Exploring Europe’s Cutting-Edge Developments in Renewable Energy

Over the last few months, I’ve been speaking with Olivier Goavec, a bright young French engineering student.  He’s currently living in Alkmaar, just south of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, which I mention only so I can link to photography that shows how incredibly beautiful the town is. 

Olivier will be researching and writing on the many red-hot developments in renewable energy in Europe.  Over the coming months, I’m expecting to receive and publish a number of excellent articles that I know readers will find quite valuable. Possible topics include:

• Breakthroughs in battery technologies coming out of the major European universities.

• How countries that have been important players in clean energy, e.g., Spain, are dealing with their significant national debt problems.

• Contributions from the great minds in Eastern Europe, e.g., Romania and Bulgaria.

• The numerous different types of public/private partnerships that France has in place to develop mass transit and electric transportation.  (I first came across this at http://2greenenergy.com/2010/12/08/french-american-ev/8217/ the French-American Electric Vehicle Technology Forum a few years ago.)

• Germany’s struggle to find levels of feed-in tariffs that provide the exact proper amount of incentive for solar photovoltaic developers.

• How Europeans’ and Americans’ perception of the climate change issue vary from one another.

• The difficulties that countries with huge volumes of variable renewable sources (solar and wind) face in stabilizing their grids.

• The most popular forms of energy storage, and what lies ahead in this arena.

• Tidal energy in the northern latitudes.

• Offshore wind in the North Sea.

• The introduction of progressive approaches to financing wind, where farmers are paid for the use of their land over long-term contracts.

• Nuclear: the impact of Germany’s decision to decommission its nukes, France’s phasing out nukes as well.

• Distributed generation and microgrids.

• The long-term prospect for powering the entire Continent via huge CSP arrays in Northern Africa.

Welcome, Olivier, and thanks very much in advance.