Giles Parkinson at The Climate Spectator has a look at the Asian push into the renewable energy sector - Asia powers on.

One of the principal justifications for inaction on climate change and the go-slow on the transformation to low-emission technologies in developed nations such as the US, Canada and Australia, is that the major Asian economies are not doing their fair share.

If that is true, someone forget to tell Asia’s leading industrialists.

Over the past few weeks there have been numerous examples of the sort of transformation that has been taking place across north Asia – from Honda’s massive commitment to electric vehicles (now that the previous CEO who “didn’t like batteries” is gone), to Panasonic’s $10 billion buyout of Sanyo Electronics to consolidate its green technology investments. The heads of both Honda and Panasonic have said the transformation of their companies was a matter of survival – they would be soon out of business if they didn’t keep up with their rivals.

Last week, the South Korean shipping giant Daewoo Shipping announced that it aimed to source one third of its revenue from the wind energy industry by 2020 – just like that. That equates to $US7.5 billion from next to nothing ($US25 million) right now. It’s the equivalent of building an industrial giant nearly twice the size of Foster’s from scratch, and in just 10 years.

“It’s a very ambitious target and it won’t be easy,” chief strategy officer Koh Young Youl told Bloomberg. “Still, the market potential for wind power is very big, partly because there’s a lot of interest in going offshore as the space on land runs out.”

Daewoo plans to leverage its knowledge of the shipping industry to build, operate and service offshore wind installations, and is targeting Europe and the US too. The world’s largest ship-builder, Hyundai Heavy Industries, is also making major investments in wind and solar technologies.

But perhaps the trend towards clean energy and low-emission technologies is best summed up by the listed Chinese energy company China Longyuan Power Group, one of the “big five” energy producers in China that was the first to push into renewable energy in a major way.

The company still produces some 60 per cent of its energy from coal trading and coal-fired energy production, but that will quickly diminish as China Longyuan adds a further 2GW of wind power a year over the next three years, part of a staggering pipeline of 50GW (more than the nameplate capacity of Australia’s grid) of wind resources, including offshore installations.

Earlier this month it released its annual earnings, showing that wind accounts for 76 per cent of EBITDA, as wind energy attracts a 34 per cent higher tariff to coal-fired energy in China’s grid, and capital expenditure for its wind business outstrips that of coal by a factor of 50:1. The total capex budget for 2010 is $US2.9 billion (financing isn’t a problem in China and China Longyuan has borrowing costs in the range of 3.7-5.4 per cent).

The company also noted that the costs of wind turbines had fallen 10 per cent in the last year alone. China Longyuan is also pursuing developments in solar, geothermal and biomass energy solutions.

Stewart Taggart of Desertec Australia and the solar thermal desalination company Acquasol, has recently started a new branch of Desertec for Asia.

The Desertec Asia plan (linking Australian solar thermal power, geothermal power and wind / wave energy, along with natural gas and coal seam gas into an expanded east Asian energy grid featured local solar, wind, geothermal and hyrdo-power resources as well) is summarised below - more detail can be found at "A Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure".

Imagine an interconnected, pan-Asian electricity and natural gas Infrastructure.

The system would distribute electricity from solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy from Australia to China. Natural gas and hydro would fill the gaps. The vision is big. So is climate change.

In Europe, the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative proposes that a series of concentrating solar power plants in North Africa could power the region and export surplus electricity to Europe.

A similar network built in Asia would generate energy market efficiencies, spur innovation and increase energy security.

Following this path, Asia could end up with networked electricity and natural gas backbone that would serve the region into the 22nd Century.

The plan involves connecting Asia through a 6,000-8,000 kilometer electricity and natural gas transmission system stretching from southern Australia to Japan and South Korea.

Australian surplus concentrating solar power, geothermal, wind and wave energy, along with natural gas, would flow northward to Indonesia. There, it would be joined by Indonesia's surplus natural gas, geothermal and hydro power.

The combined energy supplies, joined by Malaysian hydro, southeast Asian biomass and Mekong wind, would then be transmitted to China, Japan and South Korea through a 'non-discriminatory, common-carrier' infrastructure operated like a toll road.

Further north, China's Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang provinces could contribute solar and wind energy. In the East Asian Sea, networked offshore wind farms and wave and tide machines would contribute more energy. Regional natural gas and hydro energy supplies would 'load balance' the entire system in a hemispheric network managed as an highly-efficient whole.

Competitively accessible, non-discriminatory, low-emission energy generated and delivered through a regionally-interconnected, Pan-Asian energy infrastructure represents a market-based solution to climate change.

Stewart made the closing address at the Clean Energy Expo Asia Conference 2009, describing the Desertec Asia plan. Part 1 is embedded below - click on the links for Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Reuters has a report on Asian efforts to expand production of coal seam gas - Asia's coal seam gas projects charge ahead, China leads.

Projects to exploit coal-bed methane (CBM), once the bane of miners, are surging in Asia, with China out front as it strives to find ways of satisfying its prodigious appetite for energy.

Industry players gathered at a conference in Singapore this week to explore opportunities in a region where CBM is in its infancy, except for Australia, whose coal seam gas industry has flourished over the past decade.

While some CBM projects in the United States have shut down, discouraged by very low gas prices, in Asia, the focus is on conversion of CBM to LNG and it will be priced using traditional Asian LNG formulas linked to oil, Tony Regan, a consultant with Tri-Zen International, said.

"Sponsors are taking a long-term view -- they expect that oil prices will continue to increase, and therefore the Australian CBM projects are still moving ahead. Most are still at the reserve development stage and are either proving up reserves or buying them," added Regan.

China, the world's second-biggest energy user after the United States, is eager to develop CBM into an alternative energy source to drive its rapid industralisation.

"Gas consumption in China is rising at a rapid rate. We see potential, explosive growth of CBM in China," said Frank C. Ingriselli, chief executive of Pacific Asia Petroleum.

The country extracted four billion cubic metres (bcm) of CBM in 2006, and is expected to pump up 10 bcm by 2010, besides further raising 300 bcm of proven CBM reserves.

ScienceAlert has an article on a DESERTEC Australia proposal to link the Australian gas an electricity grids with east Asia - The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid.

Imagine an Asian electricity grid anchored by China at one end and Australia on the other. The grid would carry and distribute hemispheric solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy. The vision is big. But so's the problem of climate change.

Start by looking at Asia's energy status quo. Fossil fuels dominate. Renewable energy development is sporadic. National grids aren't interconnected. Carbon costs aren't applied. Vision is lacking.

Now, apply sensible economic and technological rationalisation. What pops out is a networked Asian electricity backbone in which efficiency, price and environmental-friendliness count. A regional grid would offer a frictionless exchange of kilowatthours akin to the frictionless exchange of electrons the Internet has brought.

The plan would entail building a 10,000-kilometer long electricity transmission system stretching from Beijing to the Great Australian Bight. Australian concentrating solar power, geothermal, wind and wave energy would flow northward. It would be joined by the harnessed geothermal power of Indonesia's volcanoes. This torrent of Austro-Indonesian low emission energy would then wend its way across a wind farm-lined South China Sea to China. Or the transmission system could go by land through a Southeast Asia regional High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power line paralleling existing power lines in Malaysia, Thailand and Laos.

Southeast Asian natural gas and Laotian and Vietnamese hydro power plants could provide 'load balancing' in a regional grid dominated by renewables. Even China's Three Gorges Dam might find a role as hemispheric provider of peaking power. That's because using hydro (and natural gas) for baseload power in an electricity system dominated by renewables makes about as much sense as employing trapeze artists to shovel gravel.

Tibetan and southern Mongolian deserts could be developed for concentrating solar power, wind and geothermal energy. Windfarms stretching from Shenzen to Shanghai off China's east coast could similarly provide huge amounts of power.