admin

Global investment bank UBS says solar is likely to account for 10 per cent of global electricity capacity by 2020, as production costs continue to fall, and demand soars in the world’s major economies and in other markets. In the latest bullish solar analysis released by a major investment bank – see Alliance Bernstein says solar’s dramatic cost fall may

Read more

Climate campaigners have a new weapon in their arsenal: they say that if shareholders want value for money they had better start questioning the high-risk, high-cost projects oil companies are undertaking on a massive scale. And not just because of climate risks, but for purely economic reasons as well. The Carbon Tracker Initiative, which first put the idea of ‘stranded

Read more

EU member states should be free to make their own decisions over whether to increase their greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments for 2020 – rather than letting the EU lead, according to a statement from seven Eastern European countries. With their declaration the group puts a bombshell under the EU’s collective efforts at the international climate negotiations. Environment ministers from

Read more

When people think about the “energy transition” in Germany and elsewhere, they tend to think of the success of solar and wind power. However, of all forms of renewable energy it is biomass that has seen the largest absolute growth and supplies by far the most renewable energy, writes Robert Wilson. In Germany biomass has grown three times as much

Read more

In April of this year,​ ​t​he British Government​,​ through its Department of Energy & Climate Change​,​ announced “​…plans to turn the Government estate as well as factories, supermarkets and car parks into solar hubs​.​” This is huge! ​Translation? Government support for solar PV distributed generation (DG). ​Yay!​ The UK solar industry (at least some companies) do​ not share my excitement

Read more

A first gold rush driven by generous subsidies led to an uncontrolled boom in solar power projects in Japan, of which, however, only a very small percentage actually got built. Now, however, the government has taken charge and serious developers are entering the market. The liberalisation of the Japanese retail market in 2016 is expected to give another boost to

Read more

What is it like to rent an EV in Beijing? Over the Labor Day holiday, we decided to find out. For all the articles about Beijing’s air pollution problems and ambitious goals for electric vehicle adoption, we had trouble finding one that covered the actual experience of renting or owning an EV in China. We had heard of the few

Read more

China has thrilled the solar industry in the past few years with bigger and bigger solar installation targets. Of course, this also came on the back of solar capacity oversupply and a solar manufacturer shakeout that put many non-Chinese solar companies out of business, but it has also helped to pull manufacturers out of a financial crisis and further drive

Read more

Rooftop solar is an unstoppable force in the Australian market that will drive the nation’s total installed solar capacity well past 20 gigawatts, regardless of any attempts by the incumbent utilities to thwart its development, Bloomberg New Energy Finance says. Kobad Bhavnagri, head of BNEF in Australia, told the 2014 Solar Conference and Expo in Melbourne on Thursday that BNEF

Read more

Thanks to its partnership with Tesla Motors, Panasonic now possesses 39% of the plug-in vehicle battery market — crushing its closest rivals, NEC at 27% market share and LG Chem at 9%. The market as whole is continuing to grow relatively rapidly — having more than tripled over the past three years. It currently rests at about 1.4 GWh per

Read more