Geopolitics

KilowattSol CEO Xavier Daval has criticized the absence of references to solar in the French government’s post-Covid recovery plan, which has allocated €30 billion to the energy transition. The head of the PV technical advisory says solar must become more central to France’s strategic choices and China must not be allowed to retain its near-monopoly on PV panel manufacturing.

As nations begin to move towards clean energy, fossil fuel exporting countries will need to rethink and reshape their economies. Taking Russia as an example, an MIT study has examined the likely impact on oil, gas and coal exports and the opportunities the energy transition could offer.

An Ernst & Young report has found power and utility deals fell off markedly in the Americas during the first half of the year because of the Covid-19 pandemic but commitment to clean energy investment appeared to remain strong.

RES4Africa’s plan to offer a one-stop-shop to tap consolidate all the European sources of funding for African renewables aims to de-risk investments in large-scale renewable energy projects in the continent. The 171-page report entitled “Scaling Up Africa’s renewable power” provides an update on the “renewAfrica Initiative” launched by the RES4Africa foundation together with a range of European stakeholders one year ago.

A study into the clean energy tech innovation rate required to keep global heating under control may suggest concepts such as lithium-air could yet keep us to the mid-century ambition, but it is also starting to contemplate the temperature rise to be expected if we only achieve net-zero by 2070.

U.S. thinktank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says the nation should reorder its power network to harness cheap, modular renewables after existing power station overcapacity was worsened by plunging electricity demand during the Covid-19 shutdown.

The International Seabed Authority will change regulations for deep-sea mining this year. The ocean floor is covered with potato-sized pebbles containing high levels of cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper – materials that could soon be in short supply as the energy transition progresses.

A team tasked by the European Commission with estimating the raw material requirements of the European energy transition found if global PV roll-out is high, and the component requirements of certain solar technologies don’t improve by a greater margin, some elements could end up in short supply.

The losers in a world which no longer runs on fossil fuels are obvious but the dividend from shrugging off hydrocarbon dependency will be spread around most of the world so it is the nations which are winning the cleantech manufacturing and intellectual property race which appear best positioned for the future.

The scale of fossil fuel deals signed between African governments and U.K. oil and gas interests reportedly amounted to more than 11 times the volume of renewable energy commitments as Britain scrambles for post-Brexit financial opportunities.