TPT November 2013

Global Marketplace

states, the District of Columbia, and four territories offer a form of the incentive. The battle lines over the application of this system are drawn among energy executives, lawmakers and regulators across the country. Utilities in California won a concession from the state legislature, which ordered the Public Utilities Commission to conduct a study to determine the costs and benefits of rooftop solar to both customers and the power grid, with an eye toward retooling the net metering policy. Results of the study are due to be published before the end of the year. Oil and gas After investing heavily in new equipment to process Canadian tar sands, refiners in the US are wrong-footed by their own country’s shale boom Until recently it was believed that all the world’s “easy oil” had been found and that only extreme oil – so called for the rigours it imposes on explorers and drillers – remains. Then the US shale boom unlocked vast quantities of light, sweet crude. Without fear of contradiction, Matthew Philips, an

government incentives aimed at promoting solar energy and other renewable sources of power. At stake, the companies say, is nothing less than the future of the American electricity industry.” (“On Rooftops, a Rival for Utilities,” 26 July) According to the US Energy Information Administration, rooftop solar electricity – the economics of which often depend on government incentives and mandates – accounts for less than a quarter of 1 per cent of the nation’s power generation. And yet, as reported in the Herald Tribune , industry executives claim that such power sources could ultimately threaten the ability of traditional utilities to maintain the nation’s electricity grid. “We did not get in front of this disruption,” Clark Gellings, a fellow at the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit arm of the industry, said during a panel discussion at the annual utility convention in June. “It may be too late.” Advocates of renewable energy say that such sentiments are wildly overblown. For now, solar industry executives say, the government needs to help make the economics of renewable power work for ordinary Americans. Without incentives, the young industry might wither: and so might its potential profits, Ms Cardwell observed. › At the heart of the fight is a credit system called net metering, which pays residential and commercial customers for excess renewable energy they sell back to utilities. According to the US Energy Department, currently, 43

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05. - 08.11.2013 Stuttgart (DE) Hall 5, Booth 5511

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November 2013