Energy Law

Renewable Energy News, August 3, 2011

By Shems Dunkiel Kassel & Saunders PLLC

South Africa's Department of Energy called on investors to submit proposals to build the country's first renewable energy power plants.

The bids can cover energy produced from wind, solar, hydro, biogas, biomass or landfill gas, the department said in an advertisement in the Sunday Times newspaper yesterday.

The government is aiming to purchase 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2013 and 3,800 megawatts by 2016, according to a July 28 cabinet briefing.

Upon registration, bidders must pay 100,000 rand ($15,000) for every megawatt of installed capacity they propose to build, the department said. A mandatory briefing session for project developers will be held on Sept. 14.

The use of wind energy among EU members is expected to triple by the end of the decade, the European Wind Energy Association predicts.

The association said that Ireland, Denmark and Portugal will lead the European community in wind energy by 2020 with wind energy making up 52, 38 and 28 percent their energy production, respectively.

The EWEA said electricity production from wind will increase from about 5.5 percent of total European demand in 2010 to more than 15 percent of total demand by 2020.

From his office in a converted Victorian schoolhouse, Neil Kermode can see little more than centuries-old stone buildings and narrow streets better suited to horse carts than Land Rovers. Yet Kermode, head of the European Marine Energy Centre in Scotland?s Orkney Islands, will tell you he can also see the future. Orkney, a collection of green, hilly islands where the North Sea collides with the Atlantic Ocean, has become a testing ground for wave and tidal power, technologies that will be instrumental in helping Scotland reach its goal of getting all its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. ?The bit of alchemy of turning seawater into electricity has been done,? Kermode says as he gazes out at the busy harbor in Stromness, a 90-minute ferry ride from the Scottish mainland. ?Now what we?ve got to do is to industrialize it and do it reliably.?

Full post as published by Renewable Energy Law Blog on August 03, 2011 (boomark / email).