They say nothing can get done in Washington, D.C. on the issue of clean energy, which has become a political lightening rod over the last year. With Congress at a high watermark of partisanship, accusations abound on Capitol Hill that American energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and the policies that support them are job killers and a money-wasting hoax on taxpayers. And yet, there's reason for optimism about energy innovation in this country. Why? Because the most powerful force in the world, the U.S. military, is mobilizing on a clean energy mission — and I believe they're going to win this war.

Another year, another wringing of the hands over tax credits and incentives for clean technology. Lobbyists and vendors in the U.S. are once again singing the blues, calling for continued and expanding government investments in clean technology. At the same time, political challengers continue their Solyndra hootenanny, raking the curren

Sinking revenues and shrinking policy support may be causing a bit of a haze on the renewable energy horizon, but there's plenty of sunshine trying to peek through if you look hard enough.

Seven months after a trade investigation was launched, American solar companies and Chinese solar manufacturers will finally get a clear picture of the challenges ahead.

While North America continues to dawdle on the road to the renewable revolution, the conservative, oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has proposed one of the most sweeping and massive moves to renewable energy on the planet.

Confusion reigned following Maxwell Technologies' (NASD:MXWL) earnings call Thursday night. What would be the impact of the company's reduced sales growth guidance on the stocks value?

In the choppy seas of American offshore wind development, calm waters are often followed by stormy skies. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Mid-Atlantic waters off Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. All three states have made some strides in the growing industry, but the path has been anything but clear.

No form of energy really emits zero emissions, and that's a point that's both missed by casual advocates and overstated by strident critics.

Positioned between the affluent of Martha's Vineyard to the east and the well-heeled of The Hamptons to the west, Block Island has always been more of a casual paradise, a place for blue collar workers to make summertime memories and sea-loving residents to enjoy the solitude of the other three seasons.

Back in 2009, Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors ("DB") published a study tracking 270 major climate policies in 109 countries. The study concluded that successful programs were those that offered investors "TLC" — transparency, longevity, certainty — a comprehensive, stable, and predictable set of rules that infused markets with a sense of clarity and security. The research went on to find that the United States lacked TLC and was lagging behind other countries, notably China and Germany. A more recent DB paper found little to cheer about at the Federal level in the U.S. Referring to the gridlock in Congress on energy policy, the paper noted "…while Congress stumbles, the U.S. stands to fall behind."

Last February, a group of anti-wind activists gathered in Washington, DC. Their goal: establish a coordinated, nation-wide program of "wind warriors" who could be dispatched to fight the industry anywhere, anytime.

Construction has begun on what will become Chile's largest wind farm, a 115-megawatt development in the Antofagasta region in the northern part of the country.

Iceland may soon spread its vast wealth of geothermal energy to the UK. But how can two islands separated by more than 1,000 km of ocean share electricity? The answer lies in undersea high-voltage cables.

Affirming its commitment to the development of renewable energy resources, the Arizona legislature recently passed legislation exempting the sale and/or use of Renewable Energy Credits (generally referred as "RECs") from Arizona's transaction privilege tax, which operates similar to a sales tax. Given that Arizona's state transaction privilege tax is over seven percent in most counties, and that city tack on an additional 2 to 3 percent tax, the decision to exempt the sale of RECs from a 10 percent tax is a significant development that should encourage the development of renewable energy in Arizona.

A natural disaster sparked the re-emergence of Japan as a ripe renewable energy market. Now, a political shakeup could have similar effects 6,000 miles away in France.

From the good folks at Wind Power Monthly magazine: http://www.windpowermonthly.com/news/1129821/Enercon-build-biggest-E-126-wind-farm-date/ - the first of the 38 x 7.5 MW wind turbines being installed at a Dutch wind farm called Windpark Noordoostpolder. By most European land based wind turbine arrays, this is a pretty larger one - 285 MW for just these machines, with an expected combined output averaging 95 MW. Up at the 135 meter level, average wind speeds are 9.1 m/s, which, for onshore Europe, is righteously impressive, but which would be quite common in the US Midwest. However, Enercon CHOOSES not to participate in the U.S. wind market.....

The Enercon E126 is a very impressive energy production system, and these are also visually really impressive. The tower is 135 meters tall (443 feet), and when the blade is at it's highest point, it would be 198 meters (almost 650 feet) off the ground. It also takes the world's biggest crawler crane (A 1600 ton rated Terex or equivalent - most U.S. turbines are installed by cranes rated at 400 tons, such as the Manitowoc model 16000 - http://www.manitowoccranes.com/MCG_MC/Products/EN/model16000.asp). The only steel used in the tower is tensioning cables and rebar - otherwise it is made of reinforced, pre-stressed concrete sections made in a humongous factory and installed like a jigsaw puzzle on site. And yes, it has an elevator to the top on the inside of the tower, as otherwise that is one long vertical climb.

The blades of the E126 are the most efficient used in the industry, partly due to their peculiar shape and also due to the "winglets" on the blade tips that prevent air moving across the blades from "spilling" off the end of the rotor. At 61.5 meters in total length and as a unit and a total pain to transport on land, each blade is segmented into two parts - a mostly steel inner short section and a mostly fiberglass reinforced polymer outer part (and much longer than the inner section) that is assembled on site. The total blade weight is 31 tons, which is beefy by most other wind turbine blade standards.

Aside from the trademark lower green painting on the tower, Enercon units are noted for their lack of a gearbox and also the avoidance of permanent magnet generators that use rare earth elements - especially neodynium for "NIB magnets". The generator often has up to 108 poles, and operates in the 5 to 11.7 rpm range. Because of the need for multiple poles (so that the turning rotor electromagnet encounters a usable number of north-south pole change per unit time) the generator has a very large diameter of almost 30 meters (34 feet), as well as a lot of mass (several hundred tons). To accommodate the large generator diameter, the nacelle has a distinctive "egg shape". This is the heaviest nacelle of any wind turbine with a combined weight of close to 500 tons, most of which is due to the mass of the generator.

The Enercon wind turbines tend to be expensive, but they are also very competitively priced on a long term basis. They also tend to have fewer maintenance issues (mostly related to not having a gearbox or a generator that operates at 1200 to 1800 rpm). These are presently being installed in many countries, but Germany is their major market, where they have close to a 60% market share. There are several windfarms in Canada and Latin America that use them, and 1 GW worth are to be installed in Quebec in the near future (though they had to promise significant local manufacturing content to wind that deal). However, it is unlikely that any E126 models will be installed outside of Europe in the near future. Due to the need for tall towers to tap winds fast enough to justify installation of E126 units, concrete towers must be used - steel towers would simply be too flexible and too expensive. For example, the base of the E-126 tower is almost 16 meters - over 50 feet - in diameter, and that will not fit under any overpasses. It is the need for factories that make the concrete tower sections near where the turbines will be located that limits where these can be installed (though Quebec is getting a concrete tower factory for the smaller 2.3 MW Enercon turbines).

Enercon is not a public corporation - it is privately held, owned mostly by its founder and inventor (an electrical engineer) of many of its key features. As such, when the owner feels that the U.S. market for wind turbines - potentially the largest in the world - is not worth the bother, maybe we in NY State should ask the question of "Why is this?"

The simple answer is the lack of a sane pricing system of systems - particularly (but not exclusively) the lack of a Feed-In Tariff system - in NY State. For example, consider Canada, where Enercon units have been installed in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. At present, about 12% of Canada's 5.4 GW capacity is provided by Enercon wind turbines - a mix of large wind projects and community scale (1 to 5 turbines). Only Ontario has had a FIT pricing system for a while (Nova Scotia just instituted a community scale one) - the rest have had Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) won via a bidding process with other competitors. Of course, a FIT system would be helpful, and this company is a very strong advocate of them.

So, if NY wants to attract a wind turbine manufacturer, they need to consider a FIT pricing strategy. Enercon is one of the few major wind turbine manufacturers that has not installed a U.S. manufacturing facility - and since companies like GE, Vestas, Siemens, Suzlon, Gamesa, Acconia and Nordex already HAVE DONE SO, they are unlikely to do "me too" facilities in NY State when their existing new U.S. factories are underutilized (Chinese manufacturers are unlikely to set up factories here because so much of their "IP" is stolen/licensed  from American and European companies).

Food for thought.... as the only way to motivate new wind turbine installations in NY State is to deal with the severe negative consequences of both "price uncertainty" and "tax avoidance subsidy addiction". When combined with the recent collapse in NY State electricity prices, these will kill off almost all new wind turbine installations in 2013 in NY State when "Pumpkin Time" happens at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2012/January 1, 2013 (end of the important MACRS and PTC/ITC Federal subsidies for wind turbines).

Don't forget, the clock is ticking. And if you think that a last minute compromise with a sufficient number of "sane Congresspeople and Senators" will come to the rescue, perhaps you have really seriously underestimated the amount of extremist zealotry and anti-science/anti-"Age of Reason" embodied in a significant number of Republicans now in office, especially those in the "Teabagger" camp, as well as those friendly to or in fear of the 'baggers. Unfortunately, a lot of environmentalists and renewable energy advocates are gambling that sanity will pierce the veil of Teabaggery that is threatening a significant demise in the US wind turbine industry for a significant period of time.

"Do you feel lucky, punk?" was a signature phrase of Clint Eastwood in his "Dirty Harry" movies - and the question for sane energy advocates is, what is your equivalent of a 44 Magnum that you have pointed at those apparently crazy ones pushing so hard for dirty energy and fossil fuel dependency? Appeals to the common good, to logic and even to self-preservation never seemed to work out for Harry when dealing with psychopaths and  people totally willing to do nasty on others unless they got their way (and often they would do nasty even if they got their way). "Well, do ya?" will be answered soon enough, and there are over 37,000 U.S. jobs in the balance, just for starts.

DB

Rather than becoming the first American offshore wind turbine to achieve "wet steel," a landmark single prototype project planned off the coast of Virginia has instead dried up in another setback for the young industry.

Ontario just completed a revision of their landmark feed-in tariff program and rates for renewable electricity generation and prices fell sharply: 30 percent for solar and 15 percent for wind power. This continues a trend of falling costs for renewable energy around the world. As a bit of background, Ontario’s feed-in tariff gives wind a

A looming decision that threatens to derail Europe's biofuels industry could reverberate all the way to Asia.

After a great January, the last three months have not been kind to clean energy stocks. While my model portfolios are still in positive territory (+5.4 percent and +0.9 percent for the unhedged and hedged portfolios, respectively), and are above my clean energy benchmark (The Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy ETF, -3.4 percent), they have again fallen behind my broader market index, the Russell 2000 (+7.3 percent).