Portugal is quietly become a world leader in alternative energy. Why isn't America investing in alternative renewable energy sources like Portugal? M

Published on Saturday, June 7, 2008 by the Guardian/UK
World’s Biggest Solar Farm at Centre of Portugal’s Ambitious Energy Plan
by John Vidal

LISBON, Portugal - From a distance the bizarre structures sprouting from the high Alentejo plain in eastern Portugal resemble a field of mechanical sunflowers. Each of the 2,520 giant solar panels is the size of a house and they are as technically sophisticated as a car. Their reflective heads tilt to the sky at a permanent 45 degrees as they track the sun through 240 degrees every day.

The world’s largest solar photovoltaic farm, generating electricity straight from sunlight, is taking shape near Moura, a small town in a thinly populated and impoverished region which boasts the most sunshine per square metre a year in Europe.

When fully commissioned later this year, the £250m farm set on abandoned state-owned land will be twice the size of any other similar project in the world, covering an area nearly twice the size of London’s Hyde park. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes.

Portugal, without its own oil, coal or gas and with no expertise in nuclear power, is pitching to lead Europe’s clean-tech revolution with some of the most ambitious targets and timetables for renewables. Its intention, the economics minister, Manuel Pinho, said, is to wean itself off oil and within a decade set up a low carbon economy in response to high oil prices and climate change.

“We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas,” said Pinho. “What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision.”

He expects Portugal to generate 31% of all its energy from clean sources by 2020. This means lifting its renewable electricity share from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020, compared with Britain’s target of 15% of all energy by 2020. Having passed its target for 2010 it could soon top the EU renewables league.

In less than three years, Portugal has trebled its hydropower capacity, quadrupled its wind power, and is investing in flagship wave and photovoltaic plants. Encouraged by long-term guarantees of prices by the state, and not delayed by planning laws or government indecision, it has proved a success. Firms are expected to invest £10bn in renewables by 2012 and up to £100bn by 2020.

However, Portugal says it wants to develop a renewables industry to rival Denmark or Japan. When the government invited companies for tenders to supply wind, solar and wave power, it demanded they work with manufacturing companies to establish clusters of industries.

This is a great success, say regional governments. In northern Portugal, where the world’s biggest wind farm, with more than 130 turbines, is now being strung across the mountainous Spanish border, a German firm employs more than 1,200 people building 600 40-metre-long fibreglass wind turbine blades a year.

The turbines are earmarked for Portuguese farms first, but orders are being taken from Britain and other countries. Half the workforce are women who once worked in the declining textile industry.

It is Portuguese plans for wave power that are prompting the most interest in Europe. The world’s first commercial wave farm is being assembled near Porto. Three “sea snakes”, developed by the Edinburgh-based company Pelamis, will shortly be towed out to sea and will start pumping modest amounts of electricity into the grid later this year.

It is the start of a potentially giant global industry with Portuguese firm Enersis planning to invest more than £1bn in a series of farms that together would power 450,000 homes.

To read the full article, go to this link:
URL to article: Worlds Ambitious Energy Plan - CommonDreams.org

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Because it would cost 500 million dollars for 45mw. That is not cost efficient.

500million/30,000k= thats 16,667 dollars per house hold just to pay it off.. let alone make a profit

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Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

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"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

Yes, and what do you think the cost of oil/gas/coal is? Our existence as we know it. And you maths are wrong, firstly the farm cost only $250 million and that is only the start-up cost, overe time it will surely pull even.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

No, it cost 250 million Pounds. Not 250 million dollars.

1 pound = 1.98 dollars.. so thats 500 million dollars.

The point of building something like this is to make money. Your goal isn't to lose profits. If you have a 250 million pound loan at 6% interest (which is the current Bank of England and European Central Bank rate).. that means, you have to pay 15,000,0000 interest alone just to start to pay off the 250 million pound loan the first year.

So 15 million pounds/30,000k= 500 pounds per home.

Now you also want to pay down some of the loan, which means its going to be more 500 pounds.

Every business wants to pay off their loans quickly so they can make a profit. To pay off this 250 million pounds in 1 year.. it would take 8,500 pounds. Or 16,667 US dollars.

__________________
Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

The expense on projects like this are predominantly start up costs, not on going maintenance costs. The solar system once set up, should operate without much on going costs in comparison to coal, which required mining, trucking, burning, etc... It is a product that is shipped. So is natural gas. It is shipped in frozen form and then must be unfrozen at refineries. The same is true of the wave energy system and the wind system.

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National Debt =

I do apologise, entirely my mistake.

Actually the current bank of England base rate is 5% but that's kind of irrelevant. I disagree with your assertion that the point of such a venture is to make a profit. It may very well be for the companies involved, and I would imagine there will be financial help from the Portugese government to make it profitable, but for the wider human interests such ventures have their value in preserving life as we know it on this planet. This highlights a worrying question of capitalism: how well equipped is it to tackle climate change whn the driving factor is money?

__________________
Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

You'd be quite surprised at the maintenance cost for Solar power. Daily maintenance will have to be done just as the conventional means. Solar Power is a heavily subsidized industry currently and without the subsidizes European and even Aussie Companies wouldn't even bother building Solar plants.

Here is the issue..

I really don't care where I get my power from as long as its cheap.. and if the West wants to provide most of the power, let them build those huge eye sores out there. Also, remember by putting "20%" of the US power source out west means if there is a thunderstorm, earthquake (and California falls off the map) and those kinds of things.. It will effect the whole grid. Under the current system, there are fail safes, that stop power outages from effecting the whole area..

You will also kill Habitats.

__________________
Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

We don't have to think of energy issues only on large scale industrial terms in all situations. Individual consumers can unplug themselves from the electricity grid with home solar and wind systems. The lower cost nanotech-film solar panels are in production and should provide the opportunity for solar energy capture even on cloudy days. They are also pressing the research beyond lithium-ion batteries with good result. We will soon have plug in electrical vehicles with stronger, longer lasting batteries. Combine the solar panels with electrical plug in car, and you are independent of the grid and the gas pump.

In the meantime, there is the first generation Prius that was retrofitted for plug in electrical that got up to 180 miles per gallon. I posted an article in the Environmental Forum if you are interested.

And why don't we have these 180 mpg cars in mass production in 2008 when they came up with this innovation in 2005?

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National Debt =

No problem.



Yeah, I was thinking ahead of next months hike that will happen as Germany and France are getting killed right now with Inflation.

How so? Why do you start a business? Obviously not to produce yearly loses.

Wow, you sound like George W. Bush right there. We need to do it or its the end of the world crap. I don't buy into scare tactics so take that argument elsewhere.

Now, you raise the point that needs to be raised. So should the Portugese or any Government tax you for something you end up paying for in the first place? Why not allow you to keep your money and pay the company straight up, with no middle man. It would help lower costs on the citizen and force companies to lower cost to produce the product.

Ah, so Czech President Vaclav Klaus called it as it was. I knew I liked him for a reason. You know you just proved what "Freedom loving bunch" on this forum has been saying from day 1 about this Climate Change mumbo jumbo.

Money will always be the driving factor. There are 45 trillion different reasons for the Global Warming club to push for it. Who do you think is going to get rich off that? It won't be you or I, as we'll be rubbing 2 pence together just being glad they didn't tax 'em.

__________________
Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

Again, it comes down to cost. Plugging in a Car is still going to cost you money.

__________________
Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87