GREEN DEALS: The UK's war over green

A “green war” appears to have erupted within the heat of the UK ruling coalition, particularly between Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Chris Huhne and the Tory Chancellor George Osborne. Hughe on Wednesday said an “unholy alliance of short-termists, armchair engineers, climate skeptics and vested interests” were campaigning against the renewable energy industry and described their intervention as “uneconomic, unreliable and unwanted.”

Osborne has been at the forefront of concerns with the Conservative Party about the cost of green incentives and their ability to meet the UK's energy needs. He has also vowed to ensure that the UK does not reach its emission reduction targets beyond that of its European counterparts, and borrowed a line from Australian opponents and argued that the UK only makes up less than 2 per cent of global emissions. “We won't save the planet by putting our country out of business,” he said earlier this month.

Huhne, however, said UK will not save its economy by turning its back on renewables, and had the opportunity of providing “more than 2 per cent of the solution.  “At a time when closures and cuts dominate the news cycle, next-generation industries are providing jobs just as in the recovery after the last deep depression in 1929 to 1931,” Huhne told a conference organized by RenewableUK this week.

“Renewable energy technologies will deliver a third industrial revolution. Across the length and breath of Britain, new companies are creating new jobs and delivering the technologies that will power our future. I want to take aim at the curmudgeons and fault-finders who hold forth on the impossibility of renewables, the climate skeptics and armchair engineers who are selling Britain's ingenuity short.”

And in the US, too ...

Barack Obama's proposed clean energy standards could reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent between 2009 to 2035, according to the Energy Information Administration. Since Obama failed with his cap-and-trade proposals, he has switched his focus to clean energy, and wants Congress to pass legislation that will set an 80 per cent clean energy source (this includes gas) by 2035.

According to Point Carbon, an IEA report commissioned by the House science committee, electricity sector carbon dioxide emissions would reach 2.5 billion tonnes by 2035 under a business-as-usual scenario, but a reduction would come from a sharp decline in coal-fired generation, which would decrease by 46 per cent by 2035 compared to an increase of 25 per cent under business as usual. Ths woud largely be replaced by gas, but wind growth would also double.

The combined effect would be a 30 per cent rise in electricity costs by 2035 over business-as-usual. “With an anemic economy and unemployment stuck above nine percent, it is very troubling that the President continues to pursue an energy policy that would add billions to Americans' energy bills,” science committee chairman Ralph Hall, a Texas republican, said after the report's release.

Apple in the sun

Apple hasn't always had the best track record in the sustainable business department – the recent allegations of environmental abuses along its supply chain in China, for example – but in the US, the tech giant is polishing up its green image with talk of plans for a solar farm next to its huge data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer reports that local permits were obtained from the Catawba County giving Apple approval to begin preparations for the project – known as the Project Dolphin Solar Farm – which will be built on 171 acres of land across the street from Apple's planned $1 billion iDataCenter, which opened in the US spring, and supports iTunes, MobileMe and Apple's new iCloud. According to Apple, the current power supplier for the NC data centre is Duke Energy, which uses mostly coal and nuclear plants, though it does have solar arrays setup in the county.

As GigaOm points out, the Observer's news report has quite a few information gaps, including the size of the solar farm, the companies commissioned to build it, and the money being spent on the project, or the price at which Apple will be buying the clean electricity. GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher also notes says that this is one of the first times she has seen Apple show any interest in using clean energy to power its data centers – and she quotes Greenpeace estimates that Apple sourced only 6 per cent of the power for its data centers from clean energy – "the worst on Greenpeace's list", she says. But, according to a report on Apple Insider, "Apple prides itself on using sustainable energy for its facilities," including its data centers. "According to the company's website, just 2 per cent of Apple's energy footprint comes from its facilities around the world. Currently, facilities in Austin, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Cork, Ireland use 100 percent renewable energy, saving as much as 21,500 metric tons of CO2e emissions."