Scotland plans to convert its waves into a renewable source of energy. (image: woodruffshelties.com)

Scottish energy developer Pelamis has signed a joint venture agreement with Swedish energy company Vattenfall for an energy project worth about $100 million off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, CleanTechnica reported on Monday. The project has been dubbed Aegir, after the mythical Norse sea god, and will be Scotland’s largest wave power scheme.

The project is expected to feature 26 wave power machines, each at a length of 180 meters; these machines will generate a total of up to 200 megawatts of power, which can power about 13,000 households for one year. Aegir will begin producing power in 2014.

Scotland hopes that this project and others like it will help the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 42 percent by 2020, as delineated under the Scottish Climate Change Act. However, organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund think Scotland can do even more, and that renewable energy could fulfill 60–143 percent of Scotland’s energy requirements by 2030.

Scotland seems to be keen on using wave energy to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Many other countries and universities are also interested in harnessing the power of the sea to meet their renewable energy needs. For their part, England, Norway, and Australia have reported success with oscillating water columns. In addition, the Scottish government and its partners recently launched Oyster, the largest working hydroelectric wave energy device in the world.

Progress on the domestic climate bill reaches its end for 2009. (image: change.org)

Well, it’s all but official: there will not, in all likelihood, be a climate bill passed this year, reports the Wall Street Journal. On Tuesday, key Senate Democrats said there probably not be any more major committee action on climate-change legislation, signaling that a comprehensive bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions will have to wait until next year.

Climate change leaders around the world would naturally prefer to see a Senate bill passed by the time of the Copenhagen summit. However, according to Carter Roberts, CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, it may be enough for senators to release a blueprint for action and demonstrate efforts to fashion a compromise.

A climate bill should have a “credible cap, strong international provisions and flexibility to move to solutions within a fairly urgent timetable,” Roberts said, adding that the US shows leadership on climate change, other nations will follow. And if President Obama attends the conference to “close the deal,” as it was reported yesterday, his presence will make a strong statement about the seriousness of US efforts to pass climate legislation.

Although the Senate Environment Committee did approve a version of the bill, there is opposition from moderate Democrats, especially from senators on the Finance and Agriculture committees.

“It’s common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year,” Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) said, adding that although he planned to hold hearings on climate legislation and eventually mark up a bill, he didn’t know if he could put it together this year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), whose plate has been overflowing this year with debate on healthcare legislation and finance reform has dropped his earlier schedules for committees, and an aide said that the leader hasn’t drafted any new timetables on climate change.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a moderate Democrat from Michigan, is taking the lead on making an effort to protect manufacturing and agriculture industries. She said the Agriculture Committee—which has jurisdiction over climate provisions fundamental to containing costs and cutting emissions in the farming and forestry sectors—might not even debate or vote on any provisions for the bill, especially since committees were no longer under any timetables to produce legislation.

Even Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who has been a leader on the climate bill, has conceded that he is more focused on getting the 60 votes necessary to pass a bill than erecting deadlines which may be unrealistic. “The main thing to do here is to build the adequate base of support and consensus,” he said.

President Obama speaks about climate change at the United Nations. (image: nytimes.com)

The catastrophic risks posed by climate change have not been properly addressed, said President Obama in his address at the United Nations Climate Summit on September 22 (full video below). Although the US has done more than ever before to deal with global warming in the last eight months, according to Obama, much more needs to be done—here and abroad. The President emphasized that his administration is responding with a three-pronged investment attack: in renewable energy such as wind and solar; in reducing energy use in homes, buildings, and appliances; and in technology to capture carbon pollution to clean up coal plants.

He pointed out some “firsts” that his administration had undertaken: the first national policy aimed at both increasing fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks; the first offshore wind energy projects; and a brand new project that will track how much greenhouse gas pollution is being emitted throughout the country.

At the heart of these various initiatives is the goal of making clean energy profitable and a concrete means of job creation to combat unemployment in the current recession.

Obama didn’t shy away from discussion of some of the more alarming consequences of climate change if substantial action is not taken: shrinking islands causing families to relocate, rising sea levels, and more droughts and crop failures that will cause famine and conflict, especially in poor countries. He implored world leaders to work together to not only ensure fairness, but to help poor nations afford clean technology.

Probably the most provocative statement of the speech was Obama’s call to end subsidies of fossil fuel, in order to create greater free-market incentives for renewable energies.

Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, dismissed the speech as bereft of constructive solutions. Inhofe, who has declared the threat of global warming to be “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” wants India and China (currently the world’s biggest carbon emitter, followed by the US) to agree to the same mandatory limits as the US, and said any treaty that did not meet that condition or threatened to harm the economy of the US could not be approved by the Senate. On the other end of the political spectrum, progressive environmental groups were disappointed by a lack of details. Keya Chatterjee, acting director of the World Wildlife Fund’s climate program, said that the speech represented a “missed opportunity,” and that the US has yet to take a leadership role in tackling the threat of global warming.