Markets

LevelTen claims its online platform offers small companies the chance to band together to buy green energy and connects renewable energy producers and consumers in such an effective manner it has already driven $1 billion of green energy supply in its homeland.

The German project developer beat rival Scatec Solar to land the contract for a facility which will sell solar electricity to the Bangladeshi government for $0.1094/kWh for 20 years.

The ever worsening balance sheet of the Hong Kong-based solar manufacturer has triggered the removal of shares listed in Taiwan, which is likely to leave the company with a $2.84 million bill for buying them back.

Chinese state-owned PV manufacturer Jetion Solar says it has signed a deal with Italian government-owned oil and gas major Eni to develop a slew of new solar projects across five regions in the next three years in a deal worth €2 billion.

The Spanish company plans to develop 66 solar and wind parks that will add 3 GW of renewable energy generation capacity in 50 municipalities near Teruel, Aragon over the next four years. Some 34 facilities will be solar plants that will add 1.3 GW as part of an investment of more than €2.4 billion.

Utility UTE is planning to resume solar energy development with a new large scale PV project after several years of almost zero growth.

The Swiss Federal Council intends to increase competition in the solar sector and set fixed tariffs for large PV projects using tenders. The electricity market will be fully opened up in a move industry association Swissolar says will discriminate against PV and threaten the rapid expansion of renewables.

The nation’s plan for grid-parity solar – brought forward to ease a mounting public PV subsidy debt burden – could be left in ruins by a newly-announced scheme to part liberalize the electricity price, itself motivated by a need to bail out financially stricken state-owned power companies.

With hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and funds under management, Macquarie Group is seeking to amplify its considerable influence, bringing investment and reporting to bear on accelerating climate mitigation and adaptation.

Why hasn’t more building-integrated PV (BIPV) been installed throughout the world? The simplest answer is that a PV module does not architecture make. The nature of the building process – its methods and logic – are key factors affecting technological transfer, as seen in the steel and concrete industries, which have been the basis of modern architecture for the past century. In many cases, standardization would go against the case-by-case approach to design and the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Solar architecture therefore involves a synergic concept of constructive and functional correctness, while always engaging an “aesthetic intentionality.” So how can the market segment continue to drive down costs?