As the year draws to a close and Australia’s renewable energy industry celebrates a surprisingly strong year — surprising, especially considering the general lack of support from the Federal Government — one could be forgiven for wondering why a literal “island nation” as big as Australia hasn’t turned its eyes offshore for its electricity generation.
There have been significant milestones met and exceeded the world over, but also some tremendous failures — an awkward combination which came together in Australia, where political turmoil and antipathy were bypassed by state-level and independent action to bring about a record year of clean energy investment.
The announcement earlier this month from India’s power and renewable energy minister RK Singh that his country will increase its interim renewable energy target from 175 gigawatts (GW) by 2022 up to 227 GW has been heavily lauded, and though it “does look excessively ambitious,” according to Tim Buckley from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, he nevertheless believes it is possible.
With the United States pulling out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, China has solidified its position as the dominant global clean energy powerhouse in 2017, and is set to lead the way in clean energy which is expected to lead the way in global power capacity additions for at least the next two decades.
Australian energy market experts have delivered a scathing appraisal of the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee, describing it variously as a “pea and thimble trick”, a potentially “terrible outcome” for the renewable energy industry, and as a further extension of the Coalition’s faction-driven energy policy farce.
Renewable energy is disrupting electricity markets worldwide. The pace of this change has surprised almost everyone, and indeed would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago.
A few weeks back, Deutsche Bank revised its solar forecast for India up from 14 GW by 2020 to a promising 34 GW by 2020, which was in line what Bridge To India had proposed (31 GW by 2019), while the Indian government itself is chasing a target of 100 GW by 2022. … [continued]
Originally published on RenewEconomy. The global fossil fuel industry faces a loss of $US28 trillion ($A30.2 trillion) in revenues over the next two decades, if the world takes action to address climate change, cleans up pollution and moves to decarbonise the global energy system. The assessment, made by leading European … [continued]
