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SFCE Sept 15
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California’s ‘50% renewables by 2030’ legislation is passed
Sep 14, 2015 | PV Tech
By Andy Colthorpe
The passing of legislation that will see California sourcing 50% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 has been hailed as a “huge win” by the US Solar Energy Industries’ Association (SEIA). Senate Bill 350, which also doubles existing energy efficiency goals, was championed by California’s governor, Jerry Brown, who on Friday said the state now had the “legal mandate to reduce carbon pollution” as well as the technical means to do so. In getting the bill passed, Brown worked alongside the highest ranking leader of the California state senate, Kevin De Leon. De Leon said SB350 continued California’s “historic commitment” in leading “the world in the fight against climate change”. -
A Third American City Is Now Running Entirely On Renewable Energy
Sep 14, 2015 | Climate Progress
By Scott Keyes
The number of American cities that run entirely on renewable energy is growing. Last week, the city of Aspen, Colorado declared it had become the third municipality to receive all of its power from renewable sources. Aspen’s energy portfolio now primarily consists of wind power and hydroelectric, with smaller contributions from solar and geothermal. -
Dubai officially opens 800MW PV tender
Sep 14, 2015 | PV Tech
By John Parnell
Dubai’s Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has launched the tender for the next 800MW phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. The 200MW second phase was awarded to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power and Spain’s GSK Engineering. It is anticipated that the third phase will be broken up and awarded to several bidders. The ACWA/GSK bid was a then record low sub US$0.06/kWh. -
Turnbull punts Abbott, but don’t expect any instant miracles
Sep 14, 2015 | Renew Economy
By Giles Parkinson
What goes around, comes around. In Opposition, Tony Abbott displaced then Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull by a single vote, just one week before the Copenhagen climate conference. The issue at hand – Turnbull’s support for Labor’s emissions trading scheme. In government, Turnbull has now displaced Abbott, by 10 votes, just two months before the Paris climate change conference. Climate change is not the only contention, but it is central to Turnbull’s plea for an end to government by slogans. -
India: Andhra Pradesh 500 MW PV tender oversubscribed 10-fold
Sep 15, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Becky Beetz
The National Solar Mission’s (NSM’s) tender for 500 MW of solar PV to be installed in Andhra Pradesh has been oversubscribed tenfold, with 30 developers submitting bids totaling 5.5 GW. A second round of online bids is now set to take place. According to Bridge to India, the first NSM bid under India’s new government has attracted enormous interest with 5.5 GW bid from 30 developers. Six, including SunEdison and Softbank, bid for the whole 500 MW. Five, meanwhile, have made bids for 200 MW.
Industry News
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California’s ‘50% renewables by 2030’ legislation is passed
Sep 14, 2015 | PV Tech
By Andy Colthorpe
The passing of legislation that will see California sourcing 50% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 has been hailed as a “huge win” by the US Solar Energy Industries’ Association (SEIA).
Senate Bill 350, which also doubles existing energy efficiency goals, was championed by California’s governor, Jerry Brown, who on Friday said the state now had the “legal mandate to reduce carbon pollution” as well as the technical means to do so. In getting the bill passed, Brown worked alongside the highest ranking leader of the California state senate, Kevin De Leon. De Leon said SB350 continued California’s “historic commitment” in leading “the world in the fight against climate change”.
The amended bill now orders utilities in the state to meet a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 50% by 2030.
Previously, utilities were legally bound to begin sourcing 33% of electricity sold to retail customers from renewables by the final day of the year 2020. Violating the Public Utilities Act under which the RPS is implemented is a crime. Despite its passing with the inclusion of the increased renewable energy target however, SB350 was amended from an earlier form to remove demands for the halving of petroleum use by cars and trucks by 2030, however.
The state became the first in the US to surpass 10,000MW of installed PV generation capacity earlier this year and has now reached 11GW. According to a recent report from trade association SEIA, California installed 718MW in the first quarter of this year alone.
SEIA vice president Sean Gallagher said the group welcomed the passing of SB350.
“The passage of SB350 is a huge win for Californians and solar power is going to be key in making this win a reality… Solar is now among the most economic energy options. Through the wise passage of this ambitious legislation, we look forward to more jobs and consumer benefits,” Gallagher said.
However, the state also has in place a goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 40% by 15 years’ time, for which SEIA said still more renewables will be needed beyond even the newer, more ambitious RPS. To this end, SEIA’s Gallagher vowed that his organisation will keep working to help implement the bill in full and also to lobby hard for a favourable outcome in ongoing rulings on net metering in the state.
“For California to reach its state climate goals, and for solar’s success to continue, we’ll need all solar markets operating at their fullest potential,” Gallagher said.
Long considered one of the leaders in US renewables in thought as well as action, California’s three main investor-owned utilities (IoUs) also had to recently submit their own distribution resource plans (DRPs). These are plans that detail how each will respond to the move away from traditional hub-and-spoke centralised generation, transmission and distribution of energy and towards increased rooftop solar, EV charging and other resources including energy storage.
California also has in place a mandate, Assembly Bill 2514 (AB2514), for the three IoUs to procure 1.325GW of energy storage as a flexibility and capacity resource by 2020 and install it by the end of 2024.
Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, two of the three main IoUs, have issued statements welcoming the introduction of SB350.
“This bill sends a strong and important message that California will continue to lead and take bold action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – a commitment PG&E shares and fully supports,” PG&E corporation chairman, president and CEO Tony Earley said.
SCE’s director of energy policy Gary Stern called the legislation a “positive step” which created “a meaningful path toward the state’s ambitious climate goals”.
“The amended bill would assure safe, reliable and affordable electric service for our customers as the state follows this new plan to achieve its clean energy and climate goals,” Stern said.
The third and final IoU, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), did not appear to have issued any statement with regard to the news as of this morning. The utility had been criticised by local environmental and community groups including San Diego Energy District, which advocates for a public, not-for-profit utility for the area. According to San Diego Energy District, amendments to SB350 proposed by SDG&E would have limited the scope and raised costs of Community Choice Energy, which allows local authorities to purchase clean energy and remove some regulations on local electricity markets. Local campaigning group Climate Action Campaign hailed the passing of the bill on 11 September, minus the SDG&E amendments.
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A Third American City Is Now Running Entirely On Renewable Energy
Sep 14, 2015 | Climate Progress
By Scott Keyes
The number of American cities that run entirely on renewable energy is growing.
Last week, the city of Aspen, Colorado declared it had become the third municipality to receive all of its power from renewable sources. Aspen’s energy portfolio now primarily consists of wind power and hydroelectric, with smaller contributions from solar and geothermal.
The announcement came after the city’s decade-long effort to shift toward renewable energy. David Hornbacher, Aspen’s Utilities and Environmental Initiatives Director, told the Aspen Timesthat “It was a very forward-thinking goal and truly remarkable achievement.”
Burlington, Vermont and Greensburg, Kansas were the first two cities to achieve all-renewable energy portfolios.
Aspen’s new energy portfolio was made possible by the extraordinary drop in the price of renewable energy. The cost of solar has plunged in recent years, and the price is expected to drop below $0.50 per watt within a few years. Wind power has also become far cheaper than it was just a decade ago.
In addition, new regulations from the Obama administration that help internalize some of the pollution costs of fossil fuels are making energy sources like coal increasingly uncompetitive. Already, more than one-third of American coal plants have been shuttered in the past six years, and the new carbon rules make it quite possible that no new coal plants will ever be built in the United States.
Though Aspen is not a large city — just under 7,000 residents or so live there year-round — Hornbacher told the Aspen Times that its achievement was symbolically important. “We’ve demonstrated that it is possible,” he said. “Realistically, we hope we can inspire others to achieve these higher goals.”
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Dubai officially opens 800MW PV tender
Sep 14, 2015 | PV Tech
By John Parnell
Dubai’s Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has launched the tender for the next 800MW phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.
The 200MW second phase was awarded to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power and Spain’s GSK Engineering. It is anticipated that the third phase will be broken up and awarded to several bidders. The ACWA/GSK bid was a then record low sub US$0.06/kWh.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park will have a total production capacity of 1GW by 2020 and 3GW by 2030.
Expressions of interest for the third phase must be submitted by 29 September.
DEWA also confirmed that work on a huge new substation for the solar park was on schedule for completion by November 2016.
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Turnbull punts Abbott, but don’t expect any instant miracles
Sep 14, 2015 | Renew Economy
By Giles Parkinson
What goes around, comes around. In Opposition, Tony Abbott displaced then Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull by a single vote, just one week before the Copenhagen climate conference. The issue at hand – Turnbull’s support for Labor’s emissions trading scheme.
In government, Turnbull has now displaced Abbott, by 10 votes, just two months before the Paris climate change conference. Climate change is not the only contention, but it is central to Turnbull’s plea for an end to government by slogans.
History will judge Abbott’s reign, and most likely it will do so harshly. He often gave the impression of an Australian Chauncey Gardiner, the Peter Sellers’ character in the film Being There, repeating the same phrases and finding himself an unlikely president.
Abbott’s departure signals the demise of a brief period of policy dominated – possibly for the first time in Australian history – by the Far Right. This will be Turnbull’s biggest threat.
They despise him, to the point that lead right wing commentator Andrew Bolt wondered if it wouldn’t be best to lose power again to a Labor government in order to reboot the Coalition’s far right agenda. And as several Tweeters’ pointed out, 30 of the party voted for Kevin Andrews as deputy, even after Abbott was rolled.
This is, of course, Labor’s worse nightmare. Bill Shorten will likely struggle against the erudite Turnbull. Even Rupert Murdoch advised through Twitter that the Coalition should go to the polls soon before Labor dump Shorten.
What, though, does Turnbull’s leadership mean for climate change policy and renewable energy?
Not a lot of change in the immediate term, one suspects, but a complete change in atmospherics, and of perspective, particularly in the lead up to Paris.
It will mean no more slogans, no more “coal is good for humanity” and we “axed the tax”.
As we noted earlier today, the market for renewable energy, wind farms in particular, is moribund,because no investor or financier trusted the Abbott government.
Turnbull delivers a promise that the renewables target will not be weakened further, and will likely be strengthened. Developers like Meridian Energy may re-enter the market.
Turnbull is certainly not afraid of new technology. He test drove the Tesla, and loved it. He is the first Australian PM to have driven a Tesla. In his speech before the spill, he spoke of the “excitement” of economic change. The very least we can expect is an encouragement of electric vehicles and a vision to deal with the energy revolution towards solar and storage, although there is plenty of resistance from vested interests to be overcome.
Turnbull is also the first former environment minister to be elected PM. But on the issue of climate change, Turnbull has pledged not to bring back an emissions trading scheme. This evening he said the Abbott government’s “climate policy is one that has been very well designed, a very, very good piece of work.”
This is a sop to the right, but there is a lot he can do within those parameters.
As we noted in February, when Turnbull’s camp was plotting a leadership coup,
Turnbull would sweep away the cabal of climate deniers that have installed themselves in and around the PM’s office and dominated the government’s policy making.
This would include Abbott’s main business advisor, Maurice Newman, who was at it again on Friday, writing in The Australian that 2014 was NOT the hottest year on record, and that NASA, NOAA, the World Meteorological Organisation, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Japan’s Meteorological Agency, and the UK Met Office were all wrong for thinking so. Why? Because he had read as much on an obscure though notorious climate denier website favoured by the Mad Right.
So, one suspects we can count on Turnbull to sweep a broom through the likes of Newman, Dick Warburton, Tony Shepherd and David Murray – all climate deniers in charge of advising the government on key policy areas.
What Turnbull won’t do is reverse Abbott’s dumping of the carbon price. The Guardian’s Lenore Taylor gives a good explanation of why here. While Turnbull has been a fierce critic of Direct Action, he also believes it can be adapted into a baseline and credit scheme of the type he has long favoured. In effect, it will be a trading scheme without the word tax.
The mechanism to do so is already built into Direct Action with the so-called “Safeguards” – which means that companies are capped on the amount of emissions they can produce.
This “baseline” can be tightened as needed – particularly if Australia needs to meet a more ambitious target in light of the Paris climate talks – and companies that meet their target could sell their “surplus” to other companies that struggle.
Turnbull could also open up the international market to allow corporates to buy offsets (not a bad idea at the moment considering how cheap they are). And we can be sure that Turnbull would bring a more constructive Australian approach to those climate talks in the lead-up to Paris.
Not much has changed from that, except that the safeguards mechanism proposed by Abbott last week was so weak, it invited polluters to increase their emissions. Turnbull will have a big margin to tighten that mechanism to introduce a defacto carbon tax.
There is one sobering note, as one university analyst noted this evening: “On the climate front – one hopes Turnbull will inject some sanity into the Coalition, but I can’t see him changing the current policy direction given the conservative rump of 44 votes are so feral on this issue, plus the fossil fuel lock-in which dominates both Coalition and Labor.”
One point of interest. Environment minister Greg Hunt walked into the party room meeting on Monday night with Tony Abbott’s confident looking group. He was not to be seen when most of them walked out after their defeat.
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India: Andhra Pradesh 500 MW PV tender oversubscribed 10-fold
Sep 15, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Becky Beetz
The National Solar Mission’s (NSM’s) tender for 500 MW of solar PV to be installed in Andhra Pradesh has been oversubscribed tenfold, with 30 developers submitting bids totaling 5.5 GW. A second round of online bids is now set to take place.
According to Bridge to India, the first NSM bid under India’s new government has attracted enormous interest with 5.5 GW bid from 30 developers. Six, including SunEdison and Softbank, bid for the whole 500 MW. Five, meanwhile, have made bids for 200 MW.
The consultancy says 28 bidders will now move into a second round of, open online, bidding. This is the first time open online bidding has been used in India’s solar sector, writes Bridge to India, which comments, "If similar bids in India for telecom spectrum and coal mine allocation are any indicator, this mechanism will lead to a further intensification of competition."
"Aggressive" tariffs of below INR 5/kWh are expected by some, although the consultancy says it remains skeptical in light of the high solar park infrastructure costs. Saying that, it adds that the recent tariffs of INR 5.09/kWh –INR 5.98/kWh seen in Punjab were "an eye-opener."
Other solar auctions are also said to be attracting a lot of attention, with the 420 MW tender in Rajasthan having reportedly already seen 80 developers expressing interest. The 420 MW is set to be spread across six 70 MW projects in Bhadla Solar Park Phase II under the NSM phase II, batch II, tranche I.
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