The Spanish solar thermal power race is on

[jpak]

http://www.earthscan.co.uk/news/article/mps/uan/642/v/3/sp/

Spain's revised renewables regulation, introduced in March 2004, established Europe's first feed-in tariff for concentrated solar power (CSP). From less than 200 MW of projects on the table, a further 800 MW has since come out of the woodwork. Now, with 11 MW already going up and 150 MW close to receiving building orders, Spanish renewables players think the country is on the point of a CSP boom. But with no commercial scale CSP capacity yet online, and no industrial supply chain yet in operation, the sector still has to prove it can work. By Mike Stirzaker.

'Spain is probably the hottest spot on earth for CSP project development.' Thus states an international report titled Concentrating Solar Power - Now, led by Greenpeace and released in September 2005 (See article Power of reflection by Sven Teske, Renewable Energy World, Jan-Feb 2006). The report's double entendre is intentional: Spain is indeed Europe's hottest country,meteorologically speaking. But, in 2004, it was also the first to introduce a bankable guaranteed tariff for CSP. Mature projects which have been on the back burner since the 1990s are now moving forward, and new project applications have piled up on the desks of Spain's regional administrations.

Currently, Spain is building the world's first commercial central-tower CSP plant (below), an 11 MW project in the southern province of Andalusia called PS 10, developed and owned by Solucar, the solar arm of engineering firm,Abengoa. Similarly, Andalusia will soon be home to Europe's first commercial parabolic trough CSP plants - the Andasol I and II projects, each with a capacity of 50 MW. Between December 2004 and April 2005, construction group ACS Cobra bought 75% of both Andasol projects from the German project developer Solar Millennium.

ACS has also clinched the engineering, procurement and construction contract (EPC). The developers expect construction to start early in 2006. Furthermore,Andasol I has received a project finance proposal, pending approval, from the European Investment Bank,by which the EIB will take over project risk.The proposal,announced in September 2005,is for a maximum of €225 million of the project's overall €300 million investment requirement. If approved,it will be 'the European Investment Bank's first, direct project finance deal anywhere,' according to a spokesman for the developers. Solar Millennium is also expecting the go-ahead on a third 50 MW project,Andasol III, in 2006 and is developing further projects across the south of Spain.

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[donsu]

1. Hooray! for Spain fighting to save our environment

nt

[ladjf]

2. This is spreading all over the world except to the U.S.

Their governments are promoting renewable energy projects. Except for a few states, that isn't happening in the U.S. The Federal govt. only pays lip service to the renew ables while continuing their partnership with oil, gas and coal companies. We need to nationalize the oil industry. That one move would profoundly solve many of America's greatest problems.

[megatherium]

3. Nationalizing the oil industry might solve our problems,

but look what happened to the Iranians in the early 1950s when they tried that.

[ladjf]

4. The fact that the Iranian oil nationalization didn't work doesn't

mean that the same would be true here.

When I suggested the nationalization of U.S. oil, I didn't think that it would be possible. However, short of nationalization, there are things a wise and honest govt. could do that would have very beneficial effects on all of it's citizens, except the oil CEO's and stockholders. The oil business along with the religion business needs to be kept out of the law making process. That's easy for me to say and very difficult for the American people to make it happen.

[megatherium]

5. I think the reason the Iranian nationalization didn't work is that the CIA

made it not work.

[ladjf]

6. There are two things about the current oil company situation

that prompted me to suggest nationalization (1) the obscene amount of profit that is being made while Americans are suffering trying to pay the high price of petroleum products and (2) the direct involvement of the oil companies in the legislative and executive governmental processes. Nationalization would or could solve both of those. In order to get big profits, the oil companies will literally do anything with total disregard for anyone but themselves.


Nationalization will not happen unfortunately, not in our lifetimes.

[megatherium]

7. You're exactly right.

(2) is a particularly convincing reason for nationalization. But not even the left talks about this possibility now, it isn't in the cards.

[kestrel91316]

8. Why does Spain hate America??