Category: News

February 9 2018

After Two Clean-Power Deals This Week, Funds Hunt for More

Infrastructure funds agreed to snap up two clean-energy companies in the past week, both with billion-dollar deals. And they’re hungry for more. Funds are raising billions of dollars from institutional investors for assets including renewables. As the economics of building and owning power plants get better, in part because of U.S. tax incentives, these power […]

February 5 2018

Tesla Tapped by Australia Anew in Virtual Power Plant Plan

South Australia plans to roll out solar panels and Tesla Inc. batteries to at least 50,000 homes to form what its government says will be the world’s largest virtual power plant. Beginning with a trial of 1,100 public housing properties, 5 kilowatt solar panels and 13.5 kilowatt-hour Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries will be installed free […]

February 5 2018

The Cost of Crypto Is Turning Miners Towards Green Power

Vakhtang Gogokhia’s plan to extract cryptocurrencies from the netherworld of cyberspace relies on a strategy familiar to many old-school manufacturers who use a lot of energy — the cheaper the fuel, the better. That’s why Gogokhia, who heads a startup called Golden Fleece, put a cargo container with Chinese-built computers inside a dilapidated Soviet-era tractor […]

February 1 2018

The Breakneck Rise of China’s Colossus of Electric-Car Batteries

The next global powerhouse in the auto industry comes from a small city in a tea-growing province of southeast China, where an unheralded maker of electric-vehicle batteries is planning a $1.3 billion factory with enough capacity to surpass the output of Tesla and dwarf the suppliers for battery-powered cars by GM, Nissan and Audi. Contemporary Amperex Technology […]

February 1 2018

How to Wreck the World’s Fastest-Growing Renewables Program

Soon after it began in 2011, South Africa’s renewable power program became the world’s fastest-growing. Almost $15 billion poured into clean energy in seven years, financing everything from wind farms to solar towers. New independent power producers mushroomed, signing electricity-purchase agreements with national utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd that were guaranteed by the government. Brian Molefe. […]

January 31 2018

Can France Mix Nuclear and Renewable Power?

France’s nuclear giant has a plan to survive the wave of renewable energy that’s sweeping aside old-fashioned utilities across Europe. First it needs to disprove the conventional wisdom about how reactors work. Electricite de France SA says its fleet of nuclear reactors aren’t just able to provide a steady stream of power, they’re flexible enough […]

January 25 2018

Aramco Targets Thriftier Engines to Defuse Electric-Car Threat

While Saudi Arabia tries to wean its economy off crude, the nation’s flagship company is devising new ways to make money from the fuel. Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is investing in developing more efficient gasoline-powered engines and testing new methods of turning a barrel of crude directly into petrochemicals. The goal: To […]

January 24 2018

Enel Seeks Acquisitions to Tap Into E-Cars Industry Boom

Europe’s largest utility is moving fast to benefit from the sudden surge in electric car consumption by offering charging services and developing technologies for station networks, Chief Executive Officer Francesco Starace said. “Technology is ready and getting better as we speak,” the CEO said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Haslinda Amin at the World Economic […]

January 23 2018

World’s Biggest Solar Players Say Trump’s Tariffs Could Have Been Worse

The world’s biggest solar panel manufacturers were expecting a bigger blow than the 30 percent tariff President Donald Trump slapped on U.S. imports. From China to Taiwan and South Korea, they’d been bracing themselves since October when the U.S. International Trade Commission recommended a 35 percent tariff. JinkoSolar Holding Co., the world’s largest producer of […]

January 22 2018

Big Tech Is Buying More Clean Energy Than Ever in the Trump Era

Companies, led by tech giants including Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc., are snapping up more clean energy than ever, even as shifting environmental policies from the U.S. to Europe threaten the economics of renewable energy. Forty-three businesses signed long-term agreements for a record 5.4 gigawatts of clean power including solar and wind worldwide last year, […]