ENERGY NEWS - TURKEY
Turkey’s Electricity Distribution Sector Launches ‘Emergency Line’ for Health Employees

The electricity distribution sector launched an “emergency line” that can provide instant solutions for healthcare professionals.

The demands of all healthcare professionals who call “ALO 186” call center and report that they are healthcare providers will be evaluated as priority.

Electricity distribution companies to provide uninterrupted electrical service which operates according to the principle of 7/24 in Turkey, launched a field mission to prioritize the demands of healthcare providers who are struggling with the new type of coronavirus outbreak.

“ALO 186” Call Center will primarily evaluate the demands of health institutions and healthcare professionals, within the scope of the application launched by, Akdeniz Electricity Distribution Inc. (AEDAS), Bogazici Electricity Distribution Inc. (BEDAS), Camlıbel Electricity Distribution Inc. (CEDAS), Firat Electricity Distribution Inc. (Firat EDAS), Osmangazi Electricity Distribution Inc. (OEDAS), Sakarya Electricity Distribution Inc. (SEDAS), ADM and GDZ Electricity Distribution Inc.

By intervening immediately in a possible malfunction, it will be ensured that the electrical service, which is vital for an effective fight against coronavirus, will not be interrupted.

Japan's Enechange, Looop Invest in Turkish Solar Plant

Japanese firms Enechange and Looop will invest 10 million dollars to acquire joint operation rights for 10 years for a solar power plant in Turkey's western province of Denizli.

According to the Turkish Embassy in Tokyo, a video conference meeting was organized to share details of the investment which will be realized through a joint energy fund, with a total investment target of 100 million dollars in which Japanese companies will carry out decarbonization investments over the next 10 years. As the first investment project, the two Japanese companies agreed to acquire the operation rights of a solar power plant in Turkey for 10 million dollars.

The video conference meeting was attended by Hasan Murat Mercan, the Turkish ambassador to Japan, Kaneko Tomohiro, the vice director of International Relations of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, which is part of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Yohei Shiroguchi, Enechange CEO and Nakamura Soichiro, Looop CEO. Turkey and Japan share similar characteristics in terms of energy import dependency, and therefore, have the potential to cooperate in several areas in this sector, Kaneko said.

"We congratulate Japanese firms that are thinking of investing in Turkey's energy sector and as the ministry we support them," he said.

Looop CEO Nakamura also expressed his appreciation for the start of operations in Turkey. He hailed Turkey's large market volume, the government-supported investment environment and its developmental potential.

Turkish ambassador Mercan said that 70% of Turkey's energy needs are being met by imports and he stressed the need to decrease this dependency. He noted that Turkey is the fifth largest energy consumer in Europe and therefore will need nearly 125 thousand megawatts of installed capacity by 2023.

"Our target is to have a renewables share of 30% in our energy production by 2023. The targets of 20 thousand from wind, five thousand from solar, one thousand from geothermal and one thousand from bioenergy are not far-fetched targets for Turkey," Mercan stressed.

Thanks to Turkey's feed-in-tariff strategy, renewable energy investments will always continue to be one of the most important elements of the Turkish economy, according to Mercan.

"Therefore I congratulate Japanese companies' future vision in Turkey," Mercan said, adding that the Turkish embassy is ready to support other Japanese investors who are considering making investments in Turkey's energy sector in the future.

Source: AA

ENERGY NEWS - WORLD
Green Energy Could Drive Covid-19 Recovery with $100tn Boost

Renewable energy could power an economic recovery from Covid-19 by spurring global GDP gains of almost $100tn (£80tn) between now and 2050, according to a report.

The International Renewable Energy Agency found that accelerating investment in renewable energy could generate huge economic benefits while helping to tackle the global climate emergency.

The agency’s director general, Francesco La Camera, said the global crisis ignited by the coronavirus outbreak exposed “the deep vulnerabilities of the current system” and urged governments to invest in renewable energy to kickstart economic growth and help meet climate targets.

The agency’s landmark report found that accelerating investment in renewable energy would help tackle the climate crisis and would in effect pay for itself.

Investing in renewable energy would deliver global GDP gains of $98tn above a business-as-usual scenario by 2050 by returning between $3 and $8 on every dollar invested.

It would also quadruple the number of jobs in the sector to 42m over the next 30 years, and measurably improve global health and welfare scores, according to the report.

“Governments are facing a difficult task of bringing the health emergency under control while introducing major stimulus and recovery measures,” La Camera said. “By accelerating renewables and making the energy transition an integral part of the wider recovery, governments can achieve multiple economic and social objectives in the pursuit of a resilient future that leaves nobody behind.”

The report also found that renewable energy could curb the rise in global temperatures by helping to reduce the energy industry’s carbon dioxide emissions by 70% by 2050 by replacing fossil fuels.

Renewables could play a greater role in cutting carbon emissions from heavy industry and transport to reach virtually zero emissions by 2050, particularly by investing in green hydrogen. The clean-burning fuel, which can replace the fossil fuel gas in steel and cement making, could be made by using vast amounts of clean electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen elements.

Andrew Steer, chief executive of the World Resources Institute, said: “As the world looks to recover from the current health and economic crises, we face a choice: we can pursue a modern, clean, healthy energy system, or we can go back to the old, polluting ways of doing business. We must choose the former.”

The call for a green economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis comes after a warning from Dr. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, that government policies must be put in place to avoid an investment hiatus in the energy transition.

“We should not allow today’s crisis to compromise the clean energy transition,” he said. “We have an important window of opportunity.”

Ignacio Galán, the chairman and CEO of the Spanish renewables giant Iberdrola, which owns Scottish Power, said the company would continue to invest billions in renewable energy as well as electricity networks and batteries to help integrate clean energy in the electricity.

“A green recovery is essential as we emerge from the Covid-19 crisis. The world will benefit economically, environmentally and socially by focusing on clean energy,” he said. “Aligning economic stimulus and policy packages with climate goals is crucial for a long-term viable and healthy economy.”

Source: Guardian

TRIG Warns of ‘Material Impact’ of COVID-19 as Power Price Forecast Slides

European renewables investor The Renewable Investment Group (TRIG) has warned of a “material impact” from COVID-19 on its power price forecasts, contributing towards a cut to the group’s net asset value (NAV).

In an update issued to the market today, TRIG confirmed that wholesale power price forecasts for jurisdictions in which it owns renewables assets had tumbled by an average of 17% for the forthcoming five years.

This figure includes a significant decrease of 25% forecasted over the rest of 2020 and 2021, driven predominantly by a collapse in power demand associated with lower economic activity.

The effect of the pandemic on power demand and, in turn, pricing has been covered widely, with European solar developers last week expressing fears that the onset of subsidy-free developments could be beset by the changing market dynamics.

TRIG’s analysis would appear to compound those fears. In the UK market in particular, the firm is expecting an average cannibalised capture price for the power it generates of around £39/MWh (US$48/MWh) for the period 2020 – 2024.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of TRIG’s revenue base is presently fixed, and the company has pointed at feed-in tariff-backed projects in both France and Germany as being of particular benefit as power prices contract.

But the short- to mid-term collapse in power prices still implies a reduction in TRIG’s NAV of around 5 pence per share. This is equivalent to a 4% drop.
TRIG owns a portfolio of wind, solar and battery storage projects throughout

Europe with a combined generation capacity of 1.6GW.

Power price volatility is having unforeseen impacts on renewables across the board, not least of all in the Netherlands. This week, the country's renewables generators were warned that subsidy payments will be suspended if wholesale prices drop into the negative for six consecutive hours or more, as occurred in late March.

Source: pv-tech

COVID-19 Poses Dire Threat to Cleantech Companies, Climate Action

Cleantech startups are at more risk of failure during the coronavirus crisis than ever before and if they do, our climate could fail, too. Can we really risk letting them die?

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc across the entire world, driving healthcare workers to their edge in hard-hit areas, killing the economy and people like nothing ever has ever before. It is a cataclysmic time of global disruption, said Jane Kearns, VP at MaRS Discovery District in an interview.

Kearns worries that one possible outcome of the pandemic could be the rolling back of the clean tech progress we have made in the past decade. Already, we’ve seen supermarkets revert to plastic for “sanitary” reasons and many recycling centers are no longer accepting anything but trash.

“There is a real risk that when we come through the other side of this that we fall back into what we know,” she said. And if that happens, “given what clean tech startup companies are going through right now, they will die.”

In her role at MaRS, Kearns oversees, advises and helps launch a vast array of clean tech startups. And all of them are facing adversity.

“Literally every single startup is in the exact same boat,” said Kearns. When the crisis first struck, many of the clean tech startups that had been promised money, soon discovered that it would no longer be coming. “That was the first wave of phone calls,” she said.

“In the olden days we advised them on how to grow, now we advise them on how to survive,” she added. Kearns explained that startups must now learn to conserve capital, perhaps re-tool and, to the best of their abilities, just hang on.

They can’t get to their labs and for many that is problematic because their grants are dependent on them hitting certain milestones, she said. They can’t sell because their customers aren’t buying anything and they are seeing some of their best talent be scooped up by others.

“What we have seen happen is as soon as this really great talent is laid off — and Canada has exceptional engineering talent and artificial intelligence expertise — we’ve seen those people being scooped up immediately by the big players.”

MaRS helped one startup that was going to have to lay off its entire engineering team partner with another startup that had pivoted to manufacture PPEs and needed to scale up.

“So they have temporarily hired all of this other company’s engineers,” she said; a solution that “lets the one company survive through the downturn and lets the other one scale up.” Partnerships like the one Kearns described, while wonderful, are rare and what Kearns would like to see is a commitment from governments around the world to focus on their clean energy and sustainability goals as they look toward a COVID-19-free future.

Source: Smart Energy International

Storage, Smart Grid, Energy Efficiency Sectors See $337M in Q1 Corporate Funding: Report

Funding levels tend to be "lumpy" from quarter to quarter and it's difficult to say something's wrong with just one quarter, according to Prabhu. "As the year progresses, we get to see how the funding environment is a little bit more broadly," he said.

Corporate funding of these sectors should continue as long as there are good deals and good technologies out there, Prabhu added. "We may see reductions going forward, but it's still very speculative at this point," he said.

In the first quarter of 2020, a total of 244 million dollars in corporate funding was invested in battery storage — a reduction from the 635 million dollars invested in the fourth of quarter of 2019, but 88% higher year-over-year compared to 130 million dollars in Q1 2019. 

The energy efficiency sector saw $7 million in corporate funding — down from 155 million dollars raised in the first quarter of 2019, while smart grid investments totaled 86 million dollars, compared to 32 million dollars in Q1 2019, according to the report.

Energy efficiency funding has been weak over the last year because it's generally influenced by government programs that mandate efficiency deployments, according to Prabhu.

Looking to the future, "we're going to be watching solar closely, because a lot of these storage deals that are happening are solar-plus-storage," Prabhu said.

Additionally, he mentioned the possibility of a recession in the U.S. and abroad. During the last recession, even companies that were sitting on money tended to freeze and wait on investments, and that kind of thinking could cause delays, Prabhu said. 

"Once we get back to work, if that rebound is also pretty quick, then the confidence is going to be back in the markets to go, you know what, let's get back and invest," he said. "Fundamentally, there's nothing that's changed, whether solar or storage — it's really solid business and technology, and we know where the future is going."

Another area of focus is job losses in the renewables and storage sector, Prabhu said. According to a report from Environmental Entrepreneurs, the American Council on Renewable Energy, E4TheFuture and BW Research Partnership, more than 106,000 clean energy workers lost their jobs in March — erasing all job gains that took place in 2019. Without legislative intervention, the analysis predicted that number could rise to 500,000 workers in the coming months. 

But while a lot of people are talking about jobs lost in the sector, Mercom isn't seeing that with some of its clients, so it could be temporary, Prabhu said. 

"If anything, the industry's looking at it as 'Okay, we've got a blip right now, how fast can we get back?'" he said. 

Catherine Von Burg, CEO and president of SimpliPhi Power, thinks that investments will increase in energy storage and renewable energy.

"Even before COVID and the plummeting of gas and oil stocks, gas and oil were underperforming in the market. I do think that investors, if they make a choice on where to invest, where they start investing will be in renewables and storage," Von Burg said. 

Source: Utility Dive

REPORT OF THE WEEK

What the 2008 Financial Crisis Can Teach Us about Designing Stimulus Packages Today

Governments around the world are considering massive stimulus packages to try reboot their economies after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has passed. These huge spending programmes are likely to be once-in-a-generation in scale and will shape countries’ infrastructure for decades to come.

Please click here to read the full report.

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