What are the sources of investment and sources of finance in the energy sector? Cecilia Tam, Paul Grimal, Jeanne-Marie Hays and Haneul Kim at the IEA summarise insights extracted from the IEA’s latest flagship World Energy Investment report which this year has dug much deeper into the subject. They look at the capital structure (debt versus equity) of energy investments in assets and companies. They look at the entities making the investments, … [Read more...]
Forecasting the performance of new Solar PV module technologies over 20, 30, and 50 years
Solar PV technology continues to innovate and evolve at a rapid pace. Testing the modules is essential for predicting durability and future performance. But that inevitably means past experience is not a good predictor of the behaviour of the new materials and configurations. Sara Fall and Harrison Dreves at NREL explain how the Durable Module Materials (DuraMAT) Consortium has set up sophisticated testing and data gathering to use the … [Read more...]
New “Solar Thermal Trapping” process can generate 1,000°C for steel, aluminium and cement production
Many industries – production of steel, aluminium and cement being the most obvious – require high heat processes that today can only be achieved commercially using fossil fuels. Paige Bennett at EcoWatch, writing for WEF, describes a new process using solar thermal trapping to reach temperatures of a little over 1,000°C, hot enough to smelt metal. Scientists used semi-transparent materials, including synthetic quartz, to capture sunlight that … [Read more...]
At $2tn, investment in Clean Energy in 2024 is set to be double that for Fossil Fuels
A new report by the IEA reveals that global spending on clean energy technologies and infrastructure is on track to hit $2tn in 2024, driven largely by attractive cost reductions, improving supply chains, energy security, and government policies. This is despite higher financing costs for new projects. The combined investment in renewable power and grids only recently overtook the amount spent on fossil fuels, in 2023. 2024 will see it at double … [Read more...]
New Concentrated Solar Power system delivers 1,000°C for industrial processes + more
Zach Winn at MIT describes a new method of building high-temperature concentrated solar power systems. The solar receiver heats air to around 1,000°C at atmospheric pressure. The system circulates the hot air with no combustion or emissions to drive a turbine. The system can deliver daytime power and overnight thermal energy storage to provide round-the-clock power. More interestingly, it can provide industrial-grade heat. It’s being … [Read more...]
China’s plans for large-scale Offshore Solar
If offshore wind, why not offshore solar? It’s been talked about for a while and implemented on a small scale in places like Norway. You Xiaoying, writing for Dialogue Earth (formerly China Dialogue), looks at China’s efforts to establish it as a new and – once scaled up - major contributor to the energy transition. The main advantages over land-based solar are clear: large spaces of land must be found, they’re not usually near population or … [Read more...]
A global review of Battery Storage: the fastest growing clean energy technology today
The IEA report “Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions” looks at the impressive global progress, future projections, and risks for batteries across all applications. 2023 saw deployment in the power sector more than double. Strong growth occurred for utility-scale batteries, behind-the-meter, mini-grids, solar home systems, and EVs. Lithium-ion batteries dominate overwhelmingly due to continued cost reductions and performance improvements. And … [Read more...]
Analysis of Clean Technology Manufacturing around the world: solar PV, wind, batteries, electrolysers, heat pumps
For every nation, clean technology manufacturing can bring economic security, employment, and resilience to clean energy transitions, says the IEA. The sector is now so significant that it’s also impacting overall GDP performance: in 2023, clean technology manufacturing alone accounted for around 4% of global GDP growth and nearly 10% of global investment growth. Here, the IEA summarises its first-of-its-kind “Energy Technology Perspectives … [Read more...]
What China, Germany, and Texas tell us about Capacity Adequacy
As intermittent renewables penetrate further into the grid mix, reliable firm power generation is needed for whenever there is a shortfall. But back-up power, by its nature, has unreliable utilisation rates. And up-front costs for new plants are high, be they gas-fired plants, coal, nuclear, or large-scale storage. That makes future profitability uncertain, and private investors nervous. Hence the need for “capacity mechanisms” that guarantee … [Read more...]
Can the six Gulf nations meet their ambitious Renewables deployment plans by 2030?
The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabi, UAE) have all set themselves ambitious renewable energy targets to meet in the next ten years. They are some of the sunniest countries in the world, and existing projects have set records for low solar power costs. But they have a long way to go. In 2022, GCC renewable capacity was 5.7GW, primarily solar PV, out of 165GW of total generating capacity, … [Read more...]
Iron-air batteries: long-duration grid storage targets 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion
Wind and solar need cheap, long-duration storage to even out its inherent weather-determined intermittency. Deborah Halber, writing for MIT News, describes the development of iron-air batteries. Iron is cheap and available worldwide. Storage duration is multi-day. They are much heavier and take up more space than lithium-ion batteries, but that doesn’t matter for immobile grid storage. The target price tag of $20/kWh (one-tenth the cost of … [Read more...]
Explainer: The EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan
Here, the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) provides a summary of the Green Deal Industrial Plan. It’s broken up into: What is the Green Deal Industrial Plan? What are critical raw materials and why do they matter? Where is the EU currently standing on critical raw materials? What is the EU doing about critical raw materials? Where is the EU currently standing on clean tech? How is the EU attempting to boost its domestic clean tech sector? Can … [Read more...]
Who is winning the Clean Energy race between China, Europe, and the US?
“X-Change: The Race to the Top” is the fourth report of an RMI series that reviews the cleantech competition between China, Europe, and the US. Kingsmill Bond, Sam Butler-Sloss and Daan Walter at RMI summarise the findings of the latest report, along with six charts, which focuses on four areas: clean technology supply chains, solar and wind deployment, EV sales, and electrification. Solar and wind deployment is still a close contest. But China … [Read more...]
Europe’s cross-border Interconnectors: how JAO auctions optimise energy flows, prices
Interconnectors allow for cross-border flows of energy between two markets that would otherwise not be connected. Through an economic convergence between supply and demand, the cheapest marginal producer located anywhere in these two markets should be able to set market prices. As Jean-Baptiste Vaujour at the Emlyon Business School explains, the central question is to find an optimal allocation of the scarce interconnection capacity between the … [Read more...]
Solar PV technology improvements are rapid. But how do you test the long-term reliability of the new designs?
Solar PV module technology moves fast, and is delivering improvements continuously. So fast that it’s no trivial matter to judge the long-term reliability of the changes. It’s a crucial issue as modules, once deployed, are expected to deliver results over lifetimes that span decades. Sara Fall and Jarett Zuboy at NREL describes a process designed to identify and address potential reliability problems quickly, before they are observed in the … [Read more...]
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