Cautious optimism. That was the term being used across all sectors of the renewable energy industry in the days and weeks following the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) as industry leaders tried to understand exactly what the package could do for their often struggling companies. Yet as the weeks have worn on, the American public's support for the measure has started to wane. Members of the renewable energy industry appear to be a bit more bullish on the opportunities that the bill creates. The stimulus package authorized US $67 billion in spending for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs and incentives, $20 billion of which is likely to directly help put projects on the ground. This attitude was on full display last week in Las Vegas at the Renewable Energy World North America Conference and Expo where the ARRA was a hot topic both on the floor and during the conference's industry roundtable discussion.

Construction Management Degree has posted a list of The Top 50 Blogs Shaping the Energy Debate. The list is divided into categories - General, Alternative, Environmental, Coal, Oil, and Corporate - and includes numerous sites that I suspect TCOE readers would find interesting. And yes, TCOE made the list.

Scott Cooney of Red, Green, and Blue recently wrote a thought provoking post about the need for population control as a fundamental and necessary tool to deal with a wide range of environmental crises. He refers to population control as the elephant in the room when it comes to policymakers. This is certainly an apt description of the issue, and it may even be considered an understatement. I would go so far as to say that population control is regarded as political suicide and a topic that is seemingly avoided at all costs.

I have known the New York Times energy reporter, Matt Wald, for 15 years, and generally think he is pretty good. But he has published perhaps the most flawed, inaccurate, and indefensible article in his career. Wald's piece could also be a poster child for award-winning journalist Eric Pooley's searing critique of the media's coverage of climate economics (see How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics - "The media's decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress").

Some highlights from the spot auction: * 892,343 allowances were bid for * 125,000 were purchased * 59 unsuccessful bids (11 bidders) * 18 successful bids (11 bidders) * Highest bid price = $500 * Lowest bid price = $0.06 * Clearing bid price = $69.74 The Ohio Valley Electric Cooperative was the largest bidder with 75,000 allowances purchased. Smaller bidders include the Acid Rain Retirement Fund (10) and Bates College Environmental Econ (2). From my count, at least 16,000 tons of SO2 will be retired as private bidders put their money where their mouths is [sic]. Imagine if this could be done in a CO2 auction?

Renewable energy could play a much larger role in supplying the world's energy needs than previously estimated - but it won't come cheap, according to a new study.\n\nThe research, presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week (11 March) says that renewable energy could supply 40 per cent of the world's energy needs by 2050.\n\nThe new estimate is considerably higher than previous projections, which put renewables' share at only 12 per cent by 2030, said Peter Lund, an author of the research from the Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems at Finland's Helsinki University of Technology.

With the aim of ending a regulatory turf war, U.S. government agencies on Tuesday said they would work together to cut red tape and spur development of offshore renewable energy projects. Under the agreement, the Interior Department will have jurisdiction over offshore wind and solar energy projects, while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will oversee offshore projects that generate electricity from wave and tidal currents.

Cleantech.com reports that the Irish government has introduced feed-in tariffs and streamlined regulations to encourage construction of small scale renewable energy projects - Ireland pushes for fast action on small-scale renewables. Ireland expects to boost its rural economies with a new long-term feed-in tariff program encouraging consumers to install renewables energy generation projects on homes and farms. The incentives are expected to help with the long-term cost of projects, but the government limited the scope of the incentives in order to push for fast action on the part of consumers. Irish Energy Minister Eamon Ryan established the tariff of €0.19 ($0.26) per kilowatt hour, but the rate only applies for the first 4,000 projects registered during the next three years.The incentive applies to wind, solar, hydro and combined heat-and-power projects.

Beijing has reacted angrily to a Pentagon report on China's military power, which claimed it was altering the military balance in Asia. A foreign ministry spokesman called it a "gross distortion of the facts", and urged an end to "Cold War thinking". In its annual report to Congress, the Pentagon said China was developing "disruptive" technologies for nuclear, space and cyber warfare. It could be used to enforce claims over disputed territories, the report said.

"We know the right thing to do," President Obama said about renewable energy at his press conference Tuesday. "We've known the right choice for a generation. The time has come to make that choice and act on what we know.…We have achieved more in two months for a clean energy economy than we have done in perhaps 30 years." Thirty years. Let's see, that would be 1979, right? Hmmm… wasn't that the year -- yes, that was when Jimmy Carter finally got his Grand Energy Plan through Congress, setting us the road to corn ethanol, the Synthetic Fuels Corporation and a host of other harebrained schemes.

Electric grids are getting smarter in an IBM lab in Texas as the promise of billions of US economic stimulus dollars fuels a drive to make power delivery more efficient and greener. A chunk of stimulus cash aimed at promoting a "smart grid" designed to foster renewable energy generation and let people and utilities better manage electricity use has IBM in alliances with a growing host of startups. "Smart grid was starting to get hotter, but post-stimulus it is dead center at IBM and in the venture community we deal with," said Drew Clark, director of strategy at IBM's venture capital group.

The Department of Energy's decision last year to withdraw from FutureGen-the first "clean coal" plant in the U.S.-largely because costs had doubled and would escalate substantially, was rooted in faulty calculations, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released last week. At the end of January 2008-just after the FutureGen Alliance announced it would locate the zero-emissions demonstration plant in Matoon, Ill.-the DOE pulled out of the $950 million project, saying costs had doubled to $1.8 billion. It announced instead that it would pour its 74% share into smaller clean coal demonstration projects. But in its report, "Clean Coal: DOE's Decision to Restructure FutureGen Should Be Based on a Comprehensive Analysis of Costs, Benefits, and Risks" (PDF), the GAO found that the "DOE compared two cost estimates for the original FutureGen that were not comparable because DOE's $950 million estimate was in constant 2004 dollars and the $1.8 billion estimate of DOE's industry partners was inflated through 2017." The project was inflated $500 million, the GAO estimated, and should have cost $1.3 billion.

Dan Cass has an article in Crikey noting the greenhouse mafia have been performing very successfully under the Rudd government - Democracy and science vs Big Coal: the final round?. Today's news that the coal industry is lobbying Parliament again raises the grave but tedious question -- when will Australia's coal mafia give in to climate science and/or Australian public opinion? Until Guy Pearce's Quarry Vision (Quarterly Essay 33) is released on March 16, we can only read the tea leaves, but the story is worth watching. The Age has a big story today on this week's Copenhagen climate science congress. This meeting of climate scientists will report that impacts already unfolding are far worse than IPCC predictions. The science says we have to switch out of coal, and fast. On the democracy front, a Climate Institute poll released today shows 83% of swinging voters are concerned about climate change. Despite the spin of both major parties, the public knows that nothing is really being done to fix the problem. Then tonight's Four Corners will show that Big Coal is continuing to defy both climate science and public opinion, lobbying for Kevin Rudd to do nothing on climate change.

In the US, the Californian desert and the Mid-West plains are ideal locations for solar and wind energy plants. In the UK the Scottish Highlands and Welsh mountains have the highest winds in the UK. These locations have similar characteristics - great resources for renewable energy generation, but limited grid infrastructure and not many people. Hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles of new expensive, high voltage grid infrastructure is needed in these key locations to transport green energy to areas of high demand - the big cities. This grid infrastructure is both expensive and geographically extensive.

The United Nations Environment Programme's latest Year Book is out: The UNEP Year Book 2009 presents work in progress on scientific understanding of global environmental change, as well as foresight about possible issues on the horizon. The aim is to raise awareness of the interlinkages among environmental issues that can accelerate the rates of change and threaten human wellbeing. The UNEP Year Book 2009 examines in six chapters new science and developments, and discusses the cumulative effects expected from degradation of ecosystems, the release of substances harmful to those ecosystems and to human health, the consequences of our changing climate, the continued human and economic loss resulting from disasters and conflicts, and the overexploitation of resources. It calls for an intensified sense of urgency for responsible governance in the face of approaching critical thresholds and tipping points.

The near-death of one of India's most distinguished scientists has halted work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas. Professor AD Agarwal, 77, former dean of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, has been on hunger strike for 38 days in protest against a project that would dam the waters of a Ganges tributary. "The water ... is not ordinary water to a Hindu. It is a matter of the life and death of Hindu faith," Agarwal said, before beginning his fast in January. This is his second fast in the past year, which he called off last week only after the Indian government agreed that it would look into electricity generation that would not impede the flow of the holy Ganges. The river must run free in order to maintain its sacred status.

Though no oil spill can be considered a good thing, what was initially reported as a 20-30 tonne spill is now ten times worse. The BBC is reporting that 230 tonnes of oil (about 70,000 gallons) have spilled from a Hong Kong-registered ship, damaged in a tropical storm earlier in the week, and is washing up along a 60km stretch of shoreline. Authorities are warning that this is threatening wildlife and carcinogenic: Area's affected by the spill run from Point Arkwright in the north to Bribie Island in the south, as well of all of Morton Island National Park. What's more, the spill happened when 31 containers containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer were toppled in the storm, puncturing the hull of the ship. 620 tonnes of the fertilizer have also spilled into the ocean. In addition to the damage caused by the oil s

Private equity company Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that up to 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis. "Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman told an audience at the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime." But the U.S. government is committed to the preservation of financial institutions, he said, and will do whatever it takes to restart the economy.

Nikkei Business Publications recently announced the results of a survey conducted with engineers in Japan's manufacturing industry on the current global recession. They were asked hard questions about the impact of the recession and measures to cope with it. I am a little surprised that they turn out to be such tree-huggers: an overwhelming number thinks solar cells, electric, fuel-cell and hybrid vehicles - and even wind power - could provide the breakthroughs we need to get out of the current recession.

The slow-motion train wreck that is the US car market is looking less slow every day. Auto Sales Plunge as Buyers Snub Incentives: Falling U.S. auto sales crashed in February, dimming hopes that the domestic industry might bounce back in the second half of this year. … General Motors reported that its sales slid 53 percent in February compared with the same month a year ago. Chrysler's dropped 44 percent. And Ford's sales tumbled 48 percent, despite its insistence that it needs no federal aid to stay afloat.