed environmental progress and energy innovation-- means that there’s a temporary disconnect in our politics which needs to be overcome,” de León said.

The oil industry has poured money into a campaign against SB 350, calling the legislation the “California Gas Restriction Act of 2015″ and warning that it could lead to bans on SUVs.

SB 350 is “an attempt to essentially put oil companies out of business,” Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, said in August.

De León has maintained that none of the oil industry’s claims are true. Still, SB 350 had come up against a wall of moderate Democrats in recent weeks. In late August, about 20 Assembly Democrats met with Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, saying they were worried that SB 350 isn’t clear enough on how it will affect motorists. These Democratic holdouts could have meant the end for the bill during this legislative session.

Taking out the petroleum measure was meant to be a concession to these moderate Democrats-- and it seems to have worked, at least on one. Henry T. Perea, a moderate Democrat who had led the opposition to the petroleum measure, told the New York Times that he would now support SB 350.

“S.B. 350 will set California apart as a leader in climate change policy and will go a long way in reducing emissions in areas like the Central Valley that suffer from some of the worst air quality in the nation,” he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown also said Wednesday that he wouldn’t let the oil industry get in the way of his efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in California.

“Oil has won the skirmish, but they’ve lost the bigger battle,” he said. “Because I am more determined than ever to make our regulatory regime work for the people of California: cleaning up the air, reducing the petroleum and creating the green jobs that are going to put hundreds of thousands of people to work over the coming decades.”

SB 350 is expected to come to a vote before the end of the week. The bill is part of a larger climate package of 12 bills, some of which have already been voted on. SB 185, which prompted the state’s public employee investment funds to divest from coal, passed the Assembly last week, and is expected to be signed by the governor. Another bill, SB 32, which would have required the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, failed in the Assembly this week, though it may come up for another vote.

Meanwhile, reporter Chris Mooney, writing for the Washington Post, explained a new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association which shows American families and businesses aren't waiting for easily corrupted elected officials to get on the right path. The industry is hitting new growth levels this year.

Solar photovoltaic installations now exceed 20 gigawatts in capacity and could surpass an unprecedented 7 gigawatts this year alone across all segments. A gigawatt is equivalent to 1 billion watts and can power some 164,000 homes.

The second quarter of this year witnessed a new record-- a 70% year-over-year growth rate-- for residential solar installations. Last week when Obama was in Las Vegas to meet with the solar energy industry, he termed it "an age-old debate in America. It's a debate between the folks who say 'no, we can't,' and the folks who say, 'yes, we can.' "

The new GTM Research and Solar Energy Industries Association report suggests the "yes, we can" crowd is winning, finding that out of all new electricity installations in the U.S. in the first six months of this year, 40 percent were solar.

...U.S. solar photovoltaic is at 20 gigawatts of installed capacity now, and may add another 18 gigawatts by the end of next year. Overall, the growth boom is being fueled by a combination of declining costs, low interest rates, and a federal solar investment tax credit, the report suggests.

For comparison, according to the Department of Energy, the wind industry in the U.S. recently reached 66 gigawatts of installed capacity, with 13 more gigawatts expected to come online by the end of 2016. Overall, the U.S. had over 1000 gigawatts of electricity capacity installed as of the year 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. So while still a minority of all electricity generation, wind and solar are, nonetheless, growing more and more significant on a national scale.

Still, there are storms ahead. The GTM Research and SEIA report points out that after 2016, if the solar investment tax credit is allowed to decline, the industry will face considerable uncertainty from 2017 to 2019 that could hampered growth. The situation is expected to then change again after 2020, as a key incentive program that’s part of the federal Clean Power Plan goes into effect, which will strongly favor solar and wind.

"If the solar investment tax credit is allowed to decline" means: if Republicans and Democratic sellouts run Congress, we're in big trouble. Which is all the more reason to elect progressives like the men and women Blue America has endorsed for Congress. All of our candidates are committed to seriously combatting global warming and fighting for rational environmental laws. No one gets on that list unless they are. Just yesterday our candidate in IL-08, just west of Chicago, state Senator Mike Noland, was rated a 100% Environmental Champion by the Illinois Environmental Council, one of only 16 state senators with that score. He's running against a crass corporate shill who will say anything and vote for whoever hands him the biggest... contribution.

Good News: Energy Policy And The Innate Flaws Of Conservatism

Yesterday Gaius did a post about the rate of ice collapse in Antarctica. In light of that piece, I'd like to introduce you to an uncharacteristically good news post at Vice's Motherboard by Nafeez Ahmed, How Solar Power Could Slay The Fossil Fuel Empire By 2030. Please read it in the context of what Matt Cartwright (D-PA) is doing in Congress to combat the dangers of the fracking industry and what freshman Ted Lieu (D-CA) says his top priority is in Congress: "I am going to wake up every day thinking about how we can mitigate climate change, because if we don't solve the problem, it will eventually kill us."

Ahmed begins with a premise from Clean Disrution of Energy and Transportation, a new book by Tony Seba, a lecturer in business entrepreneurship, disruption and clean energy at Stanford University and a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur: "In just 15 years, the world as we know it will have transformed forever. The  age of oil, gas, coal and nuclear will be over. A new age of clean power and smarter cars will fundamentally, totally, and permanently disrupt the existing fossil fuel-dependent industrial infrastructure in a way that even the most starry-eyed proponents of ‘green energy’ could never have imagined... By his forecast, between 2017 and 2018, a mass migration from gasoline or diesel cars will begin, rapidly picking up steam and culminating in a market entirely dominated by electric vehicles (EV) by 2030." I'll take it! 

Not only will our cars be electric, Seba predicts, but rapid developments in self-driving technologies will mean that future EVs will also be autonomous. The game-change is happening because of revolutionary cost-reductions in information technology, and because EVs are 90 percent cheaper to fuel and maintain than gasoline cars.

The main obstacle to the mass-market availability of EVs is the battery cost, which is around $500 per kilowatt hour (kWh). But this is pitched to fall dramatically in the next decade. By 2017, it could reach $350 kWh-- which is the battery price-point where an electric car becomes cost-competitive with its gasoline equivalent.

Seba estimates that by 2020, battery costs will fall to $200 kWh, and by 2024-25 to $100 kWh. At this point, the efficiency of a gasoline car would be irrelevant, as EVs would simply be far cheaper. By 2030, he predicts, “gasoline cars will be the 21st century equivalent of horse carriages.”

It took only 13 years for societies to transition from complete reliance on horse-drawn carriages to roads teeming with primitive automobiles, Seba told his audience.

Lest one imagine Seba is dreaming, in its new quarterly report, the leading global investment firm Baron Funds concurs: “We believe that BMW will likely phase out internal combustion engines within 10 years.” (Investors at rival bank Morgan Stanley are making a similar bet, and are financing Tesla.)

Two days after his JP Morgan lecture, Seba was addressing the 2014 Global Leaders’ Forum in south Korea, sponsored by Korean government ministries for science and technology, where he elaborated on the prospects of an energy revolution. Within just 15 years, he said, solar and wind power will provide 100 percent of energy in competitive markets, with no need for government subsidies.

Over the last year Seba has even been invited to share his vision with oil and gas executives in the US and Europe. “Essentially, I’m telling them you’re out of business in less than 15 years,” Seba said.

For Seba, there is a simple reason that the economics of solar and wind are superior to the extractive industries. Extraction economics is about decreasing returns. As reserves deplete and production shifts to more expensive unconventional sources, costs of extraction rise. Oil prices may have dropped dramatically due to the OPEC supply glut, but costs of production remain high. Since 2000, the oil industry's investments have risen threefold by 180 percent, translating into a global oil supply increase of just 14 percent.

In contrast, the clean disruption is about increasing returns and decreasing costs. Seba, who dismisses biomass, biofuels and hydro-electric as uneconomical, points out that with every doubling of solar infrastructure, the production costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels fall by 22 percent. “The higher the demand for solar PV, the lower the cost of solar for everyone, everywhere,” said Seba. “All this enables more growth in the solar marketplace, which, because of the solar learning curve, further pushes down costs.”

Globally installed capacity of solar PV has grown from 1.4 GW in the year 2000 to 141 GW at the end of 2013: a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent. In the United States, new solar capacity has grown from 435 megawatts (MW) in 2009 to 4,751 MW in just four years: an even higher rate of 82 percent.

Meanwhile, solar panel costs are now 154 times cheaper than they were in 1970, dropping from $100 per watt to 65 cents per watt.

What we are seeing are exponential improvements in the efficiency of solar, the cost of solar, and the installation of solar. “Put these numbers together and you find that solar has improved its cost basis by 5,355 times relative to oil since 1970,” Seba said. “Traditional sources of energy can’t compete with this.”

...[I]ncreasing efficiencies and plummeting costs of lithium ion (li-on) batteries are already making night-time residential storage of PV and wind power cost-effective. Every year, li-ion battery costs drop by 14-16 percent. By 2020, experts believe that li-on will cost around $200-250 per kilowatt per hour (kWh) in which case, according to Seba: “A user could, for about $15.30 per month, have eight hours of storage to shift solar generation from day to evening, not pay for peak prices, and participate in demand-response programs.”

At the current rate of growth, Seba’s projections show, globally installed solar capacity will reach 56.7 terrawatts (TW) in the next 15 years: equivalent to 18.9 TW of conventional baseload power. That would be enough to power the world, and then some—projected world energy demand at that time would be 16.9 TW.

Paul Gilding, who has spent the last 20 years advising global corporations like Ford, DuPont, BHP Billiton, among many others on sustainable business strategy, agrees that the trends Seba highlights imply “a disruptive transformational system change” that outpaces the “assumptions built on the old world view of centralised generation.” Author of The Great Disruption, Gilding said that “it’s the systemic interactions of software, new players, disruptive business models and technology that accelerates the shift,” and which “will be self reinforcing”-- not just cheap prices.

...While solar  has already reached ‘grid parity’, becoming as cheap or cheaper than utility rates in many markets, within five years Seba anticipates the arrival of what he calls ‘God Parity’: when onsite rooftop solar generation is cheaper than transmission costs. Then, even if fossil fuel plants generated at zero costs (an impossibility), they could never compete with onsite solar. So after 2020, the conventional energy industry will start going bankrupt.

The costs of wind, which complements solar at night and in winter, is also plummeting and will beat every other energy source, except solar, in the same time-frame, according to his analysis.

“We are on the cusp of the largest disruption of industry and society since the first industrial revolution. Large, centralized, top-down, supplier-centric energy is on its way out. It is being replaced by modular, distributed, bottom-up, open, knowledge-based, consumer-centric energy,” said Seba. “The transition has already started and the disruption will be swift. Conventional energy sources are already obsolete or soon to be obsolete.”

Conservatives will continue fighting against this scenario, as they have fought against every single step forward since the beginning of time. That's how they get their name "conservatives." And ultimately they always lose. Now it's just a matter of how much damage they will cause the rest of us-- and if they cause so much damage that they finally make the planet uninhabitable.

Most Are, But Not Every Congressional Whore The Kochs Use To Sabotage Green Energy Is A Republican

It's very hard to trace the Koch cash sloshing around American politics; it's meant to be hard. They funnel so much money into so many right-wing groups that it would be a full time job to sort it all out. Perhaps it's safe to assume, though, that the recipients of legalistic bribes from Koch Industries directly are among those most devoted to the Koch war against democracy. In the last cycle, Koch Industries alone doled out almost $2,000,000 to candidates for Congress, all but $40,737 of it to Republicans. Koch Industries knew exactly which corrupt Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to give a taste:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)- $10,000
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $10,000
• Mark Pryor (AR)- $10,000
• Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)- $5,000
• Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)- $2,000
• Mary Landrieu (LA)- $2,000
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $1,250
• Bruce Shuttleworth (VA)- $287
• Rob Wallace (Blue Dog-OK)- $200

Serious money, of course, went to Koch addicts in the GOP like their own personal congressional shill, Mike Pompeo (R-KS) who walked away with $110,000. Their 5 biggest investments in Congress went towards trying to win Senate seats... and all 5 attempts failed miserably:

• George Allen (R-VA)- $45,000
• Connie Mack (R-FL)- $33,500
• Denny Rehberg (R-MT)- $29,000
• Richard Mourdock (R-IN)- $28,500
• Rick Berg (R-ND)- $26,500

So far this cycle, Koch Industries has given $852,100 to congressional candidates, all but 6 to members of the party they already own. The half dozen who received the biggest bribes so far-- and the cycle is young and the spending is just ramping up-- are:

• Mike Pompeo (R-KS)- $48,900
• John Boehner (R-OH)- $20,200
• John Cornyn (R-TX)- $17,900
• Lynn Jenkins (R-KS)- $15,000
• Bill Flores (R-TX)- $13,000
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- $10,500

Blue Dogs and New Dems on the Koch gravy train so far this year were Barrow ($5,000), Jim Matheson ($5,000), Collin Peterson ($2,000), Sanford Bishop ($1,000), Eric Swalwell (not exactly a Blue Dog-CA- $1,000), and conservative Delaware Senator Chris Coons ($250).

Last night the editorial board of the NY Times, in an editorial, The Koch Attack on Solar Energy wrote "At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax they can support. Naturally it’s a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels." Tuesday we looked at how much Koch money has accomplished in putting the brakes on the development of Oklahoma's green energy industry, even though solar and wind energy are the most cost-efficient alternative source of electricity.

For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.

Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican statehouses and receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the Kochs. As the Los Angeles Times reported recently, the Kochs and ALEC have made similar efforts in other states, though they were beaten back by solar advocates in Kansas and the surtax was reduced to $5 a month in Arizona.

But the Big Carbon advocates aren’t giving up. The same group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohio’s requirement that 12.5 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more in renewable power. These states can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets or scale them back.

The coal producers’ motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar arrays. (It is slightly higher in California and Hawaii.) But given new regulations on power-plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce global warming emissions, the future clearly lies with renewable energy. In 2013, 29 percent of newly installed generation capacity came from solar, compared with 10 percent in 2012.

Renewables are good for economic as well as environmental reasons, as most states know. (More than 143,000 now work in the solar industry.) Currently, 43 states require utilities to buy excess power generated by consumers with solar arrays. This practice, known as net metering, essentially runs electric meters backward when power flows from rooftop solar panels into the grid, giving consumers a credit for the power they generate but don’t use.

The utilities hate this requirement, for obvious reasons. A report by the Edison Electric Institute, the lobbying arm of the power industry, says this kind of law will put “a squeeze on profitability,” and warns that if state incentives are not rolled back, “it may be too late to repair the utility business model.”

Since that’s an unsympathetic argument, the utilities have devised another: Solar expansion, they claim, will actually hurt consumers. The Arizona Public Service Company, the state’s largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. The ad tried to link the requirement to President Obama. Another Koch ad (below) likens the renewable-energy requirement to health care reform, the ultimate insult in that world. “Like Obamacare, it’s another government mandate we can’t afford,” the narrator says.

That line might appeal to Tea Partiers, but it’s deliberately misleading. This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities, which to its organizers is much more important than clean air and the consequences of climate change.

Oklahoma: Here Comes The Sun-- Now Pay Up

Monday, Oklahoma's Republican governor, Mary Fallin, a lock-step right-wing ideologue and pawn of the Koch brothers, signed a bill fining or taxing Oklahomans who want to use solar power. It had passed both Houses of the Oklahoma legislature, and, in fact the House passed it 83-5. (Now this is a very, very red state but there are still 29 Democrats in the state House--72 Republicans-- and 12 Democrats in the state Senate--36 Republicans). Many of those Democrats, however, aren't Democrats that actual Democrats would recognize as Democrats. Many of them, for example, went right along with voting to tax the sun for the Koch brothers, a bill that reversed a 1977 Oklahoma law that forbade utilities to charge extra to solar users.

Americans overwhelmingly support green, renewable energy, even if the Koch brothers have ordered the GOP-- and conservative Democrats-- to oppose it. The most recent Gallup polling on the subject is crystal clear: "No fewer than two in three Americans want the U.S. to put more emphasis on producing domestic energy using solar power (76%), wind (71%), and natural gas (65%). Far fewer want to emphasize the production of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%). Least favored is coal, with about one in three Americans wanting to prioritize its domestic production." Although those numbers are so high because normal people-- 87% of Democrats and 74% of Independents-- favor solar energy, even among grassroots Republicans, if not GOP legislators, 68% favor solar power.

Last week, before Fallin signed the bill, Paul Moines, an energy reporter for the The Oklahoman wrote that "it’s the prospect of widespread adoption of rooftop solar that worries many utilities. A report last year by the industry’s research group, the Edison Electric Institute, warns of the risks posed by rooftop solar."

“When customers have the opportunity to reduce their use of a product or find another provider of such service, utility earnings growth is threatened,” the report said. “As this threat to growth becomes more evident, investors will become less attracted to investments in the utility sector.”

The report urged regulated utilities to move quickly to change their rate tariffs to recover fixed costs from distributed generation… [W]ith the prices of solar panels declining each year, installation costs are looking more attractive for many homeowners.

Chris Gary, owner of Sun City Solar Energy in Oklahoma City, said a 10-panel setup with a mirco-inverter now costs about $15,000, not including installation charges. A similar system cost almost twice that six years ago, he said.

Gary said the effects of SB 1456 won’t be known until the new tariffs get approved by the Corporation Commission. But news of the bill has sparked interest from potential customers.

“It may affect our business, but we don’t know yet,” Gary said. “Is it a killer for solar in Oklahoma? I don’t believe so, but when you open the door to a charge, that means it can always be increased. A speedbump could turn into a roadblock.”

So where were Democrats? Voting with Republicans… or ducking the bill altogether and hiding in the men's room while the vote was taken… apparently a common tactic for political cowards unwilling to stand up for Democratic values, even when they're overwhelmingly popular like solar energy. We've run into Democratic state Senator Al McAffrey before. He's the corporate shill running against progressive Tom Guild for the OK-05 congressional nomination. This is standard operating procedure for him.

You would think that the furious push back when McAffrey was MIA on the bill-- now law-- that went through the state senate to outlaw raising the minimum wage in Oklahoma, would have caused him to trim his MIA behavior. He didn’t vote against the bill that suspends the right of Oklahomans to petition the government for redress of grievances by adopting a higher minimum wage at the local level. The state senator decided to run against the progressive candidate Tom Guild, for the Democratic Party nomination for Congress in the Oklahoma City area, after James Lankford decided to follow his political social climbing instincts and run for the U.S. Senate instead of running for re-election to the house. Tom Guild is solid as a rock on the minimum wage issue both in word and in deed. He and his campaign helped gather over 60,000 signatures nationally to raise the minimum wage, Tom has carried the local petition and gathered signatures to raise the wage in Oklahoma City, and his campaign has gathered petition signatures at Guild for Congress events. McAffrey, refused to sign the local minimum wage petition when presented with an opportunity a few weeks back.

Well, disgracefully, he was at it again with the sun tax!  Does he ever oppose bills being pushed by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)? McAffrey was again missing in action and didn’t vote against the bill-- again, now law-- in a déjà vu all over again repeat non-performance. He once again didn’t do his main legislative duty and vote at all on the legislation when it came before the state senate. Senate Bill 1456 levies extra charges against homeowners who use solar panels or wind turbines. As Rachel Maddow asked last night, “Did warming yourself with the sun instead of coal just become a punishable offense in Oklahoma because it’s Oklahoma?”  Well, yes Rachel, that is just what happened, and McAffrey offered no resistance and didn’t bother to vote against this clunker of an uncommonly silly idea. The Koch group Americans for Prosperity must be giddy with celebration. Do we need to follow the money and see who in the fossil fuels branch of the energy industry has contributed to the various Oklahoma congressional candidates?

As we've been showing for the last couple of months, being an openly gay candidate (such as McAffrey)-- or an openly gay legislator (New York's Sean Patrick Maloney is the worst example)-- does not necessarily a progressive make. The choice is clear as a bell for Democratic voters in Oklahoma City. If they want the minimum wage and competitive renewable energy sources, the only dependable option is Tom Guild in the June 24 Democratic primary. If you'd like to help him get the message out, you can do that here.

Have Mainers Finally Had It With Koch-Addicted Republicans?

More than a few people have been asserting that Republican Governor Paul LePage, knowing he's already lost his reelection fight, is now only working for an audience of two: Texas neo-fascists David and Charles Koch. The clownish LePage doesn't want to go back to working at a Marden's Surplus and Salvage and he's counting on the Koch brothers to set him up with some kind of situation inside their Empire. That would certainly explain his vetoes Friday evening of two bills very popular with Mainers-- and very unpopular with Kochs.

Terry Morrison's LD 1252, An Act to Improve Maine’s Economy and Energy Security with Solar and Wind Energy, passed the Senate with a bipartisan 21-12 and sailed through the House 109-30. Two Republican senators and 23 Republican House members abandoned LePage and voted for it-- as did 100% of the Democrats in the legislature. Had LePage not vetoed the bill, it would have revived the Efficiency Maine solar rebate program ($2,000) for homes and businesses, creating over a thousand new solar and hot water projects. LePage's veto means Maine is the only state in New England that doesn't incentivize installation of solar projects for homes and businesses. Oily plutocrats, the Kochs strenuously oppose green energy projects and LePage's veto must have impressed them with his willingness to sacrifice his own already dwindling popularity on their behalf.

The Democrat polling significantly ahead of LePage in the gubernatorial race, Congressman Mike Michaud, was all over the veto: "Renewable energy is a strategic asset that Maine should look to expand, not undermine. Gov. LePage’s efforts on energy move us backward and threaten a growing industry in our state while also hurting our efforts to combat climate change. Our homegrown renewable energy sector creates jobs, reduces the impact of global warming, protects us from price spikes and keeps prices down so small businesses and Maine families can keep more money in their pockets."

According to ThinkProgress, LePage has opposed efforts to increase energy efficiency, tried to roll back renewable energy targets, moved to get out of anti-smog regulations, vetoed a bill creating a climate adaptation working group, and touted the benefits climate change will have on Maine after agreeing with a radio talk show host who called climate science a "hoax" and "lying science." His administration says they would not respond to local newspapers that reported on the governor’s environmental and energy record.

The other veto was of Franklin Republican Tom Saviello's pro-clean elections/pro-democracy initiative, LD 1631, An Act to Clarify What Constitutes a Contribution to a Candidate, just the kind of legislation the Kochs spend millions to prevent. It had passed the Senate 20=13. Saviello was the only Senate Republican to vote for it. It passed the House 83-50 without a single Republican vote. The purpose of the bill simply established that any campaign expenditures made by a person who has been affiliated with that campaign in the prior 120 days, regardless of whether they were paid or volunteered, counts as a campaign contribution. House Majority Leader Seth Berry said that "This bill is about keeping Maine’s Clean Elections clean. It is too bad the governor does not share this priority."

The non-partisan group, Maine Citizens for Clean Elections was fuming after the veto and asked the legislature of override it.

"This simple bill closes a problematic loophole in our campaign finance system," said Andrew Bossie, MCCE’s Executive Director. "Maine voters want compliance and accountability when it comes to campaign finance laws, and this bill provides that."

LD 1631 makes clear that when key persons affiliated with a candidate campaign make expenditures to benefit the candidate, those expenditures are contributions. Because contributions are limited, and independent expenditures are not, it ensures that campaign insiders do not evade contribution limits with sham independent spending.

"While this bill does not attempt to reverse the trend of independent expenditures, it does attempt to clarify when an expenditure is really a contribution to the candidate," said Senator Tom Saviello, the bill's lead sponsor, during the public hearing on the bill. "It starts with the simple assumption-- you might even call it a 'no-brainer'-- that certain persons close to a candidate's campaign cannot with a straight face make an independent expenditure on behalf of that candidate."

The bill is modest in scope, simply clarifying that treasurers, campaign managers, and other agents of a campaign can’t make expenditures that will be considered independent of the campaign. The practical effect is that all campaign spending by agents of a candidate campaign during an election will be subject to Maine’s contribution limits. Since Clean Election candidates do not accept private contributions, this sort of spending would not be allowed at all.

"We are optimistic that the legislature will override this veto and move forward, not backward, when it comes to our campaign finance system," concluded Bossie. "This common-sense bill is good for democracy and should become law. We ask each and every legislator to carefully consider the integrity of our election laws and vote to override Governor LePage’s ill-advised veto."

Senator Susan Collins tries making believe she isn't the same "kind" of Republican that LePage is but she maxed out to his campaign and endorsed his reelection efforts, has quietly urged her allies in the state legislature to back dome of his worst agenda items and, as Rick Santorum, has told GOP donors, "she is a team player who always plays with the team and never plays against the conservative side even if she has to give the liberals a vote because she's from Maine."

Susan Collins' Democratic opponent, Shenna Bellows, is no fan of LePage's deranged agenda. "It's disappointing," she told us this morning, "that Republican Governor Paul LePage vetoed clean energy and clean elections bills on yet another veto spree. We need urgent investment in solar energy to confront climate change now. One of the barriers to better energy policy is the influence of money in politics. So it's not surprising that opponents of clean energy like Republican Paul LePage would also oppose campaign finance reforms, even modest ones." If you'd like to help Shenna vanquish the Republicans, you can contribute to her campaign here.

Solar Energy In L.A.-- And Japan

Monday night I was at the Hammer Museum for a screening of Shaun Kadlec's and Deb Tullmann's fantastic new film, Born This Way, a documentary on the gay and lesbian underground in Cameroon. Afterwards I ran into Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti. Eric's an old friend and one of the smartest politicians I've ever met. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and he studied Urban Planning at Columbia. I doubt L.A. has ever elected anyone as qualified to be mayor in its entire history. I hadn't talked to Eric since he beat out the DWP shill he ran against in the runoff. I've been dying to talk with him about how the DWP systematically rips off solar energy users in L.A.-- but I restrained myself... for now.

The DWP is going to be one of many tough problems Eric is going to face as mayor. I know he already knows what crooks they are and I figured I don't have anything substantive add anyway. My home solar system was designed to eliminate my electric bill and it did but after nearly a year it started creeping back up again and is now at around 50% of it was before I covered my roof in solar panels, I can never get a straight answer out of the DWP crooks. Lucky for Cambridge, Massachusetts they have MIT on hand to make sure ratepayers there don't get the DWP treatment. They've developed a new tool to assess a city's solar power potential. “In this project we developed a new simulation-based technique to reliably predict the annual electricity yield from an arbitrarily oriented and obstructed photovoltaic (PV) array located anywhere on the planet.”

SA+P researchers have developed a new interactive map to show a city’s property owners how much electricity can be produced on their rooftops from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, how the financial investment will pay off and how much pollution will be reduced.

The new tool shows that if photovoltaic panels were installed on all good and excellent locations in MIT’s hometown of Cambridge, the city could generate about a third of its electricity needs via PV for about $2.8 billion. The technology has been found to predict electricity yield to within 4 – 10% of actual measured results.

So far the biggest solar power generation stars have been Germany and China. But now Japan, transitioning away from nuclear, has started making a dent-- a big one. Before Fukushima only 1% of Japan's energy needs came from solar. By next year Japan will be the world's second largest solar market after China.

According to a report by energy analyst IHS on Japan's energy mix, Japan's solar installations jumped by "a stunning 270% (in gigawatts) in the first quarter of 2013." That means by the end of 2013 there will be enough new solar panels equal to the capacity of seven nuclear reactors. Such massive growth will allow Japan to surpass Germany and become the world's largest photovoltaics (PV) market in terms of revenue this year.

"Japan is forecast to install $20 billion worth of PV systems in 2013, up 82% from $11 billion in 2012," IHS said. "In contrast, the global market is set for tepid 4% growth. The strong revenue performance for Japan this year is partly driven by the high solar prices in the country." Germany still leads with the total number of units and capacity, however, with its 32,192 megawatts. Japan is now closer to the U.S.'s 8,069 megawatts at 7,429 megawatts, according to London-based BNEF.

Solar energy in Japan has come to dominate thanks to government incentives now offered to the producers of renewables and rules which require public power utilities to buy alternative power at above-market rates. A deal forged by the last government desperate to wean Japan from its addiction to oil and nuclear power led to the implementation of a very generous feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable power generators.

Starting at 42 yen per kilowatt hour last July and now reduced in April to 37.8 yen (39 cents) the FIT is more than twice those of Chinese and German offerings.

...The provenance of the hardware has also seen a sea change with domestic panels now outselling cheap imports. Japan has a strong solar panel manufacturing industry and companies like Sharp, Kyocera, Sanyo, and Mitsubishi Electric would benefit from the new energy polices and emphasis on solar power, according to IHS.

Those same failing companies are now banking on a technological edge to push the quality up of made-in-Japan solar panels while keeping prices down. Doing so could make solar one the few bright points of the Japanese electronics industry. Sharp recently unveiled new solar panels that it claims not only use just 1% of the expensive silicon used in conventional models but are thin enough and clear enough to replace windows.

Others are focusing on efficiency. To make solar electricity affordable on a large scale, researchers have long been trying to develop a low-cost solar cell, which is both highly efficient and easy to manufacture with high output-- silicon-based solar cells typically have an efficiency of around 21% for converting sunlight into electricity.

According to Panasonic its prototype solar cell has achieved the world's highest conversion efficiency at 24.7%, verified by tests performed at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

"How long the boom in solar can last in Japan is hard to tell, but as land runs out, there will be slowdown," says Hoshi. "Of course there are still the rooftops to exploit as mobile carrier Softbank is doing. It's renting rooftops for solar-- a very smart and interesting business model. Perhaps, unlike previous attempts to deregulate Japan's electric utility industry, this should be a success."

Meanwhile, The U.S. generated 730 million kilowatt hours of solar electricity in the first two months of 2013-- so not the sunniest months anywhere-- 227% more than the same period in 2012, according to new EIA data. That's already 10% of the total amount generated for all of 2012.

Sunbelt State Republicans In A Bind Over Solar Power

As we saw yesterday, the American conservative movement is a captive of-- and virtually inextricable from-- the self-sustaining, cash-soaked universe of Big Oil and Gas. Conservative politicians' careers have been financed by Big Oil and they will fight to the death for their corporate masters. Unfortunately, the death their fighting for is our death, our country's and our planet's death. As Bill McKibben mentioned in his sermon, tiny Bavaria in southern Germany (27,239 square miles-- smaller than South Carolina) now more solar panels functioning to create cheap, clean electricity than the entire United States (3.794 million square miles). Right-wing reactionaries and hatemongers accept that shilling for Big Oil is part of their job. When I woke up yesterday reactionary sociopath Bryan Fischer had just gratuitously tweeted:

Meanwhile, Juan Cole was pointing out that the rest of the world is sensibly forging ahead on the back of the incredibly shrinking cost of solar energy. Because the pace of technological innovation in the solar field has so rapidly accelerated, it is now as inexpensive to build a solar plant as a gas or coal one and in the Southwest solar is at grid parity, as it is in several European countries that have no oil, like Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal.

By 2015, solar panels should have fallen to 42 cents per watt. Reneweconomy.com says that the best Chinese solar panels fell in cost by 50% between 2009 and 2012. That incredible achievement is what has driven so many solar companies bankrupt– if you have the older technology, your panels are suddenly expensive and you can’t compete. It is like no one wants a 4 year old computer. Conservatives shed no tears when better computers drive slower ones out of the market, but point to solar companies’ shake-out as somehow bad or unnatural. No wonder US solar installations jumped 76% in 2012. The reductions in cost over the next two years are expected to continue, at a slowing but still impressive 30% rate.

In the last election, the part of the Antelope Valley in CA-25, voted, for the first time, against the virulently anti-environmental Republican incumbent, Buck McKeon, and for environmental-friendly opponent, Lee Rogers. Had the rest of the district voted the way Antelope Valley did, McKeon would have lost and Rogers would be the congressman now. Both the congressmen from the Antelope Valley. McKeon and Kevin McCarthy, have taken considerable legalistic bribes from Big Oil and Gas, McCarthy $420,650 and McKeon $32,200 and now both are in an awkward situation back home. As Cole reports. the biggest solar plant in the world, the 579 megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Project is being built straddling their two districts. "It will provide electricity to 400,000 homes in the state (roughly 2 million people), and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 775,000 tons a year." McKeon and McCarthy, of course, both want to be seen leading the parade-- at least back home. Both their voting records in Washington are horrifically anti-environmental and pro-Big Oil. McCarthy's career-long ProgressivePunch score on crucial votes involving air pollution, biohazards, clean water, global warming, and renewable energy is a ZERO. McKeon's overall record on the environment is nearly as hideous, 3.68 (out of 100). McKeon's votes in favor of renewable energy have all been tied up in pork and kickbacks he can be on the receiving end of.

Important new research also shows that hybrid plants that have both solar panels and wind turbines dramatically increase efficiency and help with integration into the electrical grid. Earlier concerns that the turbines would cast shadows and so detract from the efficiency of the solar panels appear to have been overblown. Because in most places in the US there is more sun in the summer and more wind in the winter, a combined plant keeps the electricity feeding into the grid at a more constant rate all year round, which is more desirable than big spikes and fall-offs.

That Germany, then China, then the US are the world’s largest solar markets is no surprise. But that number 17 Japan will increase its solar installations by 120% in 2013 and so may be the second hottest solar market, just after China, this year, would mark a big change. Japan may well have 5 gigawatts of solar installed by the end of this year, even though the relatively new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is no particular friend of the renewables. In my own view, if Japan made the right governmental and private investments, it could overtake China in the solar field and reverse its long post-bubble stagnation.

ABB has been commissioned a large solar electricity generating plant on the edge of the Kalahari Desert near Cape Town, South Africa. It will supply the electricity needs of around 40,000 persons and reduce annual emissions by 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide. South Africa emits 500 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, and is third in the world for per capita emissions. (Still, it only emits a 10th as much over-all as the US). But they just need a thousand more plants like the Kalahari one, and voila! South Africa is also imposing a carbon tax, which will hurry things along. (At the moment, South Africa is far too dependent on dirty coal plants, which not only fuel climate change but also spew deadly toxins such as mercury into the atmosphere, whence it goes into human beings.

Because of South African and Israeli demand in particular, demand for solar panels in the Middle East and Africa has risen over 600% during the past year. Saudi Arabia’s announced plans to save its petroleum for export by going solar at home will add a great deal to regional demand if it sticks to those plans. (In most countries, petroleum isn’t used much for electricity generation as opposed to transportation, but in oil states such as Saudi Arabia it often is used in power plants; but that cuts down on foreign exchange earnings.)

The two Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan are emerging as the solar giants in India, with each having now passed half a gigawatt in solar electricity generation capacity. The two account for some 88% of all of India’s solar power. But Rajasthan may soon outstrip Gujarat, given the state’s solar-friendly commitments, its ample amounts of scorching sunlight, and its vast deserts.

Polluting The Oceans-- Or Cleaning Them Up With Solar Powered Ships

I just got back from India and one of the things that astounded me is how the progress that had been made towards cleaning up Delhi's notorious air pollution seems to have stopped-- even gone backwards. The city seems as polluted as it was when I was first there in 1970, sad considering all the progress that had been made in the last few decades. Delhi usually makes it ono every credible list of the world's most polluted cities and this year I can attest to the fact that things have gotten even worse. A list from the University of Vermont ranks it the 10th most polluted big city in a list that includes Baghdad, Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Karachi, Lagos, Mexico City, Moscow, Maputo (Mozambique), Mumbai and Delhi. (China and Iran got off pretty easy on this list, though both have cities that normally show up on te world's most polluted lists.) As the Vermont study says, "Careless government and people contribute to every gram of pollutant that flies in the air or floating on their water resources."

I was astounded to learn while I was India that each year, just one large container ship will emit cancer and asthma-causing pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars. According to an article in the Guardian, "Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760 million cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles... US academic research which showed that pollution from the world's 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330 billion per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases."

Europe, which has some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, has dramatically cleaned up sulphur and nitrogen emissions from land-based transport in the past 20 years but has resisted imposing tight laws on the shipping industry, even though the technology exists to remove emissions. Cars driving 15,000km a year emit approximately 101 grammes of sulphur oxide gases (or SOx) in that time. The world's largest ships' diesel engines which typically operate for about 280 days a year generate roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx.

...Shipping emissions have escalated in the past 15 years as China has emerged as the world's manufacturing capital. A new breed of intercontinental container ship has been developed which is extremely cost-efficient. However, it uses diesel engines as powerful as land-based power stations but with the lowest quality fuel.

"Ship pollution affects the health of communities in coastal and inland regions around the world, yet pollution from ships remains one of the least regulated parts of our global transportation system," said James Corbett, professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware, one of the authors of the report which helped persuade the US government to act.

Another study shows that just 16 super cargo ships cause as much pollution as all the cars in the world. Huge ships bringing manufactured goods from China are enormous in size and enormous in the amounts of lung-clogging pollution they are pumping into the air. And they use the cheapest and most unhealthy high sulpher fuel-- long banned from land-based use-- to bring, along with their cheap manufactured products, acid rain, as well as lung problems, inflammation, cancer and heart disease, all the world's most dangerous killers. And the problem is getting worse, not better. Ocean shipping is causing a significant amount of climate change emissions and is virtually unregulated. Is there anything that can be done about it? As a matter of fact, there is. The future is electric boats, powered by the sun. Solar-powered yachts and passenger boats are already being built and sold Hong Kong already has 3 solar-powered ferries in operation that are similar to hybrid cars and were developed by Solar Sailor, an Australian company. Electricity is created by solar panels and stored in a battery to power the engines while the vessel comes in and out of the harbour, reverting to diesel when the ships are on he open sea.

One of the fleet, the Solar Albatross, sports two sails covered in solar panels that can be raised to harness both the sun and the wind to further reduce reliance on fossil fuel.

Robert Dane, Solar Sailor's founder, says that the technology offers ship owners huge fuel savings and has the potential to be used on all types of vessels from humble ferries and luxury super-yachts to bulk carriers shipping iron ore and navy patrol ships.

"I think in 50 to 100 years, all ships will have solar sails," he says.

"It just makes so much sense. You're out there on the water and there's so much light bouncing around and there's a lot more energy in the wind than in the sun."

...And in Australia, he hopes to clinch deals this year with the operator of a river ferry and install the technology on two ocean research vessels.

There are other solar-powered ships in operation such as the catamaran Turanor PlanetSolar, which is circumnavigating the globe exclusively by harnessing the power of the sun. However, Mr Dane says the technology developed by his company is the most commercially tested.

More ambitiously, Mr Dane says the company will soon announce a trial with an Australian mining company to attach a 40m (130ft) tall solar sail to a newly built bulk carrier that will ship iron ore and other raw materials to China. [See photo below]

He likens the sail to a "giant windmill blade" that would be covered in solar panels and fold down into the vessel when it is docking and transferring cargo.

By harnessing the wind, the company estimates that the giant sail could shave 20% to 40%, or around A$3m (£2m; $3.1m), off a ship's annual fuel bill when travelling at 16 knots (18mph), with the solar panels contributing an extra 3% to 6% saving.

...If, as Mr Dane hopes, the technology is adopted more widely, it also has the potential to clean up the shipping industry, which environmental campaigners claim emits more greenhouse gases than commercial aviation.

Roughly 50,000 ships carry 90% of the world's trade cargo, and these ships tend to burn a heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuel.

"It's like tar, you have to heat it up to make it liquid so it will flow," says Mr Dane.

"These incredibly powerful engines run on incredibly cheap but dirty fuel so what we can do in the short-term is to ensure they use less fuel."

The industry has proved hard for governments to regulate as it does not fall into one jurisdiction, however the United Nations International Maritime Organization has recently introduced new regulations on fuel efficiency and sulphur emissions that could drive demand for Solar Sailor's technology.