In this weeks news...

Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Looking to Invest in Renewable Energy Projects

Patrick Goodman, the Chief Financial Officer of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., the electric utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has announced that the company will looking to invest in renewable energy deals, rather than its traditional target of utility companies. He explained that; “we believe renewables is the better investment right now,” as a result of high utility valuations. In January of this year, MidAmerican created a new unit especially to look after its renewable energy investments, which include the $2.4 billion, 550MW Topaz Solar Farm, and the 168 MW Alta Wind VII project. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, MidAmerican has managed to purchase 1.6GW of wind and solar energy projects since December last year, adding to the original 3.3GW of eind and geothermal assets that it already owned. To read this article in full click here

Google invests $75M in a 50MW wind farm, has contributed almost $1B to the renewable energy sector

Google on Thursday announced an equity investment of $75 million in a 50MW wind farm in Rippey, about an hour outside of Des Moines. At the same time, the company revealed it has now committed almost $1 billion, “more than $990 million” quoting directly, to the renewable energy sector so far. RPM Access is behind the Rippey project, which is estimated to produce enough energy to power over 15,000 Iowa homes courtesy of turbines produced by Nordex USA. Google is quick to underline that both firms are in the US, which makes sense as Google is also an American company. Now, in addition to purchasing wind energy from a wind farm, Google is investing directly into a wind project. Again, this isn’t a blind investment: the Rippey project has been contracted to sell all of its energy to the Central Iowa Power Cooperative, an Iowa-based utility that delivers the energy to local consumers. To read this article in full click here

CDM reaches 5,000th carbon-cutting project milestone

The UN has today announced that a wind farm in the Dominican Republic has become the 5,000th project registered under its carbon offsets programme the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The Los Cocos Wind Farm Project expects to generate 74,200MWh of electricity a year and displace 54,183 tonnes of CO2 emissions from electricity previously produced by fossil fuel-fired power plants in the country. The project will now be able to issue tradable carbon credits that industrialised nations and businesses can buy to help meet their emissions reduction obligations. "This is just the latest in a long line of impressive achievements made by the CDM," said UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres. "In less than 10 years, the CDM has attracted more than $215bn in investment in mitigation and has proven that carbon markets and market-based mechanisms have the ability to bring in substantial private sector support for mitigation and sustainable development." To read this article in full click here

Wind industry could provide a fifth of global electricity by 2030

Wind energy could meet up to a fifth of global electricity demand by 2030, according to a major report released yesterday by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Greenpeace International.

The report, which looks at a number of different scenarios for the development of the industry and projected levels of electricity demand, predicts installed capacity could increase more than four-fold from 240GW at the end of last year to 1,100GW by 2020, supplying between 11.7 per cent and 12.6 per cent of global electricity, and saving nearly 1.7 billion tons of CO2 emissions. Under less ambitious scenarios, the group predicts total capacity would reach between 587GW and 759GW, providing up to 8.3 per cent of global electricity supply. Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of the Global Wind Energy Council, said that with wind energy proving cost competitive with fossil fuels in growing numbers of territories "it is clear that wind energy is going to play a major role in our energy future". To read this article in full click here

Marks and Spencer tops 100 FTSE on carbon reporting

Retailer Marks and Spencer has topped a research league table that analysed the extent and depth of carbon measurement and reporting at all of the UK's FTSE 100 list of leading companies. The independent report confirmed high street chain M&S has reinforced its position as a global leader on taking carbon management seriously. Researchers at Carbon Clear scored publicly available information from each company in the FTSE 100 against 47 reporting criteria. The analysis, carried out in summer 2012, focused on how companies measure, report and verify their carbon footprint, their existing and planned strategies for reducing emissions, their actual carbon reductions and their work to engage stakeholders about their climate change programmes. The top 10 performers were Marks and Spencer, National Grid, Aviva, RSA, BSkyB, BT Group, Hammerson, Sainsbury, Whitbread, Kingfisher, Pearson and Vodafone – three companies were listed in joint 10th spot. To read this article in full click here

Renewables will be world's second-largest source of power by 2015

The International Energy Agency predicts renewables will become the world’s second-largest source of power generation by 2015 and close in on coal as the primary source by 2035. But according to the 2012 edition of its flagship publication, the World Energy Outlook, the agency warns this rapid increase is critically dependent on continued subsidies.  It says in 2011, these subsidies (including for biofuels) amounted to $88 billion, but over the period to 2035 need to amount to $4.8 trillion; over half of this has already been committed to existing projects or is needed to meet 2020 targets. Ambitions for nuclear have been scaled back as countries have reviewed policies following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, but capacity is still projected to rise, led by China, Korea, India and Russia. To read this article in full click here

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