World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That’s Cheaper Than Wind

Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels.

 

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.

(Bloomberg 15.12 2016)

 

Austria’s largest state now gets 100% of its electricity from renewables

The Danube is a mighty river. It flows through Austria’s largest state and with it brings power: so much that the state’s governor says they no longer need to use fossil fuels to generate electricity.

The state of Lower Austria, which encircles Vienna, now gets nearly two-thirds of its electricity from hydropower, Erwin Pröll said at a news conference yesterday (Nov. 5). Of the remainder, the state sources a quarter from from wind and the rest from biomass and solar. No fossil fuels have to be burned to make the state self-sufficient in power.

Lower Austria is home to 1.6 million of the country’s 8 million people, and is leading the rest of the country in renewable production. That in itself is quite an achievement. As a whole, Austria produces around 70% of its electricity via renewables, the highest share in the EU. It’s blessed by a mountainous geography that makes hydropower—usually produced by damming rivers at altitude and then letting the water flow downhill—possible.

(Quartz 6.11 2015)

Ruter i støtet

Snart kan de reisende begynne å vinke farvel til stinkende og støyende Ruter-busser.

I august neste år tar Ruter i bruk sine aller første elektriske busser, som ikke bare er klima- og miljøvennlige, men også langt mer stillegående enn dagens busser. I første omgang er det snakk om ti minibusser av merket Iveco. De skal brukes til å frakte skoleelever på Romerike.

– Dette er de første elbussene i Norge. Kanskje er dette i tillegg det så langt største innkjøpet av elektriske minibusser i Europa, påpeker Marius Gjerset, teknologiansvarlig i miljøstiftelsen Zero.

– At vi nå kommer i gang med elektrifiseringen av busstrafikken, er kjempeviktig, understreker han.

– Dette vil gjøre en forskjell også internasjonalt. Nå skapes det en etterspørsel som også vil bety mye for utviklingen av elektriske varebiler. Store utslipp vil påvirkes av dette.

(Dagsavisen 15.12 2016)

Finland Set to Become First Country in the World to Ban Coal

The Finnish government has announced plans to stop using coal, one of the the dirtiest fuels on the planet, by 2030.

“Finland is well positioned to be among the first countries in the world to enact a law to ban coal … This will be my proposal,” Minister of Economic Affairs Olli Rehn told Reuters.

 

This is all part of Finland’s ambitious target of cutting greenhouse emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050.

“Giving up coal is the only way to reach international climate goals,” Rehn added.

According to The Independent, the “Energy and Climate Strategy for 2030 and Beyond” is the country’s plan to phase out coal within 14 years. Finland aims to turn its energy production carbon-neutral by 2050 with plans to switch its traditional energy sources to biofuels and renewable energy.

(EcoWatch 25.11 2016)

France to pave 1000km of roads with solar panels

Over the next five years, France will install some 621 miles (1,000km) of solar roadway using Colas’ Wattway solar pavement.

Solar freakin’ roadways! No, this is not the crowdfunded solar road project that blew up the internet a few years ago, but is a collaboration between Colas, a transport infrastructure company, and INES (France’s National Institute for Solar Energy), and sanctioned by France’s Agency of Environment and Energy Management, which promises to bring solar power to hundreds of miles of roads in the country over the next five years.

One major difference between this solar freakin’ roadway and that other solar freakin’ roadway is that the new Wattway system doesn’t replace the road itself or require removal of road surfaces, but instead is designed to be glued onto the top of existing pavement. The Wattway system is also built in layers of materials “that ensure resistance and tire grip,” and is just 7 mm thick, which is radically different from that other design that uses thick glass panels (and which is also claimed to include LED lights and ‘smart’ technology, which increases the complexity and cost of the moose-friendly solar tiles).

According to Colas, the material is strong enough to stand up to regular traffic, even heavy trucks, and 20 m² of Wattway panels is said to provide enough electricity to power a single average home in France, with a 1-kilometer stretch of Wattway road able to “provide the electricity to power public lighting in a city of 5,000 inhabitants.”

(Treehugger 29.1 2016)

 

 

India unveils the world’s largest solar power plant

The country is on schedule to be the world’s third biggest solar market next year.

Images have been released showing the sheer size of a new solar power plant in southern India.

The facility in Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu, has a capacity of 648 MW and covers an area of 10 sq km.

This makes it the largest solar power plant at a single location, taking the title from the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which has a capacity of 550 MW.

The solar plant, built in an impressive eight months and funded by the Adani Group, is cleaned every day by a robotic system, charged by its own solar panels.

At full capacity, it is estimated to produce enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes.

The project is comprised of 2.5 million individual solar modules, and cost $679m to build.

The new plant has helped nudge India’s total installed solar capacity across the 10 GW mark, according to a statement by research firm Bridge to India, joining only a handful of countries that can make this claim.

As solar power increases, India is expected to become the world’s third-biggest solar market from next year onwards, after China and the US.

(Al Jazeera 30.11 2016)

Google to be Powered 100% by Renewable Energy from 2017

The internet giant is already the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity, last year buying 44% of its power from wind and solar farms. Now it will be 100%, and an executive said it would not rule out investing in nuclear power in the future, too.

“We are convinced this is good for business, this is not about greenwashing. This is about locking in prices for us in the long term. Increasingly, renewable energy is the lowest cost option,” said Marc Oman, EU energy lead at Google. “Our founders are convinced climate change is a real, immediate threat, so we have to do our part.”

The Guardian 6.12 2016