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SPI Solar and Nugen

SPI Solar, a leading developer of photovoltaic solar energy facilities recently announced it has entered into an engineering, procurement and construction contract with EPC contractor for a 1.69MW DC photovoltaic solar project in the great state of New Jersey. The system is a roof-mounted distributed generation system for on-site power consumption. The project is to be operated by NuGen Capital Management, LLC, through a subsidiary owned by NUGEN.

The SEF being constructed by SPI will be connected to five independent meters serving tenants at the complex owned by North Jersey Development Group, Inc. SPI has recently worked with NuGen on the 5-megawatt White Rose Foods project that is under construction now in New Jersey.

NuGen works with large-scale energy users and real estate owners to own, develop and operate commercial-scale PV solar systems.

Solar Power, Inc. is a vertically integrated photovoltaic solar developer with its own kind of high-quality, low-cost distributed generation and utility-scale solar energy facility development services.

NuGen Capital Management was founded in 2009 investing in commercial scale solar systems. NuGen develops its own projects and partners with other developers in its pursuit to operate and own solar systems. Working with large scale energy users and real estate owners, NuGen serves the long term energy and economic needs of its clients.

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Solar Energy in Seville

Solar Seville

Solar SevilleSeville, Spain is hosting the first commercial operation of solar tower technology, which features more than 1,000 freestanding heliostat mirrors, following the arc of the sun. In a process referred to as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), the mirrors reflect solar rays to the tower, where water is boiled, and steam generated in order to drive a turbine, that produces electricity. The electricity is then sold to the national grid.

To make this happen, Spain’s government has provided incentives and subsidies supporting the solar industry. The upfront investment is enormous, and most of the money goes into building the plant. The investor community tends to see solar plants as high risk. After the economics of scale are achieved, solar power is one of the cheapest sources of energy. The report also makes the argument that it is quite difficult to detect the value of solar power currently.

When conventional sources of electricity are subsidized, it succeeds at artificially making them appear cheap. The magazine GOOD reported that “concentrated solar power…will be a core element of the transition from dirty coal to clean energy.”

Gus Schellekens of PricewaterhouseCoopers said:

“Solar has a huge role it can play, the fact that it’s an endless supply of energy…the one thing that’s needed to unlock much of that is the political leadership and will.”

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Report Shows Job Growth within the Green Sector

In an age where employment is touch-and-go for most economies, the green jobs sector is growing faster than any other. A Pew Charitable Trusts report on the Clean Energy Economy counted 770,000 jobs in all 50 states that met the “double bottom line” of economic growth and environmental sustainability. Clean energy economy jobs grew by 9.1% between 1998 and 2007, compared to the 3.7% in overall job growth in those years. Venture capital investment totaled $12.6 billion in the clean tech sector between 2006 and 2009.

A new report from the Global Climate Network predicts that the world’s eight leading economies will create 20 million new jobs between now and 2020. In the U.S. the stimulus package and the American Clean Energy and Security Act could help create as many as 1.9 million new green jobs in the period. The move to a “smart grid” could create 270,000 jobs and a further 138,000 if U.S. smart grid technologies are exported to a global market.

According to the Pew report, 65% of the national clean energy jobs in 2007 went to conservation and pollution mitigation. Clean energy accounted for 11.6% of new jobs in the period, energy efficiency for 9.5%, environmentally friendly production 7%, and training and support 6.8%. However, environmentally friendly production saw the most growth: up 67% from 1998 to 2007 (followed by clean energy, up 23%).

Of the top 10 clean-tech employers around the world identified by Clean Edge, four are in the U.S.: Illinois, Washington, Arkansas and California. Clean Edge defines the top five sectors for clean-tech jobs in the U.S.
In descending order they are:
Solar
Bio-fuels and Biomaterials
onservation and efficiency
Smart grid and wind power