Week in Renewables: Clean Energy Incentives and Brewing Political Storms

(MoneyWatch)  With the United States' two major CO2-penalizing bills limping through Senate, new legislation and programs aimed instead at rewarding clean energy are popping up everywhere.

Earlier this week I mentioned the European Commission's idea to invest almost $100 billion over ten years to research renewables. That's not where the fun ended, though. California, looking for a better way to spur solar energy along, also used this week to set up a Euro-style feed-in tariff for solar power, guaranteeing producers a higher rate.

The Department of Energy joined in too, setting up about $8 billion more in loan guarantees for renewable energy. And approvals for new projects continue apace.

Maine, for one, chose this week to approve its first large wind project. Pike Research expects more than 40,000 new wind turbines to go up in the U.S. over the next five years.

Further afield, the United Arab Emirates, whose member states hold some of the largest oil reserves in the world, also bought into carbon-free energy by setting up a new nuclear power regulatory body to determine rules (the country won't refine its own uranium) and oversee a pair of new plants costing $40 billion.

Despite the growing popularity of renewable energy incentives to wean countries off fossil fuel, they don't always work. Cellulosic ethanol production is failing to meet government mandates; even with heavy investment, the technology isn't ready to go, at least at the current price of oil.

And even if oil rises enough to make second-generation biofuels viable, it won't provide a sufficient kick to get the electric car industry into gear, according to Lux Research. The analyst firm's newest report reckons that it would take $200 a barrel oil for very many electric cars to sell, at least in the short term.

Still, the most important problem right now is in politics, not technology. The climate bill, like healthcare, is busy metastasizing into multiple bills. First there was Waxman-Markey, then Kerry-Boxer, and now Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has her own version, which comes in at a slim 32 pages -- 1,395 fewer than Waxman-Markey.

Whichever gets the most support, the political battles are likely to continue. Calls for tariffs have cropped up again, with some Democrats demanding a tax on goods from countries that don't regulate CO2.

That's a measure that is sure to cause international headaches, and present yet another stumbling block for the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations.