The EU’s Sustainable Taxonomy was intended to complement the Green Deal, provide investors with certainty about the sustainability of their investments, and help channel billions into sustainable, low-carbon processes and technologies. Despite input from experts and NGOs, the inclusion of gas and nuclear power just proposed by the Commission suggests that, once again, politics is trumping science.

Brazil’s deployment of distributed generation PV (below 5 MWp) has exploded from a total capacity of 500 MW in 2018 to 7 GW by September of this year. The trigger for this increase, alongside rocketing electricity prices, was the 2019 proposal of law 5829, writes IHS Markit analyst Angel Antonio Cancino. The proposal is expected to pass into law at the end of this year and will gradually introduce grid-access charges for residential and commercial system owners.

Structural imbalances in the supply chain and the energy intensity and consumption controls that China imposed in late September have caused prices for most PV module materials and components to continue to rise. Shipping fees and PV plant construction costs also remain high. PV plants in many regions will therefore be postponed until next year, but it remains unclear when module prices will start to fall. Despite these challenges, the global race to cut carbon emissions continues, and InfoLink’s Corrine Lin forecasts a bright future for PV deployments in 2022.

The EU has been pouring money into European battery manufacturing and recycling projects but has, as yet, been unable to address the critical question of raw materials, according to analyst WoodMac.

As 2021 ends, we enter a period of reflection and preparation. The ongoing pandemic has brought supply chain disruption, while the increasingly severe effects of the climate crisis loom over us. This winter, Europeans are struggling through unprecedented energy costs, driven by extremely high global gas prices. A year of difficulties has shown that Europe, more than ever, must accelerate the deployment of renewables to provide our economy with reliable, low-cost, and clean energy.

The Baltic state has offered energy-intensive, international-facing industries up to an 85% discount on a surcharge levied on electricity consumers since May 2017 and made the scheme wider ranging this year, in a move approved by the European Commission.

Advances in solar power and other clean energy technologies have failed to keep up with demand for electricity as economies rebound from the Covid crisis and China and India’s fossil fuel appetite will ensure the world stays well short of what is needed for a net zero 2050 for at least the next three years.

A news article published on Friday stated 13 cases had been confirmed and a senior physician said the working hypothesis was that at least half of the 120 people who attended the event had been infected. pv magazine has contacted Scatec for an update.

Solar manufacturer Jolywood, which supplied almost 500 MW of its bifacial tunnel oxide passivated contact panels for Oman’s Ibri II facility, has claimed the power plant is the biggest to date to deploy the high-efficiency technology.

The latest edition of a clean power jobs survey produced by IRENA and the International Labour Organization has stressed the important role which will need to be played by the public sector if the energy transition’s employment benefits are to be shared equally.

Local planning committees have given a go-ahead to a £2.5 billion gigafactory in the English West Midlands. The facility will be powered by 100% onsite solar and storage and equipped to both manufacture new batteries and recycle used ones.

The first green bond issued in Bangladesh is attracting investors and funding Beximco Group’s large-scale, Chinese-backed solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 230 MW. The government may soon use bonds to similarly finance infrastructure projects.

Jiangxi Jinko plans to issue 2 billion shares at RMB5.00 per share and expects to raise net proceeds of around RMB 10.0 million. Solar manufacturer Solargiga said it expects a 17% revenue growth for 2021.

Of this new capacity, 8.9 GW may come from distributed generation and 3.2 GW from utility scale solar. By the end of December 2022, the country’s installed solar power should reach 25 GW, according to new figures from Brazilian trade body ABSolar.

The world’s largest coal seaport is now powered by 100% renewable energy, following the confirmation of a new deal between the Port of Newcastle, Australia, and the Australian unit of Spanish energy group Iberdrola.

The research institute has upgraded its REopt web tool to include ground-source heat pump technologies. US homeowners will now be able to simulate the impact of converting conventional heating and cooling systems to geothermal heat pumps.

Cornell Researchers have found that upstate New Yorkers prefer rooftop solar to community solar under 50 acres, but opinions are split 50/50 over large-scale ground mounts. The distaste for utility-scale solar is strongest when converting forests, public land and productive farmland.

A worsening price shock, felt to different degrees across Europe, has now seen renewable power purchase agreement tariffs climb for three consecutive quarters. Despite that, however, developers and energy buyers are still signing contracts, with non-standard agreements on the rise, according to renewable transaction infrastructure provider LevelTen Energy.

With Emergency Ordinance no. 143/2021, the Romanian government has restored legal certainty for bilateral power purchase agreements and has created more favorable conditions for solar power generators under net metering regime.

Spanish researchers have developed a new modeling technique to assess the performance of semi-transparent PV systems for greenhouses. Their novel approach considers the broadband and spectral content of the irradiance, the solar cell technology and its performance metrics, and the relationship between the photosynthetic rate and the effective photon flux that falls on the crops.

Developed by a Canadian start-up, Solar Ink can be used to create standalone perovskite solar modules or it can be combined with existing solar modules in a tandem configuration. It can be coated on both flexible and rigid substrates, resulting in translucent solar cells which, in turn, can be used to produce flexible and light modules for application in solar windows and vehicle-integrated photovoltaics.

Seraphim’s new solar modules are available in monofacial and bifacial variants. They rely on multi-busbar technology and are built with 210 mm silicon wafers.

Current price signals to distributed battery owners “do not align with grid value,” says a study from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

A solar panel on display at a science museum in the Netherlands is one of 2,748 modules that were used for the country’s oldest PV system. The module has an efficiency of around 9% and a power output of 18W. It was manufactured by Germany-based AEG-Telefunken in 1982.

The device achieved the highest efficiency and fill factor ever reported for an all-polymer solar cell based on polymerized small molecular acceptors. The cell was built with a top donor material known as PBDB-T and an electron acceptor made of the polymer PYT.

A drone pilot has discovered that Tesla is starting to install solar panels, racking and inverters on the rooftop of a manufacturing facility it is building in Texas.

Sunman Energy claims the new factory, located in Yangzhong City in China’s Jiangsu province, is the world’s largest production facility for lightweight photovoltaics.

The US manufacturer said the device has an efficiency of 99.0% and a California Energy Commission (CEC) efficiency of 98.5%. It has a size of 750x1125x390 mm and weighs in at 131.5 kg.

The cell may be potentially used as a top subcell in tandem crystalline silicon-based devices. It was built with CdSe thin film with a direct bandgap of 1.72 eV.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced AUD 40 million ($28.7 million) of research and development funding across two streams. Stream 1 consists of cells and modules, while Stream 2 is focused on balance of system, along with operations and maintenance. It is hoped the additional funding will spur Australia’s pioneering solar research to push for the federal government’s “ultra low-cost solar” target of AUD 15/MWh.

A new underwater battery storage technology is coming from Netherlands-based Ocean Grazer to address the issue of offshore long-duration storage. The company’s Ocean Battery is touted as innovative yet simple, based on existing technology, and capable of enhancing marine life along the way.

Woodside Energy has submitted a proposal for a 500MW solar facility to the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority. The company wants to install up to 1 million solar panels to power industrial customers in the state, including its own Pluto LNG export facility.

The 11 planned off-grid networks will offer clean power to around 20,000 people for €0.28/kWh, according to one of the EU bodies which is backing the project.

LG Chem’s energy storage and battery division’s $10.7 billion initial public offering received a staggering response from institutional investors, Reuters has reported.

Elsewhere, French renewable hydrogen startup Lhyfe has announced it is building an electrolyzer in eastern Germany, and Los Angeles-based Southern California Gas has launched a hydrogen-powered drone to monitor its gas grid.