QUICK NEWS, November 14: BRIGHT INDIA SUN; FOR A BETTER UTILITY BILL; SIERRA CLUB SUES COAL FOR TOXIC SPILL

BRIGHT INDIA SUN
A Tale of Two Markets: How National and State Incentives Are Spurring Solar in India; GTM Research and Bridge to India examine India’s National Solar Mission and the state of Gujarat’s Solar Policy.
November 3, 2011 (Greentech Media)

"…[The India Solar Market: Strategy, Players, and Opportunities, from GTM Research and Bridge to India, forecasts the solar market, now only 45 megawatts, less than any other national market with significant near-term promise, will] grow significantly over the next 10 years, driven by rising power demand and fossil fuel prices; the ambitious Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission; various state-level initiatives; renewable energy quotas, including solar energy quotas for utilities; and falling solar technology costs…

"Encouraging the spread of solar power generation, both PV and concentrating solar power (CSP), and aiming for retail grid parity (currently at around INR5 per kilowatt-hour or $0.12 per kilowatt-hour) by 2022 and parity with coal generation by 2030 are both key elements in India’s comprehensive, long-term energy supply strategy…[A]s of July 2011, solar power generation in India cost around INR12 ($0.30) per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale systems, or more than three times as much as power from coal…"

from GTM Research - click to enlarge

"The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (NSM) is the main instrument promoting solar demand in India. It targets installations of 20 gigawatts of grid-connected and 2 gigawatts of off-grid solar power by 2022…In the policy's first of three phases, from 2010 to 2013, the government aims [drive growth with feed-in tariffs and] to set up 1,000 megawatts of grid- connected power plants…[and] 200 megawatts of off-grid and 100 megawatts of small-grid solar power are to be installed at the tail end of the transmission grid…

"The Gujarat Solar Policy…offers a levelized tariff…The tremendous interest from developers in the NSM led to competitive bidding for projects and a subsequent decrease in tariffs. The fall in the NSM tariff below the levelized tariff in Gujarat suddenly made the Gujarat policy very attractive…[and] a significantly higher feed-in tariff in the first 12 years in Gujarat matches investors’ timelines…The first projects under the Gujarat program have already begun to come online…[with] at least another 150 megawatts will be completed before the end of 2011…"


FOR A BETTER UTILITY BILL
The State of the Utility Bill
Ben Foster and Elena Alschuler, November 9, 2011 (American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy)

"The utility bill is the most common way for utilities to provide information about energy use to their customers, but it is often overlooked both as a way to give customers better control over their energy use and to support utilities’ goals for more actively engaging customers, especially as a part of a smart grid strategy. Even as smart meters and smart phone apps proliferate, the paper bill has the potential to become a cost-effective feedback device with a broad reach."

"This report provides a preliminary take on the potential for enhancing the utility bill to provide better indirect feedback to utility customers..."

click to enlarge

"...Our goals are to present new research on the elements appearing on a sample of 100 current bills, to characterize how these bill elements align with previous research on bill information design, to outline some of the history of bill development, and to understand where the bill might be headed in the future.

"We find that the average customer bill does not provide the level of feedback and connection to program resources that it reasonably might, and we offer recommendations for overcoming barriers to improving the bill."


SIERRA CLUB SUES COAL FOR TOXIC SPILL
Sierra Club plans to sue We Energies over Oak Creek bluff collapse
November 9, 2011 (MSNBC)

The Sierra Club issued a Notice of Intent to sue We Energies for the October 31 flood of coal ash into Lake Michigan when an old landfill located on the bluff collapsed at a construction site at the company's Oak Creek coal plant…"


Bluff Collapse, Huge Toxic Coal Ash Spill From WISN via YouTube

"…The Notice of Intent to sue alleges that the pollutants in the coal ash at the bottom of Lake Michigan ‘pose an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment.’…The Notice of Intent to sue is the first step in legal action against We Energies to force the company to clean up the toxic coal ash."