Spain becomes first country to rely on wind as top energy source

by Peter Moskowitz @PeterMoskowitz January 16, 2014 9:30PM ET

In 2013, Spain produced over 20 percent of its energy with wind turbines; questions remain over its economic stability

Topics:

 

Spain

 

Energy

 

Environment

Spain's largest wind turbine, Arinaga, a five megawatt, 505-foot tall, is pictured at the end of a dike on Gran Canaria in the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands on Oct. 20, 2013.

Desiree Martin/AFP/Getty Images

Spain is the first country in the world to draw a plurality of its power from wind energy for an entire year, according to new reports by the country’s energy regulator and wind energy advocacy group Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE).

Wind accounted for 20.9 percent of the country’s energy last year — more than any other enough to power about 15.5 million households, with nuclear coming in a very close second at 20.8 percent. Wind energy usage was up over 13 percent from the year before, according to the report.

The news is being hailed by environmental advocates as a sign that Spain, and perhaps the rest of the world, is ready for a future based on renewables. But the record comes at the end of a very rocky year for Spain’s renewable energy sector, which was destabilized by subsidy cutbacks and arguments over how much the government should regulate renewable energy companies.

Despite the flaws in Spain’s system, the numbers are promising for green energy fans. The renewable push brought down Spain’s greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent, according to another industry report from Red Electric Espana (REE).

Spain also has one of the largest solar industries in the world, with solar power accounting for almost 2,000 megawatts in 2012. That’s more than many countries but still just a fraction of the energy produced by wind in Spain. In 2013, solar power accounted for 3.1 percent of Spain's energy, according to the AEE report.

Wind Energy in Brazil: The Country of the Future?

Zoë Casey 
July 09, 2013 

At the end of 2012, Brazil had 2.5 GW of installed wind capacity, enough to power four million households, accounting for 2 percent of national electricity consumption. In 2012 alone, 40 new wind farms came online, adding more than 1 GW of new capacity to the Brazilian electricity grid and creating 15,000 new jobs. This represents an investment of USD 3.43 billion (€2.63 billion), which is expected to increase to USD 24.50 billion (€18.8 billion) by 2020. Steve Sawyer of the Global Wind Energy Council (right) gives his opinion on wind energy in Brazil, the “country of the future”. 

How would you compare the current status of the Brazilian wind market to how it was five years ago?

Five years ago, Brazil’s wind industry was in its infancy, with a cap of just 1,100 MW (later 1,400 MW) of wind power development. Since the introduction of the auction scheme in 2009, the industry has taken off in a big way.

Why is the Brazilian wind energy auction system successful?

The key reasons for the success of the Brazilian auction system are:

• A pretty high bar to clear before entering the auction, keeping out the speculators
• A guaranteed 20 year power purchase agreement
• A binding contract to supply the power — if you are in to bid, you better be serious
• Brazil’s superb wind regime
• The availability of BNDES financing
• The fact that the rest of the global market was in a downturn when things were heating up in Brazil meant that everyone was willing to do what it took to get in on the ground floor.

I do believe that the system is sustainable — with some tweaking.

What are the main challenges for the wind industry?

As wind penetrates the system more and more, there needs to be coordinated grid planning to go along with it, and regionally based planning as well as national. The market can only take you so far.

How do you see the Brazilian wind market in 2020? Wind has been excluded from the A-5 Auction — will this have an impact on the projected 2-GW annual growth?

Media campaign against wind energy funded by anonymous conservatives

By Giles Parkinson on 18 February 2013

The Guardian report has revealed that the two trusts – Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – served as the bankers of the conservative movement over the past decade, by promising them anonymity and guaranteeing that the $120 million in funds would be channeled as required.An investigation by The Guardian newspaper into the funding campaigns for climate denialists groups has revealed that rich conservatives have also used a pair of secretive trusts to fund a media campaign against windfarms and solar projects.

According to The Guardian, the campaign has successfully muddied the water around climate change and renewables, and effectively wrecked the chances of Congress acting on climate change in the world’s largest economy.

The latest revelations suggest the funds also supported a campaign to stop state governments in the US moving towards renewable energy. The revelations come as questions are asked in Australia about the support of anti-climate and anti-renewables think tanks such as the IPA, and specific anti-wind campaigns such as the Landscape Guardians, and a recently launched anti-wind website called Stopthesethings.

The Guardian report identifies a new entity called The Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity as one vehicle supported by the Donors funds. Franklin received $6.3 million from the two funds in 2011, helping it expand the reach of its watschdog.org network, which purports to provide independent journalism on government waste and use of taxpayers funds, but is focused on promoting conservative and libertarian causes, particularly on issues such as renewable energy.

The Guardian said the funding of the Franklin Centre signalled a shift in priorities for the conservative billionaires who are funding the anti-climate cause towards local and state-level organising. In 2011, Donors Trust helped the Franklin Centre expand its media operations to Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, the Centre for Public Integrity reported in an investigation on conservative funding networks.

As The Guardian explains:

Solar and wind energy catch fire

Date

February 13, 2013

Peter Hannam

Carbon economy editor

View more articles from Peter Hannam

s

Nearly one million Australian rooftops now have solar panels and 62 wind farms are generating power.

SOLAR and wind-power generation are soaring at home and abroad as falling costs combine with rising prices for fossil-fuel alternatives to reshape electricity markets.

Australians installed about 1 gigawatt of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on their roofs last year, increasing the existing capacity by more than two-thirds, according to the Australian Solar Council.

The rush to take advantage of generous feed-in tariffs before they were cut saw Queensland more than double its PV sales, adding almost 400 megawatts of capacity in 2012. Victorians also came close to doubling PV capacity, while New South Wales increased capacity by about one-third.

Wholesale prices for solar PV are now down as low as 55¢ per watt from an average of about $7 in 2008, said John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar Council.

Mr Grimes said 2013 could see PV take-up close to 2012 levels. That estimate compares with the Clean Energy Council's forecast of a pull-back as government solar schemes are wound back or closed.''With the degree of competition we have, and with consolidation between manufacturers, I think we will see prices continue at this level for some time,'' he said. ''There is some prospect they will reduce slightly.''

''Following a bumper year in 2012, we still expect in excess of 500 megawatts of new solar capacity to be added in 2013, with similar figures forecast for 2014 and 2015,'' Russell Marsh, the council's policy director, said.

Ray Wills, an adjunct professor at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Western Australia, said solar installations in Australia now exceeded 955,000 rooftops and probably would pass 1 million this month. ''Anyone paying more than 25¢ per kilowatt-hour for electricity - and that is most of us - will pay back their investment in less than four years,'' he said.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/carbon-economy/solar-and-wind-energy-catch-fire-20130212-2eb13.html#ixzz2Kz1IVM6N

Using Solar Energy to Create Wind Power

Derek Markham
Technology / Wind Technology
February 4, 2013

© Clean Wind Energy Tower
A new type of wind power plant is in the works, and it is claimed to be able to produce clean energy from the sun and the wind with virtually no carbon footprint, fuel consumption, or waste production. And not only that, it purportedly uses heat from the sun to produce its own wind, which would make this new type of plant desirable in areas with low or inconsistent winds.

The Clean Wind Energy Downdraft Tower is a skyscraper-sized hollow cylinder that uses the natural downdraft tendencies of air by spraying water (as a fine mist) across the top opening of the tower to cool the hot dry incoming air. As the water evaporates and cools the air, it becomes denser and heavier than the outside air, and then falls through the tower at speeds up to (and above) 50 mph. Once the faster moving air reaches the bottom of the tower, it is channeled through wind turbines in the base of the tower, generating electricity.

READ MORE: The Future of Wind Power: 9 Cool Innovations

In addition, if the Tower is located in areas conducive to direct wind harvesting, the exterior of the Tower could be covered with "vertical wind vanes" to help capture prevailing winds to produce supplemental power.

According to an article about the towers on KMPH,

"One tower is equivalent is to at least one nuclear power plant. But here's the big difference of course. You don't have nuclear issues, you don't have the safety issues, you don't have spent nuclear rods, you don't have the storage issue. These towers apparently they last forever. All you're using is water, evaporation, wind gradients and presto! You do have the energy that's produced through turbines and generators. So what we're talking about is water and wind at free will." - George Elliott, scientist and consultant for the Wind Energy Tower

The company is in the running as a semi-finalist for the Future Energy Pitching Event at the upcoming ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington D.C., which could potentially jumpstart the implementation of their new clean energy technology.

Wind beats gas to become top source of new US capacity in 2012

By Jeff Spross on 24 January 2013

Last week, they reported that wind ultimately pulled ahead of natural gas to become the leading installer of new capacity in 2012, at 10,689 total megawatts.Through June of 2012, renewable energy was right behind natural gas in terms of the most new energy generating capacity being installed in the United States, with wind making up most of the renewables push. And now Business Insider has flagged the numbers for the remainder of the year.

Those numbers came from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s report on the trends and highlights in U.S. energy for the past year. According to FERC’s update, natural gas installed 8,746 megawatts of new capacity, coal installed 4,510 new megawatts, and solar came in fourth with 1,476 new megawatts. Here’s the relevant table from the report, conveniently highlighted by Business Insider:

One thing to note here is the issue of capacity factor: That’s how much power an installation actually produces as a percentage of its theoretical capacity. (Which is what’s listed in the table.) Natural gas plants do quite well in this regard: Their median performance tends to come out to at least 80 percent, and they max out at 93 percent, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s cost database.

Unfortunately, wind power doesn’t perform as well, due to the intermittency of, well, wind. Its median tends to be around 40 percent offshore. Onshore it’s been at 30 percent, though arguably onshore performance is pulling alongside offshore. And both max out at 50 to 54 percent. So even though wind beat out natural gas for new capacity in 2012, the new natural gas installation will almost certainly wind up generating more total electricity.

Mixed Greens: Duke installs biggest wind energy storage system

By Staff Reporter on 24 January 2013

Bloomberg reports that US utility giant Duke Energy installed the world’s biggest battery power storage system. The 36MW Xtreme Power system has begun operating at the Duke’s 153MW Notrees wind project in west Texas. Duke said in April the system would cost $44 million, and would improve the reliability of the Texas power grid by responding quickly to fluctuations in supply and demand.Duke installs world’s biggest wind energy storage

“Energy storage will benefit our renewables business, our customers and the energy sector as a whole,” Bloomberg quoted Greg Wolf, president of Duke’s renewables unit, as saying.

IKEA to double spending on wind, solar

Bloomberg also reports that furniture giant Ikea plans to double its investment in renewable energy to $4 billion by 2020, as part of a drive to reduce costs as cash-strapped consumers become more price sensitive. The additional money will be spent on wind farms and solar parks – to keep expenses down as the company maintains its pace of expansion, CEO Mikael Ohlsson told Bloomberg in an interview.

Ikea plans to get 100% of the energy consumed at its stores and by subcontractors from renewable sources by 2020. The Swedish company already owns 250,000 solar panels, mainly in the U.S., and invested in 126 wind turbines in northern Europe to cover 34 per cent of its energy consumption, Bloomberg reported.

Belgium plans artificial island for wind energy storage

By Nicholas Brown on 20 January 2013

Belgium is planning to construct an island in the North Sea for the sole purpose storing wind energy.Cleantechnica

Wind farms, when constructed using traditional mainstream methods, will eventually require backup as their electricity market penetration increases, and when wind turbines generate surplus electricity due to unusually high wind speeds (which can happen pretty often) it goes to waste.

Image Source: Vestas

“We have a lot of energy from the wind mills and sometimes it just gets lost because there isn’t enough demand for the electricity,” said spokeswoman for Belgium’s North Sea minister Johan Vande Lanotte. “This is a great solution,” the spokeswoman said, adding she thought it could be the first of its kind.

Excess wind power would be used to pump water out of the centre of the island, and it would be allowed to flow back in, but through an electricity generating turbine to augment overall electricity production when there is a shortfall of wind energy.

Vande Lanotte revealed these plans at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge late on Wednesday.

Large-scale wind energy storage has been mostly just a thought for many years, worldwide, but Belgium decided to step up to the plate and put it to the test.

There is an important fact about the electricity market penetration of wind power — In reality, the only real market penetration is done by electricity when it is used. By storing the surplus wind energy in the North Sea plant, they can finally sell it, because they will have it ready for when electricity demand increases during peak hours.

10 more wind energy myths debunked: Madigan claims put to the test by Mike Barnard

Thank you all for your kind words and attention to the first installment of Whoppers of the Anti-wind Brigade, where Max Rheese's perplexingly a-factual views were subject to some scrutiny.  As you may remember, Mr Rheese managed 14 whoopers in a mere 17 minute radio interview covering some 1,685 words.

Our subject today is Senator John Madigan, the first elected federal representative of the Democratic Labour Party in Australia since 1974 and Victoria’s replacement for the entertaining Senator Steve Fielding.

Senator Madigan has been stirring up a name for himself in recent months attacking wind energy. Our goal is to see if he can achieve in a single web-page policy statement of 364 words what Max Rheese took a full radio interview and many more words to achieve. If you would like to play along at home, I would encourage you to review Senator Madigan'sposition on his party’s website (copied as of 31 October  2012 at the bottom of this article).

Those following the issue will remember that just this year Madigan called the wind industry sinister, powerful and dangerous. He’s called wind energy a scandal and he has described his wind campaign as a fight. But just to be clear, we’ll let straight talking John put it in his own words: “I am not and never have been against wind farms, wind energy or green technology.” Okay...

Now on to the show.

Wind Reality 1:  Wind is not heavily subsidized in Australia or the rest of the world

The claim: The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) opposes this highly subsidised method of generating electricity

The data:  Let's define terms. I am going to use the term subsidy imprecisely to mean imbalances in the market that can be quantified in dollar terms.  Direct subsidies are only one kind of market imbalance, so it is important to try to compare apples-to-apples in this conversation.

In those terms, what subsidies do wind farms receive? Well, they actually get no subsidies for construction and certainly nothing from the government. Instead wind farms are issued a renewable energy certificate (now called an LGC) for every megawatt hour of clean energy generated. Energy retailers are required to buy certificates to ‘green up’ their power. In 2012 only 9.15% of the retailers output must be matched, growing to a target of 20% by 2020.

So yes, the Renewable Energy Target, introduced by the Liberals, supported by Labor and endorsed by the Greens, has created an indirect subsidy to encourage the transition to non-polluting energy sources. (The DLP, which told the senate inquiry into the Clean Energy Future package that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, presumably doesn’t understand why anyone would want to transition to clean energy.)

Construction to begin on Japan’s largest solar power and wind energy plant located in Tahara City

08/11/2012

A groundbreaking ceremony is to be hosted this week in celebration of the start of construction of Japan’s largest solar and wind power plant, located in Tahara City.

The major project will be spread over 800,000 sq m and is estimated to generate 67,500 megawatt hours of electricity each year which would be enough to power 90% of the homes in Tahara City with green energy.

It is also thought that the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions each year will be approximately 32,000 tonnes.

The solar and wind power plant is part of a collaboration of seven firms who initiated the project last October, with permission granted in September 2012.

Design and construction on the plant is 18bn Yen with the majority of the money being sourced through loans from the Development Bank of Japan.

Wind Power: Norway Could Become Europe’s Battery

MAY 27, 2008 

World’s number 5 oil exporter, Norway has big energy resources and by 2025 it could become “Europe’s battery”.

The island of Utsira, Norway – image by tualatin

A recent study talked about developing sea-based wind parks that would allow access up to 8,000 megawatts of renewable energy, equivalent to about eight nuclear power plants. Exporting green energy would actually help the European Union to attain their goal to get 20-percent of the total energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind, waves or hydro power.

The investment for the wind parks would cost up to $44 billion but if we consider they pump out 2.2 million barrels of oil per day, it will probably take only 6 months to cover it.

Wind Power Set to be the Energy of the Future

OCTOBER 10, 2012 

With the cost of electricity rising like never before, people are pushing for more avenues in the renewable energy space. The traditional forms of electricity have significant health and environmental effects, while renewable energy like wind and solar are widely accepted as an increasingly cost-effective energy solutions.  And, among them wind energy can be considered as the cheapest energy sources.

• EmailWith the cost of electricity rising like never before, people are pushing for more avenues in the renewable energy space. The traditional forms of electricity have significant health and environmental effects, while renewable energy like wind and solar are widely accepted as an increasingly cost-effective energy solutions.  And, among them wind energy can be considered as the cheapest energy sources.

Apart from the cost of electricity, energy sources like coal, oil, and gas  pollute and have adverse effects on people. As per a study conducted by the German researchers headed by Deutsche Welle, wind energy is the cheapest energy solution in the world. It costs an average of 0.07 euro (about $0.09) to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity using wind power stations.

The accurate production costs and the environmental damage done in the name of mining silicon make solar comparatively expensive. In central and southern Europe, the cost to produce electricity from the solar plants is about 0.14 euro per kWh. When it comes to Germany, the cost is about 0.18 euro. In the case of coal, the expense in the US is more than 0.09 euros per kWh.

EU Wind Capacity Reaches 100 Gigawatt Mark, Yet Financial Risk Threatens Growth

Reuters  |  Posted: 09/26/2012 6:00 pm EDT Updated: 09/27/2012 3:26 pm EDT

* Low interest rates not translating into cheap loans

* EU austerity measures increase political risk

* Emerging offshore sector can add capacity rapidly (Adds detail on offshore)

By Barbara Lewis

BRUSSELS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Installed EU wind capacity has reached the 100 gigawatt mark - the equivalent of power generated from 39 nuclear plants or a train of coal stretching from Buenos Aires to Brussels - but financial risk threatens growth, industry body EWEA said.

"We have just in the past couple of weeks passed 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity in Europe," Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, told a small group of reporters.

Wind power in Texas keeping out new gas power plants by Nicholas Brown

CleanTechnica

CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby recently wrote an op-ed blaming wind farms for impeding the commission of new natural gas–fired power stations.

To many, it is difficult to guess why wind farms would make it more difficult to construct gas power plants. Let’s dive in.

Wind Farms Generating Cheap Electricity

Modern wind farms generate electricity at a low-cost of $0.097 per kWh (9.7 cents) without subsidies. (This is an average — as wind speeds at wind farms increase, the cost of wind power decreases because the ratio of power generated to the cost of developing the wind farms decreases. Some wind farms, of course, produce electricity much more cheaply than others.)

Add in subsidies for this young technology, and the price drops further.

Now, additionally, it’s worth noting that, while winds are blowing, wind farms can bid to sell their electricity for about as cheap as they need to – because their fuel is free, so it doesn’t really cost anything extra to produce electricity once the wind farms are built. For this reason, we’ve seen wind farms bring the wholesale cost of electricity down to $0some nights (yep, $0.00).

In the most recent Fall, Spring, and Winter, wind farms generated such a large amount of cheap electricity in Doyle’s region that they undercut natural gas power plants during all three seasons (although only 2.5% of the time). At wind speeds of 21mph, the average cost of wind power drops to as little as 2.6 cents per kWh.

Wind power has its limits, but it’s not the sky by Michael D. Lemonick

Climate Central

From the climate’s point of view, wind turbines are a great way to generate electricity. The energy source is absolutely free, and turning breezes into kilowatts releases precisely zero heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Sure, it takes energy to build and transport and assemble turbines — some of it, undoubtedly, derived from fossil fuels — but once that giant pinwheel is up and turning, emissions drop off the map. The other thing people like about wind power is that it’s essentially limitless.

Limitless, that is, unless you’re a scientist who thinks hard about such things. Three of those scientists have been thinking hard about the limits of wind power — and their thoughts have turned into a paper just published in Nature Climate Change.

In principle, they argue, the very existence of wind turbines could slow the planet’s winds to the point where they couldn’t generate any more energy. In practice, fortunately, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

The analysis considers both conventional, ground-based wind turbines and futuristic flying turbines that could take advantage of the steadier, stronger winds that blow at high altitudes. In both cases, a big enough fleet would slow the wind and limit the total energy available for electricity making.

For the flying windmills, that limit would be 1,800 terawatts, or 1.8 billion watts — 100 times more electricity than the entire planet currently uses. The ground-based turbines would top out at a mere 400 terawatts, or 20-ish times current demand.

Solar out back, wind in front: Secrets of a suburban clean energy powerhouse by Sophie Vorrath

For those who visited Mick Harris' home on Sustainable House Day in Melbourne on Sunday, the idea that green living is the preserve of the moneyed classes will have been put to bed. This was no Grand Design of sustainable architecture – Kevin McCloud was nowhere to be seen – but, just as the brochure had promised, a pretty standard 1960s brick veneer home in the suburb of Ivanhoe. A pretty standard home, that is, with two grid-connected solar arrays, a battery storage system fed by three more PV arrays, an solar-powered electric milk truck in the garage, a Hills Hoist in the back yard, and a wind turbine in the front.

In the roughly three years that Harris – a sustainability and clean energy pioneer, managing director at Envirogroup and a specialist consultant to the Alternative Technology Association – has owned the house, he has transformed it into a solar and wind powerhouse, which produces much more clean, renewable energy than it needs and – having got in before Victoria's recent solar feed-in tariff cuts– even contributes to the household's income, earning 66c/kwH for the electricity it sends back to the grid.

So what are the specs? Let's start with the solar. At the front of the house is the "solar pergola" – a custom-built verandah made of 12x 40W thin-film solar panels which, as well as providing shade for the house in summer, produce energy – 480W altogether.

The PV pergola, along with two more rooftop arrays –  a six-panel, 1100W array on the northern-facing roof, and a four-panel 740W array on the west-facing roof – all feed electricity into a 24 volt, 330 amp-hour battery bank (pictured below) at the side of the house, which feed a 1,000W Latronics inverter, which supplies all the power for the house's lights (a lot of them LED), fridge, TV and computer.

The battery system ensures that power is always available for the house – even during a blackout – and with each household appliance matched to two power points – one from the grid and one from the solar/battery system – you have the choice of running them on- or off-grid.

As for the two grid-connected solar systems, the first – located on the front of the house – uses eight 185W monocrystalline panels to produce 1480W and feeds into a grid-connected inverter, which in turn feeds into the house's switchboard and runs its other appliances, such as the electric stove. The second grid-connected system, which is on the roof of the bungalow/garage at the back of the property (pictured below), uses 18x 185W monocrystalline panels to produce 3,300W.

Offshore wind gathers speed in Europe by Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Germany took a big step to addressing the bottleneck in its offshore wind roll-out last week, as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet backed a new liability regime for grid connection delays. Some of the costs will be passed onto consumers. “We lacked investments in wind parks and grid projects” because it was not clear who would pay for possible delays, minister of economy Philipp Roesler said in Berlin. “With this regulation, the likelihood that liability losses will arise is now minimised.” The bill is likely to be accelerated to ensure its enactment before the year's end.

There was also good news for offshore wind in the UK, as EDP Renovaveis applied for a permit in Scotland to build a 1.5GW offshore wind farm. That would be the world’s largest. The project is the first to seek planning permission under the UK’s Round Three of offshore wind development, which amounted to 32GW of licences awarded in 2010.

The world’s largest wind turbine maker, Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, saw its shares surge 26 per cent last week after it said it is in talks with Mitsubishi Industries over possible “strategic cooperation”. It was the second biggest gainer last week on the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, after Hong Kong LED manufacturer Neo-Neon Holding, which announced a new production process. The NEX ended the week 0.9% down, however, as gains for wind and energy conversion stocks were offset by declines in solar and power storage stocks. First Solar fell 19.3% as it halted deliveries to Agua Caliente, the world’s largest PV project in Arizona. Its explanation was that construction is ahead of schedule, and it needed to slow down to meet contractual milestones.

In the US, President Barack Obama finalised new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, doubling them to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The White House said the standards would add around $US1,800 to the average cost of a vehicle by 2025 but lead to fuel savings of more than $US8,000 over its lifetime.

The development became the latest joust in clean energy rhetoric in the US presidential race. A spokesperson for Republican challenger Mitt Romney said, “Governor Romney opposes the extreme standards that President Obama has imposed.” Obama first announced the new standards in July 2011, flanked by representatives of the auto industry. “These fuel standards represent the single most important step we've ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” he said.