California sees big costs with renewable plan
The draft report by the Public Utility Commission nails down costs for the most ambitious clean energy plan in the nation at a time of economic turmoil and as Congress considers federal legislation.
California already requires 20 percent renewable energy by 2010, and the PUC report said that, if all that power was in place by 2020, new generation and transmission building costs would be $51.8 billion and electricity costs would rise to 15.8 cents per kilowatt hour from 13.2 cents in 2008.
Aiming for 33 percent renewables by 2020, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has advocated, would more than double capital costs to $114.5 billion and would increase state electricity costs to 16.9 cents per kilowatt hour, the report said.
It also said that hitting the 33 percent target was realistic only in 2021, which it called the "best case" scenario.
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UK must start construction of large-scale storage or fail to meet net zero targets.
LONDON - The U.K. government must kick-start the construction of large-scale hydrogen storage facilities if it is to meet its pledge that all electricity will come from low carbon sources by 2035 and reach legally binding net zero targets by 2050, according to a report by the Royal Society.
The report, "Large-scale electricity storage," published Sep. 8, examines a wide variety of ways to store surplus wind and solar generated electricity—including green hydrogen, advanced compressed air energy storage (ACAES), ammonia, and heat—which will be needed when Great Britain's supply is dominated by volatile wind and solar power.
It concludes that large scale…
