The Lewis and Roca Renewable Energy Blog

Duke Energy Renewables and SOLON Corp. announced last week the completion of the 10MW Black Mountain Solar Project near Kingman.  Duke purchased the project from SOLON in May 2012.  SOLON constructed the project and will be responsible for operation and maintenance of the solar system.  Electricity generated by the project will be purchased by UniSource Energy Services, a sister company to Tucson Electric Power (TEP), under a twenty-year power purchase agreement.  The Black Mountain Solar Project is Duke's fifth photovoltaic (PV) plant in Arizona, along with the 5MW Ajo Solar Farm in southern Arizona, the 15MW Bagdad Solar Farm near Prescott, the 1.5MW Prescott Valley Solar Project, and the 6MW Gato Montes Solar Project in Tucson. read more

The 2012 conference of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change is currently underway in Doha, Qatar.  The conference began on Monday, November 26th, and continues through Friday, December 7th.  You can browse the full schedule here or read summaries of each day's proceedings on Columbia Law School's Climate Law Blog.  The general consensus (of observers) is that very little is going to be accomplished at the conference due to a lack of consensus by participating nations about how, or even whether, to proceed with reducing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.  This has been the situation for at least the last few conferences, but it is more significant this time since the Kyoto Protocol terminates at the end of the year. read more

A book by Oxford Economics Professor, Dieter Helm, is highly critical of the methods being used by European countries to reduce their carbon emissions in an attempt to mitigate the impacts of global climate change.  The Carbon Crunch: How We're Getting Climate Change Wrong—and How to Fix It, argues that current regulatory efforts to cut carbon emissions have focused on expensive and ineffective methods, resulting in limited progress and widespread scepticism of the movement.  (This blog is based primarily on a review of Mr. Helm's book by The Economist, and not a full reading of the book which is not yet available in the U.S.) read more

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Chevron's petition for certiorari from a decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  Chevron was seeking an injunction barring the enforcement of a $18 billion Ecuadorian judgment anywhere in the world.  The District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed with Chevron's accusations of fraud and manipulation of evidence by the plaintiffs and their attorneys and granted the injunction in March 2011.  The Second Circuit vacated the injunction in January of this year and Chevron appealed to the Supreme Court.  This U.S. case stems from a case in Ecuador, in which an Ecuadorian judge awarded over $18 billion to local farmers and indigenous groups in February 2011. read more

Last Friday, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the last climate change lawsuit still pending in the federal courts to the best of my knowledge.  Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. was a lawsuit by a small Alaskan village against 22 oil, energy, and utility companies, alleging that their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused global warming which prevented historic levels of sea ice from forming around the village.  The lack of sea ice exposed the village to massive erosion from the ocean's waves and the possibility of devastating storms in the future.  The villagers sought damage payments from the defendants for the harm they suffered from global warming; presumably, at a minimum, the costs of relocating the village, estimated by the Army Corps of Engineers at $95 million. read more

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $15 million grant to the Algae Testbed Public-Private Partnership (ATP3) led by ASU.  $8 million will cover the first two years of the program and, if certain benchmarks are met, the remaining $7 million will be disbursed.  The ATP3 partnership is led by the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI) housed at ASU’s Polytechnic campus with support from national labs and academic and industrial partners, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Cellana LLC, Touchstone Research Laboratory, SRS Energy, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and Commercial Algae Management. read more