Policy

The U.S. authorities are currently subjecting imported bifacial modules to a 20% penalty – the same tariff applied to almost all other crystalline silicon solar modules.

The Climate Group has reported that just 33 members of its global EP100 initiative avoided carbon dioxide emission by one billion metric tonnes purely through energy efficiency measures. Of this, 360 million metric tonnes—comparable to taking 77 million cars off the road for a year—was avoided in the last year alone.

An ambitious, INR146,000 crore, five-year expansion of a previous domestic industry spending program includes money to attract investment into the sustainable energy and transport technologies.

The Group’s renewable energy business (Adani Green Energy) has a market value of US$15.6 billion, which is 40% more than India’s largest thermal power generator NTPC—a company with 22 times as much capacity. The RE business is of serious global investor interest, but also materially exposed to the wider Group’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) standing. By committing to phased closure of coal plants, Adani Group could lower the risk to global capital access while aligning with the government’s vision for energy independence through fast-growing reliance on renewables.

Climate Policy Initiative and REConnect Energy have developed an innovative mechanism called Garuda to retire old, inefficient thermal plants with equivalent renewable capacity. The scheme proposes a blended tariff that would include the normal tariff for the new renewable energy plant plus the cost of decommissioning the old fossil fuel plant, while making the provision for green bonds to finance RE. 

Indian solar sector remained buoyant even amid Covid pandemic as 15.3 GW of solar capacity (including solar-wind hybrid) was sanctioned in the current year’s first half itself. However, returns expectations from equity investments rose from around 14% in the first half of 2019 to 16-17%, indicating heightened risk perceptions among investors.

Led by Vikas Bansal, the Seville-based office will target Europe’s growing solar market in countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland.

India’s state-owned electricity distribution companies (Discoms) are in dire financial straits, as they owe some $16 billion to generators, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Despite this, national PV auctions have been oversubscribed and are setting record low tariffs in the country, indicating strong interest from developers – if the Discom challenge can be overcome.

A TERI paper details how the state’s inefficient electric utility transformed into one of India’s most high-performing electricity distribution companies. The study provides a learning opportunity to other sector stakeholders from India and overseas.

The electronics manufacturer says it will switch focus to solar panels and lithium battery storage as it launches an inverter series for rooftop PV.