Policy

Lack of locally-denominated finance, and of sufficiently long-term loans, are well established hurdles to the development of photovoltaics in Africa.

Members of the European Parliament accused Mairead McGuinness and the EU executive of insulting their institution by reversing their vote not to include nuclear in the sustainable investment taxonomy. The commissioner said the divisive energy sources will be needed to keep the lights on.

The European Commission has alleged China offered cut-price finance to Indonesia, via Beijing’s Belt and Road drive, so Jakarta could develop domestic demand for stainless steel raw material nickel ore.

The state-owned UAE clean power developer appears to have quadrupled its previously announced ambition today as it announced its $20 billion renewables portfolio rose from 10.7GW to more than 15GW last year.

Electricity generation in the Middle East and Africa could soon support the development of an interconnection between Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt. Ilias Tsagas examines the landscape for this infrastructure mega-project, and the possible benefits for solar.

The international development entity has already invested $1 billion in local, off-grid electricity networks over the last decade – and attracted a further $1.1 billion in matched funding – and has predicted mini-grids could supply electricity to 490 million people by 2030.

With polysilicon production capacity having been rapidly rolled out after last year’s shortages, China analyst Frank Haugwitz has suggested global manufacturing capability for the ethylene vinyl acetate used on PV panels could struggle to keep pace with what is expected to be another record year of demand for solar.

A decade on from energy rationing, head of state Sheikh Hasina is poised to announce the achievement of an historic goal which has been made possible with the help of off-grid photovoltaics.

A report published by Irena hints the world’s politicians will have to get to work immediately to avoid another generation of fossil fuel-fired hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol plants being set up to run into the second half of the century.

Heavily-indebted developer Beijing Enterprises Clean Energy has said it plans to use part of its anticipated $600 million windfall constructing 655MW of agrivoltaic and acquaculture-linked PV generation capacity.