Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the weaknesses of global value chains around the world

Continued African development could hinge on public finance reforms.

Steve Armitage, general manager of destination at Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development explains why the New Zealand city’s international profile is growing so fast.

Mohammad Nafees Zakaria, Pakistan’s UK high commissioner, talks about his country’s potential for foreign investors.

Uruguay-based Zonamerica has successfully expanded into Colombia and China, and is now looking to export its model to other parts of Asia and Africa.

We are currently in a state of heightened business and economic disruption and sociopolitical activism, which only looks set to intensify. 

President Obrador aims to mobilise billions in public and private investment to create an alternative to the Panama Canal along the Tehuantepec corridor. 

Quebec hopes a major maritime strategy that includes constructing a container port and building naval vessels will boost its economy by creating jobs and attracting investment.

Project numbers drop almost 40% between 2017 and 2018.

The Scottish government has given utility Scottish Power the go-ahead to install Europe’s biggest industrial-scale battery to date to store energy generated at the 539MW Whitelee onshore wind farm.

A sparsely populated Chinese province that’s home to the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers is attempting to set a new record for clean energy use, serving as a test bed for the entire country.

On Wednesday in New Jersey, the world’s largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of waterparks in North America said that its New Jersey park, Six Flags Great Adventure, is now powered by solar energy.

Statkraft announces it has decided to start construction of the 51.6-MW Los Lagos hydropower plant in Chile. The construction is planned to commence in August and completion is scheduled for second half of 2022.

In an announcement that was celebrated by the solar industry, yesterday U.S. trade officials said that bi-facial solar modules, which are solar modules that produce energy on both sides of the panel, would be exempt from import tariffs.

In early June, the UK enshrined into law a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, making Britain the first major economy to do so. Meeting this target will require substantial reliance on renewable energy from solar, tidal, hydro, and wind sources, both onshore and offshore.

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule and simultaneously repealed the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Here’s the latest wrinkle in the battery boom: National Grid Plc is paying consumers to tap electricity from their power-storage systems.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the twin forces of privatization and deregulation of public infrastructure services ascended to a global paradigm of progress and development. Government management of services such as telecommunications, transportation, water, and energy was deemed inefficient, underperforming, and monopolistic. Private industry – accountable to the profits and losses of an open market and, thus, believed more efficient than government – was proclaimed the better way for consumer choice and a more efficient use of taxpayers’ expenses.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has entered into an agreement to acquire Cube Hydro, an operator of small and medium-sized hydropower facilities in the northeast and southeast U.S.

POWERGEN International Week truly begins Monday, Nov. 18 with POWERGEN University. This year’s set of three, four and eight-hour PGU classes include detail educations on crucial power generation topics such as effective project management, gas turbine long-term service agreements, safety processes, digitalization, business plans for emerging markets, microgrids, cogeneration, machine learning, boiler technologies, building the generation fleet of the future and the consideration of natural gas vs. diesel for on-site power gen-sets.

Yesterday, ENGIE Storage announced that San Diego International Airport (SAN) installed a 2 MW/4 MWh GridSynergy energy storage system. Paired with the airport’s existing 5.5 MW of solar capacity, the new energy storage system will reduce energy charges during peak demand, which according to ENGIE equate to approximately 40 percent of the airport’s monthly electricity costs. The system is expected to begin operation in early 2020.

An Abu Dhabi-based company that builds drilling platforms for oil giant Saudi Aramco plans to diversify into renewable energy by supplying gear for offshore wind farms.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (the NDRC) issued a Circular on Policies of Improving the Electricity Price for On-Grid Wind Power (the Circular) at the end of May 2019. According to the Circular, the price of electricity from offshore wind power projects is cut to 0.8 yuan per kWh [US $0.12 per kWh] in 2019 and will further drop to 0.75 yuan [US $0.11] per kWh in 2020.

The Clean Power Alliance (CPA) has signed three long-term power purchase agreements, including two new solar projects and one existing small hydro project.

EON SE is now supplying all of its 3.3 million residential customers in Britain with 100% renewable electricity, the first of the U.K.’s “Big Six” utilities to do so.

This week artificial intelligence (AI)-driven energy storage services provider Stem said that it had formed a partnership with New York-based private equity company Syncarpha Capital to build 28.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) of large-scale storage projects co-sited with solar in Massachusetts.

Voith has received an order for the Ritom pumped storage power plant in Switzerland, which began operating in 1920 and will be replaced with a new facility.

Clarion Energy & iTEN Media announce the launch of POWERGEN India 2020 co-located with Indian Utility Week & DISTRIBUTECH India

Clarion Energy’s Teresa Hansen, vice president of global content, for a webcast Wednesday  will be making some important announcements regarding this year’s event in New Orleans. Hansen also will offer key details on content, the exhibit floor and resources available to attendees.

Installed solar capacity in the United States exceeded 10 GW for the third year in a row in 2018, and the pace of growth is expected to continue. The first quarter of 2019 was the strongest in the history of the U.S. solar market, according to a recent report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. Yet inefficient and costly project financing inhibits many solar developers from tapping into the market’s true potential.

Plans are under way to rebuild one of Ontario Power Generation’s oldest hydroelectric generating stations, which was damaged by a tornado in 2018. Constructed in 1917, the 5-MW Calabogie Generating Station has produced renewable, low-cost electricity on the Madawaska River for decades.

India’s ambitious plan to take the leadership position among nations as one of largest producers of renewable energy may have run into some unfavorable weather.

The HydroVision International event is now under way in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, with more than 3,000 hydropower professionals from around the world coming together for four days of learning and networking.

On Monday, July 22, about 30 HydroVision attendees visited the beautiful Hood River Valley outside of Portland, Oregon to tour in-conduit hydropower projects and learn how modernizing irrigation districts is a sustainable solution to help combat a changing climate.

On Tuesday, July 23 at the HydroVision International keynote, Vice President Marla Barnes asked the audience to close their eyes and envision their next vacation. “Are you sitting on a beach? Are you packing your family into the car for a wild adventure? What do you see,” she asked.

GE Renewable Energy announced at HydroVision that it has signed two hydropower contracts in the U.S. one for FirstLight’s Northfield Mountain project and one for PG&E’s Caribou One hydropower station.

Missouri’s smallest investor-owned utility is charting a dramatically different course two years after being acquired by new owners.

Last week, California’s Glendale Water & Power (GWP) received approval from the Glendale City Council to move forward with a plan to repower the aging Grayson Power Plant with a combination of renewable energy resources, energy storage and a limited amount of thermal generation.

Last week at the HydroVision International plenary session, a panel of three CEOs — Darrel T. Anderson, President and CEO IDACORP and Idaho Power, Mitch Davidson, CEO and Managing Partner, Brookfield Renewable Power, and Paul Jacob, President and CEO, Rye Development — along with moderator Elizabeth Ingram, Content Director, Clarion Energy, discussed both the merits and the challenges of hydropower development in the United States and Canada.

Global wind turbine makers are expanding manufacturing capacity in India to boost exports from the South Asian nation even as the country’s domestic industry faces headwinds.

The latest crop of utility participants includes NRG Energy, Cleco Corp., Entergy, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, AEP’s distributed energy ventures group AEP OnSite Partners and Hindustan Power from India.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has announced that the New York Power Authority is launching a 15-year modernization and digitization program to significantly extend the operating life of the Niagara Power Project.

A pale orange-and-gold sunset bathes the macadamia plantations and avocado orchards that sweep down to Australia’s Byron Bay. The coming dusk is a cue for two sleek Tesla battery packs in the garage at Amileka, a secluded holiday villa nearby. They stir silently into action—powering the appliances in the five-bedroom home’s twin kitchens, recharging a $100,000-plus Model X SUV, driving a filter pump for an 18-meter swimming pool sparkling in the shade of a century-old native black bean tree.

This week, DNV GL said that it acted as a technical advisor to the energy company AES Colombia during its planned purchase of the Jemeiwaa Kai portfolio of wind power projects. DNV GL carried out an independent analysis of the La Guajira wind farms wind and power generation regime.

A report recently released by the U.S. Department of Energy defines and evaluates cost and performance parameters of six battery energy storage technologies (BESS) and four non-BESS storage technologies.

Coming on the heels of Gap’s announced 90-MW PPA with Enel Green Power, BloombergNEF released its 2H 2019 corporate energy market outlook in which it said that corporations signed contracts to purchase 8.6 GW of clean energy in 2019 through July, up from 7.2 GW at the same time last year.

The national average price of wind power purchase agreements dropped to below 2 cents/kWh in 2018, according to the annual Wind Technologies Market Report released by the U.S. Department of Energy.