FOTOTHERM

Solar park in Ontario. Source: BluEarth  Renewables (www.bluearthrenewables.com) Royal Bank of Canada (TSE:RY-G), or RBC, has signed a renewable power purchase agreement (PPA) that backs the construction of a couple of solar plants in southeast Alberta. Under the terms of the contract, RBC and its partner Bullfrog Power, owned by Spark Power Group Inc, will each buy 31,500 MWh of solar power annually. Scott Foster, global head of corporate real estate at RBC, said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg that RBC is now the first Canadian lender to sign a long-term PPA for renewable energy. The two solar parks that will generate the electricity are expected to be finalised in April 2021, when they will have the combined capacity to produce 80,000 MWh per year. RBC aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions from its operations by 70% and rely solely on renewable and non-emitting electricity by 2025. ( http://www.fototherm.com/ ) Source:  https://renewablesnow.com/news/rbc-bu...

Spanish renewables company Acciona has commissioned Spain’s first floating installation. Plus, Utility EDP has finalized the first, 1 MW phase of a 4 MW project at the Alqueva water reservoir in southern Portugal. Acciona has completed Spain’s first floating solar installation. Image: Acciona Acciona has commissioned Spain’s first grid-connected floating solar plant, in the southern region of Extremadura. The renewables company received authorization for the installation in February and completed commissioning on Monday. The 1.1 MW array is on the southern shore of the Sierra Brava reservoir in the municipality of Zorita, in the province of Cáceres, and spans ​​12,000m 2  – 0.07% of the 1,650ha reservoir. The pilot project features 3,000 solar modules of various types, orientation and inclination across five floating structures and will assess the performance and operations and maintenance costs associated with the different set-ups. Acciona said the plant was conceived “as a techn...

[...] The anti-climate policies that the GWPF ( Global Warming Policy Foundation )  has pushed for years have contributed to the droughts, storms and surging temperatures that have killed people and destroyed livelihoods. Yet now they pretend to be Africa’s saviours, seeking out new markets for the ever more desperate coal industry. And coal barons are not alone: European-produced petrol, so dirty and polluting that it can’t be sold there, is being  dumped on to the Nigerian market . [...]  African prosperity will not come by it being shackled to the outdated dirty energy infrastructure of the past. Rather than trudging behind in the 50-year-old footsteps of European countries, Africa needs to leapfrog to the clean, cheap and renewable technologies of the future. This is how Africa will catch up with its global neighbours.  Africa  is blessed with more sun, wind and geothermal energy than anywhere else on the planet, but that fact does not help the GWPF or ...

As COVID-19 hits the fossil fuel industry, a new report shows that renewable energy is more cost-effective than ever – providing an opportunity to prioritize clean energy in economic recovery packages and bring the world closer to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. [...] “The chorus of voices calling on governments to use their COVID-19 recovery packages to create sustainable economies is growing,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “This research shows that renewable energy is one of the smartest, most cost-effective investments they can make in these packages.” Investing in renewables to fight adevrsities “If governments take advantage of the ever-falling price tag of renewables to put clean energy at the heart of COVID-19 economic recovery, they can take a big step towards a healthy natural world, which is the best insurance policy against global pandemics,” Andersen said. Renewable energy has been eating away at fossil fuels’ dominant shar...

Uzbekistan last week launched two Requests for Qualifications (RfQs) as part of tenders seeking to award at least 600 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity. The first competitive selection covers two projects, with a minimum capacity of 200 MW each, in the Kattakurgan district of Samarkand region and the Jizzakh region’s Gallaorol district, respectively. Through the tender rounds, the government seeks to contract private sector developers or consortia that will be tasked with the development, financing, construction, ownership and operation of solar parks. Qualification applications are due by September 26, 2020. The two projects are part of a bigger initiative for the deployment of as much as 900 MW of solar PV capacity through public-private partnerships (PPPs). The tenders are being held with the assistance of the World Bank’s International Finance Corp (IFC). In March, 84 companies and consortia filed Expressions of Interest (EOI) to take part in the tender. The hy...

[...]  Technology can help farmers not only sustain, but thrive. Solar is an essential part of this new dynamic. [...] Today (allowing for the impact the coronavirus pandemic has temporarily placed on the process) the global exchange of agricultural goods is done with an ease and speed that would’ve been unimaginable in bygone eras. But this too has often placed a new pressure on farmers. Unquestionably, some have benefited—and benefited massively from such a change—as farms that produce world-class “clean and green” goods now have a truly international market to export to. But for those who sell more routine goods, or find the international market has saturated their domestic audience with the same products they sell, the path to maintaining a steady profit year in and year out has become much harder. It’s anticipated the years ahead will see the world become more unstable as a result of numerous factors, not the least of which the growing threat of climate change....

[...]  A study by British Business Energy  used several, specific measures to rank cities across the globe  to determine the most eco-friendly locations to work, and the results are not what you might expect. [...] The Top Eco-Friendly cities to work in. British Business Energy THE 5 GREENEST CITIES IN EUROPE London The study named London as the number 1 most eco-friendly city for workers. It had the fourth-highest number of commuters walking or cycling to work at nearly 30 per cent. Recently London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, proposed a ‘cycling tube’ which would see cycle routes following the existing Underground network. The city also had the most vegan or vegetarian places to eat with 3,709 restaurants offering options for the climate-conscious. That’s more than twice as many as London’s closest competitor, New York. And, when it comes to innovation, over 10 per cent of all patents in the UK were environmentally related too. “Now more than ever it’s importan...

MIT’s vice president for research identifies three areas that show particular promise for climate action. Climate change is a very personal issue to Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. A native of eastern Pennsylvania, she watched her grandfathers, both coal miners, battle black-lung disease. “The burning of anthracite coal drove my community and was a central part of my childhood,” says Zuber. “Yet it’s been known since the 1800s that combustion of fossil fuels puts CO 2  into the atmosphere, and that the effects can be damaging.”  Today, the catastrophic effects of climate change are showing up even faster than models predicted, she observes. “If you just look at it that way, it’s easy to despair.”  Yet Zuber, also the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, remains optimistic. “People are looking at those effects based on what we know now, but I think about the actions that will be taken when we have technological breakthroughs and an improved unders...

Recent weeks have seen the news emerge this year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have been postponed. This is a big story within the renewable energy sector. For while the Olympic Games will now newly take place in 2021 from 23 July to 8 August and the Paralympic Games between 24 August and 5 September, Tokyo 2020 was to be  a celebration of an eco-friendly Games  and a fantastic insight into the current state of renewable energy as a whole. Going forward, the Games will still be called Tokyo 2020 instead of Tokyo 2021 (just as all following references to it in this article shall) but as we shall have to wait a year until the Games officially begin it’s useful to consider now what Tokyo 2020’s greatest achievements in renewable energy are set to be? And how are Tokyo 2020’s renewable energy goals set to compare to the last Games in Rio 2016, and Paris in 2024? Showcasing solar across Tokyo 2020 Many of the Olympic venues like the nation’s new Olympic Stadium that opened...

The energy supply for the buildings of this floating solar settlement in Amsterdam is based on a joint energy management system. This enables the entire neighbourhood to act as one integrated system. [...]  Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) have developed a new energy management system. This allows photovoltaic systems, battery storage systems, heat pumps and electric vehicles to be linked together. This makes it possible to supply individual households or entire energy districts with their own regenerative energy as far as possible, even in the face of the variability in current caused by the fluctuating generation of electricity by solar systems. Energy management for the entire community The basis is a common energy management system, as it is already used in many individual buildings. "We have developed this into an energy management system for entire energy communities," says Matthias Klein, describing the approa...