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SFCE 11/9
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The unbearable lightness of Chinese emissions data
Nov 8, 2015 | Reuters
By David Stanway and Kathy Chen
To get a sense of how hard it is to measure greenhouse gas emissions in China, it pays to visit the Deqingyuan poultry farm on the outskirts of Beijing, where streams of chicken manure are piped from wooden sheds to an industrial gas digester that rises above the ground like a tethered balloon. -
Hopes remain for negotiated settlement to US-China solar trade disputes
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Ben Willis
A senior executive at Chinese manufacturer and project developer ET Solar has said hopes remain high for a negotiated settlement to the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China despite the lack of progress on the issue during a recent meeting between the two countries’ presidents. -
Chinese FiT cuts won’t quell demand, says EnergyTrend
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By John Parnell
Recently confirmed cuts to China’s feed-in tariff will not dampen project deployment next year, analyst firm EnergyTrend has said. -
Global Coal Consumption Heads for Biggest Decline in History
Nov 9, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Ewa Krukowska
Coal consumption is poised for its biggest decline in history, driven by China’s battle against pollution, economic reforms and its efforts to promote renewable energy. -
Global PV manufacturing expansion plans topped 1.1GW in October
Nov 9, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
According to PV Tech’s preliminary analysis of global PV manufacturing expansion plans for the month of October 2015, new announcements reached 1.1GW in relation to thin film, c-Si solar cell and module assembly. -
World’s eight major economies to double renewable energy capacity by 2030, WRI finds
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Magazine
By Ian Clover
Study by the World Resources Institute finds that eight of the ten economies that lead the way in global emissions will double their use of renewable energy by 2030. -
Demands grow for overhaul of UK energy policy
Nov 9, 2015 | Financial Times
By Christopher Adams and Kiran Stacey
Ministers are facing calls for an urgent overhaul of UK energy policy, with politicians and industry experts demanding swift investment in new power plants and storage after a near-breakdown in the electricity network. -
A State-by-State Snapshot of Utility Smart Solar Inverter Plans
Nov 6, 2015 | Greentech Media
By Jeff St. John
Smart inverters are going to play an important role in the future of rooftop solar. They already are in Germany, and in the United States, a handful of bellwether utilities are already starting to deploy them. Now the question is whether state-by-state regulations and industry standards can evolve quickly enough to let more utilities and inverter makers join in. -
Solar + Storage May Be Energy's Holy Grail, But Will Regulators Aid The Quest?
Nov 9, 2015 | Forbes
By Jeff McMahon
The energy industry is fast embracing the revolutionary potential of renewable energy combined with cheap battery storage, which together can obviate the need for new power plants. -
How Future Businesses Will Benefit from Clean Energy Storage
Nov 9, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Kayla Matthews
No matter which side of the climate change argument you find yourself on, chances are good you’d agree that it’s in humankind’s best interest to do what we can to reduce our impact on the environment and consistently seek out renewable energy. -
German storage subsidy program to expire in 2016
Nov 6, 2015 | PV - Magazine
By Sandra Enkhardt
Despite the recommendation of Germany’s scientific advisory, the Federal Ministry of Economics will wind up the KfW-storage subsidy program, for battery storage coupled with small PV arrays, at the end of this year. -
Calls to extend German solar storage incentive
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Ben Willis
German trade association BSW Solar has called for an extension to the country’s PV energy storage incentive programme. -
German solar dismayed as Gabriel plans to scrap storage incentive
Nov 6, 2015 | Recharge
By Bernd Radowitz
German energy minister Sigmar Gabriel in a letter to lawmakers said he plans to end a successful programme offering incentives to solar storage systems, among other reasons because he believes the scheme has already fulfilled its purpose. -
EV Fast-Charging Corridor Opens In Germany
Nov 7, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By James Ayre
The Berlin to Munich electric vehicle fast-charging corridor has now been completed, according to recent reports. -
India Aims To Achieve Colossal Renewable Energy Targets 2 Years In Advance
Nov 9, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By Smiti Mittal
The Indian government will push to achieve renewable energy installation targets two years in advance, as it looks to enact more aggressive policies to promote development of renewable energy infrastructure. -
IN DEPTH: Sweet opportunity for Brazilian solar
Nov 6, 2015 | Recharge
By Alexandre Spatuzza
The concentrating solar power (CSP) sector has fallen on hard times globally, but it may be about to get an unexpected boost from a centuries-old Brazilian industry: sugar. -
UN: Climate Pledges Could Bring World ‘Halfway’ to Goal
Nov 9, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric J. Lyman
National climate pledges submitted this year would take the world about halfway to the level needed to keep global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, the United Nations Environment Program Emissions Gap Report said Nov. 6. -
The Reality Gap in the Push to Close the Global Warming ‘Emissions Gap’ in Paris
Nov 6, 2015 | The New York Times
By Andrew C. Revkin
Year by year, the great transition away from the world’s risky carbon-based path to progress is said to be just around the corner. This year’s Emissions Gap report from the United Nations Environment Program, aiming to energize Paris climate talks next month, was released today with this headline: Unprecedented Momentum for Climate Agreement in Paris, But Achieving 2 Degree Objective Contingent upon Enhanced Ambition in Future Years -
UN Green Climate Fund Approves First $168M for Projects
Nov 9, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Morales
The United Nations Green Climate Fund approved $168 million for its first eight projects, a boost to the global climate talks a month before 195 nations aim to seal a new deal requiring all countries to limit greenhouse gases.
Industry News
COP21 - Paris Talks
Full Text of Stories Below
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The unbearable lightness of Chinese emissions data
Nov 8, 2015 | Reuters
By David Stanway and Kathy Chen
To get a sense of how hard it is to measure greenhouse gas emissions in China, it pays to visit the Deqingyuan poultry farm on the outskirts of Beijing, where streams of chicken manure are piped from wooden sheds to an industrial gas digester that rises above the ground like a tethered balloon.
Turning waste into kilowatts qualifies Deqingyuan for valuable carbon credits under a UN-backed scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism. The digester turns all that chicken slurry into natural gas, powering a nearby electricity station and supplying fuel to 39 surrounding villages.
Yet calculating those emissions requires a 54-page, UN-certified rulebook, a methodology that factors everything from the amount of methane removed from the manure to local temperatures and animal weight to come up with a figure.
And that cumbersome process can mean Deqingyuan’s emissions savings vary wildly - sometimes by as much as 20 per cent.
"I don't know how they calculate the figure but there were many researchers from universities who came to assess it," said Vincent Wei, a marketing manager at Helee Bio-Energy Technology, which built the plant.
Precise data collection is a tricky business everywhere, as the Volkswagen scandal over discrepancies between the German auto company's emissions claims and the real world performance of its engines has shown.
But getting accurate emissions data is crucial for governments seeking a global climate accord in Paris this December. Negotiators say that, to succeed, any agreement must be built upon "measurable, reportable and verifiable" statistics in order to assess whether countries are on track to meet their emissions targets.
And getting a better grasp of the right numbers is particularly crucial in the case of China, which is widely assumed to be the world's largest carbon emitter. China's energy use is so great that even minute errors in data can translate into a difference of millions of tonnes of emissions.
No one currently knows how many tonnes of carbon China emits each year. Its emissions are estimates based on how much raw energy is consumed, and calculations are derived from proxy data consisting mostly of energy consumption as well as industry, agriculture, land use changes and waste.
Many outside observers view the accuracy of those figures with skepticism.
"China's contribution (to the global climate plan in Paris) is based on CO2 emissions but China doesn't publish CO2 emissions," said Glen Peters, senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. "You're left in the wilderness, really."
Demands for better data played a major role in the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, when China and several developing nations balked at providing the rest of the world with detailed data, claiming it would be an intrusion on their sovereignty.
The last time Beijing produced an official figure was in 2005, when it said its emissions stood at "approximately" 7.47 billion tonnes. And while it has promised that emissions will peak by 2030 at the latest, experts say the statistical uncertainty is so great that forecasts on what that peak means can vary from 11 to 20 billion tonnes a year.
That margin is greater than the entire annual carbon footprint of Europe.
COUNTING CARBON
At the moment, no country has the technology or the budget to completely track exact greenhouse gas emissions in real time.
The International Energy Agency and other energy organizations operate a centralized reporting and analysis system using unified statistical methodologies and reporting schedules.
The European Union’s emissions trading market, for example, also operates mainly on estimates based on the amount of carbon in energy burned. But the Europeans say monitoring and measurement of the roughly 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 31 countries that comprise the system are stricter than what occurs in developing nations.
"Every single source that could have emissions connected to it has to be identified and controlled," said Halvor Molland, director of information at Norwegian aluminum producer Norsk Hydro which also follows UN guidelines and says its numbers are verified by outsider companies.
"Even if we have a fire drill and we use diesel to set a small fire we have to calculate the amounts," he said. “These are chemical reactions so we know that if you set fire to one liter of diesel you know how much carbon will come out."
China's data reporting is managed by hundreds of organizations, and the methodologies and data at the local government and industry level often conflict with the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. For example, coal production data accumulated from 26 provincial governments in 2013 was 500 million tonnes more than the NBS report of 3.65 billion tonnes.
There are different understandings about which firms should be monitored. Small-scale businesses that fall below the NBS threshold are routinely excluded from calculations, and many small, illegal coal mines conceal their production in order to avoid shutdowns.
China is the only country apart from Russia to use raw coal production rather than sales to calculate overall output, which fails to account for the losses that accrue during processing and transportation and also ignores waste products like gangue, which could account for around 18 percent of raw coal output.
These gaps could mean that China's emissions are actually being overestimated, a government researcher said.
All this riddles the system with imperfections. A study published last month by the magazine Nature suggested China's emissions could have actually been exaggerated by as much as 14 percent because of faulty assumptions about the quality of China's coal.
Bureaucratic rivalries also lead to clashing data. Climate negotiations are run from the National Reform and Development Commission, which determines what data to publish.
"All the emission estimates officially come from the NDRC rather than from the statistics bureau," says Dabo Guan, a professor of climate change economics at the University of East Anglia. "The NDRC is in charge of the whole climate change negotiations and they have to fight for the best position for China, so they have their concerns about what can and cannot be published."
"The Chinese government likes to hold authority over data for fear that different numbers than those from official sources could lead to social unrest," says Angel Hsu, a professor with the Yale School of Forestry And Environmental Studies, who has researched the poor quality of Chinese data.
"China claims they don't have the human capacity to maintain and run the monitors," she says. "But they were monitoring air quality for over a decade; they just didn't release it because they were worried that it would lead to social unrest."
PROMISES
Officially, China says it recognizes the need to produce better data. It promised the United Nations in June to train auditors to collect better data and to produce "regular" national carbon numbers.
"The Chinese government has been funding studies into the carbon inventory - it needs to know its real level of emissions in order to reduce it," said Xi Fengming, a researcher with the China Academy of Sciences (CASS) who has spent the last six years researching the country's total carbon levels.
Xi says China had made great strides since 2012 to improve the way its numbers are collected, including crackdowns on illegal coal production and the statistical fraud by energy-intensive enterprises. It has been experimenting with drones to detect carbon dioxide build-ups in urban areas, and has launched pilot projects to measure energy consumption levels in real-time at industrial facilities.
Researchers say that measuring emissions from the energy sector, which amount to around 70-80 percent of China's total, is critical to getting a good overall picture of the country’s overall emissions.
"If China's energy data is good, then the carbon data will be more or less accurate," said Xi.
Another impetus for improvement is China’s impending cap and trade carbon market, which the country has promised to create by the end of 2017: markets require accurate baselines and data to operate properly. Some observers blame the failure of China’s attempt a decade ago to create an emissions market - this one in sulfur permits models on the US sulfur market - on the lack of accurate acid rain data.
Getting there remains a daunting task.
"There are more than 30 provinces and 2,000 cities and we need more companies to do third-party work and more specialist staff at companies who know how to report the data," said Xi.
And real-time emissions monitoring is unlikely - in even the medium-term.
"So far there is no regulation to force companies to install direct GHG monitoring devices on site and I don't think that will be the trend any time soon," said Richard Mao with the Environomist carbon consultancy in Beijing.
In that regard, China faces the same constraints as the world’s leading economies in the West.
"It may," Mao says of the technology needed to get it right, "just be too costly."
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Hopes remain for negotiated settlement to US-China solar trade disputes
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Ben Willis
A senior executive at Chinese manufacturer and project developer ET Solar has said hopes remain high for a negotiated settlement to the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China despite the lack of progress on the issue during a recent meeting between the two countries’ presidents.
Patrick Guo, executive vice president of ET Solar, said two sets of solar import duties imposed by the US and the retaliatory duties applied by China to US and EU polysilicon imports had created tough trading conditions for Chinese manufacturers, and that he hoped the two countries would soon resolve the matter through negotiation.
Speaking to PV Tech at the Solar Power International expo in California in September, Guo said a deal on the issue had been on the table that month during a visit to the US by Chinese president Xi Jinping, but that failed to materialise.
In a subsequent conversation this week, Guo said parties from the two countries were still in negotiations over the issue. PV Tech understands there is some expectation that a negotiated settlement will be reached before the end of this year, with negotiations still ongoing.
Guo said the second round of the duties brought in by the US government last year had been particularly harmful to Chinese companies looking to sell their products in America. The duties were designed to close a loophole that enabled Chinese modules to avoid US duties by using cells manufactured in Taiwan.
“[In] the first round, there wasn’t too much impact because we could still purchase the cells from Taiwan or other countries, then we shipped the modules to the States. But last year, the second round was a very big hurt. So I think that two governments now are trying to reach a settlement,” Guo said.
He said the duties had made the first half of 2015 “very difficult for most Chinese manufacturers”. The second half had been a “little better” because of falling production costs.
“But it’s not a profitable business,” Guo added. “Most of the profit they contribute to the US government. It’s no good for the industry. If we can reach the settlement next year, it will be very helpful for Chinese manufacturers to increase the shipments to the US.”
Asked what such a settlement would look like, he drew parallels with the one in Europe, where Chinese manufacturers subjected to EU duties have been given the chance to sign up to a minimum import price and annual sales quota to avoid paying the full levy. Interestingly, ET Solar is one of four companies to have been removed from the European MIP earlier this year for apparently transgressing the rules of the arrangement.
Guo said he also hoped the two countries could resolve the silicon dumping issue as well as the cell/module one. “If we can settle both of them it will be good. The silicon made in Europe and the US cannot import into China – there’s a very high tax. So if we can reach agreement it’s helpful for us to bring down the cost,” he said.ET Solar’s international plans
On ET Solar’s global strategy, Guo said the company was hoping to make a strong play from 2016 in the US residential and commercial segments, mindful of the fact that these two look the most likely to continue growing should the expected investment tax credit step-down go ahead as planned at the end of next year.
Utility-scale deployment in the US is expected to take the biggest hit post-2016 if no extension deal is agreed, so Guo said ET Solar was focusing on bringing two new products to market aimed specifically at commercial and residential segments – an AC module and a cell optimiser module.
“The AC module, this is typical for the residential market especially for the system below 3kW; it’s very high efficiency to save cost,” Guo explained. “Then the cell optimiser module is mainly for commercial projects. So the timing of launching this to market, we hope that next year we can use the new products to penetrate into the residential and commercial markets.”
Aside from the US, Guo said Pakistan and the Philippines were among ET Solar’s target emerging markets. In Pakistan ET Solar already has two 11.5MW projects under development, with a further 15MW in the pipeline. Guo said he anticipated a possibly 600MW in Pakistan in the next year.
In Africa, Guo said ET Solar was looking at various prospects, including Nigeria and Egypt. But he said African solar markets were proving slow to take off, with a few notable exceptions such as South Africa: “It’s not an open market, mostly it’s linked with the government – and anything linked with government is taking time.”
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Chinese FiT cuts won’t quell demand, says EnergyTrend
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By John Parnell
Recently confirmed cuts to China’s feed-in tariff will not dampen project deployment next year, analyst firm EnergyTrend has said.
High-irradiance western provinces, including Xinjiang, will see FiTs cut by 5.56% from next year. The rest of the country will have reductions of less than 5%. It is the first significant tariff alteration since 2011.
EnergyTrend analyst Corrine Lin said project demand was likely to undergo a moderate increase following the confirmation of the reductions with equipment prices also increasing.
“Prices are projected to rise in November and December. However, the market outlook for the end of this year remains uncertain,” said Lin citing uncertainty in the US as a result of the ongoing trade dispute and the unknown impact of major Chinese manufacturers expanding production overseas.
According to EnergyTrend, Chinese module manufacturers have experienced an immediate boom in orders as developers look to secure supply for 2016. Price increases have already begun as a result.
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Global Coal Consumption Heads for Biggest Decline in History
Nov 9, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Ewa Krukowska
Coal consumption is poised for its biggest decline in history, driven by China’s battle against pollution, economic reforms and its efforts to promote renewable energy.
Global use of the most polluting fuel fell 2.3 percent to 4.6 percent in the first nine months of 2015 from the same period last year, according to a report released Monday by the environmental group Greenpeace. That’s a decline of as much as 180 million tons of standard coal, 40 million tons more than Japan used in the same period.
The report confirms that worldwide efforts to fight global warming are having a significant impact on the coal industry, the biggest source of carbon emissions. It comes a day before the International Energy Agency is scheduled to release its annual forecast detailing the ways the planet generates and uses electricity.
“These trends show that the so-called global coal boom in the first decade of the 21st century was a mirage,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, Greenpeace’s coal and energy campaigner.
The decline in coal use will help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that are blamed for heating up the planet. To limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) -- the level scientists say cannot be exceeded if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change -- emissions from coal must fall 4 percent annually through 2040, Greenpeace said.China Declining
In China, responsible for about half of global coal demand, use in the power sector fell more than 4 percent in the first three quarters and imports declined 31 percent, according to the report. Since the end of 2013, the country’s electricity consumption growth has largely been covered by new renewable energy plants.
“The coal industry likes to point to China adding a new coal-fired power plant every week as evidence that coal demand will pick up in the future, but the reality on the ground is rather different,” according to the report. “Capacity utilization of the plants has been plummeting. China is now adding one idle coal-fired power plant per week.”U.S. Electricity
The share of coal used to generate electricity in the U.S. will fall to 36 percent this year from 50 percent a decade ago. More than 200 coal-fired power plants, with total capacity of 83 gigawatts, have been scheduled for retirement, including 13 gigawatts expected to retire this year.
Coal consumption in the 28-nation European Union was flat in the first nine months, after declining a record 6.5 percent in 2014, according to Greenpeace.
In India, domestic coal production has been on the rise, with sales by Coal India increasing 7 percent in the first nine months, and consumption increasing about 5 percent. India’s efforts to promote renewable energy is also eating into demand for coal, and stockpiles in the country have increased sharply.
“Coal is in terminal decline, and those countries investing in coal for export markets are making reckless decisions,” Myllyvirta said.
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Global PV manufacturing expansion plans topped 1.1GW in October
Nov 9, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
According to PV Tech’s preliminary analysis of global PV manufacturing expansion plans for the month of October 2015, new announcements reached 1.1GW in relation to thin film, c-Si solar cell and module assembly.
Although overall expansion plans were in line with expected rates, as a lull seen in August 2014 through to October 2014 played out in the same months of 2014, figures in the current year were at slightly higher intensities, though October 2014 and October 2015 produced identical figures of 1.1GW.
However, the product mix was very different. In October 2014, c-Si module assembly expansions dominated (950MW), while 150MW was provided by dedicated solar cell expansions. In October 2015, thin film contributed 300MW, dedicated solar cell expansions totalled 500MW and 310MW was attributed to c-Si module assembly. No integrated solar cell/module assembly expansions were announced in October, 2015.
The relatively low capacity expansion announcements reflected once again in the low level of companies - six - that declared plans.
Yet, some of the plans demonstrate bigger ambitions over the next few years.
The CIGS thin-film plans of Avancis are worth noting as although the initial first phase capacity expansion is 300MW at a new facility in China, ambitions were announced for subsequent build-out at a single facility that totals 1.5GW of capacity.
The other big ambition relates to 1366 Technologies' initial 250MW ‘Direct Wafer’ production plant in the US, with future ambitions to expand capacity to 3GW in coming years.
Staying with upstream manufacturing, Elkem Solar announced plans to restart multicrystalline ingot production at the former REC plant in Herøya, Norway. Although planned production levels were not disclosed the plant had a capacity of 650MW and several hundred employees. Elkem Solar is initially expecting to create around 70 to 80 jobs, indicating initial production would be low.
There has been little new multicrystalline wafer capacity expansions announced for more than two years, except an additional meaningful 1GW of capacity at GCL-Poly taking nameplate capacity to 14GW. Overcapacity and weak ASPs have limited expansions in this upstream sector and it is not currently included in PV Tech’s accumulation of capacity expansion data.The big surprise
In mid-October China Sunergy (CSUN) announced it had officially started the volume production ramp at a new 200MW solar cell plant in Incheon, South Korea, having had trial production successfully undertaken in May.
The NASDAQ-listed PV manufacturer had not previously disclosed any specific plans for production in South Korea. The cash-strapped company is believed to have transferred tools from its facilities in China and said it was considering expanding production to 500MW with additional production lines once the facility has reached around 50% utilisation rates and against the backdrop of restructuring its manufacturing footprint to circumvent US and EU anti-dumping duties.
Technically, CSUN’s announcement would not be classified as a capacity expansion announcement but simply a relocation of nameplate capacity. However, CSUN has experienced low utilisation rates in recent years and the shift of tools to South Korea would bring idled capacity back into being ‘effective’ capacity. Global update
Based on updated information and analysis, the first nine months of 2015 has seen more than 22.7GW of new capacity expansion announcements.
The major seismic shift of capacity plans outside China primarily to other countries in Southeast Asia has continued through October. India, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand have been the destinations of choice, though the US has also been an attractive destination for the last two years but at lower intensity levels.
At the end of October 2015 a cumulative total of 23.8GW of new capacity expansions had been announced that incorporates thin film (3.1GW), c-Si solar cell (6.9GW), module assembly (6.2GW) and (6.3GW) of integrated cell/module expansions planned.
The figures also underline the growing focus on both dedicated c-Si solar cell and integrated c-Si solar cell and module capacity expansions in 2015, compared with 2014 when emphasis was focused on module assembly expansions.
Expectations
Last year, the month of November generated almost 5GW of new capacity expansion announcements as publicly listed major PV manufacturers reported fiscal third quarter results and the largest single month of expansions in 2014.
SunPower has already said that it will announce its next major new production facility plans during an analyst event next week, which could provide over 800MW of new capacity.
There is a strong expectation that several of the six 'Silicon Module Super League' (SMSL) members due to announce third quarter results this month (Trina Solar, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q CELLS and Yingli Green), with a backdrop of full capacity utilisation rates and module shipment guidance ahead of in-house nameplate capacity, will also make major new capacity expansion plans.
It will be interesting to see whether major expansions will be announced for facilities in China or whether a further phase of expansions will focus on further expansions in South East Asia.
Charts and graphs to substantiate the data can be found here: http://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/global-pv-manufacturing-expansion-plans-topped-1.1gw-in-october
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World’s eight major economies to double renewable energy capacity by 2030, WRI finds
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Magazine
By Ian Clover
Study by the World Resources Institute finds that eight of the ten economies that lead the way in global emissions will double their use of renewable energy by 2030.
Analysis published yesterday by the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) has found that renewable energy supply will double in eight of the world’s major economies by 2030, surpassing previously projected growth rates for clean energy deployment by as much as 18%.
The WRI report, Assessing the Post-2020 Clean Energy Landscape, finds that eight of the ten leading emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) – Brazil, China, the EU, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the U.S. – will cumulatively reach 20,000 TWh of renewable energy capacity by 2030, up from just 9,000 TWh in 2012.
The increase, equivalent to all of India’s current energy demand, is a doubling of current capacity when averaged out across the eight economies, but for some countries the actual increase of clean power is set to be much higher.
The WRI report finds that Brazil is on course to hit 45% renewable capacity by 2030, with the U.S. set to hit 20% of renewables, minus hydropower, by that date. The EU’s pledge to have 27% clean energy capacity by 2030 is realistic, the report adds, while China and Japan will source 20% and 22-24% of their power from renewable sources by 2030, respectively.
Canada and Russia, the remaining two emitters from the top ten economies not included in the report, are yet to put forward their post-2020 climate goals for the forthcoming UN talks in Paris, and thus were not assessed in the report.
In breaking down the 127 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) so far pledged ahead of the Paris talks, the WRI found that 80% of them mention clean energy, with five countries in particular – Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico and the U.S. – set to increase their combined capacity of renewables to 856 GW by 2030, which is a four-fold increase on 2012 figures.
"These new renewable energy targets send strong signals to energy markets and investment circles," said WRI global director, climate program, Jennifer Morgan. "Combined with the Paris climate agreement, it’s clear that renewable energy is poised to surge forward in the next 15 years, bringing clean and affordable power to millions of people worldwide."
The WRI report was published at the same time as a UN study that found that despite the efforts and pledges of nations involved in the climate talks, global emission reductions are likely to be half that required to ensure the earth’s average temperature does not rise beyond the ‘safe’ 2c threshold agreed by leading climate scientists.
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Demands grow for overhaul of UK energy policy
Nov 9, 2015 | Financial Times
By Christopher Adams and Kiran Stacey
Ministers are facing calls for an urgent overhaul of UK energy policy, with politicians and industry experts demanding swift investment in new power plants and storage after a near-breakdown in the electricity network.
Fergus Ewing, Scotland’s energy minister, has written to UK energy secretary Amber Rudd voicing concern over the country’s “worryingly low” safety margin of supply over demand. He accuses the government of having ignored repeated warnings that critical infrastructure is near breaking point.
His comments follow an unexpected supply crunch last week that showed just how fragile Britain’s creaking electricity network has become. As the system came under severe stress, sending prices soaring, big industrial users were asked to reduce usage to prevent a breakdown.
A full-blown emergency was averted. On a balmy, windless November day, the National Grid’s plans for dealing with the failure of back-up power plants were sufficient. But what about a midwinter supply squeeze?
Last week’s scramble highlighted the challenge facing Ms Rudd as older, uneconomic coal-fired power stations are closed to meet new EU rules on air quality and ageing nuclear plants are retired. While the closures have long been expected, not enough new capacity is being built. Malcolm Webb, former head of industry group Oil & Gas UK, blames failures by successive governments, describing British energy policy as an “unholy mess”.
Ms Rudd’s first big policy speech, likely later this month, will be closely watched. So far, anyone looking for a big-picture strategy risks disappointment. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is in the grip of a Treasury clampdown on spending. Ms Rudd is slashing renewable energy subsidies, championed by Liberal Democrat predecessor Ed Davey, and preparing sharp departmental cuts demanded by George Osborne, the chancellor.
“Affordability is the top priority now, while decarbonisation has taken more of a back seat,” says one industry insider.
At the heart of this brief is a desire to cut the maximum amount that can be spent supporting clean energy, from £9.1bn a year to £7.6bn in 2020-21. This is ultimately paid for by households and businesses via electricity bills.
“She is nervous of doing anything that the chancellor will not approve of. This is a Treasury energy policy. Osborne’s priorities are fracking for gas and building nuclear power stations,” says a second industry insider.
Yet, while Ms Rudd is focused on cuts to her budget, the bigger issue is Britain’s security of supply. The first in a new generation of nuclear plants, at Hinkley Point in Somerset, is not expected to come online before 2025, while efforts to “frack” for shale gas have so far run into vigorous local opposition.
Renewables, meanwhile, have been a success, despite protests over subsidy cuts. They comprise 19.2 per cent of Britain’s supply versus 2.7 per in 2003, putting the UK on track to hit its immediate carbon reduction targets.
Mr Ewing says ministers should ensure that new capacity, including renewables, is built more quickly alongside storage.
However, wind and solar power cannot meet the grid’s baseload needs because they do not provide a guaranteed uninterrupted supply of power. Sometimes, like last week, things can go wrong. The UK looks likely to become more dependent on undersea interconnectors and imported gas.
One answer could be to extend the demand-side measures used by the grid — or, put simply, to manage energy usage better. Simon Virley, UK chairman of energy at KPMG, says: “We have to find ways to manage demand more actively and avoid having power stations being paid just to cope with the teatime peak.”
Mr Davey agrees. The grid, he argues, should be able to encourage more businesses to reduce their consumption at peak times. But he doubts that Ms Rudd will support this, saying his Conservative coalition partners balked at the idea because of fears that such action could harm economic growth.
“This seems to stem from Britain’s experience in the 1970s,” says Ed Reid, analyst at research group Lazarus. “There is a generation that thinks if we are asked to use less, it means Britain isn’t great any more. But we’re talking about voluntary usage cuts, not mandatory ones.”
Smart meters could help. If households can measure the cost of peak usage, they might curb their demand. But predicting such behaviour is difficult.
Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford university, says the focus should be on ensuring the economic incentives are in place for back-up power. So-called “capacity” auctions, introduced to address this need, are flawed, he argues. Polluting diesel-powered generators, for example, look set to benefit disproportionately.
Instead, says Prof Helm, the UK urgently needs more gas-fired capacity. These plants can be built quickly, relatively cheaply, and are able to respond to fluctuating needs in a way renewables cannot. “The government needs to get on with it. They will have to be more interventionist and make sure gas gets built before returning to a more market-based approach later.”
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A State-by-State Snapshot of Utility Smart Solar Inverter Plans
Nov 6, 2015 | Greentech Media
By Jeff St. John
Smart inverters are going to play an important role in the future of rooftop solar. They already are in Germany, and in the United States, a handful of bellwether utilities are already starting to deploy them. Now the question is whether state-by-state regulations and industry standards can evolve quickly enough to let more utilities and inverter makers join in.
Those are some of the top-line findings from a report released Thursday by the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Taking a look at four key U.S. utilities, the report highlights the significant differences between today’s limited smart inverter rollouts, and the full spectrum of capabilities envisioned for the technology down the road.
The report, Rolling Out Smart Inverters, finds evidence that autonomous inverter grid support functions can be readily deployed at low cost today, and that retrofitting inverters for advanced capabilities can be effectively managed by utilities.
These enhanced capabilities, which include reactive power compensation, voltage and frequency ride-through, and real-time data connectivity, “could potentially offer utilities a least-cost tool for mitigating many grid management challenges" and “help defer or avoid certain distribution, transmission, and electric supply upgrades.”
At the same time, “unresolved issues related to the devices’ implementation and use have limited deployment. Ongoing revision of voluntary standards (e.g., IEEE 1547), grid codes (e.g., California’s Rule 21), interconnection procedures, and communications protocols are affecting utility rollout approaches.”
The four utilities -- Arizona’s Salt River Project (SRP) and Arizona Public Service (APS), The Hawaiian Electric Companies, and California’s Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) -- are in very different stages of deployment, with very different goals. At the same time, each utility’s work is in some ways interdependent on the others. California’s work on revising grid codes and industry standards to allow smart inverters to come to market will have an important influence on how quickly Arizona’s project can get started, for instance. On the other hand, Hawaii’s smart inverter deployments have in some cases gone ahead of the groundwork being done in California and helped to inform it.
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Solar + Storage May Be Energy's Holy Grail, But Will Regulators Aid The Quest?
Nov 9, 2015 | Forbes
By Jeff McMahon
The energy industry is fast embracing the revolutionary potential of renewable energy combined with cheap battery storage, which together can obviate the need for new power plants.
“The combination of those two things—that is truly a killer app,” said California Clean Energy Fund director Julie Blunden, who has experienced alternative and mainstream energy as a former executive for SunEdison, SunPower, Green Mountain Energy, AES, and others. “It’s a phenomenal position we’re now in.”
Since Tesla Motors set a new low price for batteries this Spring, and since the EPA published the Clean Power Plan this summer, renewables and batteries have been showing up together in the strangest places.
“Even the folks who are kind of the laggards to the conversation, the folks who are incumbent coal or incumbent nuclear, are at the point where they’re thinking about it and saying, I can’t ignore this,” Blunden said. “Solar is going to be a part of my portfolio.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said battery storage could eliminate the need for half of the world’s existing power plants, but he’s a battery manufacturer. A major utility CEO, Jim Robo of NextEra Energy, gave credence to such claims a month ago when he told an analyst conference that after 2020, there may never be another peaker plant built in the U.S.—”Very likely you’ll be just building energy storage instead.”
It was Robo who attached the term “holy grail” to renewables + storage this autumn as he announced NextEra’s $100 million investment in batteries over the next year.
But the quest for the holy grail needs the aid of regulators, who can speed it up or slow it down as they hack a path through antiquated energy policies for batteries to enter the system.
Regulators will be responsible for key pieces of the puzzle—developing protocols for connecting storage devices to the grid, drafting regulations that allow utilities to recover the cost of batteries, creating markets that storage projects can sell electricity into. With battery storage perched on the cusp of a vast implementation, regulators have an opportunity to do it well.
“We don’t want to do this necessarily the same way we did solar policy, where every single state in the nation has a different framework,” said Madeleine Klein of SoCore, a solar developer owned by Edison International, during an appearance this week at Greentech Media’s U.S. Solar Market Insight conference on Coronado Island.
For solar developers to operate in 50 states, Klein said, they have to navigate 50 different markets, with 50 different sets of regulations.
“We want to try to avoid that for storage, so that you’re looking at effectively the same market structure regardless of whether you’re looking at a northeast project or a southwest project.
“I know that might be wishful thinking, but hopefully there can be work done at the federal level with FERC (Federal Energy Regulation Commission),” she said. “And some of the really forward looking discussions that are happening in places like New York and California will become the model rules that can be rolled out.”
Should Klein’s wishful thinking not come to pass, storage will roll out anyway. And that will happen not because of government incentives, said Ivo Steklac of SunPower, but because of economics.
“I’m a firm believer that these things are best settled through the laws of economics. If there are high prices there is a demand for alternatives and an open market for disruption of whatever exists for a cheaper and a better way,” he said. “I actually think that works more in our favor.
“It does make it complex.”
Steklac would rather see regulatory reform that better values prosumers—consumers who produce energy—than reform that harmonizes markets.
“Do we need uniformity? No. It would be wonderful, but that truly would be the holy grail of energy for all of us.”
Even without regulatory reform, batteries seem to be finding a home already with residential, commercial and industrial customers.
“The residential application right now is primarily backup,” said Peter Rive of SolarCity. “It’s important to realize that the market for people buying backup generators is larger than rooftop solar. So, there is a strong market for backup power, and you can do it cheaply. We’re basically selling backup power for $4,000 with a solar system.”
Rive described seeing homeowners in new developments pondering whether to spend their discretionary money on granite countertops or battery backups.
But commercial and industrial customers are exercising a more imperative kind of choice.
“The biggest traction we’re seeing with solar and storage is actually on the commercial and utility scale,” Rive said.
At that scale, SolarCity can offer customers electricity for 12¢/kWh in California, compared to a market price of 15¢ or more. And that 12¢ does not yet reflect the impact of Tesla’s new low price for the utility-scale PowerPack. Those should begin flowing from Tesla’s Gigafactory next year, Elon Musk said last week during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call.
“We are seeing very strong demand for Tesla Energy products globally, and particularly in Australia, Germany and South Africa,” he said. “To respond to these opportunities, we are growing our worldwide Tesla Energy sales team and are continuing to sign new business partnerships with utilities and energy companies. There is also an exciting market opportunity for us in India with strong government alignment that we look forward to growing in 2016. Recent changes to feed-in tariff structures in Hawaii also create a large new storage market in that state.”
One of Tesla’s main competitors in the storage market, Sonnenbatterie, has also been busy in Hawaii. At the Solar Market Insight conference, a Sonnenbatterie executive reported a similar outlook.
“I really think the value proposition of solar-plus-storage so outweighs its negatives, that we’ll see a wide implementation not only throughout the United States but throughout the world,” said Boris von Bormann of Sonnenbatterie.
“It’s not incentive driven. It’s truly value driven.”
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How Future Businesses Will Benefit from Clean Energy Storage
Nov 9, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Kayla Matthews
No matter which side of the climate change argument you find yourself on, chances are good you’d agree that it’s in humankind’s best interest to do what we can to reduce our impact on the environment and consistently seek out renewable energy.
In addition to protecting the environment, green energy also promises another welcome benefit in the business world: that of reduced utility bills. Unfortunately, in many cases, it’s been easier said than done for businesses to operate completely on renewable energy.
As it stands now, the problem with renewable energy is that we’ve not yet figured out how to store it in such a way that we’re able to use it to power our businesses around the clock. For example, wind energy can’t be harvested unless there’s wind; solar energy can’t be produced without sunlight; and hydroelectric energy can’t be produced unless there’s flowing water. Since you can’t really expect a business to shutter its doors for the day simply because it’s cloudy, these problems need to be addressed before one can reasonably expect throngs of business owners to migrate to new energy sources.
But there’s good news: Thanks to research and development breakthroughs taking place in the clean energy storage market, business owners won’t even need to know anything about the basic mechanics of air compressors, batteries or solar panels to take advantage of renewable energy sources. In fact, there’s a good chance that many organizations will be able to affordably run their businesses completely on renewable energy in the very near future.
So, why exactly should business owners be interested in clean energy storage? Let’s take a look at what the transformative technology promises:Competitive advantage
Clean energy storage, like compressed air energy storage, promises to reduce electricity and other energy costs. For example, studies show that the technology may very well end up saving Ontario, Canada, $8 billion in energy costs over the next two decades.
While your business probably won’t generate that kind of savings, you’ll certainly see a healthier bottom line. In other words, clean energy storage systems give you more money to invest in new initiatives, new employees or new markets.It’s forward-thinking
There’s a reason companies like Tesla are investing so heavily in the clean energy storage market: It’s clearly the future.
You can’t really control the prices of utilities, so there’s no way of knowing what your business might be paying for energy in five, 10 or 20 years. You also don’t know what kind of regulations government agencies might put on businesses to force them to switch to renewables.
By being proactive and adopting clean energy storage systems early on, you’re positioning your business ahead of the curve — and saving yourself an inevitable headache somewhere down the line.Great PR
By transitioning to renewable energy, your business stands to benefit from a PR blitz that should send sales in the right direction. Today’s customers are increasingly supporting businesses that they agree with ideologically.
Just look at how many folks flock to Chipotle thanks to its commitment to “food with integrity” and its distaste of factory farming. Likewise, when your business runs wholly on renewable energy, you’re able to share that information with the public. You better believe that at least some folks will start doing business with you because of your behavior toward the environment.A revenue source?
If your renewable energy plans are designed well enough, you may even have a chance to generate extra energy and sell it back at a profit. Since solar electricity has come down in price in recent years, many homeowners, business owners and landlords have taken advantage of this by selling excess electricity generated from their investments back into the grid. Who knows? If you play your cards right, not only will your investment in clean energy storage reduce your costs over time, but you may even stumble across a new revenue source!
Clean energy storage systems are already here, though they might not yet be priced within everyone’s budget. But that day is coming soon, and you’d be smart to keep your eyes open for it.
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German storage subsidy program to expire in 2016
Nov 6, 2015 | PV - Magazine
By Sandra Enkhardt
Despite the recommendation of Germany’s scientific advisory, the Federal Ministry of Economics will wind up the KfW-storage subsidy program, for battery storage coupled with small PV arrays, at the end of this year. The Federal Ministry of Economics confirmed this news to pv magazine today. The German Parliamentary Economic Committee was informed by the Ministry this week that all of the targets associated with the program have been achieved.
Since May 2013, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics has supported the KfW-storage program, to incentivize distributed battery storage. The German government’s scientific advisory, the RWTH Aachen, has recommended that the program be extended, with minor technical adjustments. However the Federal Ministry of Economics has ignored this recommendation and will allow the program to expire at the end of the year.
The Federal Ministry of Economics informed pv magazine of this decision today. The statement from the ministry reads in part:
"The aim of the program was to push the market development of stationary battery storage systems, to accelerate their technology development, and to reduce costs to make the PV+battery storage more interesting to consumers. This objective has been achieved. The program’s first Monitoring Report in July was the first sign that these objectives were being met," the statement reads.
Prices for lead-acid batteries for stationary storage have fallen 11% over the last 12 months, and for lithium-ion batteries by 18%. These price reductions are in line with the typical technology learning curve, which posits that with every doubling of production volume, prices fall by between 10-20%.
As of March, 17,000 storage systems have been installed alongside PV arrays in Germany, according to information provided Federal Ministry of Economics. Since May 2013, 13,600 storage systems have received funding under the KfW-storage subsidy program.
The German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar) recently called for the extension of the KfW-storage promotion for a further three years. The association and a number of solar companies have expressed disappointment with the government decision to terminate the program.
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Calls to extend German solar storage incentive
Nov 6, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Ben Willis
German trade association BSW Solar has called for an extension to the country’s PV energy storage incentive programme.
The call comes after it emerged that energy minster Sigma Gabriel plans to end the initiative at the end of this year by which time it will have run its planned three-year lifetime.
BSW Solar said it was “disappointed” by Gabriel’s direction not to extend funding for the programme, which was launched in 2013 to stimulate investment in storage in conjunction with PV and lower the cost of the technology.
According to BSW Solar, the incentive has driven the cost of storage units down by 25%.
But the body said this was just the first stage of the process, and that further funding was needed to achieve full cost competiveness for storage technologies.
It said the government should approve a one-off, three-year funding extension to continue the process instigated by incentive programme. BSW Solar estimated this would cost taxpayers €25 million annually.
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German solar dismayed as Gabriel plans to scrap storage incentive
Nov 6, 2015 | Recharge
By Bernd Radowitz
German energy minister Sigmar Gabriel in a letter to lawmakers said he plans to end a successful programme offering incentives to solar storage systems, among other reasons because he believes the scheme has already fulfilled its purpose.The programme, carried out via subsidised loans from German development bank KfW and introduced in 2013, is scheduled to run out at the end of this year.
"As the programme has fulfilled its purpose and successfully has supported the market introduction of PV battery storage systems that are conducive to the power system, there is no more need to continue the support," Gabriel said in the letter to the economics and energy committee of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.
Germany's solar federation BSW rejects that notion and is lobbying for a continuation of the scheme that costs tax payers a mere €25m ($27.2m) per year.
"We have reached first interim targets in regards to cost reduction, but we still need incentives for a limited period of time during the second part of the journey to competitiveness," BSW managing director Carsten Körnig thinks.
"Ending the programme now could set back the market introduction of storage systems for years, and endanger the Energiewende as a whole and Germany's leadership in one of the great markets of the future."
The number of solar electrical-storage systems (ESS) had doubled to about 20,000through the summer of 2015, of which about half were subsidised via the KfW-run programme, the BSW said in June. Prices during the period had fallen by over a quarter.
The German storage programme is one of only a few public programmes across the world to support solar storage, and has been hailed as a success by increasingly successful Germany-based storage specialists such as Younicos.
Gabriel also argued that the government sees storage as only one option to make the power system more flexible and integrate solar power into it – next to other "flexibility options" such as load management – and doesn't want to favour one option over another in the developing electricity market.
The cabinet in Berlin earlier this week approved new power market legislation that among other things stipulates making smart meters obligatory for many renewables installations, to allow for better load management and system integration.
That move has been rejected by the BSW as another layer of excessive conditions or bureaucratic barriers which the solar industry has to cope with.
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EV Fast-Charging Corridor Opens In Germany
Nov 7, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By James Ayre
The Berlin to Munich electric vehicle fast-charging corridor has now been completed, according to recent reports.
The new, German EV fast-charging corridor is composed of 8 different DC fast-charging stations spread out along the A9 highway. The corridor was created — by BMW, Siemens, and E.ON — with the intention to function as part of the “Electromobility Connects” Bavaria-Saxony showcase (sponsored by the Deutschland government).
The various EV fast-charging stations have reportedly been spaced apart from one another at distances of no more than 90 kilometers (56 miles) — thereby making the corridor of use to most of the electric vehicles on the market currently. The full corridor stretches across a distance of over 430 kilometers (267 miles).
Green Car Congress provides more:
With the project’s completion, Allego GmbH assumes commercial operation of the stations. Initial availability to some of the stations for the public began in May 2014, linking Munich to Leipzig. With the installation of the final station in Dessau, the corridor was completed. In compliance with the EU Directive on the Deployment of Infrastructure for Alternative Fuels and the standardization roadmap of the National Platform for Electromobility, each column can be accessed via CCS (50 kW DC) and IEC type 2 (22 kW AC).
Access to the charging columns is provided through an “SMS payment system”, ie the charging columns can be operated with any mobile phone that is activated for German payment services. DC charging costs €3 per 10 minutes charging time, AC charging costs €2 per 30 minutes charging time. All the fast-charging stations also have been connected to a trans-regional charging roaming system.
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India Aims To Achieve Colossal Renewable Energy Targets 2 Years In Advance
Nov 9, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By Smiti Mittal
The Indian government will push to achieve renewable energy installation targets two years in advance, as it looks to enact more aggressive policies to promote development of renewable energy infrastructure.
India has set a target to have 100 GW solar power, 60 GW wind energy, 10 GW small hydro power, and 5 GW biomass-based power projects operational by March 2022., but Minister of Power, Coal, and New & Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal recently stated that the Indian Government will try to achieve this target of 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2020instead of the set timeline of 2022.
The Central Government has taken several initiatives to increase the uptake of renewable energy through policy initiatives including enactment of a national offshore wind energy policy, and throwing support behind generation-based incentives and accelerated depreciation.
The Government is also looking to address the biggest issue in the Indian power sector — the huge financial debt faced by state utilities. Several billion dollars of debt on state power utilities has prevented them from increasing the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix, despite mandatory renewable energy procurement targets. This fact has only been strengthened by the failure of the Renewable Energy Certificate scheme, and low compliance of the renewable purchase obligation.
Minister Goyal specifically mentioned that states will have to make a significant contribution if the steep renewable energy installation targets are to be met. The Indian government recently announced a comprehensive financial package to restructure the debt on state power utilities. The debt on these utilities will be taken over and guaranteed by the respective states. These utilities will not be given any additional debt from banks and will have to gradually increase their tariffs and reduce losses.
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IN DEPTH: Sweet opportunity for Brazilian solar
Nov 6, 2015 | Recharge
By Alexandre Spatuzza
The concentrating solar power (CSP) sector has fallen on hard times globally, but it may be about to get an unexpected boost from a centuries-old Brazilian industry: sugar.A growing number of experts believe that integrating CSP technology with Brazil’s vast and expanding fleet of biomass-fired power stations can create a multi-gigawatt industry providing 100% renewable energy around the clock 365 days a year.
While still largely untested, the idea is attracting some of the CSP world’s heaviest hitters, including Spain’s Abengoa, and the Brazilian government recently expanded an R&D programme for stand-alone CSP to include such hybrid plants.
The idea is simple. Today, roughly half of Brazil’s 355 sugar mills have on-site power plants fuelled by bagasse, the fibre-rich, high-energy material that is left over after the cane has been crushed to remove the juice that is processed into raw sugar or ethanol.
These bagasse-fuelled plants — typically ranging from 40-100MW — sell their excess power onto the grid and play a huge role in Brazil’s electricity system. Together, they produce 11GW of generation capacity spread across the country’s sunniest regions, making them the country’s second-largest source of electricity after hydropower. The government expects the country’s installed base of bagasse-fired plants to reach 18GW within a decade.
The drawback to these biomass power stations is that bagasse is only produced during the seven- to nine-month sugarcane harvest season, leaving operators needing to buy wood pellets or other forms of fuel to keep the plants generating electricity year round.
Sugar mills have tried a variety of fuel sources to smooth out the seasonal and market-based variations in their bagasse supplies — including natural gas, grass from their plantations, and biogas produced from vinasse, the slop left over after distilling the cane juice.
But the smartest solution may prove to be above their heads: the Sun.
The Brazilian government has been funding CSP research for the past five years, with backing from Germany’s international development agency, which saw an opportunity for German companies to supply CSP components.
But Brazil kicked off a new strategic R&D programme for CSP in September, with the intention of getting a series of pilot projects built across the country. Critically, the decision was taken to include hybrid biomass/CSP plants.
“We were initially looking at pure CSP power generation projects, but we changed the rules to allow these hybrid projects,” says Carlos Cabral, an adviser to the board of power regulator Aneel, which is overseeing the programme.
More than two dozen companies have declared an interest in building pilot CSP plants in Brazil as part of the programme, including Abengoa, Iberdrola, Enel Green Power, China’s State Grid, local developer CPFL and São Paulo state power company CESP.
It remains to be seen whether a commercial CSP market will take off in Brazil. But the government used a similarly structured and funded R&D programme four years ago to kick-start the country’s PV industry — three years ahead of Brazil’s first PV auction.
Aneel, expects a similar timeline before the country’s first CSP auction, which would mean the first commercial projects would be set in motion around 2019.
Some sugar mill operators have been looking at integrating CSP for years. One such operator is Jalles Machado, a large sugar mill in Goiás state with a 40MW bagasse-fired power plant.
“Here in Goiás we have very good solar irradiation, so we thought we could use solar power and [conserve] the bagasse so we could generate power during the whole year,” says Otávio Lage de Siqueria Filho, chief executive of the Jalles Machado mill.
An initial feasibility study, backed by Abengoa and the University of Brasília, found that CSP did not make economic sense at Jalles Machado. With an estimated generation cost of R$400 ($101) per MWh, it would have been impossible to get financing, says Siqueria Filho.
But Celso Oliveira, a researcher at the University of São Paulo, says CSP can be integrated more cheaply than earlier studies indicate.
Bagasse-fuelled plants already have steam turbines and transmission lines in place, meaning those costs can be stripped out of the equation. And there is no need to build expensive storage systems, because the bagasse can be burned during the night, allowing the plant to generate power around the clock.
The total cost of building a CSP solar field and tower can be reduced to about a third of what previous studies have found, says Oliveira.
For Jalles Machado, a CSP plant would require just 20 of its 50,000 hectares of land.
Oliveira has drawn up plans for a 10MW pilot power-tower hybrid project that uses water as the heat-conducting fluid, rather than more expensive oils or molten salt.
This project is backed by local CSP start-up Solinova, and Jalles Machado are in talks with some of the power companies targeting Brazil’s CSP R&D programme.
The Brazilian Union of Sugar and Ethanol Industry (Unica) welcomes the idea of combining solar and biomass.
But it says the government must now offer good cap prices at national auctions to enable biomass power producers to modernise their existing plants and start thinking about adding CSP.
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UN: Climate Pledges Could Bring World ‘Halfway’ to Goal
Nov 9, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric J. Lyman
National climate pledges submitted this year would take the world about halfway to the level needed to keep global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, the United Nations Environment Program Emissions Gap Report said Nov. 6.
The report, released in Geneva, said pledges from many of the world's nations to the UN—Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)—ahead of global climate talks late this year in Paris, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4 gigatons to 6 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year by 2030 compared to a business-as-usual trajectory.
That's if each of the countries submitting INDCs did what they've pledged to do.
Current policies put in place before submissions of the INDCs represent a reduction of another 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.
66 Percent Chance
Combined, the reduction of 11 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year by 2030 (in the best-case-scenario of the impact of the current pledges) are around half the total required by 2030 to make it “likely” global warming can stay below 2 degrees Celsius this century, the report said.
In this case, “likely” is defined as better than a 66 percent chance.
The findings could change slightly, depending on the strength of the few remaining INDCs expected to be submitted before the end of the year and how some “conditional” INDCs—those where some poor and developing countries gave two sets of figures, with the stronger targets tied to aid from industrialized nations—play out.
UNEP's findings are generally in sync with the Oct. 30 Synthesis Report on the Aggregate Effect of the INDCs released by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (211 DEN A-1, 11/2/15).
In its Oct. 30 conclusion, the UNFCC was a little more optimistic based on its projections of the impact of INDCs, saying that if enacted they would keep global warming to within 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit).
By contrast, UNEP's Jacqueline McGlade said Nov. 6 that its estimates said INDCs, if enacted, would limited global warming to 3 to 3.5 degrees Celsius (4.8 to 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit). .
‘Beginning to Bend the Curve.'
UNEP Executive Secretary Achim Steiner praised the work that countries have done in the lead-up to the Nov. 30–Dec. 11 climate summit in Paris, but he cautioned there was still a great deal of work to do after the Paris deal is finalized, presuming that happens.
“We are beginning to bend the curve [in the growth of worldwide emissions], but it is not enough,” Steiner said in a briefing following the formal presentation of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report. “We're most likely around halfway to what we still refer to as ‘net-zero emissions' sometime in the second half of the century, which is probably something we need to reach in 2060 to 2075 in order to keep open the pathway to 2 degrees.”
Steiner stressed that it was impossible that the Paris summit would bring the world to the 2 degree target on its own and said it was much more important that it “pointed the world to the 2 degree pathway” so that future actions could close the gap.
According to the UNEP report, incentives for increased energy efficiency, expanded use of renewable energy, better forestry and agricultural management, and better waste policies are all key areas that can be used to further reduce emissions beyond the levels indicated in the INDCs.
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The Reality Gap in the Push to Close the Global Warming ‘Emissions Gap’ in Paris
Nov 6, 2015 | The New York Times
By Andrew C. Revkin
Year by year, the great transition away from the world’s risky carbon-based path to progress is said to be just around the corner. This year’s Emissions Gap report from the United Nations Environment Program, aiming to energize Paris climate talks next month, was released today with this headline: Unprecedented Momentum for Climate Agreement in Paris, But Achieving 2 Degree Objective Contingent upon Enhanced Ambition in Future Years
The message? You’re doing great, world, but raise your ambition some more and we’ll really get on track toward a safe climate.
You’ll be hearing the phrase “emissions gap” a lot in coming weeks. This is the difference between countries’ pledged commitments to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases after 2020 and scientifically calculated trajectories giving good odds of keeping global warming below the threshold for danger countries pledged to try to avoid in climate talks in 2010 (to “hold the increase in global average temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”).
Under the climate treaty process, these commitments have become known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (the shorthand is INDCs; the World Resources Institute has a great set of related resources.)
The problem is that year-by-year evaluation of tweaks in such short-term plans completely misses the monumentally harder challenge that can be seen when you look at curves out through the rest of the century. Most such pledges don’t go beyond 2030, and those from developing countries are mostly “conditional” — they’ll proceed if wealthy countries pay the cost or otherwise help.
This portion of a graph in the U.N.E.P. gap report shows the short stretch of time and emissions rates it focuses on in the context of the grander challenge. Click here to see the full graphic and here for a nice Carbon Brief discussion.
Lots of U.N. officials and climate campaigners are pressing for Paris to produce a ratchet-style mechanism that boosts the scope of such pledges every five years or the like. But there’s a lot of magical thinking in all of this when you zoom out from this myopic way of defining progress.
There are enormous assumptions in most calculations, including the assumption that “carbon negative” technologies, like capturing CO2 from power plants burning biomass, can be done at a scale remotely relevant to the climate problem (to be relevant one needs to be talking in gigatons of avoided CO2 emissions per year — each a billion tons).
I’ll be writing soon about ways some scientists have proposed (hereand here) to integrate commitments for boosting basic research, development and demonstration on next-generation energy options into the treaty process. In the meantime, here are a few sobering, but valuable reactions to the latest emissions gap news:
Here’s Guido Schmit-Traub, a leader of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project assessing how countries might contribute to the grander task of avoiding dangerous warming:
It puzzles me how people can conclude that needed technologies exist today when they only look at emission reductions through to 2030. The really hard part starts thereafter. Since every new power plant built today will still be in operation in 2050 the structural transformation of energy systems must start very soon. To understand how energy systems must be transformed over the next ten years we need a longer-term view through to 2050. If one looks at such pathways the technology challenges become very clear indeed – you just need to compare required mid-term technology penetration rates with the IEA roadmaps. If, however, we do not worry about post-2030 then UNEP might well be right.
As an example of what the Deep Decarbonization project does, you can read the 2014 pathways report for the United States through 2050 here and here’s the 2015 synthesis report summarizing similar studies in 16 countries.
Oliver Geden at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs sent this reaction:
The message is the same as every year: There’s a large emissions gap that has to be closed to keep warming within 2 degrees. But if the world starts to act now, we can still make it.
It’s remarkable that the message stayed just the same since 2010, although emissions have increased continuously. As already anticipated in my Nature article in May 2015, this conclusion can only be reached by shifting the reference year and taking “negative emissions” into account.
Originally, the gap had been calculated for 2020, and it hasn’t decreased over the years. In the meantime, scientific advisers should have reached a point where they tell climate policymakers that it isn’t possible to reach the 2C target anymore (since the 2020 gap can’t be closed). Instead, they shift the reference year to 2025/2030. And while the first four Emission Gap reports (2010-2013) made it very clear that the global emissions peak would have to be reached before 2020, the report downplays this aspect now.
It’s only possible to keep the 2C target alive with a growing share of “negative emissions” being integrated into the models, primarily the combination of bioenergy and carbon capture and storage.
As the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change has showed in its INDC assessment last week, by 2030 almost 75 percent of the remaining carbon budget will already be consumed, the total budget by around 2036-37. “Negative emissions“ simply work like a “carbon debt” mechanism, but it’s somewhat dubious to count on “payback” starting in 2050.
In these ways, the emissions gap report gives the questionable impression that despite increasing emissions there’s always a way to reach the 2C target, it’s always “five minutes to midnight.”
Brad Plumer looked into these issues for Vox after other assessments of the global emissions gap were released last month.
Chart referenced in the text can be found here: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/the-reality-gap-in-the-push-to-close-the-global-warming-emissions-gap-in-paris/
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UN Green Climate Fund Approves First $168M for Projects
Nov 9, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Morales
The United Nations Green Climate Fund approved $168 million for its first eight projects, a boost to the global climate talks a month before 195 nations aim to seal a new deal requiring all countries to limit greenhouse gases.
The projects range from a wetlands protection program in Peru to development of early warning systems in Malawi, the fund said Friday in an e-mailed statement. The total cost of the programs, including input from UN agencies and private investors, is $624 million, though over the next five years they may generate as much as $1.3 billion of investments, according to the fund.
The awards mean the $10 billion fund is finally operational, six years after it was first mooted at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, and five years after it was formally established. Developing countries have long said the action they can take to fight climate change and adapt to its effects is dependent on the funding they receive from the industrialized world, and the Green Climate Fund is seen as one of the principal conduits.
“The Fund is now truly up and running, and I am confident the board will go on to scale and fund much bigger projects in the near future, living up to our ambition,” Henrik Harboe, co-chair of the board of the fund, said in the statement.
Climate finance is one of the major sticking points at the UN talks, with developing countries seeking more clarity on how much funding will be available in the future and how much progress industrialized nations are making on a pledge to ramp up funding to an annual $100 billion by 2020.
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last month said funding totaled $62 billion in 2014, a figure questioned by environmental campaign groups because it includes loans and development aid.
The Green Climate Fund has received $10.2 billion in pledges, though only $5.9 billion of those have been signed for. The biggest pledge of $3 billion came from the U.S., where Congress has yet to approve the funding.
The other projects awarded funding on Friday are in Senegal, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Fiji, with regional projects in eastern Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.
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