coal power

Polish power providers Enea and Energa have suspended construction financing for a new 1 GW coal power plant in northeastern Poland. According to the Europe Beyond Coal campaign, this could mark the beginning of the end for the $1.6 billion project. The two companies said their decision depended mostly on the new EU policy for the electricity sector and a lack of external financing.

Research institute the Fraunhofer ISE has estimated the technical potential of floating PV at mining sites in Germany at around 56 GW. With floating projects 10-15% more costly than land-based alternatives, researchers have called for further incentives, such as the staging of ‘innovation tenders’.

Poland’s fourth largest energy company, Enea, will build a 30 MW solar plant for the Bogdanka coal mine in which the utility is majority shareholder. The project will sell power to the mine through a long-term supply deal.

Recent investments into 11 GW of new coal generation capacity may result in reduced operating cashflows of $71 billion. That will occur, according to a report from the Carbon Tracker Institute, because solar and wind will become cheaper than coal in Japan by 2025 at the latest, despite high renewable energy costs at present.

The partnership between OPG and the Six Nations of the Grand River development Corporation is set to deliver 44 MW of solar energy when the plant is finished in 2019.

The Chilean government said that existing coal power plants will be gradually closed, although by 2030, the fossil fuel is still expected to account for 25% of thermoelectric power production. Renewables, however, are forecast to cover the remaining 75%.

The government of the archipelago is planning to decommission parts of thermal power plant Es Murterar and to increase the share of renewables through the deployment of large-scale PV capacity.