Beyond that challenge, though, is another one that doesn’t always get as much public attention: how to incorporate the impact of renewables into energy trading markets.

Making our power grids “smarter” and cleaner can affect energy trading markets in a number of ways. For one, by creating so-called “supergrids” that connect many smaller and more local grids, energy buyers and sellers will have a wider, more competitive market open to them … with all sorts of new implications for prices.

For example, the Tres Amigas SuperStation project being developed in the southwestern US will link three regional grids that until now have operated as virtual energy islands, with little electricity exchanged among them. Once in place (the project is set to begin early operations in 2015), those links have the potential to “revolutionize” US power markets, according to Tres Amigas LLC.

“The SuperStation’s ability to transmit, for the first time ever, significant amounts of power across the three main US interconnections will increase the value of regional transmission investments, both in place and planned, due to the newly created enhanced ability to use those assets,” the developer says.

Managing and selling all that power through a single hub will also make it possible, for instance, for energy-hungry cities on the East Coast to purchase electricity generated by solar farms in the Southwest. That could encourage more development of wind and solar in areas where local demands alone aren’t enough to justify further building.

Enabling such wider-reaching, more competitive energy markets will take wider-reaching, more advanced data sharing and analytical capabilities as well. Tres Amigas, for example, is partnering with Mitsui to help ensure its smart-grid system is backed with plenty of smart computing as well.

As Tres Amigas president, chairman and CEO Philip Harris has said, “Apart from the purely electrical engineering aspects of the project, the commercial operation of the SuperStation requires intensive use of information systems and technology, as well as management of large-scale infrastructure.”

The giant energy and infrastructure company Siemens also sees opportunity in support for smarter, more nimble energy markets. It announced today that it’s collaborating with IT services provider Atos to together develop integrated software for optimizing both power generation and energy trading. The joint development is “designed to significantly boost the profitability of power generation and trading by optimizing the bid creation and by providing a seamless data flow at IT level. This furthermore saves costs for integration and reduces the project risks.”

“The cooperation with Atos puts us in a position to offer our customers an IT solution that covers their entire value chain,” said Jan Mrosik, CEO of the smart-grid division in Siemens’ Infrastructure and Cities Sector. “At the same time, a single source of supply reduces the project risk significantly when introducing or exchanging tools of this type.”

The Siemens-Atos “joint Resource Optimization and Scheduler” (jROS) “offers a seamless data flow between generation planning and energy trading, allowing faster decisions to be made in the bidding process on energy exchanges and for bilateral trading.”

In his State of the Union address late last month, President Barack Obama spent a lot of time outlining plans for a more energy-independent, “all-energy-sources-go” US. And while he didn’t specifically mention the Commerce Department’s ongoing investigation into solar-cell “dumping” by China, he did announce the launch of a new Trade Enforcement Unit and added, “There will be more inspections …”

Now, as OilPrice.com notes, “it’s wind power’s turn.”

Asking whether a US-China “energy trade war” is imminent, OilPrice.com’s John Daly writes that Commerce is targeting for investigation China’s imports of utility-scale wind towers to the US. He adds:

“What is surprising about the brewing dispute is the relatively minor amounts of money involved … (A)ccording to US Customs statistics, in 2010 China’s wind technology exports were worth a paltry $104 million.”

That small figure would certainly seem to suggest there’s some “fight-picking” going on in international trade officialdom. However, another theory is floated by Liu Pengxuwhen, deputy director of the legal services division for the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.

Pengxuwhen says, “(S)ince the US presidential election is around the corner, we noted that the US government continuously makes speeches on domestic alternative energy policies, expressing support for its alternative energy industry. In connection with such a political environment, we are convinced that the United States’ launch of the ‘anti-dumping and anti-subsidy’ investigation is inevitably connected with political considerations.”

Hmm … might he be onto something there? Read more details at OilPrice.com and decide for yourself.

For all the challenges the clean-power sector has faced in the past year — fast-dropping prices for solar panels, stiff competition from Chinese manufacturers and a number of high-profile bankruptcies — renewables have not only proven themselves in the market, but in some cases (as with solar) are coming close to price parity with traditional fossil fuels. That’s good for the environment and consumers  … if not always for the companies that make and install clean-energy technologies.

The market has now clearly moved into the maturing stage, with lots of action in mergers and acquisitions last year: a record $53.5 billion in deals in 2011, according to PwC. That’s 40 percent more than in 2010 ($38.2 billion). Of all the deals last year, one out of three involved solar energy.

If renewables were already enjoying good momentum, they got an extra boost following the March 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, which set in motion the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster that’s still ongoing. In the wake of the nuclear plant disaster, countries like Germany and multinationals like Siemens have both announced plans to abandon nuclear power.

Nor are continued economic uncertainties, especially in Europe, likely to dampen development of the clean-energy industry into 2012 and beyond. By now, there’s enough big money in the sector to keep the renewables ship moving forward despite financial headwinds.

“Staying out of the markets in the hope things will improve cannot be assumed to be the right strategy,” said Paul Nillesen, a partner at PwC renewable. “The potential for further destabilization domestically, or at an inter-governmental level cannot be ruled out, but if a deal is highly strategic, and mission critical, then parties will still feel it is worth doing on the right terms.”

Coming into office with the promise to build the “greenest government ever,” Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition has instead drawn an increasing amount of fire from environmentalists, clean-energy advocates and others calling for a more sustainable Britain. In the case of the government’s proposal late last year to abruptly cut incentives for solar-panel installations in half, even the country’s High Court of Appeals is crying “foul.”

A three-judge panel found today that the government’s claim that it could reduce those incentives at will ahead of the predetermined expiration date “offends the legality principle.”

Friends of the Earth, the UK-based solar-energy firm Solar Century and several other parties last year filed suit against Chris Huhne, the government’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, after his agency — the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) — announced plans to halve the feed-in tariff (FIT) rates ahead of schedule for homeowners who installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. The news threw solar-energy companies into an uproar: the sudden reduction, they said, created massive uncertainty for the market and threatened to kill Britain’s nascent solar-power industry just as it was moving from a crawl to a walk.

DECC claims the move was prompted by the overwhelming response to the solar incentive. With so many homeowners taking advantage of the tariff, DECC said its budget would be quickly exhausted if tariff rates weren’t cut.

The ironic part in all this is that the feed-in tariffs were already scheduled to adjust to a lower rate early this year.

While Friends of the Earth is hailing the court’s latest ruling, it’s also urging the government to give up the opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“This would extend the uncertainty for the industry,” a Friends of the Earth statement read.

Huhne, on the other hand, is criticizing the court’s decision and said DECC is seeking permission to appeal.

“We want to maximize the number of installations that are possible within the available budget rather than use available money to pay a higher tariff to half the number of installations,” he said in a statement. “Solar PV can have strong and vibrant future in UK and we want a lasting FITs scheme to support that future and jobs in the industry.”

Challenging this latest ruling in court yet again, though? Looks like a pretty strange way to show your “support.”

And that’s cause for concern in an era when energy and carbon have become critically important issues for politicians to tackle. So it’s good to see that the International Energy Agency (IEA) actually offers courses for officials and others who want to learn about things like energy security, markets, sustainability and technology.

This year’s IEA Energy Training Week, which actually lasts just five days, is set for April 2 through 6 in Paris.

During that time, the agency will run seven English-language courses, including introductory classes on oil and gas market basics and on the basics of energy efficiency and renewable energy. While the program targets leaders in developing economies, there are more than a few officials — from the US, in particular — we’d love to see in the IEA’s classrooms this spring. Then, again, the problem there is probably just as much money-related (ie, hundreds of millions of dollars in oil, gas and coal lobbying) as education-related.

But oil drilling is what more and more US citizens might soon be finding during their back-to-nature getaways.

Faced with steep cuts in government funding, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission this week gave its director the go-ahead to negotiate a surface use agreement and lease with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. The deal would allow Anadarko to drill multiple horizontal wells from one pad in the 688-acre St. Vrain State Park.

According to a report in the Denver Business Journal, granting drilling rights to Anadarko is aimed at raising revenues to make up for steep cuts in state government funding. General fund support for state parks has dropped from $7.1 million in 2009 to zero, the journal reported.

Ohio legislators last summer also approved oil and gas drilling in state parks, and created a new commission to oversee the leasing process across the state.

Such a program — called on-bill repayment — could hold the secret to finally getting more homeowners to invest in household energy-efficiency improvements. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which has outlined just such a plan for the state of California, says the system could overcome the biggest obstacles currently facing home-focused energy-efficiency projects:

• Penny-pinching homeowners find it hard to shell out upfront cash for efficiency improvements, even if those more than pay for themselves over time. Owners of apartment buildings and commercial structures are also reluctant to make such investments, since their tenants are the ones who would reap the benefits of lower energy bills.
• On-bill repayment would make improvements with longer-term returns — rooftop solar panels, for example — more palatable by spreading out payments over a longer-term as well.
• Attaching the cost of energy efficiency work to utility bills gives building owners, as the EDF says, “a very strong incentive” to repay … as most people don’t enjoy having their electricity cut off for non-payment.

The California Public Utility Commission believes the idea is promising and has set a public comment period and workshops to explore the program. With a commission decision possible this April, a statewide program for on-bill repayment could begin as early as 2013, according to the EDF.

Reuters reports that five deep wells used for the disposal of “fracking fluid” — a liquid cocktail of chemicals used to open up underground shale gas formations in a process known as “hydrofracturing” — have been closed in the wake of a number of earthquakes in the area around Youngstown, Ohio.

The most recent quake, reported around 3:05 pm local time on Saturday, Dec. 31, measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). While there were no reports of damage, some 4,735 people responded using the USGS “Did You Feel It?” website.

According to Reuters, Northstar Disposal Services first began injecting used fracking fluid into disposal wells in December of 2010. The first earthquake in the region was reported in March of 2011.

It’s all enough to make Prime Minister David Cameron wish he had never pledged to usher in “the greenest government ever” when his coalition began leading in 2010.

Yes, Britain’s base of renewable energy has expanded over the past year. The government reported last week that consumption of green energy rose by 27 percent from 2008 to 2010 (although, buried in the fine print is the fact that solar, hydro and wind/wave/tidal energy actually declined under Cameron’s watch … from 5.3 terawatt-hours in 2009 to 3.6 terawatt-hours in 2010). And Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, points to plans in the coming financial year for £2.5 billion worth of investment in renewable energy projects in the UK, with the potential to create almost 12,000 jobs.

At the same time, though, the government is trying to slash incentives — in the form of feed-in tariffs — for small-scale solar energy projects such as rooftop photovoltaics, a move that late last month was declared illegal by the country’s High Court. Solar industry executives such as Solarcentury’s Jeremy Leggett have called that decision an “absurdity” that threatens to bankrupt homegrown solar companies and put 25,000 people out of work. (Cameron’s government has until this Wednesday, Jan. 4, to appeal the High Court’s finding.)

While promising to meet EU goals of generating 15 percent of its energy from clean sources by 2020, Britain has also just issued 46 new licenses to explore for oil and gas in the North Sea, with Energy Minister Charles Hendry saying he looks forward to a “prosperous” 2012 for the nation’s fossil-fuel sector.

For a country where the latest statistics show that one in four citizens is experiencing “fuel poverty,” it would seem to make sense to try and squeeze every last kilowatt of energy possible from every source, low-carbon or otherwise. But how then to explain the attempt to strangle the domestic burgeoning solar industry in its infancy? Two phrases come to mind for a nation aggressively pursuing austerity measures at the same time it’s trying to boost energy security: “penny-wise and pound-foolish” and “desperate.”

1. Who’s the leading smart-city brand? Which companies are leading the way in helping the world’s cities become smarter, more connected and more efficient? This article provided an overview of our study, “The Greenbang Smart Matrix™ – Smart Cities: How brands compare on marketing vs. capability in the smart-city space.” The key finding? There remain a number of disconnects and opportunities between what companies do and what they say they do.
2. US funds tallest molten salt tower in the world. A look at the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 100-megawatt molten salt concentrating solar power tower plant under development in Nevada. The SolarReserve project, backed by a $737 million loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DOE), will be the first facility of its kind in the US. The solar plant will store extra energy in molten salt, in effect allowing it to continue providing sun-generated electricity to the grid even at night.
3. What energy innovations will lead the way in 2012? This post described five startups vying for the US Department of Energy title of “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator.” They include Vorbeck Materials, which is working to develop lithium-ion batteries store that can twice as much electricity at high charge and discharge rates as current technology; TrakLok, which is using GPS technology and satellite communications to track and monitor containers in transit; IPAT, a firm researching methods for lower-cost, more efficient titanium powder-making; e-Chromic, which is working to develop a new thin-film window material that reflects sunlight on demand; and Umpqua Energy, a company developing a system that lets a gasoline engine operate in an “extreme lean burn mode” for improved gas mileage.
4. Taipei boasts world’s greenest skyscraper: TAIPEI 101. A  profile of the 1,667-foot (508-meter) tower in Taipei that’s earned the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification, the highest level for energy efficiency and environmental design. Innovative design and technology enables the tower to use 30 percent less energy than the average skyscraper, reducing energy costs by some $700,000 a year.
5. From inspired to awful: 8 definitions of smart buildings. What makes a building “smart”? This article looks at definitions from eight different organizations, with descriptions ranging from the dry — “A smart building is the integration of building, technology and energy systems” — to the elegant: “solutions that turn buildings into living organisms: networked, intelligent, sensitive and adaptable.”
6. Incentives fire up UK solar market. A summary of the Greenbang report, “The UK’s Feed-in Tariff: Impact, response and market trends for the decade ahead.” The study found that the British government’s now-threatened feed-in tariff for renewable energy projects helped spark the installation of more than 10,000 solar photovoltaic arrays — most of them on household rooftops — in just six months.
7. In land of photovoltaics, Europe is king. A look at the latest growth in the world’s solar photovoltaic market, with Europe dominating in terms of installed capacity. Germany is the undisputed leader, having added 6.5 gigawatts of new capacity to an existing installed base of 9.8 gigawatts.
8. Smart meters, demand response exert growing impact in US. A look at how both demand response and advanced energy metering are spreading rapidly across the US. By June 2011, 13.4 percent of electricity meters in the US — 9.7 million in all — featured advanced “smart” technologies, compared to 8.7 percent in 2009. Demand response programs have also increased significantly, with the potential nationwide capacity growing from 27,189 megawatts (MW) in 2009 to 31,702 MW in 2010.
9. Futuristic lighting tech that’s here now. Images and descriptions of some of the latest innovations in modern, energy-efficient lighting, from light bulbs that can be wirelessly controlled with Android devices to a lighting control and energy management system that uses power line carrier (PLC) technology to communicate over existing power lines.
10. “Age of cheap energy is over”: IEA chief. Nobuo Tanaka, then chief of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says the world is at a point where a global energy makeover can’t come fast enough. “The age of cheap energy is over,” he said. “The only question now is, will the extra rent from dearer energy go to an ever smaller circle of producers, or will it be directed back into the domestic economies of the consumers, with the added benefits of increased environmental sustainability?”