Coronavirus

The EU Council has rejected a Covid-inspired European Commission proposal for a €40 billion warchest to help coal-dependent regions shift to renewables, with the heads of member states instead allocating €17.5 billion. Despite the final figure being €10 billion higher than that suggested by the commission before coronavirus battered Europe, questions have been asked about how useful the program will be.

Negative second-quarter updates from China and uber-low new-solar figures from India, however, show the world is far from out of the woods yet.

Grid scale lith-ion batteries may be multiplying Stateside, but an expected recovery in the production line segment will be put on hold until next year because of the pandemic, according to one analyst.

Analyst IHS Markit has predicted storage will rebound this year following its first year-on-year decline in 2019. The technology is being rolled out at pace despite Covid-19 with state-level policies set to keep the US the global capital for the next five years.

The decision to remove its cell manufacturing capacity has prompted hefty impairment losses which, together with a Covid-19-related slump in demand, will wipe out the gains offered by new solar ingot, wafer and module production lines.

But Israeli inverter company Solaredge and Indian engineering, procurement and construction services provider Sterling and Wilson have both offered hope of a recovery in Europe as Chinese glass producer Xinyi said it kept the furnaces going throughout the worst of the pandemic.

Rudolf Staudigl highlighted polysilicon manufacturing overcapacity among Chinese competitors as he announced Covid-19-battered second-quarter figures for the Munich-based chemicals conglomerate.

Xinyi Solar has revealed another impressive set of figures and plans another 1,000-ton-per-day production line this month plus a new mine to source raw materials in September.

Plus, U.K. analyst Cornwall Insight reports the price of green energy certificates in the nation could stay in the doldrums for some time and industry executives consider the upsides of the new virtual PV business.

Plus, even stay-at-home orders and plunging commercial energy demand failed to take the sting out of Australia’s solar duck curve and China’s GCL System counts the first-half cost of the public health crisis.