"Hello Viet Nam " - Phạm Quỳnh Anh

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Hình ảnh về nước Nhật ngày nay

Chú cô Tiến&Phương du lịch Nhật 4/2013

 

 

   Người Nhật Bản sống trong hòa bình tĩnh lặng. Họ “cho rất nhiều và không hề biết      nhận”. Một dân tộc đáng được kính trọng.
 Nhật Bản, đất nước hôm nay vẫn sống bởi lòng kính trọng Phật giáo và Thần đạo

 Người Nhật đã đem đến đời sống văn minh tiến bộ, trật tự ngăn nắp 

Cuộc sống và công việc luôn hối hả khắp nơi

 Sử dụng phương tiện xe đạp rất nhiều trên đường phố

Hoa anh đào người Nhật gọi là Sakura gồm nhiều chủng loại khác nhau nhưng nó vẫn là loại hoa đại diện tiêu biểu cho xứ sở mặt trời mọc. Trong hình là một loại hoa anh đào tuyệt đẹp trong khu Ngự Uyển Shinjuku.

Mùa xuân với những nghi thức và trang phục truyền thống của các thiếu nữ Nhật.

Hoa anh đào có vẻ đẹp thuần khiết, thầm kín và sang trọng.

Phú Sĩ là ngọn núi cao nhất Nhật Bản, 3,776 mét, đỉnh núi có tuyết quanh năm. Địa điểm ngắm núi Phú Sĩ đẹp nhất chính là hồ Kawaguchi-ko.

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South East Asian Energy Big Vision

By

Aedan Kernan

18/06/2012

 A massive energy arc – a super grid – connecting largescale renewable energy sources from Australia to Mongolia to Asia’s power-hungry billions.
The levels of direct solar radiation in western and southern Australia make the region one of the best locations in the world for electricity generation from concentrated solar power. Throughout the Asia-Pacific region there are major national infrastructure development programs underway to transmit electricity, gas or digital information. The Chinese are building a transmission system with over 10,000 km of HVAC and HVDC lines. The Palapa ring backbone in Indonesia will connect the eastern islands to the west of the archipelago with fiber optic cable.
Why not overlay all these infrastructure projects to create a single, trans-national energy grid? Australian natural gas and electricity from renewable sources could be provided to the billions of people across fast-developing mainland Asia and Japan. That is an idea promoted by an American former journalist based in Australia, Stewart Taggart.
The energy connections would move along a massive arc from Australia to East Timor in the South East, through Indonesia and Malaysia, to Thailand and on to China. A second HVDC arm would branch off in the Indonesian archipelago. Cable would be laid under the South China Sea to the south coast of China and then potentially on to the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Funded by greater competition
International energy trade would provide the big advantage, argues Taggart: “When efficient markets are allowed to do their job it can bring prices down. That can reduce the overall costs of the infrastructure that’s needed to achieve that integrated market.”
The South East Asia grid plan was criticized in an article in CSP Today on the grounds that countries in the region would prefer to pursue energy independence. Stewart Taggart responds that they are far from energy-independent now and there is no reason why countries should not specialize and benefit from comparative advantage in energy, just as they do in virtually other product or service.
The distances across a South East Asian energy grid would be vast. Singapore is over 3,300 km of land and sea from Darwin and there is still another 1,400 km to travel to Bangkok in Thailand before the grid swings full to the East. Yet, in 2010, Siemens Australia described the long-term possibility of Australia becoming a renewable energy exporter as “realistic” and Taggart takes great comfort from a similar expression by the International Energy Agency.
In an article for Proceedings of the IEEE, Taggart and his colleagues made efforts at an initial costing for their South East Asian scheme. They came up with US $2.6 trillion for the land-based elements and $8.7 trillion for the undersea connections, or $66 billion per year for 40 years. That is only the cost of the transmission infrastructure. The article points out that Desertec North Africa-Europe expect transmission to account for 11% of the total costs of their project. Generation infratructure would account for the rest.
Getting everyone to agree
A common energy market would prevent individual states from achieving energy independence and energy security, according to critics of Taggart’s idea in CSP Today. Taggart points out that there is no reason why countries should not specialize and benefit from comparative advantage in energy, just as they do in virtually any other product or service. After all, nearly all those countries are dependent on energy imports – with considerable quantities of coal and uranium coming from Australia.
Yet, the political complications involved in getting China, Japan, South Korea, the ASEAN countries, and Australia to coordinate energy policy in support of a common energy market appear daunting. Political tensions that could scupper cooperation are not only between the biggest players. At the very first step after Australia, mountainous little East Timor, one of the poorest countries in the world, won its independence from Indonesia in 1999 through a bitter struggle. The Timorese may be uneasy at the concept of an energy common market with Indonesia.
All aspects of the grid are technically feasible, says Taggart, though he acknowledges there would need to be considerable research into confirming engineering feasibility. Natural gas connections are part of his plan. In the middle of the 650 km of sea between Darwin on Australia’s North coast and East Timor is a 32-km stretch of subsea terrain at a depth of more than 2km. Gas pipelines have been planned for depths of more than 3km. But the seas around East Timor are earthquake-prone. Dili, the capital of East Timor, was rocked by an undersea earthquake to its North East, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, in August 2011. Companies looking to exploit the oil and gas reserves off East Timor’s coast have been battling against the government’s request for pipelines to the shore. They would prefer a floating solution.
Best investment?
The massive expense of this can only be justified if the benefits eventually outpace the costs – and outpace the competition. The Gobi desert does not have the same levels of direct solar radiation as Australia, but theoretically it could provide 66% of the world’s energy needs with PV, according to the IEA. Other proposals for the development of Australia’s solar resource have suggested exporting products manufactured from the low-carbon energy rather than the energy itself.
The article in Proceedings of the IEEE, co-authored by Taggart, also introduces some doubts on the medium-term economic benefits of a South East Asian grid for Australians.
With plentiful, easily exploited energy reserves, electricity in Australia is pretty cheap. The IEEE article included an analysis of the effects of a South East Asian grid on market prices. It concluded that as interregional transmission capacity grew, cheap electricity exports from Australia would grow and the overall cost of electricity and emissions in the grid would decrease – up to a point. Once capacity increased beyond 30 GW the transmission congestion between Australia and Indonesia would disappear. The result would be higher regional prices in Australia. It would be sufficient to cause an overall cost rise across the whole grid. The Australians won’t like that.
Next steps
Stewart Taggart is pressing forward with his research. He’s planning a book and videos. He says he has been encouraged by positive comments from some major organizations. He has applied for funding to research the costings and engineering feasibility of all this further. A key issue will be to get decision makers to lift their eyes from the expense column.
“Politicians don’t think in 25-year timeframes,” Taggart says. “I think it would be beneficial to everyone if they did. I believe there is a compelling business case to be made by not looking only at the short term.”

(Source : Leonardo -energy )

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Biểu diễn piano của Mona Asuka Ott

Mona Asuka Ott tham gia biểu diễn piano ở Việt Nam gần đây trong Chương trình Hòa nhạc Hennessy lần thứ 17 được tổ chức vào lúc 20 giờ ngày 12/6 tại Nhà hát Lớn, Hà Nội . Cô đã nghiên cứu tại Học viện Âm nhạc  Würzburg (CHLB Đức ) Cô đã nhận được nhiều học bổng,  Cô lọt vào chung kết tại cuộc thi Piano quốc tế lần thứ 11 tại Học viện  Hamamatsu (Nhật Bản) năm 2006. Tại Piano Olympus 2006, cô nhận được giải thưởng khán giả.
 Mona Asuka Ott chia sẻ rằng, cô bắt đầu học chơi piano năm lên 2 tuổi. Niềm đam mê âm nhạc lớn dần trong cô theo năm tháng và cô nhận ra rằng: "Trên thế giới có rất nhiều loại ngôn ngữ khác nhau. Nhưng trong âm nhạc, chỉ có một loại ngôn ngữ duy nhất, vượt qua mọi danh giới quốc tịch, sắc tộc, tôn giáo. Âm nhạc là phương thức giúp cô truyền tải tất cả những cảm xúc, suy nghĩ, ước mơ, hoài bão của mình đến với mọi người".

 

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Beautiful Nature

 (P.V.D 's video )

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The Future of Nuclear Energy Technology

BY MARY JO ROGERS, PARTNER, STRATEGIC TALENT SOLUTIONS AND AUTHOR OF NUCLEAR
ENERGY LEADERSHIP: LESSONS LEARNED FROM U.S. OPERATORS.

More attention has been given of late to recent announcements of nuclear power plant closures and threatened shutdowns than to the pursuit of new nuclear technology. Despite current economic challenges to the nuclear power industry, many experts support the ongoing development of nuclear power as an essential part of the mix for long-term world energy needs. Recent polling shows that the majority of Americans still favor the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity and 81 percent of those surveyed stated that nuclear power will be important in meeting the country’s future energy needs.

Given current economics, however, it would be easy to question the ability of the U.S. to build new nuclear plants and make use of advanced nuclear designs. This question was recently answered when the industry achieved an historic milestone in the construction of new nuclear power. In March, South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCG&E) and Georgia Power poured the first new construction “nuclear concrete” in over 30 years at the Summer and Vogtle construction sites, respectively. The historic completion of over 7,000 cubic yards of basemat structural concrete at each site by CB & I (formerly Shaw Group) serves as the foundation for the nuclear island structures, such as the containment and auxiliary buildings.

Georgia Power and SCG&E (and their co-owners) are building two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at each of the Vogtle and Summer locations. Westinghouse and CB&I are even further along in building four AP1000s in China. Design certification of the AP1000 by the NRC was issued in December 2011 and the licenses for construction and operation (COLs) were issued in February 2012 for Vogtle and March 2012 for Summer.

The building of these advanced reactors in Georgia and South Carolina is significant and demonstrates that nuclear power will continue to play an important role in the U.S. energy mix. Their presence also reinforces the need for key stakeholders to support and continue to invest in nuclear reactor technology. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), the certification of the AP1000 required 1,300 person-years of work and $440 million for the design and testing program.

Notably, at the time of the Fukushima disaster, the Westinghouse AP1000 was not yet fully certified and the COL had not yet been issued by the NRC. The passive safety features of the AP1000 design provide 72 hours of cooling by way of stored energy and gravity in the case of a major event, which protects public safety as well as the asset. Russ Bell, the Senior Director of New Plant Licensing at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), points out that one year after Fukushima, the NRC was able to proceed with the licensing of the AP1000 at Vogtle and Summer in part because of the robustness of its enhanced safety features. “There is a lot of credit to go all around—Southern Nuclear, SCANA (SCE&G’s parent company), Westinghouse, the NRC, and many others.”

TERRAPOWER’S TRAVELING WAVE REACTOR PROTOTYPE

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At least one high-profile investor, Microsoft Corp co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates, touts the benefits of nuclear power and calls for more investment in nuclear energy research. At the international energy executives’ conference in March—CERAWeek, Gates endorsed nuclear power as the best long-term solution to meeting rising world energy needs while addressing climate change because only nuclear provides reliable, high capacity, low-carbon energy in a way that can significantly reduce global warming. Gates also discussed how after the Fukushima accident, there is a greater demand for more stable nuclear energy technology with improved nuclear power reactor designs with greater inherent safety features. There are multiple improvements in nuclear reactor technology already being realized—and there are dozens of new reactor designs being pursued and significant innovations on the horizon. 

 

THE VOGTLE UNIT 3 REACTOR VESSEL IN FRONT THE UNITY 4 CONTAINMENT VESSELL BOTTOM HEAD, MAY 2013. COURTESY OF GEORGIA POWER.

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GENERATIONS OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has adopted a nomenclature to categorize various stages of advancement in the development of nuclear energy technology. The progression from one “generation” to the next tells a story of technology evolving to meet needs for increased safety and economy as well as proliferation resistance and reduced nuclear waste material. 

VOGTLE UNIT 3 COOLING TOWER CONSTRUCTION, MAY 2013. COURTESY OF GEORGIA POWER.

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•Generation I reactors were the prototypes, the first civil reactors developed in the 1950s and 60s that moved the technology from research and military uses to commercial power. They were typically small and lacked the redundant safety systems and non-proliferation aspects of current designs. Exelon’s Dresden Unit 1 (now retired) is of the first generation.

• Generation II reactor designs comprise the vast majority of nuclear plants in operation in the world today. These are commercial nuclear power reactors designed to be economical and reliable and built primarily in the late 1960s through the 90s worldwide. They include the boiling water reactor (BWR), pressurized water reactor (PWR), and the Canadian CANDU reactors. In the west, most were built by Westinghouse, GE and Framatone (ARE-VA). They use active safety features, as opposed to passive, that involve electrical and mechanical operations initiated automatically and/or by the unit operators.

•Generation III and Gen III+ reactor designs reflect significant design improvements and are referred to as Advanced Nuclear Power Reactors. There are dozens of third generation designs that are under development, going through the licensing and certification process or under construction (some Gen III units have been in operation in Japan). According to the World Nuclear Association, third generation reactor designs have the following improvements:

• Standardized design—reducing capital cost, construction time and expediting licensing.

• Simpler and more rugged design—making them easier to operate and less vulnerable to error.

•Longer operating life—typically 60 years.

• Reduced possibility of core melt accidents.

• Passive safety features and long grace period during a shutdown—passive cooling and containment requires no active intervention.

•Greater fuel efficiency—longer fuel life and less fuel waste by-products.

• Resistance to serious damage and radiological release from an aircraft impact.

The major difference between Gen III and Gen III+ designs is that the latter incorporated significant safety improvements that do not require active controls or operator intervention, but rely on gravity and natural convection to mitigate the impact of an event. After the reactor events at the Fukushima Daiichi units, the importance of passive, naturally occurring safety features in the event of a loss of all back-up power became patently clear. The AP1000 is a Gen III+ reactor design.

Other third generation reactor designs pursuing certification include the APR 1400 led by Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO), US EPR by Areva, the ABWR and ESBWR by GE Hitachi, and the US-APWR by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are third generation designs that have received broad support. SMRs provide advantages in their modular construction and smaller size, which impacts cost, time for construction, and location. Most SMR designs employ advanced passive safety features. The DOE awarded Babcock and Wilcox’s mPower a maximum of $452 million in matching funding to support certification and licensing of its 180 MWe SMR. mPower’s anticipated deployment is approximately 2022. The DOE is taking applications for a second SMR design funding opportunity. Other companies pursuing an SMR reactor design include Holtec International, NuScale Power and Westinghouse. 

VOGTLE UNIT 3 CR10 “CRADLE” ON CONCRETE AND STEEL BASEMAT INSIDE THE “NUCLEAR ISLAND,” VOGTLE 1 & 2 OPERATING UNITS IN THE BACKGROUND, MAY 2013. COURTESY OF GEORGIA POWER.

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Generation IV reactor designs are in the concept stage, require extensive fundamental research and could be built then commercially deployed beginning in the late 2020s or the 30s. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) was formed in 2001 to bring global resources to bear on Gen IV reactor research and development and to coordinate efforts for best results. There are 12 member countries including the U.S. DOE. According to the DOE, the objectives of the Gen IV designs are:

•Sustainability—meeting clean energy goals, utilizing fuel more effectively.

• Significantly reduced nuclear waste and long-term stewardship burden.

• Safety and reliability—a low level of reactor core damage in the case of an accident and reduced need for offsite emergency response.

•Economic competitiveness—with a lifecycle cost advantage over other energy sources.

• Proliferation resistance and physical protection.

With any future regulatory effort to capture fees for carbon allowances, nuclear power’s estimaed share of generation increases anywhere from 7-18%, taking the gains from coal.

Six reactor technologies have been selected by GIF for further research and development. Five of the designs recycle nuclear material and produce less waste. China has begun construction of a prototype Gen IV reactor.

Bill Gates has invested in TerraPower, a Bellevue, Washington-based company that is working on the development of a Gen IV technology, the traveling wave reactor (TWR). The TWR is a safer form of breeder reactor that would have no fuel recycling or reprocessing needed because of an intrinsically higher burn-up rate of waste byproduct. TerraPower is working on a prototype reactor to be built around 2022, with an ambitious goal of commercial operation in the late 2020s. The TWR-P would possess all the safety and security benefits of the Gen III+ reactors, but would generate at least seven times less waste than current reactor technology with 50 times the fuel efficiency.

But will we continue to need nuclear power?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently released a study that was interpreted by some as concluding that renewables such as wind and solar can provide the vast majority of America’s electricity. However, an April Washing-ton Post article analyzed the study and reached different conclusions. The Post stated that the limits of renewable energy reinforce the need to more aggressively explore next generation nuclear technologies that can provide better safety, nuclear waste, and security (non-proliferation) solutions that can be more economical to build. Although renewables are and will continue to be an important part of the U.S. energy portfolio, most experts conclude that they will not be able to dominate the energy mix, though they certainly can become a bigger play.

Looking at the long-term energy picture reveals that nuclear power will continue to have a key role. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), nuclear power’s share of the electricity mix is expected to decrease by only 2% by 2040, losing some ground to natural gas and renewables, which will also absorb increases in demand. With any future regulatory effort to capture fees for carbon allowances, nuclear power’s estimated share of generation increases anywhere from 7-18%, taking the gains from coal. Global long-term estimates show that nuclear power’s overall proportion of electricity generation stays fairly constant, with losses in Europe and gains in Asia, according to the International Energy Agency.

In sum, nuclear power will continue to be a significant electricity generator in the U.S. and internationally. Advanced nuclear technologies currently being realized bring significant advantages over current reactors. Future technologies hold even more promise to enhance the safety, security and economics of nuclear power while incorporating nuclear waste solutions
( Source : Nuclear Power International )

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Duo Main Tenan T

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Kỳ quan tuyệt vời của tạo hóa

Trên thế giới có biết bao kỳ quan tuyệt đẹp khiến bạn phải  ngạc nhiên. Nhưng hầu như chúng đã được can thiệp bởi  bàn tay của con người. Tiền Phong Online xin giới thiệu  tới bạn 4 kỳ quan hoàn toàn tự nhiên, khiến bạn phải mê  mẩn vì sắc đẹp của nó! Thung lũng hoa - Ấn Độ Thung lũng tuyệt vời trải dài 8km nằm trong dãy Himalaya .  Thung lũng hoa này có một vẻ đẹp kỳ diệu được công nhận  bởi các nhà leo núi nổi tiếng, các nhà thực vật học. Không  chỉ thế, nó còn được đưa vào văn chương trong suốt một  thế kỷ và có mặt trong thần thoại Hindu từ rất lâu.  Người dân địa phương tin rằng đây là miền đất mà các  nàng tiên đã từng ghé thăm. Phong cảnh thướt tha lúc  nào cũng tràn ngập sắc màu với hàng trăm loại hoa đẹp  khác nhau. Thung lũng hoa được tuyên bố là công viên  quốc gia vào năm 1982 và bây giờ đã được coi là một  Di sản thế giới. Ốc đảo Trăng lưỡi liềm – Trung Quốc Chắc chắn rằng bạn đã nghe nói tới sự tồn tại của những  ốc đảo trên sa mạc. Nhưng hôm nay chúng tôi muốn giới  thiệu tới bạn ốc đảo trăng lưỡi liềm tọa lạc tại chân  Mingshashan. Chiếc hồ dài 200m có hình dáng như mặt  trăng lưỡi liềm đang chờ đợi du khách đến khám phá vẻ  đẹp của nó. Lâu đài bông – Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ  Pamukale – hay còn gọi là ‘lâu đài bông’, là tên của một  kỳ quan thiên nhiên vô cùng hấp dẫn. Nó nằm tại tây nam  của Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ. Điều khiến cho nó trở nên độc đáo là suối  nước nóng có chứa rất nhiều khoáng chất. Các oxit canxi trong suối nước nóng làm tăng thêm độ  dày của những lớp màu trắng và lan rộng ra theo hình  bậc thang, tạo ra các hồ bơi đẹp tuyệt vời có hình vỏ  sò hoặc cánh hoa. Ở đây bạn có thể thưởng ngoạn cảnh  đẹp tuyệt vời trong khi ngâm mình trong suối nước nóng. Sa mạc Lençóis Maranhenses Vườn quốc gia – Brazil Nhắc đến sa mạc người ta thường nghĩ đến sự nguy hiểm  bởi nắng nóng, rắn rết, khô hạn… Nhưng vẻ đẹp của sa  mạc Lençóis Maranhenses lại níu chân bất cứ du khách  nào đến đây bởi những hồ nước xanh biếc đầy quyến rũ.  Nằm tại bang Maranhao, phía đông bắc Brazil, rộng khoảng  1000km2 với những cồn cát trắng xóa và các hồ nước xanh  sâu thẳm, nó thực sự là thiên đường dành cho những người  thích khám phá sa mạc. Điều đặc biệt là ở đây không có các thảm thực vật mặc dù  vẫn có nước và mưa. Hàng năm từ tháng 7 tới tháng 9, mưa  lớn tạo nên một hiện tượng vô cùng lý thú. Nước ngọt tụ lại  các thung lũng giữa các cồn cát tạo thành các đầm nước xanh  xen kẽ nhau giữa một khu vực hoang mạc rộng lớn.

Sưu tầm

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Germany's Renewables Revolution

Amory B. Lovins

Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist

April 17, 2013

While the examples of Japan, China, and India show the promise of rapidly emerging energy economies built on efficiency and renewables, Germany—the world’s number four economy and Europe’s number one—has lately provided an impressive model of what a well-organized industrial society can achieve. To be sure, it’s not yet the world champion among countries with limited hydroelectricity: Denmark passed 40% renewable electricity in 2011 en route to a target of 100% by 2050, and Portugal, albeit with more hydropower, raised its renewable electricity fraction from 17% to 45% just during 2005–10 (while the U.S., though backed by a legacy of big hydro, crawled from 9% to 10%), reaching 70% in the rainy and windy first quarter of 2013. But these economies are not industrial giants like Germany, which remains the best disproof of claims that highly industrialized countries, let alone cold and cloudy ones, can do little with renewables.
Germany has doubled the renewable share of its total electricity consumption in the past six years to 23% in 2012. It forecasts nearly a redoubling by 2025, well ahead of the 50% target for 2030, and closing in on official goals of 65% in 2040 and 80% in 2050. Some areas are moving faster: in 2010, four German states were 43–52% windpowered for the whole year. And at times in spring 2012, half of all German electricity was renewable, nearing Spain’s 61% record set in April 2012.

Efficiency and Renewables Bolster Post-Fukushima Germany

To underscore the remarkable German case, let’s review what happened in 2011, right after Fukushima. The Bundestag—led by the most conservative and pro-nuclear party, with no party dissenting—overwhelmingly voted to close eight of the country’s nuclear plants immediately and the other nine by 2022. (In a double U-turn, a nuclear phase-out agreed in 2000 was first slowed and then reinstated; nuclear output has actually been falling since 2006.) Skeptics said this abrupt shutdown of 41% of nuclear output would make the lights go out, the economy crash, carbon emissions and electricity prices soar, and Germany need to import nuclear power from France. But none of that happened.
In fact, in 2011 the German economy grew three percent and remained Europe’s strongest, buoyed by a world-class renewables industry with 382,000 jobs (about 222,000 of them added since 2004, with net employment and net stimulus both positive). Chancellor Merkel won her bet that it would be smarter to spend energy money on German engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to send it to the Russian natural gas behemoth Gazprom. Germany’s lights stayed on. The nuclear shutdown was entirely displaced by year-end, three-fifths due to renewable growth. Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output. Meanwhile, efficiency gains—plus a mild winter—cut total German energy use by 5.3%, electricity consumption by 1.4%, and carbon emissions by 2.8%. Wholesale electricity prices fell 10–15%. Germany remained a net exporter of electricity, and during a February 2012 cold snap, even exported nearly 3 GW to power-starved France, which remains a net importer of German electricity.
Was this just a flash in the pan? No. In 2012 vs. 2011, official data show that these trends broadly persisted.
Germany generated 617 TWh of electricity in 2012, up 0.3% from 2011. Nuclear generation fell below 100 TWh, the lowest in at least two decades. Gas prices spiked above coal, so gas-fired generation fell 13 TWh while coal-fired generation ticked up 14 TWh or 5%—still near modern lows, but boosted by a record 23 TWh of profitable power exports. Renewables added 15 TWh: they rose from 20% of electricity consumption in 2011 to 23% in 2012, passing every rival except brown coal (lignite, expected to recede in 2013). Renewable output has risen by one-third just in the past two years. And though Germany’s mix of solar, wind, biomass, hydro, etc. wouldn’t all run at the same time, its total end-of-2012 renewable generating capacity impressively rivaled the country’s 82 GW peak demand. Driven by renewables’ competition, wholesale electricity prices continued to plummet. Germany’s grid remained the most reliable in Europe. And while real GDP, damped by the Euro crisis, grew just 0.7%, electricity consumption fell 1.3%. Total carbon emissions rose 1.6%, boosted by an unusually cold winter, but emissions from industry plus power stations stayed constant, and weather-adjusted total emissions probably fell.

Germany’s Electricity Rates and Feed-in Tariff

German renewables’ dual trajectories of declining costs and rising installation rates are sending big ripples through the electricity system. Rating agencies are downgrading major European utilities because renewables—now over one-third of Europe’s generating capacity—have almost zero running cost. They can thus underbid fossil and nuclear plants, making them run fewer hours and earn lower prices, and thus slashing their profits. For example, German wholesale power prices have fallen about 30% just in the past two years to near eight-year lows, putting big utilities that underinvested in renewables under severe profit pressure.
Even so, Germans pay a lot for their household electricity, about $0.34/kWh in 2012. The household tariff includes a “renewables surcharge,” expected to amount to roughly $249 per three-person household this year. That’d be three-fifths smaller if households weren’t subsidizing many businesses, mainly large ones—exempted from nearly the whole renewables charge, allegedly to boost German competitiveness—by 3–4 billion Euros a year. Yet German industry enjoys the lower spot prices that renewables create, so it pays about the same for electricity as it did in 1978, and less than French industry pays today. This cross-subsidy from households to industry, and the size of the resulting household surcharge, have generated lively debate about how much Germans pay for their electricity and why.
The German Renewable Energy Act introduced two key policies in 2000: 1) a fixed 20-year power purchase contract (i.e. feed-in tariff) offered to most renewables, such as rooftop solar PV, which also gain priority access to the grid, and 2) a stipulation that such power purchases not draw on Germany’s public purse. That second piece is notable, because German utilities—required to pay the feed-in tariff for each kind of renewable energy fed into the grid by any producer—recover those payments via the renewables surcharge.
At the beginning of 2013, that surcharge jumped 47%, but only one-ninth of that increase was for renewables; the rest came from calculational quirks, chiefly the generous industrial exemptions. The household surcharge has been rising rapidly because home photovoltaic generation has quadrupled in four years, with 1.3 million rooftop systems producing 28 TWh in 2012—adding at least 1 GW more in 2012 than the government intended. In a German national election year, this prompted calls from various members of government to postpone or reduce payments (even retroactively) or spread the fee to more customers. Those proposals were promptly scuttled. With Germany’s firm commitment to an energy future grounded in renewables, and with clean technologies such as solar rapidly taking off, the renewables surcharge will probably remain widely supported, controversial, misrepresented, and widely misunderstood.

The Truth Behind Germany’s FiT and Electricity Rates

Some critics have thus blamed renewables and the surcharge for Germany’s high household electricity prices, but such claims are little more than smoke and mirrors.
Many coal and nuclear subsidies came for decades from tax revenues as they still do in the U.S.; if transparently self-financed the way the German renewable surcharge is now, they’d raise German household prices about twice as much as renewables now do. But Germany stopped subsidizing photovoltaics nine years ago and has adopted a far more rigorous, egalitarian, effective, and transparent system of buying the power mix it wants and paying for it through an electric-bill line-item. This is no more a subsidy than the standard U.S. practice of charging customers for the cost of any power plant the utility regulator has approved: society simply chooses and buys the kinds of power it wants.
But in Germany those renewable charges present a key choice: you can earn them back—and more—by choosing to invest in renewables personally or through a co-op or community, the way 65% of Germany’s renewable capacity is now owned. In other words, you pay the surcharge like most German citizens, but you can also reap the feed-in tariff for your renewable generation. Such level-playing-field investment opportunities are rare in America, where corporations, usually large ones, own about 98% of non-hydro renewable capacity.
Even for customers who choose not to invest in their own renewables, the surcharge is a tiny drop in the bucket. Of the steep average German household electricity price, only 56% bought electricity and its delivery and sale; the rest was taxes. Less than a third of those taxes was the 13.6% for the renewables surcharge—after its roughly 150% enlargement by not fairly spreading the cost to all customers.
From 2000 to 2012, only two-fifths of the increase in the household electricity price was due to the renewable surcharge. The 2012 renewable surcharge cost the average German three-person household about ten euros a month. That’s about 3% of the household’s total energy costs, or 0.3% of its total expenditures, or less than 0.2% counting its offsetting cost reductions. You need a magnifying glass to see it—as the Environment Ministry thoughtfully illustrated.
Further, renewables also directly reduce several costs, such as wholesale electricity price and an electricity tax (effectively a carbon tax). These declines offset nearly half of the increased renewables surcharge—and decrease customers’ risk from volatile fossil-fuel prices. (German’s electric bills rose 70% during 2000–12, while heating oil and gasoline prices rose 86% to a total nearly three times higher. Heating oil alone rose 119% since 2000.) In fact, as renewables keep getting cheaper and fossil fuels probably costlier, the surcharge should turn into a large public dividend—as happened in France in 2008—in about a decade, and should total over a trillion dollars during 2030–50; so far, this shift from investment to return is outpacing expectations.

Germany’s Efficiency Reigns: Economic Growth with Less Energy

The broad consensus behind Germany’s energy turnaround rests on foundations laid long ago. During 1990–2011, German coal-fired generation fell 14% and nuclear generation fell 30%, while renewable generation grew by 614%. Moreover, and often overlooked, German energy productivity advanced across all sectors. Indeed, Germany is rapidly becoming the world’s most energy-efficient country. Since 1990—the base year for Kyoto carbon accounting (and also the year Germany reunified)—the country’s weather-adjusted primary energy use fell 11% and its carbon emissions fell 25.5%, while its real GDP rose 37%.
Thus the economic productivity of its carbon combustion, reflecting big gains in every sector, rose by 84% in 22 years. This powerful trend is just getting started: Germany intends by 2050 to cut its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 80–95% below the 1990 level, double its overall energy productivity from the 2020 level, and supply 60% of its total final energy renewably. Applying Reinventing Fire’s integrative design approach could probably far outdo the 20% electricity savings projected during 2008–2050. This could shrink the projected need for renewables and transmission.
While coal and nuclear shares of electricity generation decreased, Germany’s renewable share exceeded 1.5 times the nuclear share by mid-2012 (as also occurred worldwide in 2011). Germany is installing 8 GW of solar power each year (more in the past three years than the U.S. added in the last 30), and added 3 GW just during December 2011—more than the U.S. added all year. The feed-in tariff, now below $0.19/kWh for small photovoltaic systems, falls monthly. Thus as liberalized power markets in Europe and the phase-out of German coal subsidies both gain traction, renewable costs and subsidies are falling, and Germany’s relatively stable policy has built a world-leading clean-energy industrial base.
So the world’s largest economy (the U.S.) hangs suspended between the old and new energy worlds, while #2 China, #3 Japan, #4 Germany, and #10 India are consolidating their energy vision around transformation. So are many others, as surveyed annually at REN21. But in particular, Germany’s methodical and determined energy turnaround offers proof that a heavily industrialized, world-class, politically pluralistic market economy can run well on a self-financing combination of efficiency and renewables. The losers in the German market are those who assumed the energy turnaround couldn’t work. The winners are those who applied their capital and skills to make it happen.
The author gratefully acknowledges helpful data and comments by Craig Morris in Freiburg, whose blog is an exceptionally valuable source on Germany’s energy shift, and by U.S. renewables expert Paul Gipe. Graphs of German electricity generation and renewables mix courtesy of Paul Gipe. Composition of German electricity price graph developed with data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries and based on a similar Creative Commons version here.

 (Source :  http://blog.rmi. )

 The Cheapest Route to Germany’s Renewable Energy Goal

By

Aedan Kernan

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the cheapest and most efficient route for Germany to meet its renewable energy goals, says Professor Colin Vance of the Rheinish-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI-Essen). Most other renewable energy promotion policies are redundant. Germany should ditch its massively expensive feed-in tariff scheme, he believes.

Germany faces a major challenge if it is to achieve its to generate 35% of its electricity needs from renewable energy sources by 2020. And, the decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2022 increased the risk of failure.
The renewable energy sector has grown rapidly in Germany in recent years. By the end of 2011, the country was able to meet over 20% of its needs with renewables. But plans to reshape the country’s transmission network has suffered delays. The readiness of the government to deliver its self-proclaimed ‘energy revolution’ has been questioned. And most of all, the cost of the program to subsidize renewable energy development and roll-out is worryingly large.
Germany was praised for providing investors in its renewable energy industries with greater certainty about future earnings, by publishing a schedule for future stepped reductions in feed-in tariff levels for PV. However, the government recently abandoned that approach with an unscheduled cut in feed-in tariff levels of up to 30%. Ballooning costs were a higher priority than investor certainty.

Unpromising solution
At first glance, the ETS does not seem like a better solution than the feed-in tariff. To date, the ETS scheme has been unsuccessful.  During 2011, for the third consecutive year, supply of ETS emission certificates exceeded demand. Oversupply pushed the price of ETS certificates to record low values. When emissions certificates are cheap, there is little incentive for companies to invest to reduce their emissions.
It is generally recognized that governments have reduced demand for ETS certificates by flooding the market with give-away certificates– to protect the global competitiveness of their energy-intensive industries. To tackle that issue, the European Parliament called for a ‘set-aside’ scheme that would reduce the numbers of certificates made available in future years. European Ministers met in late April to discuss ways to salvage the scheme.
Feed-in tariff schemes across Europe add to the problems that the ETS is suffering, according to Professor Vance.
Feed-in tariffs are an extremely expensive subsidy. Vance calculates that German PV installed in 2008 at a feed-in tariff of €0.42 per kWh costs €716 for every tonne of carbon emissions it eliminates (or ‘abates’). The International Energy Agency calculated the cost at closer to €1,000 per tonne abated.
By contrast, the cost of an ETS certificate in March 2012 to emit one tonne of carbon was just over €6. At no stage since the establishment of the ETS has the price of a certificate ever exceeded €30.

Blunt instrument
Feed-in tariffs can deliver a lot of renewable energy. But they are a blunt instrument, says Vance. They require electricity suppliers to buy energy in unlimited quantities at a very high and guaranteed price for a very long period. Once the feed-in tariff is in place, there is little incentive for the generator to lower the costs or improve the efficiency of generation. To date, the German feed-in tariff scheme has cost the country over €100 billion.
The way feed-in tariff levels are set is also a problem, according to Vance.
“In Germany, renewable energy technologies are effectively subsidized based on their lack of competitiveness. You have solar getting a very large subsidy of about €0.24 per kWh, while wind, a much more mature energy source, gets about €0.09 per kWh. Where do these numbers come from?” The level of tariff is set by the persuasive power of the lobbying groups behind each technology, not by any market logic.
There are a number of renewable energy technologies, including solar, that are worth developing, Vance acknowledges. But he believes that it would be cheaper to provide direct research and development funding to companies rather than feed-in tariff support.
He is doubtful about the argument that the feed-in tariff acts as a bridging mechanism, ensuring continuing innovation and industry development as it gradually move closer towards fossil fuel prices.
“We have been hearing that argument for the last 20 years”, he says. Yet, the costs of fossil fuels have remained doggedly low. Where the costs of renewables have come down, a lot of it is due to the efforts (and to the benefit) of Germany’s Asian competitors. While the feed-in tariff has created many jobs, it did so at a very high price and many of the jobs it created were not in Germany.
Feed-in tariffs are a block in other ways, says Vance. Germany can meet its ambitious renewable energy targets more cheaply if it takes a pan-European approach. Drawing from numerous renewable energy sources across a Europe-wide network would provide flexibility and better match supply to demand. A supra-national approach would reduce network costs and increase efficiencies. Electricity suppliers could purchase their electricity where it was cheapest. It makes a lot more sense to generate electricity from photovoltaics in Mediterranean Europe than in Germany.
The patchwork of national feed-in tariffs, distorts costs of generation and supply, while the bureaucracy further complicates the market. In effect, national feed-in tariffs act as a barrier to that Europe-wide approach.

Funding the Energy Revolution
The German public has remained staunchly supportive of the ‘Energy Revolution’ that the government is promising. There is cross-party support for both the phase-out of nuclear power and the rapid expansion of renewable energy. There has been considerable concern that the German government is not being radical enough, nor acting fast enough to meet the enormous challenge ahead. But there is also a dawning realization that the cost of a transformation dependent on feed-in tariffs will be high – and that the German government may have underestimated that cost up to now.
It would be more effective to push up the price of fossil fuels by placing a cost on emissions, he believes. There are two ways to do that. A carbon tax makes emissions more expensive and allows the market decide how much it is prepared to emit. The advantage of an ETS scheme is that it places an absolute limit on emissions and harnesses market forces to ensure that the cost of staying within those limits is as low as possible.

(Source :  leonardo-energy )

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