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Court Suspends Chinese Solar Duties
Aug 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
Countervailing duties on certain imports of Chinese solar cells will not be finalized while domestic producer SolarWorld Americas Inc. challenges the entries' duty margins, the Court of International Trade ordered Aug. 25 (SolarWorld Am. Inc. v. United States, Ct. Int'l Trade, No. 15-00232, 8/12/15). -
China Slowdown Rattles Stock Market
Aug 26, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Major U.S. stock indexes tumbled dramatically on Aug. 24—and along with them the stocks of U.S. chemical makers—as investors reacted to the stock market decline that has hammered China since June. “People are realizing that China is not going to be growing at 7% a year,” says Kevin Swift, chief economist... -
Hawaii could run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2045
Aug 26, 2015 | Energy Digital
By Sasha Orman
Hawaii Governor David Ige has ambitious energy plans for his state, and he discussed these plans at the Asia Pacific Resilience Innovation Summit in Honolulu this week. Instead of switching the state’s energy production plants from petroleum to natural gas, Governor Ige asserted that his administration intends to guide... -
Austria's biggest PV park goes online
Aug 27, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Sandra Enkhardt
Sonnquest has completed the development of a 2 MW solar park in Austria under a contract with Wien Energie. The PV park has now officially started operations. The Guntramsdorf PV plant is one of the first, if not the first, PV plant in Austria to go online. 8,136 solar modules were installed on an area as large as six football fields. -
Regulators in Nevada, Colorado support solar net metering
Aug 27, 2015 | See News Renewables
By Ivan Shumkov
On Wednesday the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Nevada approved extending the state’s current solar net metering policy through the end of the year, while regulators in Colorado decided to make no changes to its own programme. Commissioners in Nevada will have time until the end of 2015 to set long-term... -
EDF Renewable Energy Acquires OWNEnergy
Aug 26, 2015 | Clean Technica
By Joshua S Hill
North American EDF Renewable Energy announced Tuesday that it has completed the acquisition of OwnEnergy. EDF Renewable Energy is one of the largest developers of renewable energy in North America, currently with 6 GW worth of wind, solar, biomass, biogas, and solar storage projects developed and a total installed capacity...
Industry News
Full Text of Stories Below
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Court Suspends Chinese Solar Duties
Aug 27, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
Countervailing duties on certain imports of Chinese solar cells will not be finalized while domestic producer SolarWorld Americas Inc. challenges the entries' duty margins, the Court of International Trade ordered Aug. 25 (SolarWorld Am. Inc. v. United States, Ct. Int'l Trade, No. 15-00232, 8/12/15).
In July, the Commerce Department announced the results of an administrative review of Chinese crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from March through December 2012, assigning countervailing duty rates of between 15.43 percent and 23.28 percent. SolarWorld is challenging those rates as too low.
In particular, SolarWorld argues that Commerce did not adequately address a program by the Export-Import Bank of China that provides preferential loan rates for the purchase of Chinese exports.
Commerce preliminarily found that the review's mandatory respondents, Lightway Green New Energy Co. and Shanghai BYD Co., did not benefit from this program. But during the final phase of the review, Commerce was unable to verify the respondents' reported non-use of the program because bank officials refused to allow the department to check its electronic system.
Commerce determined that an adverse inference was warranted in light of the Chinese government's failure to cooperate, and assigned a subsidy rate of 5.46 percent to the credit program, which was factored into the respondents' CVD duty rates.
SolarWorld argued that, because the Chinese government has not cooperated with the verification of this program in multiple proceedings, Commerce should have applied adverse facts available to the fullest extent possible to pressure the Chinese government to cooperate in the future. According to SolarWorld, that would lead to a subsidy rate between 11.83 percent and 19.55 percent.
The court ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection not to liquidate the subject entries while SolarWorld's case proceeds, including any appeals or remands. The court has not yet scheduled further proceedings in this case.
Timothy C. Brightbill of Wiley Rein LLP, Washington, D.C., represented plaintiff SolarWorld Americas Inc.
Melissa M. Devine of the Justice Department's Civil Division represented defendant United States.
Link (subscription needed): http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=74858067&vname=dennotallissues&fn=74858067&jd=74858067
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China Slowdown Rattles Stock Market
Aug 26, 2015 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Major U.S. stock indexes tumbled dramatically on Aug. 24—and along with them the stocks of U.S. chemical makers—as investors reacted to the stock market decline that has hammered China since June.
“People are realizing that China is not going to be growing at 7% a year,” says Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a major trade association. Adding to that realization is a further drop in the price of oil, which threatens the shale-gas-inspired petrochemical expansion in the U.S.
On Aug. 24, the Shanghai Composite Index fell more than 8.5%, continuing a decline that has totaled 38% since June. U.S. investors, already spooked because of China’s recent currency devaluation, reacted in kind.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which includes large U.S. chemical firms such as Dow Chemical and Eastman Chemical, was off 3.9% at the end of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell even further. The S&P dropped another 1.4% on Aug. 25 and was up 1.7% in midday trading on the 26th.
Compounding the market jitters has been the decline in oil prices from nearly $100 a barrel a year ago to around $40 recently. Chemical investors are concerned that low prices could hurt the profitability of shale-gas-inspired expansion projects in the U.S., which ACC now values at $147 billion.
ACC’s Swift acknowledges that about $3 billion in fertilizer-related projects were canceled in August and that other shale-dependent projects may now be delayed. Yet he says recent declines in U.S. natural gas prices still give U.S. petrochemical makers, which largely rely on gas-derived ethane feedstock, an advantage over oil-derived naphtha.
Still, declining oil prices are a nightmare for U.S. shale project planners. “Oil dynamics drive marginal production cost and price-setting mechanisms for chemicals, plastics, and fibers,” says Don Bari, a vice president at consulting firm IHS. “A prolonged oil price recovery could shift the feedstock advantage from ethane back to a more cost-competitive naphtha.”
The stock market tends to react early, and large declines predict economic slowdowns only about half the time, says John E. Roberts, a stock analyst with investment bank UBS. What is clear, he says, is that the stock market is going through a period of volatility as people try to sort out the longer-term impact of recent events.
Link: http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i34/China-Slowdown-Rattles-Stock-Market.html
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Hawaii could run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2045
Aug 26, 2015 | Energy Digital
By Sasha Orman
Hawaii Governor David Ige has ambitious energy plans for his state, and he discussed these plans at the Asia Pacific Resilience Innovation Summit in Honolulu this week. Instead of switching the state’s energy production plants from petroleum to natural gas, Governor Ige asserted that his administration intends to guide Hawaii toward 100 percent renewable energy reliance by 2045.
RELATED CONTENT: Competitive wind energy prices could help the U.S. increase interest in renewables
Why Hawaii? As a chain of islands, it’s a state unlike any other state in the Union—and as The Nation reports, this fact also makes it a state with unique energy needs: Residents pay the highest rates for electricity of any state in the union. Last year, before the recent oil price drop, residential electricity averaged around 36 cents per kilowatt hour (the US average is 12 cents/kwh). On the mainland, states that do not generate enough electricity themselves can import it from their neighbors. Islands in the middle of the Pacific just have what they can make themselves. Because Hawaii’s energy plants were built before it was economical to ship natural gas as LNG, they for the most part use petroleum. The high oil prices of the past decade are estimated to have cost Hawaii some $5 billion extra that was not anticipated.
Link: http://www.energydigital.com/renewables/3921/Hawaii-could-run-on-100-percent-renewable-energy-by-2045
With the oil industry in constant flux, Hawaii is making the decision to move away from a reliance on petroleum to a more stable source of fuel to power its energy plants. But while the expectation would be a switch to liquefied natural gas (LNG), Hawaii’s government posits that renewable energy like solar and wind power should no longer be thought of as simply an “alternative” supplement but a viable primary source.
RELATED CONTENT: Hawaii's SunPower Solar Farm Part of State's Renewable Energy Program
In his address at the Innovation Summit, Ige noted several reasons why he and his administration are pursuing the potential of renewable energy over LNG: Ige said Monday that LNG (liquefied natural gas) will not save the state money over time, given the plummeting prices of renewables. Moreover, “it is a fossil fuel,” i.e., it emits dangerous greenhouse gases. He explained that local jurisdictions in Hawaii are putting up a fight against natural gas, making permitting difficult. Finally, any money put into retooling electric plants so as to run on gas, he said, is money that would better be invested in the transition to green energy.
This puts Hawaii in a unique situation of being a sort of “canary in the coalmine” for the viability of full reliance on renewable energy in the United States. It’s always difficult being the first, but in this case Ige’s administration has the support of the Hawaii Electric Company and a substantial ally on its side: the U.S. military.
RELATED CONTENT: Massive Military Solar Project Commences in Hawaii
Already a major driver of the state’s economy, the military could use this mandate from Hawaii as another way to enhance security and fulfill federal clean power mandates as well: Some 50 percent of the electricity generated in Hawaii is bought by the US military. The Department of Energy has a mandate from the Obama administration to use more green energy, and Governor Ige and HECO are finding the admirals and generals enthusiastic partners in their plans for 100 percent renewables. In fact, the Navy, the Army, and the Marines all hope to generate up to a gigawatt of electricity themselves on bases throughout the United States. The Navy’s self-imposed deadline for doing so is only 18 months away.
If Hawaii is able to achieve this goal and set standards, this could pave the way for enhanced renewable energy production in the Continental United States. It will be interesting to see how the state fares further down the line. But as it stands, Hawaii’s largest powers are all invested in green energy success.
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Austria's biggest PV park goes online
Aug 27, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Sandra Enkhardt
Sonnquest has completed the development of a 2 MW solar park in Austria under a contract with Wien Energie. The PV park has now officially started operations. The Guntramsdorf PV plant is one of the first, if not the first, PV plant in Austria to go online. 8,136 solar modules were installed on an area as large as six football fields. The total capacity of the PV park is pegged at 2.034 MW and the park has been officially in operation since Wednesday. The complete produced PV capacity will be fed into the Austrian power grid providing enough electricity for around 800 households.
Wien Energie has around 50 PV plants under its wings totalling around 12 MW. 19 of these with approximately 5.8 MW in total are under the citizen-solar parks concept. Wien Energy seeks to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and will therefore be investing more in solar and wind projects.
Link: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/austrias-biggest-pv-park-goes-online_100020844/#axzz3k1EDb7g7
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Regulators in Nevada, Colorado support solar net metering
Aug 27, 2015 | See News Renewables
By Ivan Shumkov
On Wednesday the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Nevada approved extending the state’s current solar net metering policy through the end of the year, while regulators in Colorado decided to make no changes to its own programme.
Commissioners in Nevada will have time until the end of 2015 to set long-term rules on solar net metering and until then new solar customers will be allowed to benefit from existing rates. The policy allows customers who have installed solar panels on top of their houses to sell excess power to the grid.
The decision to extend the programme enables local solar sector workers to return to work after the market closed a week ago when utility NV Energy announced that the previous net metering cap of 235 MW had been reached.
Commenting on the PUC ruling, Bryan Miller, the co-chairman of The Alliance for Solar Choice, expressed his gratefulness to the commission and noted that Nevadans will remain vocal to make sure that the new rules will support the continued creation of jobs and drive economic growth.
As per the proceedings in Colorado, the local PUC has ruled to leave the state's net metering policy unchanged. For over a year, the commission was examining costs and benefits that arise from the current policy.
"This decision will hopefully provide confidence to people who are considering going solar that this key policy will remain in effect,” Rebecca Cantwell, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement.
Link: http://renewables.seenews.com/news/regulators-in-nevada-colorado-support-solar-net-metering-490193
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EDF Renewable Energy Acquires OWNEnergy
Aug 26, 2015 | Clean Technica
By Joshua S Hill
North American EDF Renewable Energy announced Tuesday that it has completed the acquisition of OwnEnergy.
EDF Renewable Energy is one of the largest developers of renewable energy in North America, currently with 6 GW worth of wind, solar, biomass, biogas, and solar storage projects developed and a total installed capacity of 3.2 GW. OwnEnergy is a developer of mid-sized wind projects in the US, and has developed or is developing a total of eight wind projects, representing 329 MW.
The acquisition includes 100% of OwnEnergy assets, including its pipeline of future projects, as well as the 20-person team.
“We are thrilled to welcome the OwnEnergy team to the EDF Renewable Energy family,” said Tristan Grimbert, CEO and President of EDF Renewable Energy. “We worked collaboratively during the due diligence to ensure that our respective cultures and customer oriented focus would fully align. Today, I am happy to make this announcement with the utmost confidence in our future success.”
“OwnEnergy’s business model taps into the entrepreneurial spirit of farmers, ranchers and other community leaders across the country with a focus on the mid-size market of off-takers. Their community partner approach will continue under the EDF Renewable Energy brand.”
“Joining an entrepreneurial powerhouse like EDF Renewable Energy is a perfect fit for us,” added Jacob Susman, CEO of OwnEnergy. “They are acquiring us for the same reason that brand name corporations are buying our clean power – we are a successful entrepreneurial company that puts the community first. Our management team was able to scale the business in the face of a tough economy and an unstable policy environment. We are proud of the business OwnEnergy has built and look forward to developing more community-centric wind farms alongside our new EDF RE colleagues.”
Link: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/08/26/edf-renewable-energy-acquires-ownenergy/
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