Week in Renewables: Climategate Continued, Cheaper Solar, Biochar Fraud

(MoneyWatch)  This year's Thanksgiving week proved great for climate change skeptics, lousy for climatologists. The so-called Climategate emails from the United Kingdom's Climate Research Unit received an increasing amount of attention as the week went on, provoking a variety of negative reactions.

So far, the only tangible consequences are an inquiry led by Sen. James Inhofe and a suit filed against NASA, and many of the arguments that the emails explode the science of climate change have been insubstantial. But the scandal isn't ready to disappear yet. Searchers are just beginning to delve into some of the data that came with the emails, which may reveal some of the inner workings of climate science.

Until these investigations are complete, it will be hard to tell how much of an effect Climategate will have on the politics of climate change and the renewables industry. The biggest effect -- and the one that skeptics are hoping for -- would be reduced commitment from the United States in the Copenhagen climate treaty process.

Copenhagen is already dragging on, a processs that BNET blogger Kirsten Korosec has written more about in our weekly oil and gas roundup. China and India, the largest developing nations, appear firm in their resistance to any CO2 reduction. The United States, for its part, is resistant to deep cuts.

The biggest moves to date have come from smaller countries -- a trend that California, which sometimes seems to regard itself as a separate entity from the U.S., followed by releasing a new cap-and-trade plan that would reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. If adopted the plan will take effect in 2012.

Solar power achieved what are perhaps its largest cost reduction in history this year, helped along by the recession. A study by New Energy Finance shows a 50 percent drop in cost per kilowatt hour for solar panels through 2009. Supply has soared in the face of steady demand, which snagged on the lack of available financing.

Bright spots still appear on a regular basis, though. Abengoa, a large renewable energy company, just announced a partnership with utility E.ON to build two large solar thermal power plants in Spain.

Spurred in part by a growing solar industry, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that it is looking for ways to cope with the costs and challenges of a new electricity distribution network. The FERC was disallowed this year from "socializing" the costs for new transmission, a barrier to a new national network.

Hydrogen technology got a couple of boosts. Sun Catalytix, a company started by MIT professor Daniel Nocera to produce and store hydrogen, was funded with $3 million. Scientists from the Carnegie Institution also announced a new high-pressure storage method for hydrogen, using the unreactive gas xenon.

Finally, the nascent biochar industry took a hit, as Mantria Industries was taken to court by the SEC for an alleged "Ponzi scheme" involving fraudulent claims meant to get investments from the elderly.