Sustainability

pv magazine’s UP campaign aims to highlight industry movers who embrace carbon reduction and the circular economy in their operations and Swiss BIPV manufacturer 3S Solar Plus boasts an impressive sustainability record.

The Chinese module giant has committed to sourcing 70% of its energy from renewables by 2023 and all of it by 2025. If serious, that could represent confidence in the amount of new renewable energy generation capacity to come online in China given the company’s huge production capacity expansion plans.

The Paraná-based energy provider will buy renewable energy under a 15-year power purchase agreement. The auction’s winners and final prices were not revealed.

The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report gives the energy source little hope in the race against fast, widespread, job-friendly, popular renewables. The report reiterates clean power is taking the lead in the world’s energy system and nuclear is not only too costly a remedy for carbon emissions but too slow to deploy. Nuclear output grew only 2.4% last year while solar and wind power volumes grew 18% and 29%, respectively.

The French development agency and the environment ministry have a €1.6 million budget to finance novel off-grid projects from companies and NGOs operating with local partners in Africa.

Scientists at South Korea’s Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology have set a new efficiency record of 11.4% for a cell based on a copper zinc tin sulfide thin film applied to a flexible substrate.

While the solar industry will welcome the move, the feed-in tariff paid to small systems is still reducing thanks to the volume of new capacity installed every quarter. Announcing a wide-ranging policy package on Friday, Angela Merkel admitted Germany will miss the carbon emission target set for next year.

Research has found even short-lived, 10 to 15-year solar panels could provide enough return for bankable projects. The researchers believe panel costs, coupled with an industry mindset now fixed on the final solar energy price rather than costs per kilowatt installed, may open opportunities for PV products currently snubbed because of a short lifecycle.

A team of researchers modeled the country’s energy future, finding that the drought plagued municipalities could benefit massively from large scale renewables deployment. The current reliance on coal-fired power stations causes immense water consumption, worsening the problem.

A new report in Sweden suggests that renewables are an ideal source of power for marine vessels, based on a case study in which solar PV and proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, combined with a diesel generator, were used to reduce the greenhouse gas and particulate emissions of cruise ships by almost 10%.