Philippines Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras said this week that the government was still awarding renewable energy service contracts to “deserving” companies and that 268 projects had been approved as of January 9, according to a report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
China has lost its appeal to the World Trade Organisation regarding its constraint on the export of certain raw material, leading the EU to urge it to drop export bans on rare earths.
The WTO upheld its ruling that the complaint lodged by the EU, the US and Mexico that China's export ban on nine raw materials broke global rules. It had been alleged that the policies drove up prices internationally and gave China's domestic manufacturers an advantage.
With funding from Japan's Official Development Assistance agency the Pacific island state of Palau, 550 miles east of the Philippines, has completed its largest solar power project to date and the first to be grid-connected.
The US Department of Commerce has again delayed its decision on imposing additional tariffs on imports of Chinese solar products, and experts said yesterday the move will help reduce Chinese solar companies' potential losses.
The market for photovoltaic (PV) solar power across the Asia Pacific region surged beyond expectation in 2011, topping 6-GW for the year with 2.8-GW installed in the last quarter alone. The region as a whole grew 165 percent year-on-year and is forecast to grow at a more sedate 40 percent in 2012, according to the latest Solarbuzz Asia Pacific Major PV Markets Quarterly report.The advent of a national solar feed-in-tariff (FiT) in China flipped the switch on project development, leading to a 500 percent increase in installation to 2.9-GW in 2011 that amounted to 48 percent of total APAC demand.
According to figures released in the latest Solarbuzz PV Equipment Quarterly, the solar photovoltaic market became more fragmented in 2011 with the top 10 suppliers accounting for 40 percent of shipment as compared to 44 percent in 2010.
Moser Baer Solar, India's leading solar photovoltaic manufacturer, has announced plans to upgrade its production process to use metal and intrinsic layer semiconductor technology (MIST) which it claims with enable it to produce cells with conversion efficiencies of 21 percent, making it one of the few producers top the 20 percent mark.
China's hard-pressed solar photovoltaic suppliers may find market relief in India's fast growing solar power generation sector.
Two of China's leading PV players, China Sunergy and Hanwha SolarOne, have supplied a total of 25-MW of solar modules to a newly commissioned project in the Surendranagar district of Gujarat, India built for Visual Percept Solar Projects, a company backed by the family of Vallabh Bhanshali, one of India's best-known investment bankers.
India is producing power from solar cells more cheaply than by burning diesel for the first time, spurring companies to jettison the fuel in favor of photovoltaic panels, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
China's Yingli and DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions are working together on improving cell technology. While Yingli is already producing its “Panda” cell technology, the research aims to improve the design which the companies say can produce a conversion efficiency of over 19 percent.
The Panda technology has been under development since 2009 in co-operation with the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands.
Yingli Green Energy has become the first company in the global PV sector to obtain a Product Carbon Footprint Verification from TUV Rheinland.
Using the international carbon footprint standard PAS 2050:2011, which provides a method for assessing the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of various goods and services, TUV determined that the amount of CO2 emissions avoided during 25 years of PV module usage is significantly greater than the amount emitted during Yingli's product manufacturing.
SunEdison, the solar development unit of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc, said it plans to build solar power plants in Japan over a five-year period at an initial cost of 350 billion yen (USD4.6 billion), according to a Bloomberg report today.
Just as China's solar companies started the new year with improving share price, there have also been some appointments of new senior staff, also boosting their presence in overseas markets, especially Europe.
Asian solar stocks on Thursday echoed a rally by their US peers, with some surging as much as 20 percent on signs that prices for solar energy components are stabilizing, reports Reuters.
In Hong Kong, GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd was up 13.2 percent, Trony Solar Holdings Co Ltd rose 8.3 percent, Apollo Solar Energy Technology Holdings Ltd firmed 3.5 percent and Solargiga Energy Holdings Ltd climbed 13.2 percent. South Korea's OCI Co Ltd jumped 14.9 percent.
Total new investment in global clean energy increased 5 percent to set a record of USD260 billion in 2011, despite the sluggish global economy and a painful squeeze on manufacturers, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.Most notable, according to the report, is that the US reclaimed its crown from China for clean energy investment for the first time since 2008, with total investment surging by 33 percent to USD55.9 billion compared to China’s USD47.4 billion, which was only an increase of 1 percent over 2010.
There is an intriguing fight developing between clean and renewable business and non-green industries in Burma. In a very public announcement – to reporters in Rangoon – the minister for electricity Khin Maung Soe halted the construction of a Thai-backed coal-fired power station.
It comes only months after the Chinese-funded Myitsone hydroelectric dam was halted after listening to “the people”. This time he said the coal-fired plant at Dawei had raised pollution and environmental concerns.
Bangladesh's state-owned Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL) has announced a plan to install one million domestic solar systems this year. They will primarily be in in the rural areas where grid electricity is not economically feasible or hard to reach, said a Xinhua report.
The company estimates that each solar home system saves at least USD61.80 dollars worth of kerosene every year and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 375 kilograms annually.
Anil Kakodkar has been unveiled as chairman of the recently launched Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a speech to the Indian Science Congress.
Mahindra Solar One has just commissioned a 5-MW photovoltaic (PV) solar plant in Jodhpur near the state of Rajasthan which claims is the first in India to achieve non-recourse financing – i.e. with the loan secured solely on the future cash-flow of the project rather than other assets of the borrower.
According to IMS Research, second tier photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturers in China saw average utilization rates fall as low as 35 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 as a result of overcapacity, high inventory levels and weaker than expected demand in 2012. The market research firm noted that many tier-two suppliers have reduced production significantly or suspended production entirely, resulting in the lowest-ever recorded utilization rates so far reported.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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