Policy

With the country’s first procurement exercise for bigger projects, the Togolese government intends to develop solar parks with a combined generation capacity of up to 80 MW. The tender is being held under the umbrella of the World Bank’s Scaling Solar initiative.

French thinktank the Institut Montaigne says Africa is absent from the global solar revolution for several reasons including a lack of suitable financing tools, the small size of projects and a systematic recourse to tendering. Removing artificial price signals set by ever more competitive tenders could be a step towards a more mature market, ready for large scale solar tenders.

The government of the state of Western Australia has allocated funding from its Renewable Hydrogen Fund toward seven feasibility studies that could pave the way for significant renewable hydrogen projects around the state.

Bidders can pitch for up to 300 MW of generation capacity per project with the deadline for proposals on February 4. The eighth tranche of inter-state transmission system program capacity offered by the Solar Energy Corporation of India comes with an energy price ceiling of $0.039/kWh.

With the third procurement round of the kingdom’s National Renewable Energy Program, the Renewable Energy Project Development Office is tendering four large-scale solar projects. Successful bidders will have to include at least 17% local content in their facilities.

The government has abrogated a controversial measure introduced last year which favored big developers in the allocation of fiscal incentives for rooftop projects linked to building renovation.

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy has issued an expression of interest to pre-qualify developers for two 5 MW solar plants. The facilities will be on the islands of Sal and São Vicente.

IHS Markit has predicted another year of global solar growth but a peek behind the headline figures shows uncertainty dogging the markets of China and India, two of the most important markets and biggest polluters.

The cataclysmic bushfire season ravaging the nation is a reminder of the risk climate change poses to Australia’s economic and social prosperity. An international roadmap to freedom from fossil fuels by 2050 produced by the U.S.’ Stanford University says Australia needs another 280 GW of solar and tens of billions of dollars of investment to turn down the heat.

The Brazilian president said the potential introduction of a grid fee for net metered solar systems will be eliminated thanks to an urgent ad-hoc decree expected to be approved soon by parliament. The proposed ‘solar tax’ would have affected all new PV installations with a generation capacity of no larger than 5 MW under Brazil’s net metering regime.