How to keep on financing wind farms when banks have no money left.

My earlier wind diaries can all be found here: Wind power series

Banks are engaged in a massive deleveraging exercise right now. One part of that has been much described and commented upon: the elimination of bad assets, either by taking the losses or by dumping them on the tax payer. The other part of the process is much more devious, as it means choking off new activity, even when sound, to avoid any new build up of assets. Debts that mature and are paid help shrink the balance sheet; giving new loans goes against that process and is thus avoided as much as possible by banks right now.

New lending activity is therefore much more scrutinized from a risk perspective, sees its conditions made much less favorable than they used to be, and is especially frowned upon for long term commitments, as long term liquidity is scarce and expensive.

In my case, working in a bank that suffers from a huge gap between its predominantly long term assets, and its short term liabilities, was basically bankrupt earlier this autumn, had to be bailed out via nationalisation and has not yet announced its forthcoming strategy (ie I still don't know yet if my ativity will be a "core business" or not), funding has been especially restricted.

The wind sector requires long term funding in order to spread out the initial investment over a long enough period (so that the levelized cost per MWh is low enough) and it was a massive user of debt finance to get investments done. This means that it is an industry particularly vulnerable to the credit crunch. And indeed, expectations are that the fourth quarter will show a severe drop in new activity. Construction will still be at a record high, as projects which got their financing in the past year and a half get built, but new funding is drying up and next year is thus likely see a significant drop in actual building activity as those investors that relied on debt finance have more difficuly finding it and have to delay their plans.

In this context, I must admit that I'm especially pleased to be able to announce that we closed the financing of a new wind project, with a $60 million loan to build, over the next 12 months, a 30MW wind farm in the Caribean island of Aruba (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands).

The project makes particular sense as the island gets its electricity, right now, exclusively from oil-fired power plants, and it has an incredibly good wind resource. The wind farm, which will have a capacity factor in the 50-60% range (better than European offshore, and almost triple the German onshore figure) will replace about 15% of the island's electricity generation, thus saving on oil consumption, limiting pollution and emissions. The local utility will buy the power at a fixed price over 15 years, ensuring a steady revenue to repay the debt and hedging it, for that part of the island's consumption, from the variations in oil prices. The breakeven for the wind farm is at roughly $50-55/barrel, which means that it's rather likely to be a good investment over the duration.

The interesting question is: how did we find $60 million in December 2008 for a project in what is hard to call a priority location for any hard-pressed European bank (and with clients who are small developers - while highly experienced and competent, they could not be described as strategic customers, an increasingly strict requirement these days for banks to commit any funds)?

The answer is simple: we did not. My bank is not actually lending a cent of its own. The ways this has been possible is thanks to the involvement of two other entities - one is the export credit agency (ECA) of the country of origin of the turbines, and the other is a Scandinavian bank which has accepted to provide funds - but not for the project: only for the government of that Scandinavian ECA. So that bank is notionally the lender to the project, but it actually only takes government risk, being fully guaranteed for all sums by the ECA, which is a government-backed entity. My bank could then join the project by counter-guaranteeing the ECA for a share of the project risk. This is a deal where those that take the risk and those that do the funding are almost completely separate, and where a government provides the vital link, in a smart way (they take the risk on my bank, but it is as a backup to a project risk which they are also taking, which they would have taken in any case in normal times, and which is not a bad risk per se). For the client, it is slightly more expensive than usual, as, in addition to the usual margin to cover project risk, they have on top of that to pay the funding cost of the other bank (based on the price of that scandinavian government debt), plus a fee to compensate that government for taking the risk on my bank. But from their point of view, it is a price worth paying, as they could not build the project without debt funding.

The project has sound economics and can bear that additional financing cost; if markets change for the better in the future, they will also be able to reduce the funding costs via a renegotiation or a refinancing (in addition, by then, the project will be built and operating and will be seen as an even smaller risk).

I literally had to harass my senior management to get them to agree to do the deal; I'm not sure if getting noticed by the top management is what you should do when your employer is preparing a massive plan of layoffs, but to me this project just had to be done. It' a good risk that would have been a no-brainer at any other time, it's the kind of activity that banks should support now in so many ways: it promotes economic activity at home, it's a good deal for the buyer of electricity, it's good for the climate, it's good if you worry about peak oil, the risks are understood and thus it's nicely profitable for everybody. And we found a way to do it without requiring my bank to come up with its own funding. So if we could not do it, I did not see much future for my activity in the bank anyway - the confrontation at senior management level was worthwhile as a way to force an answer on that, even if it does not tell me what the decisions will be like on future transactions.

I'm not sure yet if this is a lesson that the kind of banking that focuses on its actual core business (risk analysis and allocation) will survive the crisis, or a sign that even the most reasonable transactions will face tremendous hurdles. We'll see. Right now I'm just very happy that I pulled it through.

Do you really want to keep on financing wind farms?

In Arizona here is how it works for the tax payers:

"The Arizona Corporation Commission raised the monthly charge that Arizona Public Service Co. residential customers will pay in 2009 to support renewable energy to $3.17 a month from $1.32 a month.

That’s a 140 percent increase for the maximum tariff on people living in homes and apartments. Businesses would see their monthly charge increase to a maximum of to $117.93 from $48.84.

Large industrial customers could see tariffs of $353.78, compared with the current cap of $146.53.

The tariffs will be worth an estimated $78.4 million to the utility, which uses the money to acquire renewable energy and pay incentives to people who use rooftop solar and other renewables."

Note this is per meter. Lots of businesses have lots of meters.

How about wind power in Texas?

" A power producer typically gets paid for the power it generates. In Texas, some wind energy generators are paying to have someone take power off their hands.

Because of intense competition, the way wind tax credits work, the location of the wind farms and the fact that the wind often blows at night, wind farms in Texas are generating power they can’t sell. To get rid of it, they are paying the state’s main grid operator to accept it. $40 a megawatt hour is roughly the going rate."

http://knowledgeproblem.com/2008/12/16/more_on_wind_po_1/

In short “You are wasting resources in order to produce subsidized goods,”

I suggest you read the entire article as it indicates were subsidies would be more useful if desired.

I find it the pinnacle of nitpicking to assume that $1.85/month more for clean power is somehow a unbearable burden. Calling it a 140 increase is attempting to make it look bigger than it really is.

So large industrial customers might have to pay $200/month more? Take that drop in the bucket out of the millions of $ in excessive overcompensation to upper management and stop whining.

Your article stated "Wind power developers could easily time the addition of still more wind power capacity in the region to match the expansion of transmission capacity."

I'm afraid I agree with Steven Chu, "Coal is very, very bad" and support every effort to help break our addiction to it.

It obvious you are not a small business man. One small business man, who operates camping grounds and marinas in Arizona has over a hundred meters. He estimates a two to five thousand dollar increase in his utility bill. It is also obvious that you never ran a number of large irrigation pumps, either. (Actually large or small, numbers count here.) Also, I think you would be hard pressed to find one large customer with just one meter that pays the minimum increase of $200. So you are all for taking money from tax payers to subsidize a production that doesn't have a market? Then I guess you are all for the bailout of GM & Chrysler.

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/12/15/daily64.html

Arizona doesn't have wind. Arizona public service corp. is building a solar plant but it is unclear whether there is an correlation between that and the 4% rate increase.

One tiny outlier should never be the deciding factor when thinking of the choices to take that affects millions of people. Irrigation pumps in the desert? There's a business with a future.

And I do run a small business.

They recharge the aquifers with waste water and Colorado river water. It's illegal to do toilet to tap around here but if you pump water into the ground and back out again, then it is ok.

If this marina/campground has 100 meters, then they are probably metering power to their tenants rather than including it in the site rental fee. I'd also bet that these meters don't belong to the power company, but to the park itself for the purpose above, and aren't subject to the power company's meter fee. That's the way the RV park we live in part time operates. We pay a $2/mo meter fee plus the power we use at the park's business rate directly to the park, not the power company. The $2/mo meter fee is to amortize the cost of the meters over time.

Go over to the Coyote Blog and ask the man; he answers Email.

He estimates a two to five thousand dollar increase in his utility bill.

I doubt if that is enough. The typical ankle-biting small businessperson - to use Joe Bageant's term - is getting away with murder. No, we don't need more of them. And no, we don't need the big auto companies. What we need is to get rid of all those resource suckers. Get rid of the camping grounds. Get rid of the marina. And we probably need to get rid of those irrigation pumps too - odds are they are sucking some glacial epoch water supply.

Business. We need to get rid of business. At least as something separate and above society.

cfm in Gray, ME

puhkawn,

Your concern for the small business owners sounds valid and sincere. I was once a business owner myself and can attest to "the law of unintended consequences."

However, we wouldn't want to throw renewables out the window due to the way utilities currently bill if there were some other reasonable solution. Is there the possibility of metering reform of some type that could overcome this problem?

In a way, one can see how it would be to the utilities advantage to stick in as many meters as possble, and then bill the business owner for any and all changes "per meter". The utilities would then have veto power over any attempt at renewables right from the start if this is allowed. It is for this reason that some businesses in the U.S. are going off grid, even if they have to pay a bit more for fuel, because the tacked on fees and expenses of dealing with the electric utility simply become more than the business owner wants to or is able to bear.

RC

I am retired and was a small business man my entire life. For health reasons I spent a goodly number of years in Arizona. I think wind generated electricity is fine. I am against market distorting mandates and anything that exist solely to receive a government handout. (Rent seeking.) If you do subsidize wind generated electricity then it should be a packaged deal including the infrastructure to sell the electricity produced. Sort of seems like a no brainer, huh? Subsidizing hundreds of wind powered generators that lack the infrastructure to sell the generated electricity is not solving the "energy crisis" it is, however, a terrible allocation of taxpayers money.

You might be interested in seing the latest ad lampooning clean coal by the "we can solve it" group,

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pKC5YV2yrFk&feature=channel

There's still plenty of money being spent by coal to convince people that it's OK:-(

They view climate change as a very serious threat to their business, so they're going all out to confuse people.

Actually, the net effect on consumers of wind is to _lower_ prices for them, as, when wind blows, the marginal price is much lower and applies to all the power generated. The savings to consumers from lower prices when wind blows are already larger than the gross amount of the subsidy given to wind in countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain (and of course, even larger than the net subsidy which is the feed-in tariff minus the market price). So focusing only on the tariff while ignoring the simultaneous effect on market prices is silly.

Ironically, this means that wind will always require a regulated tariff as, the more wind you put in the system, the lower market prices will be (when wind reaches 50-100% of system needs as is already happening in Denmark or Spain, prices come down to almost zero) and wind can never be profitable under "pure" market conditions. So you need wind farms to keep on getting a steady revenue in order to be built; the good thing is that the tariff reuired can be quite low (in the same range as market prices are today) and never needs to be increased.

Any product that for about one third or more of its production you have to pay people to get rid of and have to collect a government subsidy doesn't lower the prices for the consumer. 100%? I'm not talking about Spain or Denmark; I am talking about Texas & Arizona.

Maybe when the wind is blowing just right Denmark gets 100% of its power from wind; however, for 2007 is was considerably less. East & West Denmark wind power generation was 28%; a far cry from 100%.

http://www.energinet.dk/en/menu/Environment/Environmental+key+figures+fo...

Wind farms make a lot of people feel good on The Oil Drum but if you are going to throw taxpayer dollars around how about first building the proper grid to use wind power generated electricity.

Arizona doesn't actually have a commercial wind farm. There are some proposed. And there are individual ranchers with windmills for electricity or irrigation pumps.

http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/windmaps/az_50m_800.jpg

Lots of opportunity for the surplus wind in low demand in Denmark.

http://www.investindk.com/visNyhed.asp?artikelID=20525

I'd guess that wind installations will stay in the financing game longer than other power plants, simply because you can install them quicker and in smaller chunks than anything else. Might be worth pointing that out.

I was totally for wind farms until last week (now I need some clarification).

The November 2008 issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a short article up front that says huge windmills kill bats by the alternating pressure effects as the turbines spin. In effect, the pressure ossilations rupture the bats' lungs.

This is the first time I've read about this. Now I'm thinking that all the people who supposedly argue about bird kills may have a point.

Has there ever been a study on types of turbines and effects on passing wildlife? Everyone seems to favor the propeller type blades... what about the vertical blade type windmills?.. or the weather vane (cupped) spinners?

@ignorant

To be consistent one should also ban buildings, electric power lines and cars because all these kill birds at three times the magnitude then wind mills do. Maybe we should ban cats as well as they also kill birds....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/04/MNG9SPKPT...

I don't know anything about the bat issue.

Yep,,,all for Banning Cats.

And most of the other things as well.

Mainly the Cats.

Power Down.

Interesting. Last night I asked a friend of mine (who seems to like birds) about cats. He was of the opinion that cats account for very little total bird kills ALTHOUGH cats probably account for the largest NON-HUMAN cause of bird kills. If rated, the top ten bird-killers are human caused. Besides the items mentioned in Rembrandt's link were:

a) Light pollution - National Geographic Magazine had an artilce on the effects of urban night lighting on bird deaths in a recent issue... I haven't read it yet.

and

b) Habitat destruction - Friend's opinion is that it accounts for a far more higher bird population reduction than is generally publicized.

Rembrandt,

Thanks for link, it answers my question.

(You are confusing. You say "I don't know anything about the bat issue" yet the article in the link you just posted covers the topic of bat deaths. As such, I'm not sure if your call for consistency is in jest or is meant in full seriousness. If you're serious I wish you the best of luck.)

@ignorant

I have read studies about the effect of windpower, electric power lines, and carc etc. on bird deaths. But I don't think from what I have read that the science on the effects on bat deaths is very thorough so far (not that many studies exist). The article itself is even a bit vague about the effects on baths.

My call for consistency is meant in the sense that we shouldn't make elephants from mice.

Rembrandt,

True... but I also don't want to take A Cornucopian's philosophy and make mice from elephants.

According to enti- enta- entomo- (oh, people who study bugs), birds and bats were the biggest controllers of agricultural incest pests in times before chemical substances were used. If Petro-chemical based insecticides are soon to become scarce, it's probably best to go with turbines that are the most compatible with (or least harmful to) the wild animals we will depend on to survive.

Like I said, I only became aware of this problem last week. For now, I'm very concerned until I can find proof that it is reasonably safe.

There has been a ridiculous amount of hand wringing over the Altamont Pass "Eagle Chopper". I stuck some pins in the idea that turbines are a significant cause of bird mortality a while back.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/3/2321/01755/236/467602

Not so long ago someone sent me this link - the first genuine bird mortality report I've ever seen.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=48900

Resolving the putative bat mortality problem should be fairly simple - We use ultrasonic whistles on car bumpers now to discourage deer and something similar should be built into the turbine blades. These will be tiny devices and retrofitting will be easily accomplished on existing blades where bat mortality is a concern.

And thusly one more favorite NIMBY fact will be consigned to the dustbin :-)

Hey SCT;
How's things in Stranded Wind world? Hoping you've gotten some headway for making good those brutal Iowa winter blasts! BRR!

Bob

I long ago scampered off to Massachusetts. Came here to do a little biomass, met the most amazing woman, and here I set up to my private parts in snow.

Massachusetts has been a very rich environment in all sorts of ways - Iowa won't do anything until at least forty seven other states in the union try it first, while here they have to keep up with Vermont.

The Stranded Wind Initiative just got a pro bono attorney from a big firm in Boston to help it get to charitable status, we've picked up a former director's assistant from a big nonprofit who is helping us get organized for talking to foundations, and things are coming right along in that area. I feel like I should be writing more, but I am now subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous editors ... style? Deadlines? Deadlines?!?!?!?! They're after me even now ... gotta keep my head down :-)

LOL ! Good to hear of progress in the personal area.

I consider Iowa liberal compared to Nebraska !!

Been keeping up with your writing at stranded wind and dailykos.

Happy to hear you made a connection to get to charitable status.

Syracuse NY is the extended family's homeland. I've also been reading a blog or two connected in one way or another to the Syracuse/Northeast area - for whatever reason I haven't yet grasped.

Be REAL careful of those editors
!!

Still job hunting ... :)

Where are the huge piles of dead bats?

I'd guess that there are no piles since the bats might fly some distance before dying... since it's not the blades that directly kill the bats. And as the article points out, a dead bat is food for some other animal.

Bats generally fly below 50 feet and the bottom of a windmill blade rotation looks a lot higher. Are you certain of your facts? If so, how many bats died before they learned to avoid the windmills?

According to the Smithsonian article (Nov 2008, short article up front) it's not collision with the blades that kills the bats, it's the rapid pressure oscillations behind the blade airfoils. The rapid change in pressure ruptures the lungs and the bats bleed to death internally.

That 50 foot number... is that while hunting? On a moonlit Summer's night while looking at the moon with binoculars I've seen bats flying (my estimate) at least 200 feet up.

What's the altitude for migration flights?

Don't get me wrong I'm not against wind power, but if we go that way we should study any potential problems NOW before we commit an irreversible amount of resources into it... and NOT AFTER we start to potentially deplete ANOTHER necessary resource (in this case the efficient consumers of pesty incests).

Jerome, you mention banks being unwilling to lend. However due to low interest rates and lots of small investors looking for safe investments, it would seem me that a wind farm is a pretty safe bet. Providing the wind keeps blowing for the next 20 years you will make a good return on your investment. Several small investors could form a co-op which would also allow investment from local people (normally a strong anti arguement is the lack of financial benefit to local residents) Also the investment shares could be the backing of a local currency.

I have noticed that a wind farm would make a good pension scheme, as once it has repayed its capital costs there are very little running costs and no fuel costs. The stock market is not a safe bet for pension funds, and they carry a lot of investment power, especially if you could get free electricity as a pensioner.

In an ideal world, the feed in tariff could be higher for the first few years of the wind farms operation then drop off over the next few years. This would reduce the time taken to repay the loan so mean less interest would be paid on the borrowed money. Also because the incentive ends after a few years, the final cost of the subsidy would be less.

Glad to hear projects are still getting funding, all the transitional technologies, (wind, nuclear, heat pumps, electric vehicles, rail etc) are very capital intensive with low running costs. We have been giving credit left right and centre for the last 8 years, and this has caused the problem that now we need it, its really hard to get. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
Thanks for the post, keep up your good work.

OMGlikeWTF writes:

[I]t would seem me that a wind farm is a pretty safe bet ...

Only with government backing, at least in France. France's primary source of electric power is nuclear and until the day 'peak uranium' arrives wind power doesn't really stand a chance, except as a kind of cosmetic exercise. I reckon a growing number of French citizens are likely to view wind energy as a luxury that their country cannot really afford in a time of crisis. For the time being, it's probably a political non-starter.

Well, France has now become the third country in Europe for wind and the 6th in the world for both installed capacity and newly built capacity (it may even catch up with Germany this year in terms of new capacity). A lot of the technostructure in France still sees wind as something silly and unnecessary, but there are now enough supporters for it to happen. One of the biggest backers of wind is Areva (which has bought German offshore turbine manufacturer Multibrid, and has an active business in the electrical infrasturcture and cabling bit of windfarms) and Alstom has also invested in the sector. EDF's renewable arm is one of the biggest in the world.

Existing nuclear power is far cheaper than new wind. When it comes to new nuclear the economics are totally different

I don't see wind providing more than about 10-20% percent of a coutries energy supply, except in areas with lots of pumped storage and good connections to nearby countries. In 10 years time the cheapest electricity will be coming from the wind farms being built today.

Wind will always be free, materials technology is continuing to improve and there is plenty of manufacturing capacity which can switch towards making turbine components. Once 5MW turbines can be churned out for around €500/kW, the game will be different.

Jerome writes:

The project has sound economics and can bear that additional financing cost ...

If the project had sound economics it would not require government support. Perhaps it is 'sound' if you factor in positive externalities but on purely market grounds it is a loser. Without taxpayer backing it cannot survive. Presumably that's why banks are so reluctant to cough up their own depositors' moneys.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that it's important to distinguish between good reasons and bad reasons when making an investment decision. And there is certainly a downside in terms of short-term opportunity costs: in the upcoming Great Depression the consumer isn't going to welcome energy investments that raise his current energy bills, regardless of the 'jam tomorrow' benefits or positive environmental impact. So I think wind energy advocates in France are going to have their work cut out for them as long as nuclear energy remains dirt cheap.

But bonne chance anyhow!

1. Project wasn't in France.

2. Really doubt you could get the financing for a new nuke plant either. France's power is cheap because they put the investment in over 20 years ago.

Oops -- thanks for the correction.

Carolus.

If the project had sound economics it would not require government support.

1) there is the short term argument that the credit crunch is killing economic activity that would be profitable because banks don't lend right now, even for profitable stuff, beause they simply cannot spare the cash to do so. So government support here cures the (hopefully temporary) liquidity problem;

2) there is the structural issue that wind costs (like those of nuclear) are borne upfront and thus market price variations over the next 15 years can seriously damage a project even if the average is higher than the cost of wind electricity - it's like swimming: it does not matter that your average altitude is +10cm if that means spending several minutes at -10cm and the same at +20cm: you die). Gas-fired plants, which tend to have costs that follow (or indeed drive) market prices do not take that risk and are thus seen as less risky to finance. Government support in the form of price stability is therefore a worthwhile goal, and as I noted in a comment above, somethign that actually costs the public nothing (it might be provided by the markets if markets were willing to provide 15 year hedging instruments, but they are not)

Dear Jerome,
I hope you make it regarding your job prospects. Here is a project you may be interested in.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5337500.ece

Maitland Mackie is a local businessman in my part of the world. Many wonder why his knighthood is taking so long. His Dairy to Ice Cream business is wind powered. (His ice cream is sublime)

Here is a brief extract:

Maitland Mackie powers ahead with windfarm project
The ice-cream firm owner is generating support and investment for a plan to build 30,000 wind turbines across the UK

John Penman
When it came to inspiration for his idea to set up a wind-farm company that could plough billions into the rural economy, Maitland Mackie didn’t have to look far.
On a hill on the Rothienorman estate that hosts the dairy where his famous ice cream is made, three wind turbines hum gently in the Aberdeenshire breeze. The towering machines — Vesta V52s dubbed Margaret, Matilda and Mirabel — power the dairy and produce so much energy that Mackie’s has a positive carbon footprint.
“We have one of the best carbon footprints in the world for a business of our size,” said Mackie proudly.
But using wind to make ice cream is one thing; making large amounts of money is quite another.
Since September, when Mackie announced plans to create a company that would install a network of wind generators throughout the country, he has signed up more than 500 interested parties and raised £2.5m towards a target of £10m needed to get the idea off the ground. If successful, the company would be part-owned by thousands of people in the rural community.
Mackie plans a total of 30,000 three-megawatt wind turbines across the UK that would have the potential to deliver more than a third of Britain’s current generating capacity.

Although I my doubts about wind generation in many places, this part of the world has high level potential. Have a Joyous Noel and good luck with the job.
Rgds
Dropstone

In the USA nearly every capital equipment investment has a government subsidy in the form of depreciation allowances. Many businesses have additional tax benefits peculiar to the industry and even to that specific business. Think of that maker of toy wooden arrows that benefited from TARP legislation. At the local level it is common to give a property tax abatement for a new factory. That subsidies for renewable energy producers are upfront and obvious is why they are commonly debated here while the abatements for energy consuming businesses are ignored.

Says Carolus Obscurus
"If the project had sound economics it would not require government support."

O.K., I've had all I can stand. Let us remind the folks out there who never really liked history classes that there was NO nuclear fission program in the civilian world at the birth of nuclear energy. Nuclear power was created, planned, and funded for the purpose of making a weapon. The U.S. military was the sole and only nuclear power producer at the birth of the nuclear industry and EVERY CENT THAT BIRTHED THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CAME FROM THE MILITARY. That's one hell of a head start to give any industry, a head start from the federal government that the airplane, the automobile, the radio nor the television was ever given. With these industries the government did join in the rationalization and assistance to them later, but the nuclear industry is somewhat unique in that it was birthed entirely by "government support".

RC

Carolus, wind and other renewable energies are only being undercut by taking no account of the negative externalities of fossil fuels (e.g. CO2, pollutants). Huge numbers of scientists think that climate change is being caused/accelerated... by releasing the CO2 that had been successfully sequestered over eons to create our current climate. How can we object to an increase in the price of electricity against the likely destruction of civilisation??? ( yes i know we are short term thinkers who value the present above the future...:-)

Whilst probaly better than nothing cap and trade are still a complicated answer that is open to abuse, lobbying etc. IMHO a better simpler system would be to tax all fossil fuels and give this money back to everybody possiblyin the form of vouchers with an expiry date. Any country that did not want to follow these rules would have an import tax applied to its goods.

Of course this stands no chance of being adopted since there are millions of dollars being spent to lobby in favour of coal, oil, nat gas, traders...

Good to see there are still those in the world who are champions of doing what's right. So many people have become focused on get-rich-quick schemes, amassing wealth for McMansions/SUVS/etc, and turning a blind eye to the wreckage their actions have caused, directly or indirectly.

Keep up the great work and email me if you plan to visit D.C.

There are a couple of us here in DC :-).

From the bank's ("no brainer") POV

"Oh goody, free lunch."

We were in Bonaire about a year ago (same island chain), and the wind was impressive. Just constantly blowing, and it was strong. We only saw one medium-sized turbine on that island, and I believe they also use oil for the bulk of their electricity. The population of that island is far lower than in Aruba (maybe only 10K inhabitants).

Whatever the problems are with financing wind right now, nuclear must have the same problem x10. Then again, I was talking with a guy I know who is a mechanical engineer, and they were working on a couple of new nuclear plant projects in the U.S.

I sense a 'wind/nuclear' plenum in the direction France is taking place here.

Obviously no one in France is seriously proposing wind replace nuclear (completely different types of market) but the conflict could be over future base-load as France's nuclear plants (now in their middle-life) start to need replacement in 2017 and onward.

It seems to me that the 'idea' should be that 6% or so of France's power plants that still burn gas and oil.

david

50% to 60% capacity factor? What is the average wind speed? Any word on the equipment selected?

At the airport in Bonaire, they report average wind speeds between 12 and 17 knots. But the airport is on the leeward side of the island.

http://www.windfinder.com/windstats/windstatistic_bonaire.htm#

The other side of the island reports

Lac Bay, the windsurfing site, is an 8 sq. km. lagoon that is protected from the sea by a barrier reef, creating ideal flat-water windsurfing conditions. But the enclosed, safe lagoon is not sheltered from the Caribbean trade winds, producing perfect side onshore wind that averages 15-25 knots from December to August and 10-20 knots from September to November.

Aye, our honeymoon was on Aruba, as I was an avid windsurfer. Indeed, the wind is so abundant, it actually shapes tree growth.

Will,the West coast of Tasmania is noted for this type of vegetation,and a lot more of it as the rainfall is very high - Roaring Forties latitude.
There is a vegetation type there which is known as Horizontal Scrub.It is extemely difficult to walk through or over.
To my knowledge there is still only one wind farm on the West coast at Woolnorth.Tasmania generates most of it's power from hydro.

Thirra the hydro component of the Tas grid is shrinking as more coal power comes via the HVDC cable. Also because they chase high spot prices when mainlainders turn up the aircons, thus dropping water levels. The NE coast has a big wind farm at Musselroe. I believe the 200km of coastline (where all the whales get beached) south of Woolnorth could easily generate a gigawatt on an average day. In a couple of places the beach is within 40 km of hydro stations and fresh water could be pumped back uphill using unregulated power.

Jerome writes:

The other part of the process is much more devious, as it means choking off new activity, even when sound, to avoid any new build up of assets. Debts that mature and are paid help shrink the balance sheet; giving new loans goes against that process and is thus avoided as much as possible by banks right now.

So much for fractional reserve lending. It works in an upturn but disappears when the going gets tough.

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Austrian.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread

:-)

One of the major parts of the Swedish governments first "bailout" of the local part of the global financial system were additional funds for the Export Credit Agency. The "bailout" work is focused on jobs and thus getting as much as possible of our industrial capabilty to survive the recession and prepair for the next round of growth.

A failed bank is not a large problem, they only employ a few thousand people. The large problem is stand still in productive industries and businesses giving bankruptcies resuting in job loss and destruction of capital assets when the banks dont dare to finance good projects or when a failure gives a transition period.

It makes no sense to use the government surplus for saving failed businesses. But we have industries that manufacture goods that people need for productive work, work that produces value and even is usefull way past peak oil. If our government guarantess credit for good projects we get the ability to continue to sell globally to customers that do things that are likely to succeed.

This has been practiced for decades to help the Swedish export industry enter emerging and high risk markets. There has been failures and it has probably also been abused, for instance do North Korea still ove us for a large number of Volvo cars bought in the 70:s, if I remember right. But it is a better idea then the desperate one used during the 1970:s oil crisis when we also had strong government finances and burnt billions by subsidizing production that went to storage waiting for obsolecence and scrapping.

A successfull use of this mechanism need good bank services, and by that I mean what you did! The only kind of financial service that cant be replaced with a computer running in a cheap cellar is good analysis of customers and new business ideas. The better banks are in doing this the more sense it makes to provide government guarantees that even benefit foreign banks.

Btw, I guess the scandinavian country in the example were Denmark? Sweden would be more likely if the were a HVDC or HVDC-light link involved.

This could be an example of the 'affordability trap' whereby we have to replace FF-burn technology with high capital outlay but can't afford to. A parallel example is South Africa cancelling its new nuke order. It's also why there won't be timely replacements for fossil fuels. Those who argue feed-in tariffs and renewable energy credits increase household electricity bills should remember they will be paying higher taxes for direct bailouts of other industries.

Some letter writers to a local newspaper argued that a cancelled 250MW windfarm (Heemskirk, named after a 17th century sailing ship) should be restarted to employ 200 laid off workers from a nearby nickel mine. I pointed out that the option of pumped hydro storage was close by. The irony was that the nearby Vestas factory closed down and changed over to making mining machinery. Boy they got that one wrong! If this idea (windpower replaces mining) picks up momentum I guess the Australian federal government will be asked for major financial input which will reveal just how short sighted their recent announcements have been.

Jerome,
Has the decline in steel prices ( and possibly decline in wind turbine back-orders) started to reduce costs of new wind farms or is it too early for these prices to work through the system?

It seems that pension funds are still looking upon wind farms as "safe and reliable" long term investments, based on the just completed sale by Babcock and Brown Wind partners of Spanish wind assets.

Here in small-time oil and gas country you find all sorts of people that own tiny shares in bunches of wells or get royalties from multiple oil leases. I wonder if it would be possible to have individual investors working en-masse to "sponsor" wind turbines?

I bet you'd find local people who'd invest in wind turbines near to them that actually server their farms/neighborhoods, and such ownership could throw off money like an oil well -- little or none if electricity prices drop down too low, or a bunch if prices skyrocket. Like an oil lease there would some expected maintenance and costs, but over the long term you hope to make good money.

Such an ownership structure could help smooth feathers at all sorts of local gov't levels, and help gain a groundswell of support for improved electricity grids.

Let's see, burning fossil fuels releases carbon into the atmoshphere, which causes global warming and climate change. There's also only a finite amount of the stuff, no matter how much the Saudi's would like us to imagine there are trillions of barrels in the ground. So it would seem like we need to think of ways to produce energy from the wind and Sun. Hey, now there's an idea!

You mean we can erect windmills and connect to a modernized electrical grid, like Chu envisions, and we can replace some of our usage of the dirty stuff for the clean stuff?

Sounds like a no-brainer to me! Oh, but we have to install sound technology to scare away the animals that might get harmed by the windmills, and that just seems so daunting. Oh well, by to the drawing boards.

Banks have PLENTY of money (almost a trillion of it is courtesy of the US Tax Payer, 250 billion pounds courtesy of the British Tax Payer.)

Their butts are well covered.

Now getting them to part with any of it on something as risky as speculating on whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow ... that's another matter.

The banking system is so totally broken and cowed by their own monumental ineptitude that its better to go around them and appeal to capital firms, or to go to the lender of last resort immediately (like the car companies did.)

I second what msbpodcast said, and then some! As of yesterday, per stories in Bloomberg and CNN Fortune, the bankers for the most part are still flying in private jets, still taking exotic vacations and still living in psuedo palaces (except when the are living in real ones). There is no shortage of money, it has just been shifted under a different shell in the eternal shell game ("watch my hands ladies and gents, watch my hands, under which shell is the pea now...be a man and place your bets..."

For a great working model of how wind and solar could be funded one need look no further than the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S.
Once the system was set up and the bonds were sold, the government was required to spend no more money. This would be even safer and truer if renewable power were used, since the volatile fuel cost would be completely removed from the equation.

As a brief aside, let us look at what we can see from an extraction, this from a book called "The Crash and it's Aftermath" by Barry A. Wigmore, a book about the Great Depression (I would LOVE to have this book, but Barnes and Noble has it priced at $196.95, you see, the rich protect their information with a hefty price tag :-)

"http://books.google.com/books?id=HjeMj1DB6w8C&pg=PA507&lpg=PA507&dq=TVA+Bond+Yields&source=web&ots=uJbnSdJuA_&sig=C3KWnYhU-cqiK_65GO4mLX0Cdis&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

This book gives an extraordinary statistic from the great depression period of the 1930’s:
“Not a single large utility bond issue had its rating reduced by Moody’s, and no significant operating electric utility defaulted during the depression.”

Another one: “Based on their ratings at the end of this period, utility bond prices at their high in 1933 compared with their highs in 1929…”

I was raised in the U.S. south, and still live there. I personally know of old families who derived almost their entire income from TVA bonds. In the 1990's us younger guys scoffed at the yield. Why didn't these guys jump into the stock market and make some real money?" we asked.

Now, with people taking a 1/4% per year after tax penelty to buy Treasury Bills, while the yield on TVA bonds has historically been at least 4% to 5% compounded.

We should have statistical information to prove how much the sun will shine or the wind will blow over the long term. There has now been enough windmills built to demonstrate maintanence costs and life cycle.

With concentrating mirror solar, we should know even more. Installations built in the late 1970's are still producing power to this day (the one issue has been some of the molten sodium storage systems, which in some cases have caught fire, thus destroying the storage ability of the system, but not stoppng the plant from producing electric power. Another good thing...unlike a nuclear accident, an accident at a solar plant is not normally a national emergency). The life cycle costs of these plants should be easy to calculate. Bonds could be sold for the construction of the plant using normal actuarial practices, and investors would enjoy one of the most stable investments in history, exceeding even the TVA which since the 1930's has been as solid as a rock.

So, why isn't it done? You tell me. Hey President Obama, are you listening? :-)

RC

I'm probably way behind the play on this sort of thing, but where are we on the storage systems for generated wind power? To me it seems that all we're doing so far is reducing fossil output during periods of high wind and solar and not actually storing any significant amount of it.

Is it feasible to use wind generated electricity to heat sodium - or whatever - to be later used to generate steam, and would this involve a major loss? It seems to me that even inefficiently storing excess is better than throwing it away.

CST, wind and PV all seem to be at the point where the design hurdles are behind us. Sure, it may prove to be a Model T, but Ts still run. Storage appears to me to be the big hurdle and the economics of being a storage provider/broker look interesting, i.e., buying during off peak and selling at peak.

I see lots of generation, but where is the storage?

Just keep in mind that *any* storage technology can be applied to *any* form of power generation. Nuclear industry experts are just waiting for newfangled storage systems...of the completely non-existent industrial-scale sized ones...for storing *nuclear* energy at night. Store at night, release during the day.

I suspect his is totally irrelevant for solar as *all* solar could or would want to be used as it's produced since the point is to keep MHhrs from being produced by gas and coal.

David

I second what msbpodcast said, and then some! As of yesterday, per stories in Bloomberg and CNN Fortune, the bankers for the most part are still flying in private jets, still taking exotic vacations and still living in psuedo palaces (except when the are living in real ones). There is no shortage of money, it has just been shifted under a different shell in the eternal shell game ("watch my hands ladies and gents, watch my hands, under which shell is the pea now...be a man and place your bets..."

For a great working model of how wind and solar could be funded one need look no further than the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S.
Once the system was set up and the bonds were sold, the government was required to spend no more money. This would be even safer and truer if renewable power were used, since the volatile fuel cost would be completely removed from the equation.

As a brief aside, let us look at what we can see from an extraction, this from a book called "The Crash and it's Aftermath" by Barry A. Wigmore, a book about the Great Depression (I would LOVE to have this book, but Barnes and Noble has it priced at $196.95, you see, the rich protect their information with a hefty price tag :-)

"http://books.google.com/books?id=HjeMj1DB6w8C&pg=PA507&lpg=PA507&dq=TVA+Bond+Yields&source=web&ots=uJbnSdJuA_&sig=C3KWnYhU-cqiK_65GO4mLX0Cdis&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

This book gives an extraordinary statistic from the great depression period of the 1930’s:
“Not a single large utility bond issue had its rating reduced by Moody’s, and no significant operating electric utility defaulted during the depression.”

Another one: “Based on their ratings at the end of this period, utility bond prices at their high in 1933 compared with their highs in 1929…”

I was raised in the U.S. south, and still live there. I personally know of old families who derived almost their entire income from TVA bonds. In the 1990's us younger guys scoffed at the yield. Why didn't these guys jump into the stock market and make some real money?" we asked.

Now, with people taking a 1/4% per year after tax penelty to buy Treasury Bills, while the yield on TVA bonds has historically been at least 4% to 5% compounded.

We should have statistical information to prove how much the sun will shine or the wind will blow over the long term. There has now been enough windmills built to demonstrate maintanence costs and life cycle.

With concentrating mirror solar, we should know even more. Installations built in the late 1970's are still producing power to this day (the one issue has been some of the molten sodium storage systems, which in some cases have caught fire, thus destroying the storage ability of the system, but not stoppng the plant from producing electric power. Another good thing...unlike a nuclear accident, an accident at a solar plant is not normally a national emergency). The life cycle costs of these plants should be easy to calculate. Bonds could be sold for the construction of the plant using normal actuarial practices, and investors would enjoy one of the most stable investments in history, exceeding even the TVA which since the 1930's has been as solid as a rock.

So, why isn't it done? You tell me. Hey President Obama, are you listening? :-)

RC

You can read a press release announcing the order from Vestas here: http://www.vestas.com/files//Filer/EN/Press_releases/Local/2008/CE-08122...