China

Despite outperforming rivals in terms of revenue and curtailment levels, solar apparently didn’t do enough to deflect the board away from plans to focus on energy-from-waste.

Founding chairman Li Hejun is too busy travelling to promote the company to also manage day-to-day operations. His sisters will hold the stock on his behalf, however.

Chinese solar plant operators must contend with higher financial costs than companies that run wind farms in the country. And delayed subsidy payments are only complicating their woes, the ratings agency reports.

Stanford professor Mark Z Jacobson has said new nuclear plants may cost up to 7.4 times more than wind and solar facilities, with construction times longer by up to 15 years. Such a delay, he said, may see an huge amount of extra carbon emissions from fossil fuel power sources. His verdict comes as China this month set new guaranteed tariffs for nuclear power.

Just 5.2 GW of new PV generation capacity was installed in the world’s biggest solar marketplace in the first three months of this year. And virtually all of that was made up of small systems as developers wait to see what emerges from solar policy discussions in Beijing.

The polysilicon manufacturer will be one of the partners in a fund for the city of Leshan which appears to be planned chiefly to upgrade the poly production facilities of one of the company’s subsidiaries.

The solar manufacturer has revealed plans to invest around $875 million in production capacity for monocrystalline ingots, wafers and cells – and expects to raise a chunk of the cost with a shares issue this week.

The world had more than half a terawatt of PV generation capacity at the end of last year as emerging solar markets picked up the slack caused by Beijing’s subsidy about-turn to the tune of a 20% rise in installations outside China.

Parent group Hanergy Mobile Energy appears to have gone quiet on its proposal for shareholders in its Hong Kong unit to vote on whether to shift their stock in an attempt to have the business moved to the Chinese exchange. The clock is running down until the Thin Film unit loses its Hong Kong listing.

The poly maker’s project development business has entered a sale and leaseback deal for a 140 MW project that will bring in a financial lift in the short-term but cost more than $31 million over nine years.