Much Ado About Solar II
…and we’re back! Apologies of the prolonged dormancy, but yours truly has been busy lately transitioning to his new day job. But no time to waste! Let’s pick things up really quickly with some solar updates.
First, my solar policy paper, Getting out of the Shade: Solar Energy as National Security Energy, which we summarized before in a previous post, has now been published in three parts on China Dialogue. While the content remains the same, what’s new is that an Chinese version is now available.
中国太阳能产业转向国内市场 (1)
中国太阳能产业转向国内市场 (2): 重新定义国家安全
中国太阳能产业转向国内市场 (3):发现太阳能发电的瓶颈所在
There is an extra bit of text that is new in this edition that is worth noting:
[相当振奋人心的是，自从这篇文章发表之后，中国开始将太阳能产业转向国内市场。经济部与住房和城乡建设部开始发展太阳能屋顶计划以每瓦二十人民币的方式补助优质的太阳能光伏面板系统。然而在某些省份，尤其考虑在江苏提供可观的财政鼓励以增加当地太阳能光伏面板的制造与发展。]
[Encouragingly, since the first publication of this article, China has begun its journey out of the shade: China's Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has launched a solar roofs programme to subsidise qualifying PV systems at 20 yuan (US$3) per watt, while some provinces, particularly Jiangsu, are poised to offer significant financial incentives to increase local capacity in PV manufacturing and deployment.]
And what a surge in domestic solar projects there has been in response! Many of the new projects were tracked on a previous post Much Ado About Solar, and so we have a continuation of more solar activity announced since that post: Read the full story
Solar at a Crossroads
Solar is been making the news in China for a mixed bag of reasons.
[Pictured right: a solar installation on a German football stadium using panels by Yingli Green Energy, a Chinese solar company based in Baoding in Henan province]
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced their Action Plan for Solar to ramp up research, development and deployment of solar photovoltaics (PV) in China. People’s Daily vaguely describes the Plan’s has three scheduled milestones:
- distributed utilization of solar energy by 2015,
- substitution utilization by 2025 and extensive utilization by 2035, and
- aiming to make solar energy one of China’s important energy sources around 2050.
There are no further explanation of what these milestones mean in the article or in Read the full story
Green Hops: Walmart, Geely, Smart Grid
Climate Social Responsibility. At its firs global supply-chain summit in Beijing, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, launched an ambitious program dubbed the “Global Sourcing Responsibility Initiative” that will require its Chinese suppliers (which may number up to 20,000 according to China Daily) to abide to potentially costly energy efficiency targets, to be verified by third party audits, among other environmental and social goals. The program will be expanded worldwide by 2011.
A new report by the Carbon Disclosure Project suggests that major Chinese companies lag far behind their foreign counterparts in carbon-risk awareness and carbon reporting. But China Mobile (the world’s biggest wireless operator with 420 million subscribers), Broad Air Conditioning (the world’s leading manufacturer of low-energy air-conditioning units) and Suntech (the world’s third largest solar energy company) are not among these companies as they have just joined the Climate Group’s global climate coalition. As members to this coalition, the three companies will make ambitious emissions reduction commitments beyond what is currently required by law. China Mobile, for instance, has set itself the target of reducing its energy intensity by 40%, double the national target, reports The Guardian.
Auto & Transportation. Geely, China’s first independent auto maker, is looking to follow BYD Auto’s footsteps to export its electric vehicles (EV) technology. Read the full story
Green Hops: BYD Auto, Algae, Green Bricks
BYD Auto/ Warren Buffet Update. Seems like the investment of Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings in Shezhen-based BYD Auto is not just a bet on electric vehicles, but also on the collaboration between MidAmerican and BYD to develop “rapid charge batteries” for electrical grid systems to serve as energy storage for renewable but intermittent power such as wind and solar, revealed MidAmerican’s chairman, David Sokal, at a press conference earlier this week in Hong Kong. (I have argued before in my solar blog how grid-tied energy storage solutions are the key to a clean electricity revolution.) Elsewhere, it appears more definitive that BYD’s entry into the Israeli market will be facilitated by Clal Industries and Investments, a unit of conglomerate IDB Development. Clal will start importing BYD’s electric vehicles into Israel next year. Such developments have apparently caught the eyes of Portland’s city officials, who are trying to woo BYD to start make America’s greenest city its North American hub.
Post-Olympic Traffic Measures Draw Mixed Reactions. As smog re-envelopes Beijing, the capital is reinstating a modified set of traffic measures to curb the growth of auto emissions that will, among other things, ban corporate and private cars from taking to the roads one day per week depending on their license plate number. Xinhua reports mixed reception to the measures, with some contemplating purchasing a second car, and others more astutely observing that “to ban should not be the ultimate way to ease Beijing’s traffic woes… Read the full story
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