Shares in Sungrow Power Supply and GCL-Poly Energy Holdings led Chinese solar power stocks lower in mainland China and Hong Kong on Monday, after the government moved to rein in the expansion of the industry, by suspending the construction of new farms and cutting subsidies in a surprising decision. —South China Morning Post, 4 June 2018
China has abruptly put the brakes on solar power subsidies, seeking to stem overcapacity in a sector that has benefited for years from government incentives. The move caught many in the industry off guard. The government won’t grant subsidies to any new ordinary solar projects this year. For those that are being built, the incentives will be cut by 0.05 yuan (0.8 U.S. cents) per kilowatt-hour (kWh). China has led the world in solar-power capacity for the last three years, reaching 130 GW by the end of 2017, it said. But much of that electricity has gone unused, with grids unable to accommodate 7.3 billion kWh of solar-generated power in 2017 or 6% of the solar power China produced last year. Moreover, the government has struggled to pay the subsidies. By the end of 2017, unpaid subsidies for solar and wind power surpassed 110 billion yuan. —Caixin, 4 June 2018
The Wylfa nuclear plant is set to cost at least £20bn — and, given the record of new nuclear construction, that figure can only rise. Authoritative reports in the FT and elsewhere indicated that Britain had gone further and decided to make a direct investment of public money into the project. This would be a dramatic change of policy with many implications. It would mark the reversal of 40 years of a privatization of the energy sector begun by Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson. Suddenly, the state is back in business and the arguments against other proposed nationalizations, for instance of the railways or energy retailers, are undermined. —Nick Butler, Financial Times, 4 June 2018
U.S. shale oil drillers are boosting efficiency with giant pads and walking rigs, lowering prices to a point that could soon hurt exporters like Saudi Arabia. —The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2018
European plans to tackle vehicle emissions that cause climate change are at risk of coming undone, sending car manufacturers such as Daimler and BMW back to the drawing board to avoid potential fines. —Bloomberg, 1 June 2018
Green technologies are not yet proved, affordable, or deployable—but even if they were, it would still take them generations to solve our environmental problems. —aclav Smil, IEEE Spectrum, 3 June 2018
You know when China is cutting subsidies there is a ton of extra capacity . China would be better off building 100 new nuke plants .
When China refused to commit to reductions of green house gasses under the Paris Treaty, many took comfort in the aggressive investments in renewable energy. Well, it looks like that is gone