April 2010 Archives

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that he is dispatching a team of attorneys from multiple divisions within the Justice Department to New Orleans to meet with the U.S. Attorney and response teams and to monitor the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The British Petroleum oil spill has already cost lives and created a major environmental incident," said Attorney General Holder. "The Justice Department stands ready to make available every resource at our disposal to vigorously enforce the laws that protect the people who work and reside near the Gulf, the wildlife, the environment and the American taxpayers."

The team will be led by Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, and will include relevant United States Attorneys. The combined group from the Department plans to make a site visit and meet with representatives from federal agencies working on the response.

A coordinated response continues with a comprehensive oil well intervention and spill-response plan following the April 22, 2010 sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. More than 1,000 personnel from federal, state and local agencies are involved in the response effort both on and offshore, with additional resources being mobilized as needed.

SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice

E.ON has placed an order with Siemens Energy for the supply of 87 2.3-MW SWT-2.3-101 wind turbines for the Papalote Creek II wind power plant in San Patricio County, Texas. With a total installed rated capacity of more than 200 megawatts (MW), the Papalote Creek II wind farm is expected to provide clean power to approximately 60,000 households.

"With this new project, E.ON and Siemens continue their great partnership in the wind power business," said Jan Kjaersgaard, vice president and general manager of Siemens Energy's Wind Power Americas business. Siemens is already one of the top three wind turbine suppliers in the U.S. According to the American Wind Energy Association's year-end 2009 market report, Siemens installed more than 1,160 MW out of the more than 10,000 MW installed total in the U.S. in 2009.

"We are delighted to partner with Siemens in the next phase of our Papalote Creek II wind farm in south Texas," said Steve Trenholm, CEO, E.ON Climate & Renewables North America. "This project will create more than 300 temporary jobs and provide an investment of more than $300 million to the local tax base. E.ON is pleased to make this investment and help further the growth of the U.S. renewables market."  

E.ON and Siemens have partnered on several U.S. wind farm projects in the past. Siemens supplied 54 2.3-MW units for E.ON's Forest Creek wind farm near Big Spring, Texas, in 2006 and 55 2.3-MW wind turbines for the Champion wind farm in Nolan County, Texas, in 2007.

The Siemens scope of supply for the Papalote Creek II wind power plant includes delivery and transportation of the 87 SWT-2.3-101 wind turbines with a rated capacity of 2.3 MW each. With a diameter of 101 meters, the rotor of the new SWT-2.3-101 has a swept area of 8,000 square meters, which equals one-and-a-half football fields. Delivery is expected to begin in May 2010 and the wind farm is expected to be commissioned in the fall of 2010. Siemens also will provide service and maintenance for two years.

To better meet the increasing demand for clean energy in the Americas, Siemens is currently constructing its wind turbine assembly facility in Hutchinson, Kansas, which is scheduled to become operational in December 2010. The 300,000-square-foot wind turbine nacelle facility is expected to employ up to approximately 400 "green-collar" employees. Siemens also recently expanded its 600,000-square-foot blade manufacturing facilities in Fort Madison, Iowa, which it opened in 2007. The blades for the Papalote Creek II wind power plant will be manufactured in Fort Madison, Iowa.

Wind power is part of Siemens' Environmental Portfolio. In fiscal 2009, revenue from the Portfolio totaled approximately EUR23 billion, making Siemens the world's largest supplier of environmentally friendly technologies. In the same period, the company's products and solutions enabled customers to reduce their CO2 emissions by 210 million tons. This amount equals the combined annual CO2 emissions of New York, Tokyo, London and Berlin.

The Siemens Energy Sector is the world's leading supplier of a complete spectrum of products, services and solutions for the generation, transmission and distribution of power and for the extraction, conversion and transport of oil and gas. In fiscal 2009 (ended September 30), the Energy Sector had revenues of approximately EUR25.8 billion and received new orders totaling approximately EUR30 billion and posted a profit of EUR3.3 billion. On September 30, 2009, the Energy Sector had a work force of approximately 85,100. Further information is available at: www.siemens.com/energy.

E.ON Climate & Renewables (EC&R) is responsible for the E.ON group's renewable energy and environmental protection activities around the world. Tapping renewable energy sources offers enormous alternatives, both from a business perspective and for the environment. E.ON Climate & Renewables will be investing EUR8 billion in renewable energy and environmental protection projects from 2007 - 2011 to expand the share of renewable energy in E.ON's portfolio for the long term. E.ON has thus taken a leading role in developing renewable energy sources worldwide. For more information, please visit www.eon.com/renewables.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by E.ON Group management and other information currently available to E.ON. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. E.ON AG does not intend, and does not assume any liability whatsoever, to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

SOURCE Siemens Energy, Inc.

According to the Energy Information Administration, buildings already consume a third of energy worldwide, and world energy consumption is predicted to grow 60 percent by 2030.

To increase energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact, many building teams now incorporate renewable energy technologies into new construction and renovation projects.

Renewable energy technologies capture, store and deliver power derived from renewable resources, including sun, wind, water, the earth's core and plant matter. Because they do not depend on finite resources, renewable energies can increase stability in the power grid. Plus, there are state government incentives available to help fund many renewable installations.

At the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) Green Technologies Conference, Jim Knutson, comprehensive solutions director at Trane, will discuss emerging energy tools and technologies for high-performance buildings, their application and results. Knutson will also cover design stage tools and those specific to building construction, performance, operation and renovation. These will include:

• Energy modeling and analysis
• Solar/photovoltaic, geothermal, co-generation and thermal storage
• Infrared thermography, ultrasonic analysis and vibration transducers

Conference attendees will learn the benefits of these technologies and how they can be used to increase operational efficiency and sustainability while reducing energy consumption.

Details of this presentation:

When: Friday, April 16 at 11 a.m. (Conference is April 15-16)

Where: Mustang 6 room in Gaylord Texas Resort and Convention Center, Grapevine, Texas

Conference Web site: http://www.ieeegreentech.org/

The second annual IEEE Green Technologies Conference will feature a variety of papers, presentations and technical seminars on current and emerging topics related specifically to the development and use of green technologies.

Jim Knutson, director of comprehensive solutions for Trane, leads a Denver, Colo.-based team in serving new construction and retrofit customers in six states: Colorado, Nevada, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. Knutson has over 27 years of experience providing energy efficiency and contracting solutions for federal, state and local government, K-12/higher education, commercial and industrial clients.

Knutson is a current board member of the Energy Efficient Business Coalition and a member of the Energy Services Coalition, Association of Energy Engineers and the Cogeneration & On-Site Power Association. He played a key role in drafting energy efficiency legislation in 10 states over the past 15 years. He also assisted in the development of the energy performance contracting M&V protocol used now as the standard in many states. He has a bachelor of arts in Business Administration from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn.

Trane, a business of Ingersoll Rand - the world leader in creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and energy efficient environments - improves the performance of homes and buildings around the world. Trane solutions optimize indoor environments with a broad portfolio of energy efficient heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, building and contracting services, parts support and advanced controls for homes and commercial buildings.  For more information, visit www.Trane.com.

Contrary to some prevailing opinion, reprocessing would not eliminate the need for a deep geologic disposal program to replace Yucca Mountain. It aggravates waste, proliferation, and cost problems. The volume of waste to be disposed of in deep geologic repository is increased about six times on a life-cycle basis in the French approach compared to the once-through no-reprocessing approach of the United States.

A new report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nonprofit scientific research group, shows that France uses less than 1 percent of the natural uranium resource, contrary to an impression among some policy makers. The report has several recommendations for President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which was created to address U.S. nuclear waste issues after the administration's cancellation of the Yucca Mountain program.

IEER President Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the author of the report: "In recent years, a 'French fever' has gripped the promoters of nuclear power in the United States. Praise of France's management of spent fuel by reprocessing, including its use of the extracted plutonium as fuel in its nuclear power reactors, is now routinely heard. But it is a fantasy on the scale of the 1950s "too cheap to meter" mythology about nuclear power to imagine that 90 or 95 percent of the "energy value" of U.S. spent fuel can be extracted by reprocessing."

Key IEER report findings include the following:

• On a life-cycle basis, French-style reprocessing and recycle increases the volume of waste that would have to disposed of in a geologic repository. Reprocessing results in high-level radioactive waste and large volumes of Greater than Class C waste, both of which must be managed by deep geologic disposal. Their combined volume on a life-cycle basis is estimated to be about six times more than the no-reprocessing approach that is current U.S. policy, according to Department of Energy estimates. Low-level waste volume and waste transportation shipments are also estimated to increase several-fold.
• France spends about two cents per kilowatt-hour more for electricity generated from reprocessed plutonium compared to that generated from fresh uranium fuel.
• Attempting to combined reprocessing with breeder reactors to convert uranium in U.S. spent fuel in plutonium will create intolerable costs and risks. Reprocessing plus breeder reactors are much more expensive than light water reactors today, which are themselves expensive. Such a system is required to convert most of the uranium in spent fuel into a reactor fuel. Even a single penny in excess generation cost per kilowatt-hour in a breeder reactor-reprocessing system would lead to an added $8 trillion in costs to convert nearly all of the uranium in the 100,000 metric tons of U.S. spent into usable fuel. It would take hundreds of years to accomplish the task and require separation of tens of thousands of bombs equivalent of fissile material each year. The proliferation risks will be far greater than today.
• Adoption of French-style reprocessing program would not eliminate the need for a deep geologic repository. Even complete fissioning of all actinides - an unrealistic proposition - will leave behind large amounts of very long-lived fission and activation products like iodine-129, cesium-135, and chlorine-36 that will pose risks far into the future -- much beyond the 24,100-year half-life of plutonium-239. In fact, France needs a geologic repository and opposition to one has been intense there. The French appear to dislike nuclear waste in their backyards as much as people in the United States.
• Proliferation risks are inherently part of the French (and any other) approach to reprocessing. Even advanced reprocessing technologies will not significantly reduce proliferation risks. For instance a study authored by scientists from DOE laboratories, including Los Alamos and Sandia, concluded that it would take only a few days or a few weeks for proliferant country to make material for nuclear bombs once it had reprocessing plants. It found that new technologies, including electrometallurgical processing, resulted in "only a modest improvement in reducing proliferation risk over existing PUREX technologies and these modest improvements apply primarily for non-state actors." The IEER report concluded that electrometallurgical increases risks in other ways. For instance, it is far less difficult to conceal a plant than the present PUREX technology.

Other key findings include the following:

• Six decades of sodium cooled breeder reactor development has so far resulted in failure. Historical experience indicates no learning curve for the sodium cooled fast breeder reactor, which is the breeder technology that has received the most development. In fact, the two most recent large scale demonstration reactors, Superphénix in France and Monju in Japan, have been failures. Superphénix had a cumulative capacity factor of less than 8 percent before it was shut. Monju has been closed for almost 15 years, following a sodium fire, and has not generated a significant amount of electricity. Sodium cooled breeder reactors are not commercial today despite global expenditures on the order of $100 billion over six decades. They face a host of safety, proliferation and cost hurdles to overcome, some arising from the fact that they use liquid sodium for cooling. They are unlikely to be commercial in the near future. For instance, Japan's estimated date for commercialization of the sodium cooled fast breeder is 2050.
• Storage of liquid high-level wastes creates some risk of catastrophic releases of radioactivity. For instance, the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority has estimated that a severe accident at the liquid waste storage facility in Sellafield, Britain, could result in cesium-137 contamination between 10 percent and 5,000 percent of that created in Norway by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident, which is the worst commercial accident to date, by far. A catastrophic release of radioactivity from a military high-level waste tank occurred in the Soviet Union in 1957.
• Using more than 1 percent of the uranium resource in a light water reactor system is technically impossible even with reprocessing and re-enrichment. In light water reactor systems, almost all the uranium resource winds up as depleted uranium or in spent fuel. Even with repeated reprocessing and re-enrichment, use of the natural uranium resource cannot be increased to more than 1 percent in such a system. A corollary is that the use of 90 to 95 percent of the uranium resource or of the material in the spent fuel is impossible in a light water reactor system even with reprocessing.

These are physical constraints that go with the system and also apply to France's system.

The IEER report also sets out a number of recommendations for the Blue Ribbon Commission on

America's Nuclear Future appointed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

• Spent fuel from existing reactors should be slated for direct geologic disposal without reprocessing of any kind; a suitable path for a scientifically sound program should be set forth.
• In the interim, spent fuel should be stored on site as safely as possible - in low density configurations while in pools and in hardened storage when moved to dry casks.
• Breeder reactors and reprocessing are not commercial after six decades of development of sodium cooled breeder reactors, and enormous expenditures. Given the long time frame for commercialization estimated even by some promoters, the proliferation risks, and efforts already made, it does not appear to be a good investment to spend more R&D money in that direction. Rather energy supply R&D resources should be focused on development and deployment of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency.
• The Commission should request the French company AREVA and/or the French government to supply it with data on the present use of the natural uranium resource purchased for French nuclear reactors, including, specifically, the increases in fission fraction that have actually been achieved by reprocessing and recycling.
• The Commission should also request official data on Greater than Class C waste equivalent expected to be generated on a life-cycle basis in France, and the total volumes and heat generation of packaged waste expected to be disposed of in a deep geologic repository, including estimates of decommissioning waste.
• The Commission should investigate the public support or lack thereof for repository programs in France and Britain, the countries with the longest history of commercial spent fuel reprocessing.
• The Commission should make the same requests regarding the British reprocessing program.
• Official analyses of the mechanisms, probability, and consequences of large accidental releases of radioactivity to the atmosphere from liquid high-level waste storage in tanks should be requested from the French and British governments.

Western Wind Energy Corp. ("Western Wind" or the "Company") announced today its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2009.

Highlights for the Year:

    -   Raised $6.3 million in new equity.
    -   Received zoning approval for its 120MW Windstar wind energy project.
    -   Engaged a senior lender to provide $200m in financing for Windstar
        subject to final lender approval.
    -   Entered into a turbine reservation order for Windstar with a leading
        turbine supplier.
    -   Received a 24 year extension of the Mesa land lease and the right to
        repower and expand.
    -   Secured an 11MW PPA for a combined wind and solar project in Arizona.
    -   Signed an amendment to the Windstar PPA that updates the terms to
        reflect the current market conditions and completion schedule.
    -   Secured additional prime wind and solar resource land in Tehachapi,
        California.

Subsequent to the year end:

    -   Closed two loan agreements with institutional investors for a total
        of $2.5 million.
    -   Selected a Institutionally recognized EPC - BOP contractor for
        Windstar
    -   Commenced Engineering, design and preliminary construction on
        Windstar

2009 FINANCIAL RESULTS

The Company is pleased to announce a 10% increase in electricity production to 58,859 MWh for the year ended December 31, 2009 compared to 53,579 MWh for the year ended December 31, 2008. However lower natural gas prices led to a decrease in the average Short Run Avoided Cost electricity selling prices which resulted in revenues decreasing 45% to $2,798,496 compared to $5,116,652 for the year ended December 31, 2009. Net loss from continuing operations increased from $4,993,000, or fifteen cents ($0.15) per share, for the year ended December 31, 2008 to a net loss of $5,023,162, or twelve three cents ($0.12) per share. The slight increase in net loss from continuing operations for the period was due to lower revenues and no interest recovery in 2009, which were mostly offset by a $1,400,182 (34%) decrease in general and administration costs and decreases in foreign exchange losses and amortization. Net loss for the year was $5,023,162, or twelve cents ($0.12) per share, compared to a net loss of $2,269,275, or seven cents ($0.07) per share, for the prior year. Net loss last year included income from discontinued operations of $2,724,047 primarily relating to a one-time US$3,000,000 reduction of the loan principal due to the Mesa loan repayment before the agreed upon repayment date of June 24, 2008. The net gain recorded was $2,900,000 after taking into account a Mesa Loan extension fee of $100,000.

Although electricity production for the three months ended December 31, 2009 was similar to the same period in the prior year, the decrease in average Short Run Avoided Cost electricity selling prices resulted in revenues decreasing 53% to $321,952 from $687,666 for the three months ended December 31, 2008. Despite the drop in revenues, net loss for the three months ended December 31, 2009 improved 33% to $1,512,001 or two cents ($0.02) per share compared to a net loss of $2,251,537 or seven cents ($0.07) per share for the comparable period in 2008 due primarily to a reduction in amortization, stock based compensation and travel expenses.

The Company's financial position continued to strengthen as cash increased from $1,817,371 as at December 31, 2008 to $1,882,152 as at December 31, 2009. Shareholders equity improved 11% from $22,442,493 last year to $24,843,162 primarily as a result of $6.3 million of new equity from the issue of shares and warrants.

The information in this news release should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2009, prepared in accordance with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles, and the Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2009. The financial statements and MD&A will be available at the Company's website at www.westernwindenergy.com and at www.sedar.com.

Western Wind is a vertically integrated renewable energy electrical production company that currently owns over 500 wind turbines with 34.5 MW of rated capacity and a further 131MW of expansion power purchase agreements in the States of California and Arizona. Western Wind further owns additional development assets for both Solar and Wind Energy in California, Arizona, Ontario, Canada and a development team in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Western Wind is in the business of owning and acquiring land sites and technology for the production of electricity from wind and solar energy. Management of Western Wind Energy includes individuals involved in the operations and ownership of utility scale wind energy facilities in California since 1981.