There has been a lot of talk in the U.S. about the collapse of the Spanish solar market this year, commonly held to have been a solar bubble. However, few U.S. commentators seem to understand the Spanish market enough to go beyond the standard quip that the Spanish were simply throwing too much money at solar -- and that feed-in rates were the culprit. A closer look reveals what Spain's real problems were, and where those problems could happen in the U.S. as well.

With feed-in rates, the extra money required to make renewables profitable generally does not come from a governmental budget; rather, costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher retail electricity rates. But the particularities of the Spanish electricity market prevented these extra costs from being passed on. At the beginning of each year, the Spanish government sets retail power rates. If, say, the price of natural gas skyrockets that year, the Spanish government later reimburses power providers and grid operators to cover the difference.

In this way, electricity rates are kept artificially low, with part of the cost being covered by taxpayers. And since just about every country, including Spain, is running a budget deficit, the Spanish are having future generations subsidize current electricity consumption. The Spanish are well aware of the problem. As Industry Minister Miguel Sebastián put it, the practice is "irrational and untenable." Spain has responded by starting to phase out the entire system. By 2013, it is to be done away with altogether.

This "energy deficit" has risen to 14 billion euros since 2000 (around 300 euros per Spaniard), and renewables were not the only cause, with energy prices rising in general over the past decade, but there can be no doubt that the spike in solar in 2007 and 2008, when the solar market grew by a hundred percent each year, took Spanish budget planners by surprise. As the decree that revised the solar rates put it, "Energy sources under this special regime constitute a risk for the system's sustainability because of their effects on power prices."

The changes include not only a ceiling on the amount of solar that can be installed, but also the addition of a registry, which will also cover installed wind capacity. Up to now, the government has not kept close tabs on how much is actually put in the ground; that task was largely left up to industry associations. Now, you have to enter your project in the registry so the government can tell you where you are in the line -- whether you can connect your project to the grid this year or not and get this or that rate. For instance, the various regions of Spain are quite keen on expanding renewables, and it turned out that they cumulatively had a target for wind power of around 40 gigawatts by 2010. But Madrid has specified a national target of only 20,155 MW for that year. The registry will be one way that the central government will be able to rein in the regions in terms of wind power.

Similarities with the U.S.

Although Spain's situation is unique, there are a number of overlapping spots. Most saliently, renewables policies in the U.S. often specify either that the investments in renewables must not raise the retail rate or not by more than a certain level. Also, though Americans believe they are living in a freer market than Europeans do, utilities and governmental regulatory bodies also work out retail electricity prices in the U.S. American utilities, whether private or public, are considered "natural monopolies." As such, the government regulates them to prevent price gouging, but in return the utilities are guaranteed a certain profit margin. Call it price fixing.

So while critics of feed-in rates do not seem to like the idea of the government setting prices, we see that governmental pricing did not start with subsidies for renewables. It was there all along both in Spain and the U.S. (but not Germany).

We also clearly see that feed-in rates were not the sole cause of the problem in Spain. Rather, Spain attempted to combine feet-in rates with inflexible, a priori government pricing of retail rates.

What to do?

So how do we stop the U.S. from repeating Spain's mistakes? To my mind, there are two different ways of addressing this question: the first assumes that feed-in rates will be implemented; the second, that they won't be.

Assuming that feed-in rates are adopted, costs would have to be passed on to consumers -- today's consumers, not tomorrow's. And if you want to keep the retail rate in check, you can do what Spain failed to do, but other countries with feed-in rates have done: have the rates decrease not only every one or two years, but also in volume increments.

We all know the policy from car warranties: five years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first. Assuming that you want the rate paid for newly installed solar arrays to drop by, say, five percent each year, you could also have that rates kick in earlier if, say, 500 megawatts had been installed. If you are paying 30 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar, you can get a rough estimate of how much 500 megawatts in good locations are going to cost you. Weather conditions will vary, but your estimate will be accurate +/- around 10 percent for a given year.

You can then also do what Spain has now done and further subdivide those 500 megawatts if you want to ensure that a small number of projects do not take up the whole pie. Go ahead, set aside a couple of hundred megawatts for the countless roofs of Joe the Plumber and his friends.

When companies and homeowners register their systems, they can be told up front where they are on the list. They can be given a window within which they have to connect to the grid, and if they cannot complete their projects on time, those further down in the list will be happy to learn that they will be trading places and getting a slightly higher rate. Planning is thus not only still possible under such a scheme; the surprises it produces are also mostly pleasant.

If you don't want to have feed-in rates, of course, you can simply set aside a budget for solar, wind, and whatever. When that budget is full, you can decide whether you want to devote more money to renewables.

You will then certainly not only prevent a bubble from occurring, but in all likelihood also fail to meet whatever ceiling you set for yourself. Ask any solar advocate in the U.S., and they will tell you that there is a tremendous amount in the pipeline. So why is it not going in the ground? What is holding up solar in the U.S.? What do our policies fail to do that feed-in rates get right?

While Americans are understandably excited about a couple of high-visibility projects for hundreds of megawatts of solar, the Germans I talk to fail to understand what the excitement is about. "We are going to put up a couple of thousand megawatts in 2009, and a large part of that is loads of rooftop systems with just a couple of dozen panels each," one German industry insider told me recently.

So yes, the U.S. does run the risk of repeating Spain's mistakes if feed-in rates are implemented. The conclusion does not, however, have to be that feed-in rates are dangerous. Instead, we need to look at the entire energy policy context and see where Spain and the U.S. are similar -- and remember that the policy of feed-in rates was not itself thrown out in Spain. Only the rates were adjusted, and even that only affected solar. Spain still has feed-in rates.

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Actually, I think they do.  I think Keith Johnson knows quite a bit about energy markets.  Which makes this hit job on solar subsidies, published before the Senate considers national renewable energy legislation, so disturbing.

After chronicling the problems of the Spanish solar industry, the article goes on to say:

"Clean-energy skeptics, however, point to Spain as a cautionary tale of a government policy that created a speculative bubble with disastrous consequences. Some Republicans have cited Spain's solar bubble and bust as an example of how unsustainable government clean-energy pushes are ... California and New Jersey, which lead the U.S. in solar power, are among states that have used subsidies similar to the ones in Spain to make solar power more attractive"

This is in fact incorrect.

Spain used a singular policy, a fixed price, standard offer contract known as a feed-in tariff.

California, on the other hand, has several different policy mechanisms, and each one is market-based.  They look nothing like Spain at all. 

The state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard requires utilities to buy increasing amounts of renewable power through competitive solicitations.

As a result, over 6 GW of contracts for solar electricity have been signed -- and most under the price of natural gas.

For example, look at this contract [PDF] with PG&E for 230 MW of photovoltaics with NextLight: under 13 cents kWh (that’s the 20 year levelized cost of energy of a new combined cycle turbine -- a natural gas plant).

And another: LADWP and FirstSolar: $120/MWh over 30 years [PDF], with escalation, comes out to about 14+ cents per kWh average.  Again -- clean energy, cheaper than natural gas.  Nothing for the Wall Street Journal to be afraid of here.

California is developing a new market-based feed-in tariff for 1-10 MW installations.  This is the perfect program to accelerate new solar development and continue the reduction in prices.

California also has a program to address an entirely different market--  customer-owned, customer-sited generation (competing against retail electricity, not wholesale) -- called the California Solar Initiative.  It has a system of declining rebates that respond to market conditions -- the idea is that once the rebates decline to zero, we have a self-sufficient industry that can continue on its own without subsidy.

California’s approach is different than Spain's, and so are the outcomes.  There's a good story here, and the article missed it.

The Spanish experience demonstrated that the solar industry can ramp up extremely quickly  -- they did 3 GW in a year.  But in chronicling some of its problems, the Wall Street Journal owes its readers a more accurate assessment of market designs and outcomes. 

Solar is getting cheap -- cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives -- and Congress has nothing to fear by getting aggressive on clean energy.  It's an economic opportunity, not burden.

In fact, next week I'm going to DC to deliver that message directly.  If you are in town, please join these informal Hill briefings, and bring your favorite Congressional staff.

House of Representatives, sponsored by Represenatives Giffords, Israel, and Bono Mack:
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
2168 Rayburn House Office Building
RSVP here.

Senate, sponsored by Senator Reid
Thursday, September 10, 2009
1-2 p.m.
Capitol Visitors Center, Room 200 (Senate Side)
RSVP here.

Maybe the Wall Street Journal will show up.  Can somebody call George Will, too?
 

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Proponents of clean energy have long argued that investment in solar, wind, and other renewable sources creates domestic jobs. In the past few years, however, critics of renewable energy have responded -- with considerable success -- by arguing that the net effect is actually negative.

The concept of "netting" the effect of investments (including government subsidies) on the job market is legitimate when used correctly; when not used correctly, it is disingenuous.

Take the case of the F-22 fighter plane. You may have heard the current debate over the decision to discontinue production of this aircraft. One argument against the proposal held that jobs in the aviation production sector would be lost. The other camp countered with the net-effect argument: we are talking about the allocation of a portion of the military budget, not additional funding for new F-22s, they pointed out, so the question is whether the same amount of money could be better used on other things -- including on other aircraft. To the extent that other planes can be built by the same companies that would manufacture the F-22, the net job effect may be negligible. Aircraft will be built anyway. We are comparing the production of one plane to the production of others.

With renewables, the question of net effect is also related to other, similar investments. Since renewables generally produce electricity, not investing in them would mean investing in electricity from other sources. What, then, are the effects on the labor market when we invest in renewables rather than in fossil fuels or nuclear?

I would love to give you the answer to that question, but to my mind, few sound studies have ever been conducted on the issue (I note one exception below) -- which has not stopped a growing number of critics of renewables from using the net-effect argument.

The study that's received the most attention is entitled "Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources" (PDF), made available March of 2009 by Professor Gabriel Calzada Álvarez and his team at Madrid's Rey Juan Carlos University as a "draft: bibliography pending." Interestingly, as of this writing at the end of August, we are still waiting on the bibliography.

Although the paper is merely a draft and did not undergo any peer review, it has received media attention at the highest level. "Saving the planet and creating jobs may be incompatible," wrote the British Economist in a review of the study. In the U.S., Fox News surmised: "Americans shouldn't be depending on green jobs to help the U.S. economy." And the New York Times wrote, "Alvarez posits that the programs creating those jobs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy." Word has it that the paper is being circulated in the US Congress; it was also cited favorably in a Michigan white paper opposing the implementation of European feed-in tariffs (FITs) in the US.

The same net-effect argument has also been used by a group of economists associated with the Cato Institute, led by Prof. Roger Meiners of the University of Texas at Arlington. In the last year, the group has published a 97-page report "Green Jobs Myths" and the shorter (21 pages) "7 Myths about Green Jobs," both of which aim to prove that almost nothing said positively about renewables and job creation is true.

The Spanish and the US reports share a common flaw: they do not say what would otherwise be done with the money invested in renewables. But remember the F-22 decision above -- you cannot talk about the net effect unless you say what the alternatives are.

When Álvarez does mention an option, he unwittingly uses an example most Americans consider unattractive: the "unseen cost" of renewables is "all the hamburgers not cooked ... as a result of the state directing resources to windmills or solar panels" -- a nonsensical example (are we supposed to believe that Spain does not have enough hamburgers?) that he may want to reconsider, for "flipping burgers" is synonymous in the US with poorly paid, unskilled labor.

The formula used in these reports is astonishingly simplistic: take the amount invested in a sector and divide it by the number of jobs created; you get the cost of each job. Now take overall investments in the general economy and divide that figure by the number of jobs created overall, and you get the cost of each job in the general economy.

Álvarez found that 571,138 euros is invested in each green job in Spain, compared to only 259,000 euros per job in the general Spanish economy. He therefore concludes that 2.2 jobs are not created for each green job. I have no idea if these figures are accurate, because he does not provide his sources or define his terms, but no matter -- we will take him at his word. The argument collapses all the same.

If we compare Meiners' figures with those from Spain, we have some interesting results. Meiners and his colleagues put the figure at "$107,000 per new job" in the renewables sector. At this point, a disingenuous critic of Meiners and Álvarez might point out the discrepancy in their figures and calculate that the cost of a green job calculated by Meiners offsets only 0.3 jobs at the general costs calculated by Álvarez. In other words, you create three more jobs in the renewables sector than you would in the overall economy. But throwing together figures calculated in different ways is not honest scholarship. Nonetheless, Álvarez and Meiners cobble together their statistics in this very way.

To their credit, Meiners and his colleagues highlight the lack of a clear definition of the term "green jobs." Unfortunately, they do not define what they mean by it and use that definition to collect and compare a fresh set of statistics. Rather, they cite a wide range of other papers and studies -- with no attempt to adjust for the discrepancies behind all of the figures.

Since the work of Álvarez and his colleagues has not been peer-reviewed, I did them the favor on behalf of Germany's photovoltaik magazine, which published the peer review. Of the four reviewers asked to participate, three said the paper was not sound; the dissenting voice was Meiners himself, who said he supported publication of the paper because, "I oppose censorship." Unsurprisingly, Meiners seemed pleased with the paper's approach -- which, indeed, is his own: "If we push billions of euros in one direction rather than other, something else must be given up. So the explanation made sense." Meiners agreed that the calculations in the paper were not explained in full, but that did not bother him: "as usual, we presume people do not lie as their reputations are on the line."

Another reviewer was Jochen Diekmann, deputy head of the Department of Energy, Transport, and the Environment at the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW), a "leading research institute involved in basic research and policy advice." Dr. Diekmann's response sums up those of the other two reviewers who opposed publication: "The study is not based on the researchers' own calculations about labor market effects," but rather on previously published figures, such as from the EU's MITRE study. But this combination concerned Diekmann because, "In all likelihood, combining figures from different scenarios and time frames leads to inconsistencies, which is generally also the case for the combination of MITRE results from 2003 and the more recent data the study uses elsewhere."

The very wording of these two responses -- one from an American and one from a German -- are revealing. The American produces complete non sequiturs (What does censorship have to do with a peer review? And what planet do you have to live on not to realize that people whose reputations are on the line lie all the time?), while the German produces objective, dispassionate criticism that slices right to the heart of the matter.

No wonder the best study, to my knowledge, on the net job effects of investments in renewables is from Germany. In September 2006, the German Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety published a study entitled "Impact of the Expansion of Renewable Energy on the German Labour Market" (PDF), which concluded that "the net impact ... is also a clear and sustainable positive employment stimulus."

Other studies in the US -- as long as we are throwing around disparate figures -- support the idea that a lot of well paying jobs will be created by renewable investments. Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, has estimated that most "green" (again, definitions vary) workers -- from engineers to construction workers to marketing staff -- will earn more than 20 US dollars per hour on the average. At that rate, you might actually need 2.2 jobs flipping hamburgers to earn as much.

Perhaps such studies could be considered biased; in each case, the conclusions were amenable to the authors' politics. But have the statistics been calculated or collected to produce a desirable outcome? The author of the Michigan White Paper mentioned above has accused me of "pre-existing bias" -- a strange formulation, as though an ex post facto bias would be preferable.

A person is not biased simply because they disagree with you. They may have reached their conclusions based on the facts. In contrast, you are biased if you get the facts wrong in order to strengthen your argument -- which the author of the Michigan White Paper does when he writes that, "Germany and Spain have had huge percentage increases in solar energy production, but solar accounts for less than 1% in both countries after 15 years of FIT [feed-in tariff] subsidies." Actually, Germany started offering its FITs less than nine years ago -- but no matter, 15 years it sounds better if you want to argue that the subsidies are of no avail. What do the facts matter?

While Álvarez and Meiners are both free marketeers who believe that the market knows best, the Spaniard writes that Spain's support for renewables will leave the country "saddled with and further artificially perpetuating obsolete fixed assets, far less productive than cutting-edge technologies." So governments do not know which technologies will prevail, but economists do? Meiners seems to think so: "Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today's demands." Which ones? How does he know? Why doesn't he tell us? Do Álvarez and Meiners base their assumptions about how the market gets everything right on the financial sector's performance over the past four quarters?

In "7 Myths About Green Jobs," Meiners and his colleagues correctly write, "Wind plays an increasing role in electricity generation, but electricity is only a fraction of energy production in the U.S., which is why wind is such a tiny share of energy" (italics in original). But only one page later, we read that nuclear "produces about 20% of U.S. electric power" -- with no further reminder that nuclear also only produces electricity.

Álvarez' study, allegedly about economics, contains much that is outside of economics -- and false. He writes of wind, "The rate of development of this technology has remained comparatively quite calm," though he does not explain what he means. Is he not aware that standard turbines have grown from 55 kilowatts to more than 5,000 kilowatts in two decades? He writes elsewhere, "solar failed even to reach 1% of Spain's total electricity production in 2008." But solar grew by around 100 percent in Spain both in 2007 and 2008. So next year, would he have complained that it failed to reach 2 percent had Spanish policy not been changed?

Finally, while the Spanish study quotes the CEO of Acerinox complaining that retail electricity prices had increased by 10.6 percent in just two years, that quote comes from April 2002. At the time, Spain only had a fraction of its current installed wind capacity -- and practically no photovoltaics to speak of. Back then, renewables could not have been the main culprit. And Acerinox left Spain for a "free economic zone" in Indonesia, where it can escape much more than high energy costs.

Most tellingly, the net-effect argument proves to be a dismal failure when it is actually applied. For instance, one semiconductor manufacturer has set up several production plants in Europe and has just announced that one will be built in the US. For one of its European plants, it received 545 million euros in subsidies; eventually, some 1,000 jobs were created there, putting the cost of each job at 545,000 euros according to the simplistic calculation commonly used in the Spanish paper. But we now see that, by the same simplistic formula, investments in the semiconductor sector also offset some 2.2 jobs (if the figures for Spain roughly hold true for Germany). And the figures are getting worse: the company's new U.S. plant will employ some 1,400 people and receive 1.2 billion dollars in subsidies -- some 857,000 dollars per job.

Here, it becomes clear how much the Spanish study leaves out. Does the value of the semiconductors from those plants make these subsidies seem negligible? What does the state stand to get back in corporate and other taxes? If local jobs are created and foreign jobs offset, the overall effect is positive anyway. Renewables offset foreign resources in most cases. Spain gets roughly half of its energy from coal, but has imported more than it produces domestically for years. The situation is similar in Germany, and energy independence is a buzz word in the US. But the Spanish study does not take domestics jobs offsetting foreign jobs into account.

An estimate of the net effect of investments in renewables might be enlightening, but it would require, as Meiners points out, an agreed definition of what constitutes a green job. It would also, however, have to include take into account how the investments are spent otherwise and how we are going to get the amount of electricity that would have come from renewables. Anything else is twisting the facts.

But my favorite calculation is this one: the last annual budget of the University of Rey Juan Carlos, where Álvarez teaches, was 22,889,932.93 euros. With a staff of around 2,000 people, that comes to some 416,180 euros per job, according to his own method. In other words, Prof. Álvarez's calculation would seem to suggest that shutting down his university would create 1.5 jobs (416,000 euros divided by 259,000 euros per job in the general Spanish economy) for each job lost. I wonder if Mr. Álvarez would prefer, to take the example he gave, flipping burgers 60 hours a week to his cushy job that allows him to upload draft papers to the web.

These days, it seems that misleading information is a legitimate option in public debate in the US (it is not in Germany). Until I see a sound study to the contrary, I will view the net-effect argument right up there with "death panels" and Obama's Kenyan birth: a nefarious attempt at winning by any means possible.

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Hola, amigos y amigas.  I write to you from Spain.  I’m here courtesy of the Catalan government, who brought me in to explain the California solar market to local solar companies. 

Why does Spain care about California?  Spanish solar companies are going through a really difficult time right now.  Briefly, the story goes like this.  The country established a standard offer contract (aka feed-in tariff) for solar at a very lucrative level, resulting in somewhere around 1000% growth over the previous year.  Upwards of 3 GW of photovoltaics were installed in 2008, instead of the 300 MW they were expecting.  The Spanish government, concerned about the cost, shut the program down, then capped the 2009 program at 500 MW--with much of that effectively filled by carryover from projects begun last year.  New applications end up in a queue, and there’s not much activity in the way of new project development.  I spoke with one company that did 100 million euros in revenue last year.  This year, they are down to 5 employees.  It’s really sad.  Hence, Spain’s interest in learning about new markets.

On a happier note, I took a side trip to Sanlucar la Mayor, near Sevilla, to tour Abengoa’s big solar facility.  Holy moly.  Muy impressive. 

I’ve posted some pictures here. 

Most of what you see are power towers.  This is a solar thermal electric technology that uses a field of heliostats (mirrors) to focus the sun’s rays on a receiver, heat water, produce steam, spin a turbine, and thereby make electricity.  It’s a promising technology in that it can achieve significantly higher temperatures than parabolic troughs (which, as they are less photogenic, don’t feature as prominently in the photoset, though the site has 50 MW essentially installed, and another 150 MW more due to come online soon) and higher temperatures mean lower costs.

What’s harder to see but in many ways more important is the energy storage technologies on site.  The towers currently are capable of storing steam for a half hour—reducing power fluctuations due to weather conditions.  But even more exciting is that one of the parabolic trough lines has a molten salt storage system, which provides for upwards of 6 hours of storage.  As intermittency and non-dispatchability are significant challenges when it comes to increasing our reliance on renewables, this is a very big deal.  I walked away feeling very impressed—and comforted—by Abengoa’s commitment to R&D.  Unless you think clean coal is going to save us--and I don't--this represents real hope in the fight against global warming.

Also, the tapas are fantastic.  The pimentos de padron and sardines and jamon iberico...gluttony has its own rewards.

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Fewer chemicals in our sparkling wines? We'll drink to that.

Nothing says festive quite like the pop of a chilled bottle of bubbly.

But while sparkling wine delivers a party in a glass, things are typically less thrilling out in the field. Like most wine, bubbly tends to come from grapes grown in large monocrops -- vines as far as the eye can see. And they're more likely to be swathed in a cloud of pesticide spray than in a farmer's careful attention.

These grim conditions generally hold sway at all price points, from $5 headache bait to the brand-name Champagnes flaunted by rap stars. In her important book The Search for Wine and Love: Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization, Alice Feiring described a visit to the vineyards of Moet & Chandon, one of the Champagne region's most prestigious producers. According to Feiring, the soil "looked dead, with a cadaver-like grayness. Chemical weed killer had clearly been deployed instead of vineyard plows."

Grist's Pick

Feiring champions so-called "grower Champagnes": wines made within France's Champagne region by small-scale farmers, not prestige houses like Veuve and Moet. Alas, these tend to be priced out of a reasonable budget. Grower Champagne is lovely stuff, but it's difficult to find a bottle of it for less than $50.

For this tasting, I wanted distinctive, affordable sparkling wines made from grapes grown on human-scale farms without the use of chemicals. I knew that the "affordable" part would steer me away from Champagne and toward less-hyped regions. How to find them? One option would be to merely seek out certified-organic wines. But that would exclude hundreds of potential candidates that flow out of the so-called "natural wine" movement -- vintners who reject chemical farming and modern wine-making techniques, but who also often reject organic certification. (Allergy to certification comes in many forms: an aversion to paperwork, a lingering but now largely antiquated belief that "organic" denotes low-quality wine, or plain curmudgeonliness.)

So I did what anyone should do who wants to identify such wines: I consulted a knowledgeable wine merchant in my area. I asked Jay Murrie, partner and wine director at Chapel Hill-based 3 Cups, to pick out five "natural" sparklers, all under $30. The ones he chose are widely available nationwide, in the kind of shops that seek off-the-beaten-path wines.

I then assembled a panel composed of wine-loving amateurs (my old Maverick Farms colleague Sara Safransky and me) and wine pros (Jay, plus 3 Cups employees Matt Souza and Elaine Thomas). We tasted the wines blind, and -- amid the frowning and sniffing and swirling -- scribbled down our reactions. I asked everyone to rank the wines by preference. Altogether, the tasting was a mini-New Year's Eve for wine nerds.

Dom. de Montbourgeau Cremant du Jura
Region: Jura, France
Price: $21.99
Natural note: Hand-harvested grapes come from an eight-hectare farm run by the founder's granddaughter.

This one took top honors. All three wine pros noted apple flavors. Jay ranked it number one, impressed by its "balance of green-apple fruit and yeast." Elaine found it "bright, clean, and fruit-driven," while Matt picked up "some good minerals on the finish" and a "nutty aftertaste." We amateurs liked it, too. Sara said it "tickles the tongue and keeps going," while I scribbled "bright, nice acidity, tight bubbles."

Avinyo Cava Rosado
Region: Penedes, Spain
Price: $25.99
Natural note: Four small organic farms supply the winery; the winemaker consults a 300-year-old book for farming tips.

This pink wine (the only rosé in our tasting) placed dead last; no one ranked it in the top three. Even so, it's a delightful, interesting wine that I'd happily drink again. I found a cherryish, almost Kool Aid-like aroma, which gave way to a bone-dry, racy flavor profile. Matt, probably its biggest enthusiast, detected "very fresh flavors -- zesty, with a good amount of acidity." Jay liked its "cranberry/red currant" hints, but found its acidity "pretty severe." Elaine judged that it would "probably be better with food."

Avinyo Cava Brut
Region: Penedes, Spain
Price: $15.99
Natural note: See above.

Most folks found this one solid but unspectacular. Its biggest enthusiast, Matt, detected floral and mineral notes in the aroma, and "honey, pear, and wildflower" flavors. Elaine judged it "pleasant, but not much personality," while Jay declared it "fine, but miles from decent Champagne." I was intrigued by its "lemony, citrus nose," but not wowed by the flavor.

Foreau Vouvray Brut
Region: Loire Valley (Vouvray), France
Varietal(s): Chenin blanc
Price: $26.99
Natural note: 12-hectare farm managed organically; yields intentionally held down to privilege quality over quantity.

This one pleased the panel. Matt found "aromas of earth and leaves and some kind of exotic fruit (mango?)." Jay detected a "really lovely soapy/chalky aroma," with lavender, honey, and pear notes on the palate. "Double-yum," he concluded. Elaine picked up "good layers of fruit and mineral and acidity." I loved it. I found the nose intensely earthy and slightly honeyish -- like hanging out near a beehive in high summer. And on the palate, a long, bracing acidity. Sara praised the quality of the bubbles.

François Pinon Vouvray Petillant Brut
Region: Loire Valley (Vouvray), France
Price: $20.99
Natural note: Supplied by 14 hectares of organically managed land, with a variety of microclimates and soil types.

Another attractive sparkler. I was its biggest admirer, ranking it No. 1. I found pretty fruit notes on the nose, including pineapple. On the palate, I picked up lemon peel and honey, and enjoyed its feather-light effervescence. Jay found it "really well made" and "elegant," with apple and pear notes. Matt detected raw nuts and sake aromas, and pear flavors. Elaine found wheat on the nose and praised its "good lengthy finish," but wished it had more acidity. Sara enjoyed its "fruity undertones" and "very mild sparkle."

Bottom Line: "Natural" sparklers rock, if this tasting is any indication. They may be a little more cerebral than what folks are used to quaffing on New Year's Eve -- they ask you to slow down and contemplate, but they also offer plenty of fun flavor. The panel's favorite, the Dom. de Montbourgeau Cremant, is a worthy choice, but I'd be pleased to toast the New Year with any of them.

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A small Spanish town crammed for space has started using its cemetery as the primary site for a solar power plant, affixing solar panels atop many of the mausoleums. "The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations," said a solar rep whose company also runs the cemetery.

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Skyrocketing fuel prices show no sign of flagging, and no one's happy about it (except the occasional holier-than-thou environmentalist). Truck drivers and transportation operators have threatened to strike, gone on strike, or are still striking in Britain, France, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, and Thailand. In some places truckers have quit the roads altogether, while others are driving at a crawl and snarling traffic. In those countries as well as Malaysia and Nepal, protesters have taken to the streets; two protesters in Spain and Portugal have died trying to block traffic. The pushback is arguably taking the most toll in Spain, where gas stations in some areas have run dry, supermarket shelves are emptying, and the car industry will likely shut down entirely this week for a lack of parts and fuel. As of May 30, average gas prices were $3.96 in the United States, $8.31 in Britain, $9.66 in France, and $11.49 in Germany.

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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

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Spanish activists up in arms over unchecked urbanization

This weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Spain to voice their fury over ... rampant urbanization. Yes, it's true, residents of la piel de toro have had it with the bull. A building boom that started in the 1960s is overrunning rural areas and coastal cities, say observers, and corrupt politicians are only too eager to make illegal deals that can increase pollution and limit water supplies. "Too often, construction in Spain represents the plundering of a community and a culture," reported a European Parliament delegation after a trip in March. Spain has the most homes per resident of any country in Europe; over the last decade, its population grew 5 percent and housing grew 26.3 percent. With high-profile cases putting shady deals in the spotlight and local elections approaching in a few weeks, activists hope a change is in the air. Spaniards, says one candidate, "are beginning to realize that they're losing the landscapes of their childhood to these crimes of urbanization."

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More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

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Spanish coast being ravaged by development

The Spanish coast is being ravaged by a decade-long building boom, and there seems to be no end in sight. About 3 million houses have been started or built in the country in the past four years, with as many as half of them along its famed 3,100-mile coastline. The development boom is ruining ecosystems and bulldozing individuals' rights to land ownership, as local laws in some regions allow private property to be effectively seized by developers. The construction industry is rife with money laundering and corruption, and politicians have allegedly accepted bribes for building permits; dozens of criminal investigations are under way. "They are legalizing illegal buildings, they are urbanizing the entire area ... These days we don't have any development plans. We just build," says Miguel Angel Garcia of the World Wildlife Fund. Much of the building is spurred by northern Europeans seeking to retire on the Mediterranean. Ah, the smell of fresh dust and the sweet sound of jackhammers!

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Spring is springing earlier in Europe, study finds

Across Europe, spring is arriving an average of six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, according to new research published in the journal Global Change Biology. Scientists studied 125,000 sets of observations of 542 plant and 19 animal species in 21 European countries, and found that nearly 80 percent of all leafing, flowering, and fruiting is now happening earlier in the year. "Not only do we clearly demonstrate change in the timing of the seasons, but that change is much stronger in countries that have experienced more warming," said Tim Sparks, one of the report's authors. In Spain, which is heating up more quickly than any other nation in Europe, trees are leafing a full 14 days early. Animals are also adjusting to shifts in climate, but, said Sparks, "If you have species that are dependent on each other changing at different rates, that could just break down the food web." Yikes.

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Spain reprimands public for careless behavior leading to forest fires

Spain has endured about 23,000 forest fires this year, up more than 25 percent from the same time last year. The blazes have destroyed more than 370,000 acres of land and killed 17 citizens -- and more than 90 percent of them have been started by people. The government has long avoided assigning blame to the public, perhaps fearing political fallout, but now environment minister Cristina Narbona is criticizing Spaniards for widespread flouting of fire-safety regulations and for not reporting violations. Forest fires in Spain are frequently set by farmers and ranchers seeking to clear land for fields or pastures or drive off wildlife. Some arsonists are burning forests to facilitate urban development. "I am not going to apologize for saying that society is complicit in these fires," said Narbona in August. "The ones that should apologize are the people that produce, tolerate, and consent to these fires."

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Spain makes solar panels on new homes mandatory

Hoping to catch up to solar powerhouse Germany, sunny Spain has announced that as of next year, solar panels will become mandatory on new and renovated buildings. The government is shooting for a tenfold increase in the total square footage of solar panels by 2010. Domestic solar usage is low in Spain, though the country is a leading manufacturer of solar panels. With oil above $50 a barrel, the government claims that solar power could save each household more than $100 a year just on water heating costs. The initiative could also make a notable dent in the nation's greenhouse-gas emissions. Industry Minister Jose Montilla promised subsidies to ease the transition, but gave no details. Spain's socialist government is headed by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, upon whom a Grist editor who shall remain nameless has a considerable crush. This solar business is only going to fan the flames.

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Wave Power Poised to Go Commercial Off Coast of Spain

Ocean Power Technologies, a leader in the fledgling wave-power industry, is set to launch a pilot project off the north shore of Spain. Ten power-generating buoys will be placed in the Bay of Biscay, where they will float just below the surface and transform wave energy into mechanical force, which drives a generator that transmits power to shore via underground cables. While this project will yield a relatively tiny 1.25 megawatts, the company plans to have a 100-MW wave farm in place by 2006, which would be the world's first commercial-scale wave-driven power station. Though the system won't produce power during strong storms or complete calm, the buoys will be up and running 80 to 90 percent of the time (compared to 20 to 30 for some solar systems), and they take up less space per kilowatt-hour than wind farms or conventional generators -- so boasts Ocean Power CEO and founder George Taylor. Says Robin Batchelor, head of Merrill Lynch's New Energy Technology Fund, "The technology is very immature, but there is some good progress being made."

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Texas Ship-Inspection Company Implicated in Prestige Tanker Disaster

Negligence on the part of the Texas-based American Bureau of Shipping -- a company that conducts safety inspections of ships -- could be to blame for the notorious Prestige tanker disaster, which spilled millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Spain 15 months ago and affected or destroyed the livelihoods of some 100,000 fishers and other Spaniards. So say two lawsuits pending against ABS, which seek a combined total of $1 billion in damages from the company. Though numerous problems had been found with the ship over the years and one past captain had quit the vessel because of its poor condition, ABS inspected and approved the Prestige shortly before the disaster. A number of previous, unrelated lawsuits have also accused ABS of shoddy practices that have led to shipping accidents, deaths of crew members, and environmental damage.

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