Central & South America

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has published a report looking at the human rights due diligence performance of the renewables industry and examined individual generation methods. The report finds that, while the solar sector is not top of the sad list, its vest also isn’t completely unstained.

Overall, 31 renewable energy projects have pre-qualified for the final phase of the auction. The outcome of the procurement exercise will be announced on July 22. Around 300 MW of capacity will be allocated.

In the first part of pv magazine‘s series on solar’s hidden champion markets, we take a look at Mexico. The country currently has 4 GW of total installed PV capacity, and overtook Chile as Latin America’s largest solar market by the end of 2018. But the cancellation of auctions and other negative signals from government could put a damper on things moving forward.

After the bombshell new this week, the Italian inverter manufacturer’s CEO spoke to pv magazine about the future of ABB’s R&D hubs, manufacturing sites, hundreds of employees and of course Fimer’s outlook.

While Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and Brazil attracted more funds than last year, China’s transition to an auction-based procurement system and slow performance overall in Europe saw worldwide backing decrease. BloombergNEF does expect investments to ramp up in the second half, however.

Already postponed from June to September 30, the procurement will now be held by the end of October. The exercise will be open to new renewables projects with more than 5 MW of generation capacity. Selected developers will be awarded 15-year energy deals rather than the 12-year arrangements offered in February’s abortive attempt.

China’s slowdown in installations last year was more than made up for by expansion elsewhere, according to IHS Markit. The news comes amid increasing market fragmentation – with the biggest engineering, procurement and construction business boasting less than 3% market share – and internationalization, with almost half of the top 15 companies operating across more than one region.

The projects were developed under the auspices of an arrangement between the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and IRENA which supplies concessional loan financing for renewables facilities.

The solar tracker supplier is benefiting from a steadily growing PV market and has inked a deal with ABN AMRO Energy Transition Funds for new capital to expand its operations.

The developer has announced a major portfolio acquisition. London-based Lightsource says it has acquired 1.9 GW of solar generation capacity in various stages of development from Brazilian developer Enerlife.