Japan continues to curb its reliance on nuclear power after it added 1,178-MW of mostly solar clean-energy capacity in the nine months to the end of December, according to Bloomberg.
India’s domestic manufacturing capacity of photovoltaic cells and modules has increased from 200-MW to 2-GW since 2010, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
Sinovel Wind Group, China’s biggest wind-turbine maker by market value, has become the third big Chinese renewable-energy company to replace the head of its board this month following the resignation chairman Han Junliang, for the usual euphemism of for personal reasons.
There will be some disappointment among developers after the Indian state of Karnataka announced the second round of allocations under its state solar policy.
Following on from the publication of a draft Japanese Government plan for the commercialization of methane hydrate deposits 10 years from now, Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) announced yesterday that it has it produced gas in the world’s first offshore test to extract the fuel from the frozen depths.
The experimental gas field is in the Nankai Trough, about 50-km off the coast of Honshu, Japan's main island. JOGMEC estimates that the surrounding area holds at least 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrate, the equivalent of 11 years’ of Japanese natural gas imports.
China's top economic planner has issued a draft regulation showing lower-than-expected subsidies for distributed solar power projects, industry insiders said.
According to a report by China’s National Development and Reform Commission presented to the ongoing annual parliamentary session, the country will add another 3.24-GW, of nuclear power this year, representing a 20 percent increase in capacity.
The fascinating end game being played over Suntech Power Holdings, the world’s biggest solar PV manufacturer in 2011, is rapidly gathering pace.
On Monday news broke that 60 percent of the company’s bondholders have entered a forbearance agreement under which they will not press for repayment of their loans, due this Friday, until 15 May. Given that Bank of China, one of the Wuxi, Jiangsu-based company’s largest creditors, had initiated legal proceeding for unpaid debt, the agreement should have come as a relief to some.
It looks like being another year of single-digit growth for the global solar photovoltaic industry but with strong growth in Asia Pacific making up for weakness in other regions, according to industry analyst firm NPD Solarbuzz.
In its new Marketbuzz 2013 report the firm predicts global solar PV shipments will be about 31-GW this year, up only 7 percent on the 29-GW shipped last year. For the first time, China will outpace Germany to become the leading PV consumer, while the top 10 markets will still account for 83 percent of global PV demand.
A somewhat sobering new report from Pike Research says annual installations of diesel generator sets (gensets) will reach 82-GW of capacity by 2018. To put this in perspective, this is nearly twice as much new wind-powered generating capacity installed in 2012 and more than two-and-a-half times last year’s solar installations worldwide.
The Japanense government look at a proposal to reduce its generous feed-in tariff (FiT) for solar power by a mere 10 percent from the beginning of April, essentially leaving in place the conditions that have created a boom since the new FiT was introduced in July last year.
Yesterday thousands of protesters were out in the streets of Tokyo calling for the Japanese Government to forgo nuclear power, a day before the second anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world's worst atomic disaster in 25 years.
The nuclear meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power's (Tepco) Fukushima Daiichi plant forced 160,000 people from their homes, to which many will never return. It also sparked an unprecedented protest movement against nuclear power.
India plans to adopt a new Viability Gap Funding (VGF) model for the second phase of its Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), according to media reports.
The US notched up a massive clean energy trade surplus with China in 2011 despite conventional beliefs that the latter is dominating the world’s renewable energy sector, according to a new report by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Considering all aspects of the value chain, US exports and trade to China actually exceeded Chinese exports to the United States by USD1.63 billion in 2011, the report, Advantage America: The U.S.-China Clean Energy Technology Trade Relationship in 2011, states.
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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