coal

‘It is a project that stands as an example of energy transition,’ Duarte Bello, CEO of EDP Renewables’ Europe and Latin America operations told pv magazine. The new 200 MW solar PV plant is now generating energy on a former brown open-pit lignite site.

Germany’s shutdown of nuclear power plants in April did not result in a ramp-up of lignite-fired power plants, despite concerns. Instead, there has been a significant increase in the share of renewables in the electricity mix, and the proportion of coal-generated electricity has fallen by more than 20%.

A row between the Greek ministry of the environment and energy, the country’s electricity utility, and a journalist has shown that Greece still has pro-lignite voices in key posts and that the government must move quickly if it wants to realize its coal phase-out plans.

Advances in solar power and other clean energy technologies have failed to keep up with demand for electricity as economies rebound from the Covid crisis and China and India’s fossil fuel appetite will ensure the world stays well short of what is needed for a net zero 2050 for at least the next three years.

President Xi Jinping’s pledge this week at the United Nations General Assembly that China will not build new coal-fired plants abroad is welcome news; however, Asia’s transition to low carbon energies remains in dire need of policy reforms.

The solar park is expected to be connected to the grid infrastructure of a coal power plant located nearby. Polish oil group Orlen is targeting 2 GW of renewable energy assets by 2030.

Although the global solar industry might be cheered by the prospect of a healthy slice of an expected $12 trillion, 30-year windfall, governments are falling far short of steering us clear of catastrophic global heating, according to the analyst’s latest New Energy Outlook report.

Victory in the economic realm (increasingly the case with solar, solar-plus-storage and wind) is no guarantee of market victory if the regulations are stacked against renewables.

Federal network agency the Bundesnetzagentur has announced it will retire 4 GW of coal-fired generation capacity through the exercise, which will see plant operators compete to secure one-off payments in return for shuttering, or converting operations.

The debt-saddled South African utility has issued an expression of interest to seek proposals on how to refurbish three fossil fuel power plants to be decommissioned in the current decade. Eskom said that all of the proposed solutions should be at the tech-readiness level.