19 Nov 2007, Morning

Review of Renewable Energy Access to find out state of Energy Bill. Plan to get something through conference committees before Thanksgiving has apparently been scrapped, and there seems to be new hope for both RPS and CAFE standards in the bill. A letter to Pelosi signed by 20 congress members supports these more stringent renewable/efficiency measures.

Mendonca editorial on renewable energy in EU
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/businessre/story;jsessionid=3C621C341A24E091CE4D892DA0104F8C?id=50605
Says UK New Labour gov't is at risk of sabotaging feed-in tariffs around the EU. Won't be able to meet it's EU RE target by 2020, so pushing to have targets reduced and certificate trading system that will allow it to purchase certs rather than produce energy. Cites an EU legal expert on how bad cert trading system would be for Germany. Conventional energy industry very opposed to FITs - like cert trading - allows only themselves to produce RE, not lots of independent producers.

Report from GAO office shows how R&D funds and tax support have been distributed among different types of electricity producers since 2002. Still much more support to fossils than RE.

Interview about the downsides of biofuels production with author of OECD's "Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease?"
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/reinsider/story;jsessionid=3C621C341A24E091CE4D892DA0104F8C?id=50616

• Biofuels consumed as low-percentage blends won't substantially lower GHG emissions (maybe 15%)
• Still very expensive - subsidized up to 50% (compared to 3-10% for oil)
• May not pave way for second generation biofuels - this is argument of first gen producers
• What about all the infrastructure that's being built in response to subsidies? Author says gov't shouldn't throw good money after bad. Let subsidies expire.
• Says policies probably won't change unless big crop failure or drop in oil prices.