Today 17% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear power plants. Right now 14 countries are building a total of 6 nuclear power stations, some in an effort to reduce CO-emissions, others because they find it a cheap alternative to other, saver methods to create electricity. France is even making a profit from selling nuclear electricity! That’s something that won’t happen in Austria, but 30 years later than expected the only nuclear power plant in the country now for the first time ever sent electricity down its cables. Yet it’s guaranteed to be save….
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Just an very short (edit on 3.7.) update from the second session of the Preparatory Commission of IRENA in Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt):

The Signatories designated Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, as the headquarters. The other candidates for the headquaters Bonn and Vienna withdrew their candidacies shortly before Abu Dhabi was chosen. The UAE has proposed to locate IRENA’s headquarters in Masdar, a 22 billion-dollar city near Abu Dhabi that will have zero carbon emissions. It is scheduled for completion in 2015 with a capacity to house up to 50,000 people.

At the same time it was decided that Bonn will host IRENA’s center of technology and innovation and that in Vienna the Agency’s liaison office for cooperation with other organisations active in the field of renewables will be established.

In addition the candidate from France, Helene Pelosse, currently Deputy Head of Staff in the Private Office of the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development, and Town and Country Planning in charge of international affairs, beating off challengers from Denmark, Greece and Spain.

Shortly before the meetings began, the United States and Japan as well as Australia signed on to IRENA . This raises the amount of IRENA member states to 136. “Our government’s participation is an important element of the administration’s effort to support clean energy technologies and the development of low carbon economies to address global climate change,” Clinton said in a statement (source: Reuters).

Map of IRENA's Signatory States (as of 29 June 2009)

At the meeting it was decided, that the 3rd Preparatory Commission Meeting will be held in Abu Dhabi in January 2010 and back to back with the World Energy Summit and chaired by the UAE. The UAE’s support for IRENA including all operation costs, a fully serviced headquarters, relocation costs and R&D funds worth a total of USD 136m for the first 6 years.  In addition Governments passed decisions on the budget outline of IRENA and being USD 6m in 2009 for building up the Secretariat and USD 17m in 2010. There was consensus that IRENA’s work programme should focus on capacity building, knowledge transfer and technology transfer. Many countries also called for formal partnerships between IRENA and existing organisations and networks already active in the field of renewables. A key message of the IRENA Preparatory Commission was that IRENA should ’start small and grow big’.

And last but not least India announced that its Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference (follow up to WIREC) will be held Delhi on 27-29 October 2010.

The second day of the Vienna Energy Conference started today morning with a short summary of the key findings from yesterday which are split into two parts - the challenges we are dealing with and possible solutions.

The challenge is … that there is no single challenge! We are dealing with fundamental questions like energy security, climate change and energy access and therefore there is no single solution (but we already knew that, didn’t we?)

More interesting … How to deal with it … well, there are a few key solutions from the sessions that took place yesterday:

• a widely shared policy framework is needed
• appropriate incentives should be created … especially a carbon price
• rapid technology development and diffusion is necessary
• and a deep engagement with the public is one of the key success factors

After this summary, we started with the first session of the day, which I summarized below:

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Today the International Enery Conference 2009 started in Vienna covering the topics around Securing Sustainable Policies and Investments’ . The conference is very well attended (I think there are a lot more than the proposed 500 participants, I do not see a single emtpy chair in the conference room) and we already listened to the keynotes, given by

• Brigitte Öppinger-Walchshofer, Managing Director, Austrian Development Agency, Austria
• Detlof von Winterfeldt, Director, IIASA
• Kandeh Yumkella, Director-General, UNIDO
• Srgjan Kerim, Special Envoy on Climate Change to the United Nations Secretary-General and
• Rajendra Pachauri, Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India and Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

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Last week at the Meeting of the Minds summit in New York City, eighty of the world’s leading actors active in urban planning, city management and sustainable development met to discuss the future of cities. We now live in the ‘century of the city’. Since 2008 more than 51% of the world’s population live in cities. And it will only get worse. By 2050 it’s projected that 70% of us will be living in cities.

According to numerous reports by UN Habitat, The Rockefeller Foundation, the US Conference of Mayors and others, cities are contributing up to 75% of a country’s GDP. The call for national leaders to focus on cities is now more important than ever.

Typically cities bring images of decay, poverty and conflict… while the affluent live in the suburbs. This trend is being turned inside out in the developed world, as suburbs are becoming more ethnically diverse and young people are moving back into cities. In the developing world, already more than one billion people live in urban slums and this number is projected to double.

Four city ‘mega’ trends were discussed:

1. Demographic change – more people will be living in cities and people in general are living longer.
2. Climate Change – cities must adapt their infrastructure to survive the effects of climate change, while also taking actions to lower carbon emissions.
3. Energy Efficiency – the growth of cities will constrain existing energy infrastructure and cities must work harder to become “energy misers” and save energy (including public buildings).
4. Urbanization – as cities continue to grow, they become more crowded and less efficient. Quality of life and economic development will suffer. Congestion impacts economic growth.

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The EBRD is providing an equity investment of €18.85 million to Freenergy AS, a leading Estonian investor in renewable energy in eastern Europe, to boost the volumes of green energy generated in the Baltic states.

By taking a 35 percent stake in Freenergy, the EBRD will support the company’s plans to upgrade and further develop the current portfolio of 15 wind farms, which are managed by Nelja Energia OÜ. Eleven of the farms are situated in Estonia, three in Lithuania and one in Latvia.

Upon completion, the 15 wind farms will have a combined capacity of 330 megawatts, nearly tripling the current wind power capacity in the region. These increased volumes of wind power would be able to cover roughly 3 percent of the current total electricity consumption in the Baltics.

Baltic States - Source: Wikipedia

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Heralded as a landmark move by the government, in December 2008, the Philippine president signed the Renewable Energy Act (RE Act), demonstrating the country’s commitment to developing renewable energy (RE) in its objective to utilise sustainable energy practices. The Act seeks to make the country 60% energy sufficient by 2010 and to mitigate problems caused by climate change. Investments in renewable energy sources not only contribute to the region’s sustainability but also reduce importing costs while boosting the local renewable energy industry and generating employment.

Map of Philippines - Source: WikiCommons

The Act is said to be the first and most comprehensive renewable energy legislation in Southeast Asia and would enable the Philippines to capture part of US$71billion investments in renewable energy development worldwide.

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There’s a new roadmap that looks interesting for helping China improve energy efficiency in buildings.  According to UNEP buildings apparently account for 42% of Chinese energy consumption, and China already has done a lot of legislating on energy efficiency — current building codes demand that new residential buildings are 50% more efficient that those built in 1980-81. But the energy use in new high-grade shopping centres, office buildings and commercial space is high compared to similar buildings in the US and Europe.

So this roadmap sets out a list of short-term and longer term measures that encourage China to fully implement the codes they’ve got in place, and to try and harness the power of the market through energy pricing and clear appliance labelling among other things.

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2009 is turning into the year of the smart grid. Company press releases, government announcements and new subsidy programmes for smart grid technologies are appearing everywhere.

Many smart grid companies are focused on the transfer of information between households and utilities via wireless networks and the Internet. Essentially providing instant information on energy consumption to both the user and the provider of electricity. The idea of the smart grid is to modernize the electricity industry by overlaying digital communications onto the grid.

Smart meters in a person’s home, for example, can communicate energy usage to utilities in near real time. The utility will be able to more efficiently manage the electricity supply and potentially allow a consumer to take advantage of cheaper rates. For example, start-up company EnergyHub’s smart meter is a digital display that sits on your kitchen counter to give consumers real-time information and control over their energy usage, appliance by appliance.

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Australia’s Government announced plans to build what it says is the world’s largest solar power station with an output of 1000 megawatts (that would be enough to power about 800,000 homes, based on Bloomberg calculations). Australians Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the government will invest A$1.4 billion ($1 billion) with industry in this project which should lead to a network of solar-powered stations across the country.

Reuters wrote yesterday:
The plant would have three times the generating capacity of the current biggest solar-powered electricity plant, which is in California, Rudd said during a tour of a power station.

Tender details will be announced later in the year, and successful bidders will be named in the first half of 2010. Rudd said the project was aimed at exploiting the country’s ample sunshine, which he called “Australia’s biggest natural resource.”

I am looking forward to see this project beeing started …

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