In a move that the anti-wind crowd is sure to celebrate, Alberta’s electricity system operator has indefinitely capped the amount of wind development in the oil-rich province to 900 megawatts, or about 8 per cent of grid capacity, citing a lack of adequate transmission infrastructure and a fear that too much instability will be introduced to the system beyond that amount.

What the anti-wind folks don’t seem to appreciate is that the pro-wind folks understand the intregation difficulties associated with adding wind to an electricity system. Just because, at a certain point in time, a system can only handle so much wind doesn’t mean wind technology is garbage or a scam or uneconomic or whatever else they like to call it. The fact is, it can be handled up to a certain threshold — we’ll take what we can get. After that, yes, the entire structure of the grid has to be adjusted to accept more wind, and new technologies such as utility-scale storage must be experimented with to “firm up” wind power. This is why the Ontario Power Authority has hired GE Energy to study this issue, so that we have an action plan in place as Ontario gets closer to this threshold — and believe me, it’s got a long way to go.

So is this cap in Alberta bad news for the wind industry? No, not really. It may be a tad conservative, but it’s not at all surprising. And I wouldn’t read too much into the word “indefinite.” Every jurisdiction has a right to slow down development of something so that it can be more thoroughly studied, and no one has ever lost their job by taking a slow, cautious and balanced approached. That’s all Alberta appears to be doing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that wind power is only part of the energy puzzle, alongside biomass, hydropower, co-gen, combined cycle natural gas, solar and energy-efficiency (i.e. negawatts). No fool believes we’ll be powering the entire world with wind energy. As far as I’m concerned, hitting a 10-per-cent threshold is mighty impressive.

Given that China is likely to build dozens of new coal plants over the years to meet its rapidly growing energy needs, and given that China can’t afford to add more pollution to its already polluted air, and given the world can’t afford to see an exponential rise in greenhouse gases coming from China, it’s nice to hear that this fast-growing economy is interested in joining the U.S. government’s FutureGen clean coal project. India and South Korea have already joined FutureGen, and apparently China’s largest power company joined last year. China likes the idea because the coal gasification technology used will not only generate cleaner power from coal, it will also produce hydrogen that could be used to support the country’s move toward fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s likely that many of those “dozens of new coal plants” will be built on old dirty technology before the fruits of this project are realized…

I didn’t go to the solar conference last week, but if you’re looking for an overview check out the Cleantech Blog and this podcast from RenewableEnergyAccess.com, which managed to snag an interview with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. The San Jose Mercury News also had a short story worth reading. Meanwhile, Red Herring has an article that discusses “Three Huge Solar Trends” and another piece about Khosla and his belief that centralized, utility-scale solar that uses concentrator technology is where the greatest opportunity lies.

One more thing: While I’m at it, here are two interesting pieces from CNET’s News.com, the first about new solar technology from Sharp and the second one putting the huge growth in solar cell/panel/module manufacturing into perspective.

And another thing: Seems ATS’s soon-to-be-spun-off Photowatt Technologies is considering a shutdown of its highly anticipated Spheral Solar business. The Spheral Solar technology has always held considerable potential. It’s flexible, can come in different colours, can have advertising printed on it, doesn’t use a lot of silicon, and could be manufactured at low cost because of its unique design. Problem is, trying to mass-produced the bloody things are tricky, and perhaps too tricky for Photowatt to make a reliable product.

MacMurray Whale at Sprott Securities, after analysing a recent amendment to Photowatt’s SEC F-1 filing in advance of its IPO, found that the company is downplaying the Spheral Solar (SSP) business and has removed all references that say Photowatt will benefit from the technology. “There is an apparent additional disclosure that there is an expected program review of SSP in January 2007, at which point a decision may be made to terminate development,” wrote Whale. “This opens the possibility that SSP could be abandoned in the near term.” That would be a shame, though Whale believes the company can still salvage its IPO if it does a good job promoting Photowatt’s traditional solar business in France and its proprietary silicon processing capability.

Associated Press has a story about the expectation among an increasing number of U.S. power-industry executives that European-style caps on carbon emissions are coming. We just don’t know when. That said, the “writing is on the wall” the article states, pointing to state and regional initiatives that are likely to force the federal government to follow suit. Likely next decade.

Ultimately, movement in this area is going to have to happen on a state/provincial and regional level to get the ball moving in North America. While I’m seeing a lot of this happen in the U.S., I wish I’d see more of it happening in Canada. This shouldn’t be left in the hands of our federal Conservative government, which as we saw last week has let the nation down with a “green plan” that has no details and no real action. Just a long-term target set for… get this: 2050! This government will be lucky if it gets through the next year. My Toronto Star colleague James Travers has an excellent column today on the “alternative universe” Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to create.

Now, if for some strange reason an election is held within the next year and power is regained by the Liberals (armed with a new leader that campaigned on the environment), then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some hard decisions, hard dates and tough legislation set before the end of this decade.