More than $785 million has been invested in renewable energy in North Carolina since the passage of a landmark 2007 state energy law requiring greater use of solar, biomass and other forms of clean energy.

The investment total was released today by the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, a Raleigh trade group the represents the developers whose projects represent much of that $785 million.

The trade group issued the data to promote the economic benefits of clean energy at a time that some legislators are trying to repeal the state's policy. In 2007 North Carolina became the first Southern state to require electric utilities to use renewables to offset nuclear power and coal-burning power plants.

The Sustainable Energy Association lists Davidson, Robeson and Person counties as receiving the greatest investment, accounting for more than half the total amount. Davidson leads the group with $130.3 million. Those three counties have seen an explosion of industrial scale solar farms.

Wake County received $36.7 million and Mecklenbrug $23.5 million, the association said. Chatham got $18.4 million and Durham $12.2 million. Johnston was near the bottom with $2.5 million.

North Carolina's renewables lobby and trade group is countering Republican attempts to roll back green energy subsidies with a new report painting the state's current policies in a GOP-friendly light as job creators and revenue generators.

Some Republicans consider subsidies for solar farms and other renewables to be boondoggles that raise power bills for households and businesses. State legislature is likely to consider a number of bills to scale back such subsidies, including an expected bill to freeze the amount of solar, wind and biomass power that electric utilities have to add to the state's power grid.

The N.C. Sustainable Energy Association announced a report Monday saying that since 2007, programs that encourage or mandate renewables and conservation have created 21,162 jobs and generated $1.7 billion in economic benefit for the state. N.C. SEA warns that those jobs and revenues will go to neighboring states if North Carolina abandons its policies to promote green economy jobs.

"Clean energy is creating thousands of jobs, fostering innovation, and attracting billions in private investment to North Carolina," said Betsy McCorkle, N.C. SEA's government affairs director.

N.C. SEA brought in some reputable names for its effort to preserve policies favorable to its members. The report was conducted by RTI International in Research Triangle Park and La Capra Associates in Boston, Massachusetts.

Progress Energy and Duke Energy have agreed to sign more contracts for solar power as they continue looking to buy electricity generated from swine waste and poultry waste.

The utilities' proposal with industry lobbying organizations is intended to buy time for the two North Carolina electric utilities to contract for power generated from this state's abundant agricultural wastes.

Raleigh-based Progress and Charlotte-based Duke signed their agreement with the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, N.C. Farm Bureau, N.C. Pork Council and the N.C. Poultry Federation. The N.C. Utilities Commission, which has the authority to approve or reject the proposal, has scheduled a hearing for next month.

The companies have warned they will be unable to meet state-imposed mandates this year and in 2013 on contracting for green power generated from poultry and hog waste. The main problems are lack of operating facilities and high costs for such energy sources that are still regarded as experimental.

North Carolina's power suppliers, awash in solar energy and other clean resources, said today they will not be able to meet a state mandate this year for generating electricity from two of the state's most abundant renewable resources: swine waste and poultry waste. 

The organizations, including Progress Energy and Duke Energy, said they have fallen behind in efforts to sign contracts to buy power output from independent generators that burn or extract flammable gas from those agricultural animal wastes.

The power suppliers collectively asked the N.C. Utilities Commission for a delay to meet those green energy goals, saying the technologies are immature, the markets are not developed, and potential suppliers are inexperienced.

The filing was made by Raleigh-based Progress, Charlotte-based Duke, Richmond-based Dominion N.C. Power, GreenCo Solutions, Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, Tennessee Valley Authority as well as a number of rural electric cooperatives and municipal power agencies.

Amory Lovins, a Harvard and Oxford-educated physicist regarded by some as a prophet of energy efficiency, will speak tomorrow about energy-saving frontiers at N.C. State University in Raleigh.

Lovins was one of the first to advocate for incentivizing industries and utilities to use less energy by paying them for achieving savings. The idea was dismissed at first but has since been adopted by many states, including North Carolina in its 2007 energy law requiring power companies to increase their reliance on renewable resources and energy efficiency.

Lovins is the co-founder, with his wife, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the winner of numerous awards and prizes, including the 1993 MacArthur Fellow, commonly known as the "genius grant." The author of 31 books and more than 450 papers, he was listed as one of the most influential figures in business in the centennial issue of The Wall Street Journal and named as one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine.
 

A Durham venture fund company that invests in businesses in the clean tech sector has launched its third fund.

At $75 million, SJF Ventures' newest fund will be twice as big as the previous two funds combined, said company co-founder David Kirkpatrick.

The new fund, called SJF Ventures III, has raised about half the money it needs towards its $75 million target. The lead investor is Citi Community Capital, an investing group within Citi, the New York investment bank.

SJF, with six employees and satellite offices in San Francisco and New York, invests in companies that specialize in recycling, renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainability and related technologies. SJF requires a minimum investment of $250,000 for individual investors and $2 million for institutional investors.

The N.C. Solar Center in Raleigh is offering a 40-hour renewable energy management training course that the organization bills as the only non-degree program of its kind in North America.

And at $1,798 per student, the course is a bargain, according to the organizers.

The Solar Center's Certificate in Renewable Energy Management will require a group project to complete the course and graduate. The course will include online and on-site instruction in the technology, financing and policy of renewable energy.

A Chapel Hill solar developer said today it plans to build two solar farms in the state, each almost 5 megawatts in power capacity and both ranking as the second-largest solar farms in the state.

At that size, the two planned solar farms announced today by Strata Solar would be among at least five in this state measuring around 5 megawatts that are in some stage of development.

With that many solar farms of nearly identical size, a clear pattern is emerging: 5 megawatts is the new measure for a large industrial-scale solar farm. It replaces the unofficial old standard, which used to be 1 megawatt, a seemingly insurmountable barrier only a few years ago.

"The reason 5 is the new 1 is there are a lot more investors coming into the marketplace," said John Morrison, chief operating officer at Strata Solar. "It's in the range that's financable."
 

A Raleigh green energy startup has signed its first commercial contract to build a facility that will turn 120 tons of food scraps a day into electricity.

Orbit Energy, founded in 2004, said this week it signed a 15-year agreement to sell renewable electricity to National Grid, a power company in New England.

Orbit CEO Anwar Shareef said his company has plans for 15 similar facilities across the country, including one in North Carolina scheduled for construction later this year.

The company is negotiating a power purchase agreement with Duke Energy for a 4.8 megawatt plant near Charlotte, Shareef said. The project was approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission last year but still requires an air emissions permit from state environmental regulators.
 

Progress Energy is asking green energy developers for another round of solar farm bids to help the Raleigh-based electric utility meet its state mandate for renewable energy.

Progress is seeking solar farms sized at 1 megawatt to 3 megawatts. Currently the biggest solar farm in the Triangle is about 2.2 megawatts, located at the Cary campus of software developer SAS.

To date, Progress has contracted for about 9 megawatts of solar energy from independent developers.