Ad Hoc

China has been the dominant producer of solar PV components for several years, with domestic manufacturers rapidly expanding capacity and pursuing economies of scale, aided in no small part by government assistance at the provincial (driven by local job creation goals) and national (supporting a key industry sector) levels. Germany, on the other hand, has seen its production base dwindling over the past few years, while remaining the largest single-country end-market in the world. But this changed at the end of 2012 when China passed it. According to research in the upcoming NPD Solarbuzz Marketbuzz report, this trend is now set to continue for many years.

No doubt: the Indian solar market has strong fundamentals. Irradiation is very high, power is expensive and in short supply. Solar is getting cheaper. In addition, there are now a host of new policies (NSM phase II, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, etc. – please refer to our other blog entries) promising upwards of 4-GW of new solar installations in the coming months. On the other hand, there are only a few players that are really enjoying themselves. Tier 1 Chinese module manufacturers find price pressures too high – as do many EPCs. Project developers still face difficulties in getting their projects financed. The question is: does anyone earn any money? The answer is: no. But those who are ready to try new approaches will do so in the future.

Recent studies have highlighted that sizable amounts of carbon emissions are transferred between world regions in the form of traded goods and services. That is, considerably more emissions are generated for the production of imports to countries, such as the EU and US than those associated with their exports. This observation has frequently been regarded as an indication that energy-intensive industries are being relocated from industrialized to developing and newly industrializing countries, especially to China.

The circular from the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on 13 August 2012 finally addressed some of the issues that have been raised about recent regulation on extra financial disclosures in Indian capital markets. It comes as a follow-up to the SEBI Board’s landmark decision in November 2011 that mandated ESG disclosures from the Top 100 listed companies. The comply-or-explain stance on revelation of policy and the nine principles laid out in the National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business, published by Ministry of Corporate Affairs in July 2011, provides a good starting point

Tropical forests cover about 15 percent of the world’s land surface but every year around 13 million hectares of forest are cleared for crop cultivation, cattle, logging and mining (FAO 2010). Forests are both carbon guzzlers (sinks) and emitters (sources) and deforestation and forest degradation accounts for a whopping 15-17 percent of man-made GHG emissions each year. In the context of climate change, a 50 percent reduction in GHG emissions is needed by 2030 to prevent global temperature rising above 2 degrees Celsius (IPCC 2007, AR4) but the positive news is that reducing deforestation is the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions.”