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SFCE 11/10
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Suntech Partners With Tigo For Solar PV Optimization
Nov 9, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By Jake Richardson
Suntech has a new product out, which is a smart solar DC module integrating Tigo’s modular TS4 platform. The point of using Tigo technology is to optimize power output, add real-time monitoring, make wireless communications more accessible, and reduce maintenance costs. Simply put, the Suntech smart modules have better efficiency and output. Specifically, they can increase power output in tight spaces where they are installed. Balance of system costs can be reduced as well. -
PV module prices drop to 80% below 2009 levels; Czech Rep. reignites home user market
Nov 9, 2015 | PV Insider
...Meanwhile, Suntech announced November 3 that it has launched a new smart DC module that integrates Tigo's modular TS4 platform. -
Airpocalypse now: China pollution reaching record levels
Nov 10, 2015 | The Guardian
By Tom Phillips
Residents of north-eastern China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their homes were enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record. -
GTM: US solar capacity will multiply 10 times over by 2030 but road will be ‘bumpy’
Nov 10, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Andy Colthorpe
The road will be “bumpy”, but solar in the US will continue outstripping predictions by traditional energy forecasters, reaching its next order of magnitude increase in installed capacity by 2030, according to an analyst at GTM Research. -
Trina sets a new world record of 21.25% efficiency with multicrystalline silicon
Nov 10, 2015 | PV - Magazine
By Christian Roselund
This new world record for a multi c-Si cell beats Trina's previous record of 20.78%. Trina says that the processes used can be easily integrated into mass production. -
Australia asks Saudis to invest in renewable energy
Nov 10, 2015 | Financial Times
By Pilita Clark
Australia has invited Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries to put their money into wind and solar farms Down Under as the new government in Canberra declares it is “open for business” on renewable power investments. -
Mexico Wholesale Electricity Market Set for 2016 Launch
Nov 10, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Pickrell
The terms for Mexico's first wholesale electricity market auction will be issued Nov. 11, the government confirmed. -
UK 'to miss 2020 RE target', says leaked Rudd letter
Nov 9, 2015 | Recharge
By Darius Snieckus
Britain is on track to massively miss its legally binding renewable energy targets following a series of industry-undermining cuts by the Conservative government since its election in May, The Ecologist has revealed. -
Two Companies Get Turbine Sites Off New Jersey
| BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
RES America Developments Inc. and US Wind Inc. were the winners Nov. 9 of two federal leases for wind turbine development off of the coast of New Jersey. RES is owned by the Robert McAlpine family, a British family with global engineering and construction projects. RES bid $881,000 to win lease OCS-A 0498, which covers 160,480 acres. -
What climate talks in Paris will mean
Nov 10, 2015 | The Economist
IN DECEMBER 2009, during climate talks held under the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, negotiators failed to forge an international agreement. Hopes had been high: Barack Obama’s election meant many expected America to power negotiations. Instead, alongside Brazil, South Africa, India and China, America reached a non-binding deal on the side.
Suntech News
Industry News
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Suntech Partners With Tigo For Solar PV Optimization
Nov 9, 2015 | CleanTechnica
By Jake Richardson
Suntech has a new product out, which is a smart solar DC module integrating Tigo’s modular TS4 platform. The point of using Tigo technology is to optimize power output, add real-time monitoring, make wireless communications more accessible, and reduce maintenance costs. Simply put, theSuntech smart modules have better efficiency and output. Specifically, they can increase power output in tight spaces where they are installed. Balance of system costs can be reduced as well.
“Tigo is distinguished in the industry as being the sole company to offer a modular platform where customers can cater their PV Module behavior according to their needs by simply replacing the covers. We are focused on partnering with tier 1 solar companies in order to focus on spreading our innovation and energy optimization. By combining our leading technologies with Suntech, we will be able to provide the solar market with the finest solar energy generation products and management systems,” explained Zvi Alon, Tigo CEO.
Wuxi Suntech Power Co., Ltd. is a Chinese company; Tigo is American and is located in Silicon Valley. Suntech has sold 30 million photovoltaic panels or 9 GWs of installed capacity.
These kinds of business partnerships are impressive because they are combining existing technologies to make something that is new and better. Not all businesses are open-minded or flexible enough to reach mutually beneficial agreements.
Another striking thing is that they were able to collaborate across international boundaries and different cultures. International business ventures can be very challenging because of the language and cultural barriers. Another aspect of the relationship could be troublesome or advantageous — both companies are less than 15 years old. This might be an advantage because young companies might be more flexible and less bureaucratic. They also might be more open to innovation resulting from sharing knowledge, rather than taking a bunker mentality and never collaborating.
It would be very interesting to know how they worked out a symbiotic relationship.
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PV module prices drop to 80% below 2009 levels; Czech Rep. reignites home user market
Nov 9, 2015 | PV Insider
Modules, large-scale PV see big price drop in 2010-2014
Solar photovoltaic module prices have fallen by around 80% on average since the end of 2009 while electricity costs from large-scale solar PV plants halved between 2010 and 2014, according to IRENA’s Quarterly Update published in October.
As the graph below shows, crystalline module prices in Germany have dropped by more than 70%, from €1.95/Wp in March 2010 to €0.58/Wp in October 2015 ($2.1/Wp to $0.61/Wp at current exchange rates). At the same time, Chinese crystalline module prices have fallen by almost 63% from €1.5/Wp in March 2010 to €0.56/Wp in October 2015.
The installed costs for utility-scale solar have decreased to a global average of around $0.09/kWh ($90/MWh), meaning that electricity from large-scale PV is beginning to compete with fossil fuel-fired electricity costs in some parts of the world (see graph below).
Brazil’s solar auctions are currently contracting for solar PV at around $0.08/kWh while recent tenders in Jordan resulted in bids in the range of $0.06-0.08/kWh. In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has tendered for the lowest-cost electricity to date, just under $0.06/kWh.
At the same time, SunEdison has just won a bid to sell solar power in India at record-low 4.63 rupees/kWh ($0.0706/kWh), Reuters reported on November 4. The company won an auction for a 500 MW project in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
The previous lowest solar tariff in India was about 5.05 rupees/kWh for Canadian company SkyPower Global's 150 MW PV project in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
Though the SunEdison project could boost the appeal of renewables in India, solar energy still has a long way to go before it can effectively compete with coal on price, which costs between 1.5 and 5 rupees/kWh in India, according to Reuters.
SunEdison and Solaria, Suntech and Tigo launch new modules
SunEdison has signed an Intellectual Property licensing deal with PV technology firm Solaria to produce a new line of ultra-high efficiency 400 watt solar modules, the two companies announced on October 26.
The new SunEdison Zero White Space solar module architecture squeezes more electricity out of the module by reducing the amount of unproductive white space surrounding each cell.
SunEdison said in a press release that the new module – its most efficient to date – is especially suited for home and business applications where space is limited.
Meanwhile, Suntech announced November 3 that it has launched a new smart DC module that integrates Tigo's modular TS4 platform.
The new application is designed to enhance system performance by using wireless communications, optimizing power output and providing real-time monitoring. The module is designed to cut overall maintenance costs by eliminating module-level or cell string mismatch and by reducing the chance of module malfunction.
Increasing power output in constricted installation spaces, the Suntech smart DC module also offers up to 30% longer strings that will balance of system costs, the company said in a press release.
Suntech plans to integrate the TS4 into a variety of its modules that cater to both rooftop and commercial markets in Europe and Australia.
New incentive program could boost ailing Czech PV sector
The Czech government launched a new incentive scheme on October 15 for energy efficiency that will also support the installation of residential PV systems for self-consumption, Photon News reported, citing local newspaper Hospodarske Noviny.
The government will allocate a total of 27 billion CZK ($1.13 billion) for the program over the next 10 years, of which 520 million CZK ($21.8 million) in 2015 and 2.85 billion CZK in 2016.
The Czech Parliament has also recently approved an amendment to the country’s renewable energy law that exempts rooftop PV projects up to 10 kW from requiring building approval.
The Czech Republic had 2.1 GW of installed PV capacity at the end of December 2014, according to data from the country’s Energy Regulatory Office.
At the same time, the country installed only 2 MW of solar PV in 2014, according to SolarPower Europe’s Global Market Outlook for Solar Power 2015-2019 report, and was listed in the study as an “investment desert” due to retrospective measures and low political support for solar power that has slashed investment in the once-booming sector.
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Airpocalypse now: China pollution reaching record levels
Nov 10, 2015 | The Guardian
By Tom Phillips
Residents of north-eastern China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their homes were enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record.
Levels of PM2.5, a tiny airborne particulate linked to cancer and heart disease, soared in Liaoning province as northern China began burning coal to heat homes at the start of the winter.
In Shenyang, Liaoning’s capital, visibility levels plummeted to as little as 100 metres, the state broadcaster CCTV said.
China’s official news agency, Xinhua, published an apocalyptic gallery of images showing the country’s latest smog crisis alongside the headline: “Fairyland or doomsday?”
In some areas of Shenyang, PM2.5 readings reportedly surpassed 1,400 micrograms per cubic metre, which is about 56 times the levels considered safe by the World Health Organisation.
“The air stings and makes my eyes and throat feel sore when I’m outdoors,” one woman, who had ventured out to buy a face mask, was quoted as saying. “As for what exactly we should do, I don’t know,” she added.
By Monday afternoon there had been a slight improvement, although air quality remained at “hazardous” levels in Shenyang, an industrial city of about 8 million inhabitants.
The Associated Press said Sunday’s smog represented one of the worst episodes of air pollution recorded in China since authorities began releasing air quality data in 2013.
There was indignation on social media as China confronted its latest “airpocalypse”.
“The government knows how severe the smog problem is, so why haven’t they tackled it?” one critic wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter.
“What’s the point of having an environmental protection department? The precondition for developing the economy is not damaging the environment. Our leaders are all well educated. Can’t they understand this simple truth?”
Others reacted with resignation. “Other than reporting it, what can the government do?”
Shenyang, a major industrial centre since the days of Mao Zedong, has been attempting to clean up its act in recent years by relocating factories and starting to use natural gas instead of coal to heat homes.
But on Monday doctors in Shenyang were dealing with the consequences of the latest bout of toxic pollution to hit their city.
Yang Shenjia, who works at the Liaoning Jinqiu Hospital, said there had been a sudden influx of patients suffering from breathing complaints over the past two days. “The respiratory department’s inpatient wards are full,” the doctor told Xinhua.
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GTM: US solar capacity will multiply 10 times over by 2030 but road will be ‘bumpy’
Nov 10, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Andy Colthorpe
The road will be “bumpy”, but solar in the US will continue outstripping predictions by traditional energy forecasters, reaching its next order of magnitude increase in installed capacity by 2030, according to an analyst at GTM Research.
Shayle Kann, GTM’s director of solar research, issued an executive briefing document today assessing the US solar market, its opportunities for growth and factors that could hold it back. Kann said that while political support still has not woken up to the widespread public approval enjoyed by the technology, factors including falling costs and new market structures could drive US PV generation capacity to 250GW before 2030.
“I find it very difficult to conjure a realistic scenario that doesn’t include solar achieving the next order of magnitude by 2030, if not earlier,” Kann said.
From just 2GW in 2010, the US has raced on and is expected to reach 25GW by the end of this year. In other words, from representing around 1% of electricity generated today, by 2030 this portion could be at 10% or even 15%, according to Kann’s projections.
Kann said that as this growth had progressed, born partly out of tax incentive measures implemented from 2008 onwards as a result of the global financial crisis, cost reduction efforts had “seemed impressive” at the time, but were dwarfed by subsequent progress between 2010 and 2015.
For instance, utility-scale solar cost around 3.58 per watt in 2010, itself a drop of more than 63% from 10 years prior to that. As costs continued to “plummet”, Kann said, a fixed-tilt utility-scale project now costs just 1.45 per watt to deploy, as an average across the country.Driven by incentives but approved by the public
According to Kann and GTM, four factors will spur solar's future growth in the US:Electricity prices will rise, making solar more competitive. The US Energy Information Administration predicts a 0.6% annual growth in electricity prices through to 2040 in real terms, outstripping likely inflation figures, making relative gains through solar cost reduction even more pronounced.Solar costs will continue to fall in the “near future”, albeit more slowly than beforeThe Federal Clean Power Plan, put forward by the Obama administration this year, could bring development forward in states that lag behind- currently there is a huge discrepancy between leading states such as California and Hawaii and some of the others. For instance, SunEdison just announced the completion of New Hampshire’s largest utility-scale array, which is just 942kW DC capacity.Electricity market reforms, such as New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), and similar ongoing efforts to recalibrate California’s electricity market to allow for greater provisions of distributed energy resources, could open up new revenue streams for solar as a grid asset. Energy storage connected to PV plants could provide grid-balancing services, for example.
Kann believes that the US could install between 15GW and 22GW per year between 2016 and 2030, reaching 250GW by 2030 in the former scenario and by 2025 in the latter.Opportunities - and barriers
From an industry point of view, Kann believes opportunities exist in investing in energy storage and load control, which will make it easier and more effective to integrate solar into the grid.
The GTM analyst also believes “radical cost-reduction opportunities” should be explored, including the use of targeted and competitive funding from the Sunshot Initiative and ARPA-E.
Thirdly and finally, the solar industry should make itself integral to many of the new market designs that are being planned or implemented across the country.
However, Kann warned of a risk that continued success for solar could be “derailed” by a “number of significant roadblocks”.
First and foremost is the forthcoming expiration of the investment tax credit (ITC), the incentive scheme that applies around a one-third discount off the cost of installing solar and solar-plus-storage. The scheme is set to expire at the end of 2016. GTM-affiliated trade group Solar Energy Industries’ Association (SEIA) and others have been campaigning for its extension, and Kann warned that the expiration could result firstly in a rush year for 2016 as developers race to install and could then be followed by solar’s first “down year” in many in 2017.
Secondly, ongoing debate over the best way to compensate for and incentivise household solar, played out in net metering discussions around the US, could cause turbulence and erode the economic case for solar, Kann argued. Hawaii, one of the country’s leaders in solar deployment, recently had to change its net metering rules, temporarily suspending the programme to new customers in order to put in place an interim rule that grid-exported PV power is paid around half the retail rate of electricity. While Hawaii is an unusual example in already having a high penetration of solar on its grids and is already at grid parity for rooftop PV, if other states followed suit, this could create a roadblock to overall PV deployment.
Finally, Kann said that one reason for solar’s success could also hold it back one day. There could be value deflation as PV spreads, with revenues from solar projects dropping as generators sell power into wholesale markets at whatever price they can receive.
Currently, solar is also a non-dispatchable resource, generating variable power throughout daylight hours. While this would potentially change if energy storage were to be added to PV installations - and the ability to aggregate dispatchable and distributed power is already being written into electricity market reforms in California, for example - at present there is no ability for solar electricity to be fed into the system at strategic times to benefit from time-of-use pricing.
In the short term, this will make little difference, Kann said, as power purchase agreements and net metering are long-term mechanisms to fix prices at levels beneficial to PV system owners and operators. PV penetration on the grid is also not really high enough in most states for it to make a significant difference.
However, as solar becomes more and more mainstream, according to Kann, power produced is more likely to be sold at something approaching wholesale prices, meaning the industry will have to find ways to combat this “value deflation” effect.
“As solar penetration increases, the value new projects can extract from the grid may fall, which will put further downward pressure on the cost of solar in order to remain competitive,” Kann said.
Overall, Kann said, while solar remains an incentive- and regulatory-driven technology, and despite its high public approval ratings, “there is no shortage of work to be done by the solar industry, electricity regulators, utilities and policymakers to ensure that the transformation at the edge of the grid produces a more affordable, efficient, resilient, and clean energy future”.
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Trina sets a new world record of 21.25% efficiency with multicrystalline silicon
Nov 10, 2015 | PV - Magazine
By Christian Roselund
This new world record for a multi c-Si cell beats Trina's previous record of 20.78%. Trina says that the processes used can be easily integrated into mass production.
Trina Solar continues to push the abilities of multicrystalline silicon, today announcing the first multi c-Si solar PV cell with an efficiency of over 21%.
The company's State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology of China has produced a new world record 21.25% efficient PV cell, as verified by Fraunhofer ISE.
The 156 square millimeter cell was fabricated on a p-type multicrystalline substrate, and integrates Trina's Honey Plus technologies including back surface passivation and local back surface field.
This beats the previous record of 20.76%, which Trina set in late 2014. The company says that only low-cost industrial processes which can easily be integrated into high-volume production were used to fabricate the cell.
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Australia asks Saudis to invest in renewable energy
Nov 10, 2015 | Financial Times
By Pilita Clark
Australia has invited Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries to put their money into wind and solar farms Down Under as the new government in Canberra declares it is “open for business” on renewable power investments.
The move is part of what Greg Hunt, Australian environment minister, says is a “significant change in tone on renewable energy” after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seized the leadership of the ruling centre-right Liberal party in September from Tony Abbott.
Green power investments in Australia plunged after Mr Abbott took office in 2013. He once described the arguments behind climate change as “absolute crap” and, after taking office, scrapped plans for a carbon tax and said coal was “good for humanity”.
The ascension of Mr Turnbull, who once called Mr Abbott’s climate policies a “farce”, has raised green investors’ hopes of more support.
Mr Hunt, who was in Dubai for international environment talks last week, says he told Saudi and United Arab Emirates officials there, “If you have sovereign wealth funds that like to invest in new energy, you might want to look at Australia”.
“We now have a rock solid platform,” he told the Financial Times in an interview in London.
While Australia’s financial incentives for renewables had not formally changed, policy consistency was crucial for long-term energy investments so the government’s assurances were “really important”, he said.
Mr Abbott’s departure is one of two significant political shifts in big fossil fuel-producing nations that have boosted hopes for the new global climate treaty due to be finalised in Paris next month.
The other came in October when Canadians voted for a new centre-left government led by Justin Trudeau.
Mr Trudeau claimed Canada became a “pariah” on climate change issues under Stephen Harper, his Conservative party predecessor, who pulled Canada out of the Kyoto protocol climate treaty in 2011.
In Australia, Mr Turnbull may struggle to meet the high expectations climate change campaigners have for his government.
Many government MPs would not have supported his leadership if it meant dramatically changing Mr Abbott’s central climate action plans, which environmental campaigners claim are far too weak.
“Some in the renewable energy industry do feel more buoyant with the current change of tone on renewable energy from the government,” said Erwin Jackson of the Climate Institute, an Australian think-tank.
But the prospect of a new clean energy boom remains a distant prospect unless more is done to replace old, inefficient coal-fired power plants, he said.
Mr Hunt, who was also environment minister in Mr Abbott’s government, confirmed there are no plans to introduce a carbon tax or cap and trade scheme.
Instead, the Turnbull government will stick to Mr Abbott’s flagship Direct Action climate plan, which awards grants to companies competing to cut their greenhouse gas emissions as cheaply as possible.
This had already led to “very significant” reductions in emissions, said Mr Hunt.
The government was also launching measures to cut carbon pollution further, he added, including new vehicle emissions standards, a national energy efficiency plan and steps to reduce ozone-depleting hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
Still, Australia’s climate policies will be scrutinised at the Paris talks, where some countries want a new climate agreement to commit signatories to phasing out fossil fuel pollution over the course of this century, with sharp cuts in emissions by 2050.
Mr Hunt said that he would not rule out supporting such a plan but he was not in a position to say Australia would agree to it either.
Australia is also facing accusations that it is trying to water down plans to slash the billions of dollars that rich countries’ export credit agencies channel to coal power plants around the world.
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Mexico Wholesale Electricity Market Set for 2016 Launch
Nov 10, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Pickrell
The terms for Mexico's first wholesale electricity market auction will be issued Nov. 11, the government confirmed.
The announcement indicates Mexico plans to stay on schedule for the January 2016 beginning of its wholesale electricity market, even as it continues to finalize rules for operation of the market, the pricing for transmission and distribution of electricity and the terms for its initial auctions.
The Nov. 11 terms will give would-be participants much needed information on the requirements to participate in the first auction, including the size of offerings and the main rules. The terms also will include the role that clean energy certificates will play in the pricing.
“We are ready to publish the rules for the auction … on Nov. 11,” Francisco Salazar, president of the Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a Platts Mexican energy conference in Mexico City Nov. 5. “We will also provide information on the clean energy certificates, how we will measure compliance and fines for lack of compliance.”
Plans for Mexico's new wholesale market were created by a 2013 legal overhaul of its electricity sector, which will allow private generators full access to sell electricity into its market for the first time in decades.
The new market is designed to encourage the development of renewable energy through the use of clean energy certificates, to meet its own internal targets to generate 35 percent of its electricity demand through clean energy by 2025.
Mexico will define clean energy as renewable energy sources, nuclear energy, natural gas energy and co-generation.
Under the new laws, users and suppliers of electricity will be required to hold at least 5 percent clean energy certificates beginning in 2018.
Commission to Be Split
The largest participant in the auction will be Mexico's national electricity company, the Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE, which also will be split into eight discrete generation companies to ensure that it does not dominate the market, according to Guillermo Turrent, director of modernization for the CFE.
“One of the big things we are waiting for is the strict rules of separation for the CFE,” Turrent said, speaking at the conference. “One of the main challenges is how do we change in an orderly fashion and make sure that the monopolistic company does not preclude competition in the market.
“We are going to operate the generation companies independently from each other, with different directors and boards. These companies are going to compete against each other,” he said.
Each CFE will compete with the others within Mexico and private players in the auction, Turrent said, explaining that each company will have its own directors and boards and financial statements.
Readiness Questioned
While the targets and the creation of energy certificates implies that renewable energy will be in demand, several potential participants in the wholesale market have said the rules and other critical information for making financial decisions about taking part are coming very late, noting that some of the final rules and key information on transmission and permits will not be available until weeks or even days before the market is scheduled to be up and running.
“I just have trouble understanding who will be ready to participate, besides the CFE,” one attendee at the Platts conference said, following Salazar's presentation.
Salazar, however, emphasized that the regulators are working tirelessly to finish the needed regulations, and the opening of the market will begin as scheduled.
“It is important that these be ready for the kick off on Jan. 1,” Salazar said. “It has to be finished by the end of the year. Our idea is to ensure that this regulation can adjust to feedback, in such a manner that the implementation of the reform will bring forth concrete good results.”
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UK 'to miss 2020 RE target', says leaked Rudd letter
Nov 9, 2015 | Recharge
By Darius Snieckus
Britain is on track to massively miss its legally binding renewable energy targets following a series of industry-undermining cuts by the Conservative government since its election in May, The Ecologist has revealed.
The UK – despite assurances to parliament from energy secretary Amber Rudd this summer – is on a trajectory to come up 50TWh shy of its pledged 15% 2020 obligation to the EU, a shortfall of nearly 25%, a letter written by Rudd and leaked to the environmentalist magazine shows.
The government is considering bridging the gap with biofuel production and purchasing renewable energy from countries such as hydropower giant Norway, as well as buying "credits" from outside Britain.
The revelation will further infuriate the UK's hard-hit wind and solar power industries, which have suffered under a welter of policy reversals this year including an end to onshore wind subsidies and cuts in support to PV farms of all sizes, as well as a rescinding of the Climate Change Levy exemption for renewables.
Jeremy Leggett, founding director of international PV group Solarcentury and aRecharge columnist, said: "This is just the latest in a bizarre sequence of government axe attacks on clean energy, but one that sets wholly new standards in black humour and legal mis-step.
"Imagine how the rest of the world would laugh at us if the renewable-resource-rich UK is forced to argue for renewable electricity 'credits' from abroad while most other countries feast on the declining cost of domestic renewable-energy production," says Leggett.
"And imagine the delight of lawyers at the open door they now have for holding [UK energy department] DECC to account for their, ahem, slipperiness in court."
Greenpeace head of energy Daisy Sands says: "This letter shows us the dark side of the government's incoherent energy policy in full technicolour. For the first time, we learn that the government is expecting to miss the EU's legally binding renewables target.
"This is hugely shocking. But more deplorably, it is willfully hiding this from public scrutiny."
"The government is planning on cutting support for the solar and wind subsidies in the name of affordability. But perversely, we see that the government believes investing in renewable energy projects involving buying power from abroad is more desirable than supporting home grown renewable energy industries.
"Even more worryingly, it seems the government is seeking to haggle with the EU to revise down our legal commitments. This policy makes no environmental or economic sense as the UK is losing jobs and affordable clean, renewable energy sources."
In a statement to parliament in June, Rudd said the Conservative government was "on course to achiev[ing]" at least 30% of the UK's electricity demand from renewables by 2020.
"Renewables already make up almost 20% of our electricity generation and there is a strong pipeline to deliver the rest," she stated.
"This government is committed to meeting objectives on cutting carbon emissions and to continue to make progress towards the UK's 2020 renewable energy targets."
The fast-approaching failure to meet its renewables obligation to Europe lays the UK open to domestic legal action from the wind and solar power industries, which have been hemorrhaging thousands of jobs in the past six months, as well as to substantial fines from the European Court of Justice.
Rudd, who also likely faces calls for her resignation on the grounds that she misled parliament, tomorrow gives evidence regarding the department's annual report and accounts to the UK's Energy and Climate Change Committee.
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Two Companies Get Turbine Sites Off New Jersey
| BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
— RES America Developments Inc. and US Wind Inc. were the winners Nov. 9 of two federal leases for wind turbine development off of the coast of New Jersey.
RES is owned by the Robert McAlpine family, a British family with global engineering and construction projects. RES bid $881,000 to win lease OCS-A 0498, which covers 160,480 acres.
US Wind is a unit of Italian conglomerate Toto Holding S.p.A. The company bid just over $1 million for lease OCS-A 0499, covering 183,353 acres.
This was the fifth auction held for wind energy sites in federal waters. No project has progressed to the construction stage in the federal offshore. The one that got the farthest, Cape Wind LLC, with a site off Massachusetts, lost its support from the two utilities that were going to buy its output.
So far, the only offshore wind farm under construction in the U.S. is the Deepwater Wind project in Rhode Island waters near Block Island. It will have a technical capacity of 30 megawatts and an expected average operating output of approximately 14 MW, tiny by the standards of typical power plants.
Schedule Set for Next Steps
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), as the federal offshore leasing agency, will give the winning bidders in the offshore New Jersey auction 12 months to submit a site assessment plan, which could include such elements as wind towers to assess energy potential.
After BOEM approves those plans, the companies will have four and a half years to submit construction and operations plans. BOEM then would develop an environmental assessment, probably a full environmental impact statement, and would offer the companies 25-year leases.
The companies will pay annual rent until they have approved operating lease contracts, after which an annual operating fee would be based on project capacity and wholesale electricity prices.
The companies would need to negotiate with electric utilities to determine where their energy output will be sold and how the energy would be brought ashore, if the projects are ever to progress to full development.
Walter Cruickshank, BOEM deputy director, told reporters Nov. 9 that the New Jersey Renewable Energy Task Force deserved much credit because it brought together federal, state and local government agency staff to get the lease sale planned and done. BOEM worked especially with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the state's Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard.
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What climate talks in Paris will mean
Nov 10, 2015 | The Economist
IN DECEMBER 2009, during climate talks held under the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, negotiators failed to forge an international agreement. Hopes had been high: Barack Obama’s election meant many expected America to power negotiations. Instead, alongside Brazil, South Africa, India and China, America reached a non-binding deal on the side. Among other measures, the “Copenhagen Accord” agreed international co-operation to raise $100 billion per year by 2020 to help countries cut back greenhouse gases. In meetings at Doha two years later, international leaders promised to adopt a legal agreement on climate no later than 2015. Now the world is set for another round of such climate talks, to take place in Paris starting November 30th. But how likely is an agreement, and what would it represent?
Rather than herding bigwigs into a huge room and presenting them with a plan, as the Danes did, countries have had nine months to come up with pledges of greenhouse-gas emission cuts ahead of the meeting—a clever manoeuvre. More than 150 countries have submitted their plans; pledges to cut back cover almost 90% of global emissions. A recent synthesis report from the UNFCCC says the pledges mean that the relative rate of growth in emissions between 2010 and 2030 will be 10-57% lower than in the two decades after 1990. Consequently they will probably only limit average global temperature rise to 3C, not the 2C goal that has dominated climate policy of recent years. But Laurence Tubiana, France’s top climate diplomat, says she is ever more optimistic about reaching a deal because “everyone is talking to everyone.” Indeed, engagement from major polluters is greater than in the past. China plans to peak its emissions in 2030, if not before, and to introduce a national carbon-trading scheme in 2017. And America is embarking on the Clean Power Plan: it aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power stations by 870m tonnes by 2030—a cut of almost a third from 2005 levels and the equivalent of taking 166m cars off the road. Brazil also intends to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 43% by 2030 compared with levels in 2005.
As with many other pledges, these plans are less impressive upon closer inspection: America is already half way to reaching its target thanks to its fracking boom. And no one knows precisely how much carbon dioxide China releases into the atmosphere each year, so its efforts to cut back will be difficult to measure. Meanwhile Brazil attracted criticism for failing significantly to address deforestation in its pledge. Just two countries, Morocco and Ethiopia, are willing to do their part to keep global warming to just 2C according to Climate Action Tracker, an analysis tool run by four environmental research groups.
Nevertheless, if a deal is cobbled together in Paris from pledges, as seems most likely, it will be the most significant international step in reducing emissions to date. Countries will proceed only if the right incentives are dangled before them, so talks will turn on financing. A coalition of the willing may be weak, but it is all that is politically possible. This means an agreement will not stave off climate change, but it will provide a signal to companies and investors of greener times ahead. And if it manages to include a clause requiring countries to tighten their pledges every five years, so much the better. “We’re not in a world of business-as-usual anymore,” says Christiana Figueres, head of the UNFCCC, “we’re in a world of business-as-urgent.”
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