Construction of the $2 billion 120 megawatt Longleaf power plant was blocked yesterday by Fulton County Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, overturning a ruling that would have allowed the first coal plant to be built in Georgia in 20 years.

Environmentalists cite Moore’s ruling as the first time a judge has applied the April 2007 ruling from the Supreme Court stating the greenhouse gas emissions are a pollutant and must be regulated.

I just posted more on the ruling, reactions from both the plants developers and environmentalists, as well as what this could mean for future coal-fired plants in the planning stages – for the full story go to my post at TriplePundit.com.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) today released its latest study of global renewable energy investment.  2007 was another record-setting year for investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, according to UNEP’s “Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008.” 

More than $148 billion was raised and invested in these sectors during 2007 – 60% more than 2006 - even as the credit crunch spread, deepened and weakened the US and other economies. 

Though the bulk of investment capital flowed into Europe and the US, respectively, the share of total investment accounted for by China, India and Brazil increased 14-times in absolute terms – from $1.8 billion to $26 billion, and from 12% in 2004 to 22% in percentage terms last year, according to the UNEP study, which was prepared by New Energy Finance. 

Facts & Figures

“Sustainable energy transaction volume” as defined by UNEP totaled $204.9 billion globally in 2007.   Some $98.2 of the total flowed into new renewable energy generation; $50.1 billion went into technology development and scaling up manufacturing.  Mergers and acquisitions accounted for $56.6 of the total. 

Wind energy led the renewable energy field, attracting more than $50.2 billion of investment capital.  Solar power was the fastest growing segment of the market, attracting approximately $28.6 billion in 2007, which translates into an average annual growth rate since 2004 of 254%.

“The clean energy industry is maturing and its backers remain bullish.  These findings should empower governments - both North and South - to reach a deep and meaningful new agreement by the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009,” Achim Steiner,  UNEP’s executive director, commented in a media release.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency investment was subdued by the end of 2007 and into Q1 2008 with banks tightening credit and restructuring in the US ethanol industry as concerns over rising food prices and supply shortages took their toll. 

Investment flows rebounded in most sectors during Q2, however, even as economic and geopolitical concerns hung overhead.  Sustainable energy venture capital and private equity in rose 34% in Q2 2008, new asset finance was up 8% and public market investment was showing a strong recovery, as exhibited by Portuguese utility EDP’s spinning off its renewable energy business,  EDP Renovaveis, in an IPO, according to the study.

“Just as thousands were drawn to California and the Klondike in the late 1800s, the green energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern day prospectors in all parts of the globe,” said Steiner, who is also a UN Under-Secretary General.

Interested in listening in on an executive summary of the report’s findings?  You can download the full report, as well as listen to a podcast of Steiner doing just that in various languages here. 

In a procedural vote of 74 to 14 the Senate began the process on Monday of bringing the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to a full floor debate.

It seems a foregone conclusion that the bill will not pass this year, but in the spirit of the deliberative process, it will at least make everyone take a stand on the issue.

One of the principal objections to the bill is the purported “economic damage” it will cause, with opponents using hot-button terms like “high energy prices” and “rising taxes”.

Despite the enormous cost his administration has projected years and decades into the future, George Bush advised congress to be

very careful about running up enormous costs to future generations”

Even if the bill could manage to get past the senate this year, president Bush has vowed to veto it if it does.

Proponents of the bill are encouraged that any debate about climate change is progressing in the Senate, seeing it as an essential first step to the essential role government must play in dealing with climate change and a new energy economy;

We may not get it done this year, but if not we start next year just a few steps from the finish line

David Doniger, director of climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, acknowledging the current debate is just the start of a long struggle getting climate change policy enacted.  

As Carl Pope writes today in the Huffington Post, one job the Senate has before it is shifting its perception of the energy issue. There will always be idealogues lost in their own insistence that facts don’t count for much and thus see no problem in making up their own (like James Inhofe claiming the bill will bring gas prices to $8 a gallon when even the Bush administration says at worst it will raise gas prices 50 cents a gallon by 2020). But Congress generally fits policy around energy producers instead of consumers. The vast engine of American wealth and prosperity is driven by businesses that consume energy, not produce it. I’m not interested in buying a barrel of oil or a lump of coal. I need what they provide – energy.

There is no doubt that the economics of running an oil company in 2050 will be substantially different than it is now. With that reality comes hard changes for producers and consumers alike. But the reality of our energy and climate future will not go away by ignoring it or striving to conserve the status quo while denying the true costs in so doing. The risk is far too great to do nothing. 

“The times, they are a-changin”. The task of the Senate is to embrace that fact and look into the future instead of clinging to the past.

The Lieberman-Warner act may be flawed, it may hold little chance of passing into law without substantial tweaking or full scale revision – and certainly not until there is a new president – but this is where it starts as we begin the essential transformation of the global energy economy.

The whole world is watching.

Sources and Further Reading:
New York Times
National Journal

Having proven a success in Japan, Nissan is taking its boxy, utilitarian Cube and Denki Cube plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) on the road.  Having officially introduced the PHEV concept version Denki Cube’s international roadshow at the 2008 New York Auto Show in March, Nissan is moving the show on to Europe.

Word came out in the UK press earlier this month that the Denki Cube is being tested in Great Britain.  Nissan plans to introduce petrol and diesel engine versions – the Cube without the Denki – in 2009 in advance of the PHEV version being available in the UK in 2011.  Less than a week later, the Spanish press was reporting that Nissan is working towards a broader European market introduction for 2010.

Nissan is working with NEC to perfect the Denki Cube’s cutting edge lithium-ion batteries, which are currently at work powering Nissan forklift trucks.

The PHEV Denki will stay true and be almost identical in design to the gasoline and diesel powered Cube’s minimalist modeling and features, which aim to create “a relaxing, moving social hub, like a favorite room in an owner’s house,” according to Nissan.

The biggest transformation in shifting from producing the original to the Denki Cube is replacement the standard 1.3-liter inline 4-cylinder gasoline engine with an electric motor and laminated lithium-ion batteries located under the floor and seats.  “The laminated structure and unique material technology offer more power, energy and battery stability, as well as compact size and packaging flexibility, versus conventional cylindrical batteries,” according to the company.

The move to the PHEV model is part of the Nissan Green Program 2010, its mid-term environmental action plan, which is focused specifically on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from Nissan products as well as from its day-to-day corporate activies.

With voluntary carbon offset credit markets growing and the topic firmly fixed and on the agenda of the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism’s executive board forestry scientists and researchers, climatologists and natural resource economists around the world are zooming in on, gathering data and analyzing existing forestation carbon offset projects in order to better understand them and anticipate their overall effects, effectiveness and sustainability. 

A new report authored by Eduard Merger and Alwyn Williams, two researchers at the University of Canterbury´s School of Forestry in Christchurch, New Zealand, sheds light on the nature and workings of four standards for certifying climate forestation projects and the criteria necessary to qualify for accreditation in voluntary carbon offset markets.

Entitled, “Comparison of Carbon Offset Standards for Climate Forestation Projects participating in the Voluntary Carbon Market,” and released May 28, the study investigates and compares standards and certification processes of the Community, Climate, and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS), the Carbon Fix Standard (CFS), Plan Vivo Systems and Stand