By now, the message that solar power will become a major source of electricity should have reached most parts of the world.

Huge proposed spending packages by the Obama administration as well as the Chinese government also highlight the political and economic relevance of the sector as a job creator.

When I visited Intersolar in Munich last week — the world’s biggest trade fair in the solar industry — it surprised me, however, that Germany – expected to become the world’s biggest solar market in 2009 in new installation — seemed to have missed that fact as no government politican turned up to the event. Not even the mayor of Munich stopped by.

Instead, German Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (who admittedly was busy with Opel at the time), sent his greetings in written form — a move that was met with irritation by some industry players.

“I find it incredible that no politician even bothered to come here, it’s a big industry and deserves attention,” said an executive of one of Germany’s biggest solar companies, who asked not to be named.

    Justified criticism?

    The industry has grown massively over the last years, with Germany becoming the world’s second-biggest market per installation in 2008, second only to Spain.

    The solar industry employs about 75,000 people in Germany, generating about 8.5 billion euros ($12.08 billion) of sales last year, and is home to bellwethers such as Q-Cells, the world’s largest maker of solar cells.

    Given the political and economic importance of the event, can the German government afford not to be there?

    What do you think?

(Photo: The sky is reflected in solar panels in the southern German town of Buerstadt May 24, 2005. The 40,000 square meter installation produces 4,500,000 kilowatts per year.)

Shares of U.S. solar company First Solarhave dropped about 7 percent this week on concerns about a federal review of the company’s recent acquisition of rival OptiSolar, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

However, in a note to clients on Wednesday, Pacific Crest analyst Mark Bachman called the story “sensational, at best.” A day earlier, Cowen and Company analyst Robert Stone said “the issue looks overdone.” Both have “outperform” ratings on First Solar.

According to Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Jan Bedrosian, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general is probing whether OptiSolar’s applications to develop 136,000 of public land were included in the value of the $400 million deal.In the event of an acquisition, applications can be transferred from one company to another, Bedrosian said, though no value can be attached to them.

“There is no value associated with a mere application, which could be rejected by us for a variety of reasons,” Greg Miller, renewable energy program manager for the Bureau of Land Management office in Moreno Valley, told the Los Angeles Times, saying the agency was trying to weed out speculators who are snapping up land only to turn around and sell it for a quick profit.

In March, First Solar said it would buy OptiSolar’s pipeline of solar projects, including a major installation for California utility Pacific Gas & Electric and other nascent deals. The move rapidly expanded the company’s presence in the fast-growing market for utility-scale solar.

On Wednesday, Pacific Crest’s Bachman said he expected the probe to “be remedied quickly in favor of First Solar.”

“In our view, the value in the OptiSolar deal was based on the near-term project pipeline… and the 1.3 GW of short-listed projects, thus the BLM applications are upside to the deal,” Bachman wrote, saying the review should not be weighing on the stock.

First Solar shares were down 3.5 percent at $177.94 in afternoon trade on the Nasdaq. They had closed at $190.29 on May 29, the last trading day before the Los Angeles Times story appeared.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Steve Marcus (A solar photovoltaic array at Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas. Note: the panels were not made by either First Solar or OptiSolar)

In these green times energy producers are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for new sources of energy.

The Los Angeles Times reports that rocket-builder RocketDyne and a Santa Monica-based renewable energy company, SolarReserve, are planning to build a plant that they say could eventually power 100,000 homes by using solar power and molten salt.

The idea, which analysts say is promising, is to use solar power, collected in a huge array of tilting mirrors, to heat up molten salt to over 1,000 degrees Farenheit and use the resulting steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

The molten salt would then be cooled and recycled to repeat the process – generating no emissions.

The Times points out that this idea isn’t totally new. In the California desert off Interstate-15, a large solar array of more than 1,800 mirrored panels still stands where a power plant was built as a pilot project using molten salt…

Somebody alert Capt. Kirk.

California utility PG&E and solar power company Solaren say they have inked a first-of-its-kind deal to produce renewable solar power from space satellites beginning in the year 2016.

PG&E, one of the largest electric utilities in the United Sates, says on its in-house blog, Next100, that it is seeking approval from state regulators for a power purchase agreement with Solaren, which it says can provide 200 megawatts of clean, renewable energy — enough to power some 140,000 California homes — over a 15 year period.

Solaren says it will generate the power using solar panels on Earth-orbiting satellites, transmit it back to Earth through a radio frequency to a recieving station in Fresno County, then convert it into electricity which would be fed into PG&E’s grid.

Though the project sounds exotic (read: expensive), PG&E says the benefit of solar energy from space is that – since the satellites are consideraby closer to the source with no clouds in the way – its 8 to 10 times greater than that on Earth and can be harnessed 24 hours a day, no matter the season back home.

Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak says on the blog that he is confident that his team, which has years of experience in the aerospace industry, can build the world’s first Space Solar Power station and deliver power to Californians from space by 2016.

What do you think? Is this something out of Star Wars, or is space the next frontier for solar power?

Photo credit: Reuters/Ho New

 The Vatican (left) is going green from today with a new solar energy system on some roofs to help boost renewable use.

If Pope Benedict can have solar panels, are they something for the White House (right), after Barack Obama takes over as President on Jan. 20?

Former President Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House during the oil crisis of the 1970s — his successor Ronald Reagan took them down when the roof was being repaired in 1986 (…a year when oil prices tumbled to below $10 a barrel).

When he got the panels installed, Carter said:  “a generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

So should Obama, who spoke of a “planet in peril” in his victory speech and who says climate change will be a priority, start by bolting on a few solar panels at his new home?

Antarctica’s population is rising because of climate refugees.

The European Union agrees to let Morocco join in return for exclusive rights to solar power from its part of the Sahara desert.

The Olympics are held only in cyberspace because it costs too much for athletes to travel around the world.

These are some of the scenarios in a report on Monday by British-based think-tank and charity ”Forum for the Future” with Hewlett Packard Labs, imaging how climate change might affect the planet by 2030.    

You may well say: ”Hang on, 2030 is only 22 years away; things won’t change that fast.” But imagine travelling back 22 years to 1986 — when Ronald Reagan was in the White House — and telling people about the end of the Cold War, 9/11, the Internet or even the 2008 global financial crunch. You’d have trouble convincing them all that was realistic.

Yes, some of the ideas in the report can be dismissed as outlandish scaremongering or wild optimism. You don’t have to believe them, but they drive home the idea that the world can change quickly and that people can go a long way towards controlling what happens.

Read more about the scenarios here

What do you think? 

   A Kennedy may be showing up Al Gore as a small time dreamer. 
   Robert Kennedy, Jr. says the Goracle’s challenge to the United States to generate its electricity entirely from renewable sources within 10 years is not fast enough.
   “Al Gore said the other day we can do this in 10 years, and a lot of people were skeptical about that. But we can do it in less than 10 years,” he told U.S. and Mexico border state governors at a meeting this week., arguing that it would be great for the economy, too.
   In solar energy resplendent border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, setting up solar plants would prove cheaper than building more conventional sources of energy, he said.  “These are the Saudi Arabias of sun.”
   “We can build those plants anywhere, we can build them cheaper than nuke plants, cheaper than old coal plants, and cheaper than oil plants, and faster than any of them,” said Kennedy a member of the U.S. political dynasty and a senior attorney for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.
(Reporting by Syantani Chatterjee)

You know the wind is changing for renewables — so to speak — when the head of Europe’s biggest power producer becomes an advocate — and then even decides to reduce his own personal reliance on fossil fuels by powering and heating his new house with photovoltaic and geothermal energies.

Wulf Bernotat, the chief executive of E.ON, admits he became rather belatedly an advocate for renewable energy, even if his company still gets the lion’s share of its 70 billion euros in annual turnover in 30 countries from burning fossil fuels. The reasons for the change of heart? It’s one answer to climate change, it’s the way the political winds were blowing, and there are profits to be made.

“We had a certain reservation about renewables until about a year ago and then we abandoned those reservations because we recognised that renewables are desired politically,” Bernotat said after a recent presentation to a group of journalists in Berlin. “That’s why it’s the right decision for us to get more actively involved.”

Bernotat also predicted that renewables will replace fossil fuels as the world’s most important energy source by 2050 and possibly even “completely displace fossil fuels by the end of this century.” It was an amazing forecast from a company so closely linked to coal-burning power plants — like a butcher saying everyone would become vegetarian by the end of the century.

Less known is Bernotat’s own personal commitment to renewables — he did not make a big deal about it but had mentioned once in passing in a German TV talk show that he planned to use geothermal power and photovoltaic on his new house. So when I asked him about it, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He said using renewables made economic sense in the long run despite the heavy initial investment — he had to drill six holes 100 metres deep in his back yard to tap geothermal power for hot water and heating (I wish my wife would let me do that). He said he did it for his daughter, who would be able to reap the longer term return on the investment in renewables — although he too is reaping handsome returns now too. “It’s easier when you build a new house,” he said. “Then it’s easier to reduce CO2. But if you’ve got a house already and the gas-burning furnace is only five or 10 years old, it’s a more difficult matter. Do you really want to replace a furnace like that now?”

When I mentioned to him that a local E.ON subsidiary was buying my 6,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic power off my roof for nearly 3,000 euros each year — and thanked him half in jest for the prompt monthly payments — Bernotat just laughed and said: “Don’t thank me. It’s the other energy users (who pay higher monthly electric bills to subsidise photovoltaic providers like me) who are paying you for that. So thank them!”

It’s summer at the G8 media centre in Hokkaido. Yet underneath the building are tonnes of snow to keep journalists cool as they write about global warming.

Japan budgeted $283 million for security at the summit and $30 million to build a temporary, low-emissions media centre far from where the G8 leaders are meeting in a luxury hotel.

The centre took five months to construct next to a ski resort and the company that built it says 95 percent of the materials will be recycled or reused once the building is torn down in the weeks after the G8 meeting.

During construction, tonnes of snow were scooped up from the resort’s car park and dumped into an insulated area under the floor. Of the 5.5 metres of snow, more than 4 metres remain, which is used to chill the air circulating around the cavernous two-storey building. Large arrays of solar panels also help power the centre and cut emissions.

Journalists can walk over glass panels to see the snow underneath.

 Jun Oishi of Takenaka Corporation, which designed and built the centre, says it will save 6,ooo tonnes of carbon dioxide over its short life compared with a conventionally designed building.

It’s a revelation compared with the media tents at last December’s climate talks in Bali, which were basically sweat boxes filled with large and inefficient air conditioners battling the tropical heat.

Green though the new building is, the fleets of cars ferrying journalists between the airport and Sapparo, both two hours from the media centre, has raised doubts about how much carbon will ultimately be saved. A case of style over substance?

The U.S. housing market may be in a serious slump, but competition for big chunks of land in the hot, dry Southwest is heating up.

Developers of solar and wind power projects are scrambling to get their hands on swathes of land in the U.S. West that not only have lots of sun or wind, but are also close enough to critical transmission lines.

“There is a lot of activity staking out that land,” said Dan Kabel, chief executive of Acciona Solar Power, the unit of Spanish building-to-energy firm Acciona that is building solar thermal power plants in the United States. “People keep talking to me about a land rush. They say there is a land rush. The evidence I’ve seen personally is the patchwork effect of all the applications for solar and wind. There is very active prospecting for solar land.”

The U.S. West is in such high demand because not only are the sun and wind resources enormous, they are also located near areas of burgeoning power demand, such as Southern California, Kabel said in an interview at Acciona’s Nevada Solar One solar thermal power plant in Boulder City, Nevada.

But even with all that competition, Kabel said, there is plenty of room for Acciona to grow. So far, it operates one solar thermal power plant in the United States, though more are in the works (he wouldn’t say how many.)

“There is a lot of desert out there,” Kabel said.