Author: mattwvd

In April, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will decide the fate of the most contentious green energy project in the U.S. – a 420-megawatt offshore wind farm in Massachusetts called Cape Wind. It’s Audra Parker’s job to make sure the developers don’t plant 130 turbines five miles out in Nantucket Sound.

Parker leads the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which brings together homeowners, tourism organizations, local fishermen and native tribes that oppose the project. The groups say Cape Wind is sited beside key shipping and ferry routes, would disrupt wildlife in the area and would hinder tribal rituals that require unobstructed views of the sound. Cape Wind supporters, including Greenpeace, say the Alliance’s stand is misguided and Business Insider recently called the group “wine-sipping hypocrites.”

Critics who say the Alliance is a “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) group, Parker fires back, ignore legitimate concerns. She says the privately-held Cape Wind could win broad support by moving from the Horseshoe Shoal site to one  further offshore called South of Tuckernuck Island. GER caught up with Parker last week for our Cornerstone Conversations series.

Green Energy Reporter: How did you get involved in the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound?

Audra Parker: I started working at the Alliance in January 2003. I had grown up here in the summertime and I had moved here a couple of years beforehand. I heard about the Cape Wind project and it was really the first time that a [wind] project was being proposed offshore. It seemed that it was public trust land that belonged to everyone and it seemed in a variety of ways an inappropriate location for an industrial scale development.

GER: Who are your major backers?

AP: We’re totally funded by private donations and we probably have 5,000-plus donors. They range from small donors to large donors. Over time, we’ve raised over $20 million. It’s fishermen, it’s tribal members, it’s wealthy people, it’s everyone. Every affected stakeholder that wants to protect the sound knows that this is not the right location.

GER: How have you been able to marshal all of the various objectors into one cohesive group?

AP: We are an alliance of various stakeholders. The tribes will do their own thing. The fishermen will do their own thing. For the most part, everyone is on the same page but for different reasons. The airports are writing to the Federal Aviation Administration to say this is an aviation safety issue. The ferry lines are talking to the U.S. Coast Guard.

GER: Your Web site says there’s still 45 days to make a difference in this eight-year fight against Cape Wind. Do you think authorities in Washington have already made a decision?

AP: I don’t think there is a decision made yet. I think Interior Secretary [Ken] Salazar was genuine in saying he has three priorities: first, respect of tribal rights; second, promoting green energy; third, historic preservation.

The Advisory Council on Historic Properties [which will make the recommendation about Cape Wind to the Interior Department in April] is definitely sensitive to tribal issues. I’m hopeful that they will recommend that Cape Wind be relocated or that it is denied and Secretary Salazar will accept their recommendation. Clearly this is a special place. It’s not an issue of being opposed to renewable energy, it’s not an issue of being NIMBY, it’s an issue of being the wrong location for Cape Wind.

GER: Is there an acceptable halfway solution for your members, like if Cape Wind digs for artifacts in the seabed or pursues other mitigation measures?

AP: When Cape Wind says, ‘We’ll go ahead and dig in the middle of an ancestral burial ground,’ that’s hardly mitigation. The South of Tuckernuck Island site already is a compromise. The downside for Cape Wind is that they claim it’s slightly deeper and it’s 12 percent more expensive. The towns [on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape Cod] have come forward in an electrical cooperative and said they’ll help offset the additional cost. There’s no financial reason for Cape Wind not to support this. It’s a pretty reasonable scenario.

The ferry lines alone transports 3 million passengers alone through Nantucket Sound, which has 200 days of fog per year. The ferry lines are calling the project an accident waiting to happen. It’s put in the most conflicted area you could imagine.

It’s not an issue of being opposed to renewable energy, it’s not an issue of being NIMBY, it’s an issue of being the wrong location for Cape Wind.

GER: After Cape Wind released a study about the projected cost savings from the project, you said that the company was propagating “the myth of cheap offshore wind.” Are you opposed to all offshore wind?

AP: We support renewable energy including offshore wind, but appropriately sited and without being an excessive burden to ratepayers.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came in [to review the site] eight years ago, there was no process in place for permitting renewable energy in offshore waters. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 put the Department of Interior in charge instead of the Army Corps. They also charged them with establishing rules and regulations for permitting. Those didn’t come out until summer 2009. We feel that regulations need to precede the project. In June, President Obama introduced ocean zoning and again we believe that needs to precede any project. Had there been ocean zoning in place, had they not picked such a conflicted location in the first place there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Also, I think there’s a public perception that wind is free and it has been fed by Cape Wind and offshore wind proponents. Land-based wind is far less expensive than offshore. Cape Wind would get anywhere between $1 and $2 billion in federal and state subsidies and tax credits. It is a hugely expensive form of electricity generation and that should be transparent to the public.

GER: Green energy companies complain that they’re being forced to jump through too many regulatory hoops to do produce renewable energy. What’s your take?

AP: South of Tuckernuck Island may not be the ideal site but [Cape Wind doesn’t] have to go back to the drawing board. It’s far better from a public interest standpoint than what they picked. It’s already in the federal review, they’ve already studied it.

GER: Does Cape Wind get more flack because it is an offshore wind pioneer in the U.S.?

AP: I think that they truly have not listened to opposition. They have tried to steamroll the local community. They’re trying to ignore the very legitimate issues that exist in this community.

GER: Is there a “green on green” war between cultural, wildlife and land conservationists on one side and renewable energy companies on the other?

AP: I think to some extent it’s unavoidable because, if you’re talking wind, your windiest areas are going to be offshore or on ridgelines. I can see why it would come to that. If you think of the reality of wind at this point it requires a fairly large footprint. If we could go into deeper waters and make that more cost effective I’d think you’d have far fewer siting issues.

GER: Do you think Cape Wind is a bad test case for offshore wind in America?

AP: I think if it goes forward it’s going to be at the expense of public safety and at the expense of the tribes. This is a test case for that commitment. If it’s allowed to go forward obviously that commitment wasn’t taken seriously.

Interview conducted and condensed by GER.

Q-Cells SE Chief Executive Officer Anton Milner has resigned, effective immediately, from the German photovoltaic cells maker, according to a company release.

Chief Financial Officer Nedim Cen, who joined the company from the restructuring consultants Alvarez & Marshal on an interim basis in June 2009, will take over the CEO duties and hold both positions. Cen will remain with the Q-Cells while it restructures and Alvarez & Marshal will support him in the program, called Q-Cells Reloaded.

Q-Cells reported losses of 1.36 billion Euros ($1.84 billion) on Feb. 23. The company blamed a drastic decline in prices and a time lag in its Calyxo subsidiary becoming competitive.

Milner, one of the company’s four founders, said in a statement:

The very dramatic negative 2009 figures have consequences and have in particular led to a loss of confidence in the financial markets.

Analysts have battered Q-Cells for constant revisions in its 2009 sales outlook, Reuters noted.

Director of Finance Carsten Simon will support Cen in the day-to-day duties of CFO.

Milner photo: Courtesy Q-Cells

Ever since the untimely and inexplicable demise of WSJ.com’s Environmental Capital, the Journal has only been dipping the occasional timid toe into the cleantech waters.

Now they’re back with a listicle that names Solyndra, Inc., the top cleantech company, followed by Suniva and eSolar. The (no doubt highly scientific) criteria NewsCorp.-owned VentureSource used to determine the rankings are hidden from view. How does this list stack up against Greentech Media’s (no doubt highly scientific) top 50VC-Funded Greentech Startups list?

Not that well.

The information on the listed companies is limited to the headquarters, description, founder and investors and there is no additional information on what makes these companies great.

The story itself touches briefly on the companies, but all of the good information here –about the 350 companies that researchers sifted to find the gems – seems to be on the back end.

Our best guess is that the article and top ten list is a brochure of sorts that people can glance at to decide if they want to pay for the VentureSource content.

Greentech Media breaks their list into major categories such as Solar, Smart Grid, Biofuels and Biochemicals, Green Buildings, Batteries, Transportation, Other Energy, Green IT and Water.

There’s no rankings, just descriptions of what makes the companies winners. Pretty insidery, but thorough.

Also, Greentech Media offers code so winners can display a “Top 50 Greentech Startups” badge on its Web site.

Slick!

A study by engineering consultants Parson Brinckerhoff claims that Great Britain’s multibillion dollar offshore wind gambit will cost twice as much as nuclear power, Reuters reports.

The costs of nuclear generation will be 6-8 pence per kilowatt hour, including decommissioning and waste disposal, while wind will cost 15-21 pence per KWh, according to Reuters.Parsons Brinckerhoff, an offshore wind supporter, did a study of the various costs for electricity generation and concluded that tidal was the most expensive, while onshore wind costs – at 8-11 pence per KWh – are comparable with gas, at 6-11 pence per KWh.

The study confirms what opponents of offshore wind, such as the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, have been saying about offshore’s costs.

Yingli Green Energy posted net revenues of $371 million USD, an increase of 43.7 percent over the same period in 2008, with a a 29.6 percent gross margin in the fourth quarter of 2009, coming in at the top end of the company’s guidance, according to a news release.

The company recorded a net loss of $6.6 million, a loss of 4 cents per American depositary share, for the quarter and a loss of $67.3 million, or 48 cents per share, for all of 2009.

Yingli Chief Executive Officer Liangsheng Miao said the the company expects to ship between 950 megawatts and 1 GW of PV modules in the coming year.

The Japanese electronics conglomerate Kyocera has announced plans to join the U.S. solar rush and build a 1 gigawatt solar module manufacturing plant in San Diego.

Kyocera’s announcement follows recent plans by Suntech Power Holdings and Yingli Green Energy to build plants in the U.S. sunbelt.

The Kyocera plant, to be built at the company’s facility on Balboa Avenue, is slated to for construction in the first half of this year with an initial production target of 30 megawatts per year, according to the company.

The plant would reach full capacity by March 2014.

Kyocera plans to double its production of solar cells between fiscal years 2009 and 2011 and has built manufacturing facilities in Japan, China, the Czech Republic and Mexico. The company’s solar cell have recently set new efficiency records.

Steve Hill, president of Kyocera Solar Inc., said the company is looking to capitalize on growth in the U.S. market.

Analysts have projected that demand for solar modules will reach 9,300 megawatts globallly in 2010 and then jump to 10,750 megawatts by 2011.

Canadian Solar announced net income of $14.9 million, or 35 cents per share, on revenues of $287 million for the fourth quarter of 2009, in a rebound from 2008 that nonetheless fell short of estimates. Net income for 2009 was $53.1 million, or $1.41 per share, on revenues of $663.8 million.

Canadian Solar shares (NASDAQ:CSIQ) were up $1.26, or 6.25 percent, to $21.49 at 9:48 a.m.

The company had earlier reported that its gross margins would be lower as a result of faulty equipment at the company’s plant.

Analysts expected earnings of 45 cents per share on revenue of $267 million, according to Reuters.

Canadian Solar Chief Executive Officer Dr. Shawn Qu said the company will grow shipments in 10 core countries in 2010 and said sales continue to recover. The company shipped 155.5 megawatts in the fourth quarter.

Qu said:

In 2009 we rebounded from net revenues of $49.5 million in the first quarter to over $287.0 million in the fourth quarter; a record for both our quarterly revenue and shipments.

Qu added that demand will be strong for 2010 with an improved cost structure in the second half of the year due to lower processing costs and increased internal cell capacity.

Management said shipments are still expected to be in the 600-700 megawatt range for 2010.

However, Barclays Analyst Vishal Shah noted in a preview of the earnings released yesterday that negative developments in the Czech market, where the grid operator recently stopped accepting solar permits, could affect the company’s second half shipments.

Canadian Solar has dominant market share in the Czech market.

Specialty chemical company Solutia will pay €240 million in cash to purchase Etimex Solar GmbH, a maker of weather-proofing films for photovoltaic solar panels, according to a release from Solutia.

St. Louis-based Solutia is expanding its range of encapsulants for solar panels with the purchase of Etimex Solar, said Solutia’s Chief Executive Officer Jeffry N. Quinn:

Renewable energy is an acknowledged source of long-term growth that fits well with Solutia’s businesses, and the combination of EVA and PVB encapsulant manufacturing capabilities will result in access to additional opportunities.

Etimex Solar, which is based in Dietenheim, Germany, is a subsidiary of Etimex Holding GmbH and is controlled by funds affiliated with private equity firm Alpha Gruppe.

Alpha Gruppe purchased Etimex in 2006 for €170 million in 2006, Bloomberg reports.

Solutia reported 2009 net income of $31 million.

Solutia, which emerged from more than four years of bankruptcy protection in 2008, will make the puchase with cash from its balance sheet and additional debt, according to the release. Deutsche Bank Securities and Kirkland & Ellis LLP were advisers for the transaction.

Etimex Solar is a supplier of ethylene vinyl acetate encapsulants for photovoltaic panels, a product line that Solutia officials said will compplement their polyvinyl butyral encapsulants.

Chevron announced the other day that it will use Germany-based Concentrix Solar’s concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology to build a 1 megawatt solar facility on the site of a mine in Questa, New Mexico.

Now Concentrix has put out its own release that repeats most of the key facts but makes on additional key point: its CPV technology is ready for worldwide deployment and utility-scale projects.The New Mexico project is meant as a bit of a coming out party for the Concentrix’s FLATCON technology, which uses lenses to focus sunlight onto solar cells.

The technology is a hybrid, somewhere between concentrated solar power – which uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a liquid, which then boils and drives turbines – and straightforward photovoltaic technology.

The project, the largest planned CPV project in the United States, will be built on 20 acres of a molybdenum mine owned by Chevron Mining Inc.

The power will be sold through a power purchase agreement to the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative.

Concentrix, which was acquired by Soitec in December, has designs on the global market.

Soitec CEO André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé told GER earlier this month that the company was looking at expanding across the global sunbelt in Europe, North America and Asia.

Concentrix CEO Hansjorg Lerchnemuller echoed that sentiment, saying:

We are excited to prove our technology with Chevron on the Questa site and are planning new investment to further expand our business in the Southwest of the USA in the near future.

Mitsubishi announced today it will create a £100 million research center in England’s northeast to research turbine blades, creating up to 200 jobs, according to a release from the Department of Energy & Climate Change.

The British government is chipping in £30 million in grants to supprt the project in hopes of enticing Mitsubishi to build a manufacturing facility in the UK in the future, which could bring up to 1,500 jobs.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding today with Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe, according to the release.

However, there was a bit of disagreement in the British media about whether the location of the research center is a done deal.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Chief Executive Officer Akio Fukui said the company is considering several locations for its research facility, according to the BBC.

Other publications suggested that the location of the turbine manufacturing plant is up in the air but the research facility is a done deal.

The government also announced £18.5 million of funding for a separate offshore wind test site at the New and Renewable energy Centre (Narec) in Blyth, Northumberland.

Britain is trying to establish itself as a hub for offshore wind design and manufacturing and has invested heavily in that goal with £75 billion in proposed offshore wind projects announced in January.

California’s Clipper Windpower announced plans last week to build a plant in the UK to take advantage of the growth in demand for offshore turbines.

The big prize in today’s deal is the manufacturing facility that Mitsubishi Wind Power Systems Europe is dangling in front of the government.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said:

Mitsubishi’s investment in wind turbine R&D and the creation of 200 highly skilled jobs is great news for our future plans in low carbon, high technology industries. The UK is now well placed to manufacture the turbines needed for the next generation of offshore wind farms. We will continue to work with Mitsubishi to secure production in the UK.

The grant funding comes from the government’s Strategic Investment Fund, but will be subject to European Commission approval.

The site would entail prototype assembly, onshore and offshore testing of Mitsubishi’s 6-megawatt turbine technology and the development of third generation wind technology, including the design and development of composite offshore wind turbine blades.

Yingli Green Energy has signed a three-year agreement to provide 285 megawatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules to Gehrlicher Solar AG, according to a release from the company. Yingli Chief Executive Officer Liansheng Miao said the deal, done through the company’s Yingli Solar brand, has strategic implications:

We believe the establishment of our partnership with Gehrlicher Solar, one of the leading system integrators with a diversified portfolio of customers in Europe, will further strengthen our position in this important region.

The Yingli modules will be installed by Gehrlicher, a PV system integrator, mainly in residential, commercial rooftop and groun-mounted power plants in Europe.

GER Editor Terrence Murray is in Austin at the Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo today and he’ll be live tweeting the panel discussion: “Financing Renewable Energy: After the Stimulus,” which starts at 1:30 pm EST.

To get real time updates on the panel discussion, click here to become a follower of Greenenergyrep, Green Energy Reporter’s Twitter feed.

Waste-to-biofuels company Enerkem, Inc., has announced a CDN $53.8 million roud of financing from its institutional investors and garbage hauling company Waste Management in a marriage that makes all kinds of sense.

Montreal-based Enerkem’s technology turns waste materials into ethanol and will help Waste Management “extract more value from the materials we manage,” according to Waste Company’s Managing Director of Organic Growth Tim Cesarek.Enerkem, which received $50 million in funding from the U.S. Energy Department in December, takes waste materials and gasifies them into a a  product known as “syngas.”

The syngas is cleaned to remove impurities and then treated to produce methanol, ethanol and plastics.

The company is growing rapidly and plans to use its latest financing round to fund construction of its second waste-to-biofuels plant in partnership with the city of Edmonton. The company takes waste from the city to fuel it plant.

Enerkem also has a deal with the Three Rivers Solid Waste Authority to construct a plant in Pontotoc, Miss.

The latest round of financing comes from existing investors Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital as well as new investors Waste Management and Cycle Capital.

Morgan Stanley acted as Enerkem’s agent for the deal.

Enerkem Chief Executive Officer Vincent Chornet said the deal shows that his company is a market leader:

This financing round validates Enerkem’s business and advances our path towards leadership in the waste and advanced fuels markets.

As Green Inc. notes this morning, Waste Management’s interest in Enerkem is a sign that conventional waste hauling businesses are interested in what biofuel technologies can do for them.

Fresh from receiving 100 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is making noises about introducing a new tripartisan climate bill soon. Kerry told a climate policy forum today that he is working with White House officials and other lawmakers on getting a bill, Reuters reports.

Any bets on when this new bill is coming out? And will he get support from Massachusetts’ new junior senator, Republican Scott Brown?

Kerry said,

We’re on a short track here in terms of piecing together legislation we intend to roll out.

White House climate czar Carol Browner, at the same event sponsored by The New Republic, agreed that the work was going well.

Kerry has been working in a tri-partisan coalition with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., trying to find a bill that can attract sixty votes.

But Kerry also told reporters Tuesday that the bill still lacks a heart – they don’t yet have a plan for reducing emissions (read: they haven’t figured out how to repackage cap and trade as something else).

Evergreen Solar has appointed Scott Gish, formerly of Photronics, Inc., as vice president of sales and marketing, according to a company announcement. Gish will report to Evergreen’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard M. Feldt.Gish had been the Vice President of global sales and business development for Brookfield, Conn.-based Photronics since 2005. Prior to that he was at Veeco Instruments, Axcelis Technologies and Schlumberger Technologies.

Marlboro, Mass.-based Evergreen, which makes String Ribbon silicon wafers using a proprietary process, is constructing a 100 megawatt solar panel manufacturing plant in China with Jaiwei Solarchina Co., that is slated to open this spring.

Germany’s coalition government has released the draft of long-awaited cuts to solar subsidies and they’re… not that bad.

The government will cut subsidies by 15 percent for solar parks built after July 1, Bloomberg reports, and rates for systems on brownfield sites such as former dumps and army bases will be cut 11 percent. Rooftop systems will see rates drop 16 percent.

Farmland used for solar purposes won’t be subsidized after July 1.

The changes in the subsidy system could still change so watch for debate in Germany’s federal parliament on Feb. 26.

The impact of the changes on shares of solar companies still isn’t clear, though Commerzbank AG analyst Robert Schramm tells Bloomberg that Phoenix Solar will benefit, as will Q-Cells.

All of the back and forth over the cuts has caused skittish investors to pull back on the stocks in recent months.

Vishal Shah also took a bearish view on solar stocks yesterday, citing signs that demand will flag beyond 2010, declining sector profitability and worries that California utilities will be less motivated to install solar after the 2010 renewable portfolio standard.

Shah also believes that a national renewable portfolio standard could take a while to pass.

O, Oracle of Omaha, how could we ever have doubted that your bet on coal was a wise choice?

Now, as coal prices have surged more than 40 percent from last year’s lows, we see three reasons why Warren Buffett’s purchase of the Burlington Northern Sanata Fe railroad – which hauls 1/5 of the nation’s coal – was smart.To review: Buffett announced in November that Berkshire Hathaway would pay $34 billion the three-quarters of the massive railroad that it didn’t already own. We initially doubted that it was a bet on coal though we later reversed and declared that Buffett was going long CO2.

Bloomberg has a long thinkpiece on coal’s resurgence – it’s up to $59.28 per ton, with a target of $70 – this morning, which helps us quantify Buffet’s genius.

1) Brrr…. It’s cold out there.

The winter has also been very cold in some areas of the country, driving greater demand for coal to feed powerrplants and shrinking stockpiles.

If you live in the I-95 corridor, you may have noticed that it’s snowed a bit this winter. A smallish, swampy city near Virginia, for example, has received 54.9 inches of snow – breaking a 110-year-old record.

Dahlman Rose & Co. analyst Daniel Scott tells Bloomberg,

“The cold weather the best thing that (coal suppliers) can get right now that’s not a full economic recovery.”

2) China is hungry

Is it ever. The Chinese economy has been importing coal at a record rate because of a frigid winter and a superheated economy that grew at 10.7 percent last quarter over the same period last year, Bloomberg reports.

The country’s National Energy Administration is forecasting a coal shortage through March.

China’s economic growth, more than any other factor, should keep coal prices high.

3) Global warming legislation is stalled

In case you missed it, the U.N. climate summit didn’t yield great results and a cap and trade bill that showed so much promise when it passed through the U.S. House of Representatives in the spring has stalled in the senate.

A tri-partisan coalition in the senate of Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., was making noises today about trying to revive the climate bill talks but the goal seems a long way off right now.

The big winner when climate legislation gets railroaded is… coal!

Both BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway are both up but there are a lot of factors involved in those valuations and, anyways, that’s beside the point. The point is that Buffett has the right instincts about the energy economy.

Those instincts tell us that the green energy future is still taking a backseat to the dirty energy past and present.

Canadian Solar reported on Friday that its gross margin for the fourth quarter will be lower due to defective equipment at the company’s plant, according to a release.

The company updated its outlook for the fourth quarter of 2009 and expects to report shipments of 138 megawatts but with a gross margin in the low, instead of high, teens.

The company had previously anticipated shipments of about 128 megawatts for the quarter and gross margins in the high teens.

Candian Solar’s stock (NASD:CSIQ) was off 10 percent, trading around the $22 mark, before the opening bell on Friday, down from a 52 week high of $33.68 in early January.

Margins were affected by higher processing costs caused by defective production equipment at the company’s plant, which it is working to address. The company has also been clearing and revaluing older solar cell inventory.

The company will release its fourth quarter results on March 3 at 8 a.m.

Canadian Solar Chief Executive officer Dr. Shawn Qu and Director for Investor Relations, Alex Taylor, will be presenting at Piper Jaffray’s Fifth Annual Clean Technology & Renewables Conference on Tuesday.

The company has been growing in recent months, selling 6,900,000 shares of common stock in October. Proceeds were used for general corporate purposes.

Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, announced this morning his intention to step down on July 1 and work for the global consultancy KPMG. The KPMG announcement is here.

His resignation comes as confidence in the ability of countries to come up with a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol is at a low ebb, following the failure to reach an agreement in Copenhagen last December. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will appoint de Boer’s successor in consultation with the UNFCCC, Bloomberg reports.

De Boer, 55, who has been led the UNFCCC since September 2006, said in a statement, “I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business.”

He continued:

Copenhagen did not  provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of  direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.

De Boer with be the global adviser on climate and sustainability at the KPMG.

While this move is understandable (anybody would be driven crazy by the gong shows that are UN climate summits) de Boer’s statement undermines the rationale for a government solution to climate change. Expect the carbon markets to respond accordingly.

Interestingly, KPMG’s press statement contains a similar quote to the UNFCCC’s statement, but modifies the last sentence to read, “…with KPMG I now have a chance to help make that happen.”

De Boer said he will stay on to help coordinate the next climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico in November.

Samsung has created a joint venture with ENCO Utility Services to build solar power plants that will sell energy to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).

The deal, which was first reported by Green Inc.’s Todd Woody, will create five photovoltaic solar plants with a total of 130 megawatts of power.

PG&E is seeking regulatory approval to buy the power for 25 years from a 50 megawatt plant and three 20 megawatt plants in Tulare County. The fourth 20 megawatt power plant is slated for adjacent King’s County, according to PG&E’s proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission.

The projects are expected to begin operating between June 2012 and February 2013, according to the filing.

Samsung has been moving aggressively to conquer the North American market, recently signing a $7 billion, 2,500-megawatt deal with the government of Ontario to build wind and solar plants and attract green energy manufacturers.

Josie Garthwaite from Earth2Tech has a nice roundup of Samsung’s greentech moves.