According to a new report called 2009 Nielsen Energy Audit, compiled by market research specialist The Nielsen Company, saving money is one of the top motivating factors driving the adoption of green energy options. 80% of the 32,000 respondents polled cited cutting costs as their main motivation for conserving energy.

“The current momentum surrounding green initiatives and reduced energy consumption presents utilities and home improvement companies with a golden opportunity,” says Jonathan Drost, Account Executive, Energy for The Nielsen Company. “When going green is cost effective, such as opting for Energy Star appliances or government incentive programs, customers migrate in that direction. The biggest hurdle for energy companies is educating the consumer on things like Smart Grids, Energy Efficiency programs and Renewable Green Energy.”

Solar appears as the number one preference as a carbon neutral source of energy, with 37% of the total. “I believe solar came out on top as a preference because it is a technology that consumers can identify with,” Drost offers. “Not only can a consumer place solar panels on their home or purchase solar water heaters, but also they see retailers installing solar panels on their roof and hybrid cars with solar roof options. It’s been a media hot topic as well.” 32% of the respondents expressed no preference, followed by 16% who cited wind as their top preference. Geothermal accounted for 5%; hydroelectric, 4% of preferences.

California, Texas, New York and Oregon boast the largest percentage of consumers who participate in a green energy program. In terms of regions, the west (consisting of California, Oregon and Washington), with a 24% rate of participation, is the greenest area in the country. This is explained by the fact that California has had green pricing programs in place for many years.

Age and income also play a role in green energy participation, which is better among the higher educated and those making over $50,000. However, a higher proportion of those making between $50,000-$100,000 (34%) participated compared to those making more than $100,000 (30%). Participants also skewed younger, with 40 percent falling between the ages of 18-34 and 39% in the 35-54 year age range. Those above 55 make up 20 percent of those taking part in green programs.

Ontario is already the Canadian leader in wind energy, producing enough electricity to power more than 300,000 homes. But the region wants to become a North American leader in renewable energy and has introduced a Green Energy Act to create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in the new green economy.

The components of the Green Act include a feed-In-Tariff program, which allows individuals and companies to sell renewable energy into the grid at set rates; domestic content requirements, which would ensure at least 25 per cent of wind projects and 50 per cent of solar projects be produced in Ontario; a streamlined approvals process and a service guarantee to bring developers greater certainty, regulations for setting wind turbines certain distances from houses, roadways and property lines; and a new Ontario Renewable Energy Facilitation Office, described as a one-stop shop to help renewable energy projects get off the ground faster.

The province hopes that the new regulations will give provide more clarity to companies, boost investor confidence and help Ontario achieve its goal of eliminating coal-fired power by 2014. Investments in new renewable energy projects already in place or under construction in the region since 2003 exceed $4 billion.

A new research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) reveals that “the largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production”. The report was produced in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008 and shows that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

During that period, the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables – $16.8 billion – are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources – such as coal and oil – and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Why is this happening? The U.S. energy market is shaped by a number of national and state policies that encourage the use of traditional energy sources. These policies range from royalty relief to the provision of tax incentives, direct payments, and other forms of support to the non-renewable energy industry. “The combination of subsidies – or ‘perverse incentives’ – to develop fossil fuel energy sources, and a lack of sufficient incentives to develop renewable energy and promote energy efficiency, distorts energy policy in ways that have helped cause, and continue to exacerbate, our climate change problem,” says ELI Senior Attorney John Pendergrass. “With climate change and energy legislation pending on Capitol Hill, our research suggests that more attention needs to be given to the existing perverse incentives for ‘dirty’ fuels in the U.S. Tax Code.”

The subsidies examined fall roughly into two categories: foregone revenues (changes to the tax code to reduce the tax liabilities of particular entities), mostly in the form of tax breaks, and including reported lost government take from offshore leasing of oil and gas fields; and direct spending, in the form of expenditures on research and development and other programs. Subsidies attributed to the Foreign Tax Credit totaled $15.3 billion, with those for the next-largest fossil fuel subsidy, the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels, totaling $14.1 billion. The Foreign Tax Credit applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the U.S. Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial treatment under the tax code.

Fossie fuels and renewable energy were defined according to conventional definitions. Fossil fuels include petroleum and its byproducts, natural gas, and coal products, while renewable fuels include wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

A silicon photovoltaic company unveiled yesterday two technologies for multi-crystalline silicon solar cells aimed at manufacturers striving to reach 18 percent efficiency. 1366 Technologies’ Self-Aligned Cell (SAC) architecture promises to “break the historic efficiency and cost tradeoff of photovoltaics (PV) by providing mono-crystalline equivalent cell efficiencies at multi-crystalline cell costs.”

One of the technologies address cell texture by creating a distinctive honeycomb structure that introduces cross-textured surfaces to the cell that trap more light and enable up to 1 percent higher absolute efficiency overall than previous cell designs. The second one focuses on the front-side cell metallization, wherein the company has developed metallization lines of just 30 microns (compared to the prevailing 120 microns) and a Grooved Ribbon busbar (licensed by Ulbrich and Schlenk). Industry standard thick fingers and flat busbars typically shade 9 percent of the surface of a cell. Comparatively, 1366’s front-side metallization approach only shades 2 percent of the cell delivering 75 percent of the efficiency gains of back-contact cell designs without the high costs and process complexity.

“We’ve pioneered a cell architecture and manufacturing process that’s going to change the way we think about energy,” said Frank van Mierlo, co-founder and president of 1366 Technologies. “Our innovations have the potential to save manufacturers $50 billion over the next five years and help the industry deliver solar at the cost of coal.”

In the past, PV companies have tried to increase efficiencies by using approaches such as back-contact or emitter wrap through solar cell technology, which add expensive steps to the manufacturing process with minimal gains in cell efficiency.

“The way we see it, the right technology and materials are available now to help PV reach grid parity, but the challenge for our industry is to simultaneously deliver high efficiencies and low costs,” said Dr. Emanuel Sachs, 1366 Technologies’ Chief Technology Officer. “Our Self-Aligned Cell architecture addresses this challenge head-on. We believe our technologies, combined with further advancements in manufacturing, will help solar power satisfy 7 percent of global electricity demand over the next decade and inspire one of the largest manufacturing revolutions in history.”

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it could become a reality. According to a report in Alternative Energy, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and IHI Corporation are planning to design and develop a $21bn Space-based solar farm that would generate 1GW of power. The farm, housed 36,000km above the surface of the earth, would require an area of four square kilometers consisting of rows of solar panels.

But don’t get too excited about it as if the future had suddenly arrived and we could remove the drips that channel fossil fuel into the veins of our economic systems. The project has a timeline of three decades and before fully embarking on it, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will demonstrate the project’s potential with a 10MW satellite. The agency will also test the systems used to beam energy from space using high-energy radio waves or lasers to ground-based receivers.

Cryptogon also covered the story and included a quote from Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a governmental agency, who said: “It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears”. The article also touches on the subject of cost: how to make commercially viable the transportation of panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers about the earth’s surface? There is no answer to this question, at least for the time being.

All things considered, Ecogeek wasn’t impressed: “I’m looking for something that can deliver 100 gigawatts by 2030. Cheaper solar, high-altitude wind and sophisticated geothermal seem a lot more feasible to me … this seems a bit like big kids playing with big toys”.

It does seem like something terribly complicated and the cost-benefit ratio does not sound all that attractive. What do you think?

Early last month we wrote about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program that provides cash assistance to energy production companies in place of earned tax credits. Yesterday the Energy and Treasury Deparments announced $502 million in the first round of awards from the Act. According to an offical press statement, the new funding “creates additional upfront capital, enabling companies to create jobs and begin construction that may have been stalled until now”.

“These grants will help America’s businesses launch clean energy projects, putting Americans back to work in good construction and manufacturing jobs. The initiative will help double our renewable energy capacity over the next few years and make sure America leads the world in creating the clean energy economy of the future”, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Created under Section 1603 of the Recovery Act, the program is expected to provide more than $3 billion in financial support for clean energy projects by providing direct payments in lieu of tax credits. These payments will support an estimated 5,000 bio-mass, solar, wind, and other types of renewable energy production facilities in all regions of the country over the life of the program.

This first round of funding will give more than 2,000 Americans access to jobs in the renewable energy industry, the government said.

Researchers at the University of Texas have announced that solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle “inks” that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb sunlight and convert it into solar power.

The idea is to create a manufacturing process that is ten times cheaper than the current standard, that is, gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which requires high temperatures and is relatively expensive. The system being investigated at Texas uses light-absorbing nanomaterials, which are 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. Their microscopic size allows for new physical properties that can help enable higher-efficiency devices. The inks could be printed on a roll-to-roll printing process on a plastic substrate or stainless steel.

Leading the research is Brian Korgel, a chemical engineer who also owns a company called Innovalight, based in California, which is producing inks using silicon as the basis. But now Korgel and his team are using copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), which is both cheaper and kinder to the environment.

According to Korgel, CIGS has some potential advantages over silicon as it’s a direct band gap semiconductor. That means you need much less material to make a solar cell. He adds that the inks, which are semi-transparent, could help realize the prospect of having windows that double as solar cells.

The only setback is that the technology does not perform as well as it should in other to become viable. Korgel’s team has developed solar-cell prototypes with efficiencies at one percent, which is way below the 10 percent ideal. “If we get to 10 percent, then there’s real potential for commercialization,” Korgel said. “If it works, I think you could see it being used in three to five years.”

Exciting news from the solar power front: with 24,000 mirrors catching the Antelope Valley summer sun, eSolar, a leading provider of modular, scalable solar thermal power technology, unveiled its 5-megawatt (MW) Sierra SunTower solar power plant. The full-scale power plant, the only power tower of its kind in the U.S., produces electricity for Southern California Edison (SCE) and can power more than 4,000 homes in California’s Antelope Valley.

But what’s the novelty here? The eSolar technology resolves many of the problems that have held back large scale solar in the past including cost, speed of deployment and proximity to existing transmission lines. eSolar uses advanced software algorithms to precisely focus thousands of mirrors on a single point to efficiently harvest the sun’s energy and achieve economies of scale with a smaller footprint than anyone else in the business.

The company develops its California projects on parcels of previously disturbed private lands, avoiding many of the permitting and environmental pitfalls of development on pristine desert lands. Located in northern Lancaster, Sierra SunTower is built on private land designated for heavy industrial use, which has attracted praise from environmentalists.

“eSolar demonstrates that pristine wildlands do not have to be sacrificed in order to keep the lights on with clean energy,” remarked David Myers, Executive Director of the Wildlands Conservancy. “eSolar’s efforts to reduce its impact on the surrounding environment demonstrates a level of foresight we hope to see from other solar developers in the future.”

Sierra SunTower was fully financed and developed by eSolar, proving the rapid deployment, pre-fabricated method eSolar patented and pioneered. Building on Sierra’s success, eSolar will deploy many more plants around the country and around the world. In February, eSolar announced an agreement with NRG Energy, Inc. to develop three plants in California and New Mexico that will generate up to 465 megawatts of electricity using eSolar technology. Additionally, in March, eSolar licensed its technology to India-based ACME Group for approximately 1 gigawatt of eSolar solar thermal capacity.

Solar power has seen a slump, says The New York Times’ blog Green Inc. The statement is based on a run of poor results shown by solar power companies, including LDK Solar and JA Solar, both Chinese manufacturers.

The drop seems to be mainly related to photovoltaic panel prices, which have suffered as demanded stalled and supply increased. The Wall Street Journal has a similar article, adding that a “collapse of demand in Spain, after the government cut what had been a generous aid for the sector” is one of the main reasons for the solar power downturn.

On a positive note, Mr. Mike Ahearn, First Solar’s CEO, said that over the long term, it is good for panel prices to fall, in order to ensure adoption and political support of solar energy.

Renewable Energy World has published a report saying that in 2008 the United States decreased its use of coal and petroleum. On the other hand, consumption of natural gas solar, biomass wind and nuclear increased. The information was based on energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Geothermal energy use remained stable.

According to LLNL, the estimated U.S. energy use in 2008 equaled 99.2 quadrillion BTUs (“quads”), down from 101.5 quadrillion BTUs in 2007. (A BTU or British Thermal Unit is a unit of measurement for energy, and is equivalent to about 1.055 kilojoules).

Energy use in the industrial and transportation sectors declined by 1.17 and 0.9 quads respectively, while commercial and residential use slightly climbed. The drop in transportation and industrial use – which are both heavily dependent on petroleum – can be attributed to a spike in oil prices in summer 2008.

Last year saw a significant increase in biomass with the recent push for the development of more biofuels including ethanol.

“This is a good snapshot of what’s going on in the country. Some of the year-to year changes in supply and consumption can be traced to factors such as the economy and energy policy,” said A.J. Simon, an LLNL energy systems analyst who develops the energy flow charts using data provided by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.

Simon said the increase in wind energy can be attributed to large investments in wind turbine technologies over the last few years as well as better use of the existing turbines.

Nuclear energy also saw a slight increase from 8.41 quads in 2007 up to 8.45 quads in 2008. While no new nuclear power plants came online in 2008, the existing plants had less down time. Over the last 20 years, the downtime for maintenance and refueling at nuclear power plants had been decreasing.

“There’s an incentive to operate as much as possible,” Simon said. “It’s a smart thing to do. You can’t earn revenue by selling electricity when you’re down. I’m really excited about the renewed push for energy efficiency in this country. Because once that energy is rejected, it’s no longer useful. But more efficient power plants, automobiles and even light bulbs really do reject less energy while providing the same energy services.”