Turkey will give a six-month extension to the Renewable Energy Support Scheme (YEKDEM) for newly built plants, the country's Official Gazette announced on Friday.
According to the decision, the expiry date at the end of 2020 will now extend until June 30, 2021, for new production facilities that want to benefit from YEKDEM, which provides feed-in-tariffs to plants for clean energy generation.
Support will be given until Dec. 31, 2030, to facilities that will be operational from Jan. 1 to June 30 next year.
If plant equipment is locally produced, additional support for five years will be provided starting from the commissioning date of the facility.
Turkey, which wants to fully utilize local and renewable energy sources efficiently to support its development, offers feed-in tariffs for renewable energy plants including wind, hydropower, geothermal, biomass, and solar through this scheme.
Renewable energy plants under the scheme are granted incentives, the value of which is dependent on the type of renewable energy used.
The scheme, which started in 2011, supports wind and hydropower plants at $0.073 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), geothermal facilities at $0.105 kWh, and solar and biomass plants at $0.133 kWh. These figures vary slightly depending on the use of locally-produced plant equipment.
Source: Anadolu Agency
Enerjisa Uretim, a Sabancı Holding company, signed a sustainability-related loan agreement with seven banks for 650 million euros ($765 million), the company said in a statement Monday.
According to the statement, Enerjisa Uretim will benefit from the Sustainability-Related Loan Mechanism, one of the sustainable borrowing instruments whose total volume exceeded $1.5 trillion in August. The company is set to speed up its sustainability efforts in two important areas within the scope of the contract. While the company is committed to significantly increasing the share of renewable energy in its energy investment portfolio, it will also work to achieve the best international standards in gender equality.
With the contract, the company replaced the long-term loans it received during the establishment phase with this new financing, further strengthening its solid balance sheet structure. Seven banks, including Akbank, Garanti BBVA, Isbank, HSBC, ING, TEB and Isbank AG, will provide financing per the Sustainable Credit Mechanism rules. The contract will offer a new financial package to achieve the strategic goals of the company, while reducing the amount of credit, taking into account the cash and foreign exchange balance. A joint statement made by the banks participating in the credit said the contract shows the banks’ trust in Turkey’s energy market.
“It is also a source of pride for us that Enerjisa Uretim, the leading player in the sector, will generate regular cash with its current healthy balance sheet and will also implement renewable growth investments,” the statement read.
Enerjisa Uretim top executive Ihsan Erbil Baycol, whose views were included in the company statement, said that the company has been continuing production for the uninterrupted supply of energy with 21 plants, 56% of which are from domestic and renewable resources.
Emphasizing that they gained a capacity of 500 megawatts (MWs) with their projects in the Renewable Energy Resource Areas (YEKA) tender, the second of which was carried out last year, Baycol said that with the company’s investments in wind power plants in western Aydın province and northwestern Canakkale, the company has achieved the potential to increase its total production capacity to 4,107 MWs and to further increase the share of green investments in the company portfolio.
“As Enerjisa Uretim, it is among our most important priorities to maintain this upward momentum and to make new investments in the renewable field, which is one of our strategic priorities,” he said, referring to the recently signed contract significant in achieving this.
Source: Daily Sabah
After years of slow progress, technologies to capture carbon emissions and store or reuse them are gaining momentum, a trend that will need to accelerate significantly for the world to achieve its energy and climate goals, according to a new special report released by the IEA today.
The report, CCUS in Clean Energy Transitions, is being launched at an IEA online event opened by Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway, whose government announced a major funding commitment this week for a new carbon capture project that can help tackle emissions from Norway and neighbouring countries.
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is the only group of technologies that contributes both to reducing emissions in key sectors directly and to removing CO2 from the atmosphere to balance the emissions that are the hardest to prevent – a crucial part of reaching the net-zero emissions goals that a growing number of governments and companies have set for themselves.
Part of the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives Series, the new IEA report is the most comprehensive global study on CCUS to date.
It assesses the state of play of CCUS technologies and maps out the evolving and expanding role they will need to play to put global emissions on a sustainable trajectory. It includes a detailed analysis of CO2 emissions from power and industrial facilities in China, Europe and the United States and potential for storing them.
“The scale of the climate challenge means we need to act across a wide range of energy technologies. Carbon capture is critical for ensuring our transitions to clean energy are secure and sustainable,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director.
“In order to develop and deploy carbon capture and storage as a technology for the future we need investments in solutions and facilities in many regions and countries,” said Prime Minister Solberg. “CCUS will be necessary on a global scale if we are to meet the Paris Agreement. And we must start now.”
“Norway has been a global leader in researching, developing and implementing carbon capture technologies, as demonstrated by its major funding commitment this week to the impressive Longship project, which can help not just Norway but other European countries reduce their emissions,” Dr Birol said.
“The IEA is delighted and honoured that Prime Minister Solberg is taking part in the launch of our new report that will help inform policy-making on CCUS around the world.”
Plans for more than 30 commercial CCUS facilities have been announced globally in the last three years. And projects now nearing a final investment decision represent an estimated potential investment of around USD 27 billion – more than double the investment planned in 2017. This portfolio of projects is increasingly diverse and would double the amount of CO2 captured globally.
Source: International Energy Agency
Less than an hour after U.S. President Donald Trump took to the virtual floor of the United Nations General Assembly and slammed China for its environmental record, China’s President Xi Jinping stunned the climate community by pledging that it would become carbon neutral by 2060.
The two nearly back-to-back speeches provided a marked and powerful contrast. There are still many questions to be answered about China’s plan—most importantly how the country will define carbon neutrality. But the bare fact that China, by far the world's biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has set out a net-zero pledge ahead of the U.S. shows how hard Beijing is striving to put itself at the center of global politics and the economic shift to clean energy—something Washington has been unwilling to do.
“The fact that President Xi Jingping is now taking advantage of White House absence of leadership is also not surprising,” said Christiana Figueres, founder of climate advocacy group Global Optimism Ltd. and former executive secretary of the UN climate negotiations leading up to the Paris Agreement. “When there is a geopolitical vacuum of leadership then someone steps in.”
Li Shuo, senior climate policy officer for Greenpeace East Asia, also pointed out the global power implications of China’s pledge. Xi’s speech, he said, was “clearly a bold and well-calculated move. It demonstrates Xi’s consistent interest in leveraging the climate agenda for geopolitical purposes.”
Trump also framed climate in geopolitical terms during his remarks to the assembly. “Those who attack America’s exceptional environmental record while ignoring China’s rampant pollution are not interested in the environment,” Trump said. “They only want to punish America, and I will not stand for it.” He also praised his own decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement, a non-binding resolution to keep the globe from warming more 2° Celsius compared to pre-industrial times. Most of the world’s nations are members of the agreement, including China. The U.S. withdrawal will become official on Nov. 4, one day after a general election that will determine whether Trump will stay in office for another term.
China first committed in 2015 to reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030, a goal Xi reiterated in his speech on Tuesday. This was the first time, however, that the president had discussed zeroing out emissions. Today, the country is responsible for 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Source: Bloomberg
Rapid industrialisation and the subsequent surge in electricity demand from commercial and residential sectors are likely to propel smart electric meter market share between 2020 and 2026.
Growing investment interest in digitalisation of electrical systems, coupled with efforts to expand grid infrastructures will further boost industry growth, according to a report released by Global Market Insights. The rising prevalence of electrification across the globe is encouraging the adoption of more efficient energy technologies worldwide. For instance, in India, the SMNP (Smart Meter National Programme) launched by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is aimed at the eventual replacement of over 250 million regular meters with smart meters across the country. Initiatives such as these could, in turn, significantly augment smart electric meter market dynamics over the coming years.
AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) technology is gaining rapid traction over the years. This is attributed mainly to the mounting expenditure on infrastructure development, as well as rising investments for the modernisation of healthcare services.
The onset of commercialisation worldwide has also triggered considerable interest in the automation of meters. This is aimed predominantly at catering to non-revenue electricity and mitigating the risk of power thefts, which is thereby expected to add impetus to smart electric meter industry trends over the estimated timeline. To that end, based on US Energy Information Administration reports, in 2018 over 86.8 million advanced metering infrastructures were installed across electric utilities in the United States.
The implementation of stringent regulatory norms and incentives towards power outage reduction is also anticipated to accelerate smart electric meter market expansion across the utility secret.
The adoption of smart and efficient monitoring and control devices is facilitating better billing accuracy in the service sector, in applications such as private offices, data centers and government buildings, among others. For example, a report from the EESL revealed that states with smart meters installed demonstrated an average rise of nearly 25% in billing compared to those with conventional meters. Based on phase, the smart electric meter industry outlook is bifurcated into single phase and three phase segments.
Among these, the single-phase segment is projected to accrue substantial gains over the estimated timeline, given their suitability in high capacity industrial facilities as well as in utility-supported power networks.
Escalating rate of urbanisation, alongside propitious regulatory policies aimed at upgrading small-scale industries in developing economies will stimulate smart electric meter market growth from the segment.
Meanwhile, the rising demand for reliability in power supply for engineering processes such as hospitality, education, logistics, oil & gas, etc. will add impetus to the adoption of three-phase smart meter systems. Consistent development in residential establishments, as a result of a surge in populations and per capita incomes, is contributing heavily to the adoption of smart metering systems.
Furthermore, industry dynamics are poised to witness a substantial boost over the projected timeframe, as public and private investments for carbon footprint mitigation, IoT expansion and renewable technology adoption continue to surge.
Source: Smart Energy International
Meeting the EU’s proposed new climate targets for 2030 will require a “transformation” of the bloc’s energy system, with a renewed focus on renewables and further efforts to cut fossil fuels in buildings, transport and industry, the European Commission has said.
“Climate change is the defining challenge of this century,” said Kadri Simson, the EU’s energy Commissioner. “And to meet this challenge, we need both long-term vision and immediate action,” she said as the EU executive presented its new climate plan for 2030 on Thursday (17 September).
The centrepiece of the Commission’s new climate plan is the objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 – a move it says will put the EU on track to reach climate neutrality by mid-century, in line with the bloc’s international commitments made under the Paris Agreement.
Achieving the EU’s updated climate target “would result in a new and greener energy mix,” the EU executive says. “By 2030, coal consumption would be reduced by more than 70% compared to 2015, and oil and gas by more than 30% and 25%, respectively,” it said in new policy proposals unveiled on Thursday.
Renewable energy, meanwhile, would see its share soar from 18.9% in 2018 to reach 38-40% of gross final consumption by the end of the decade. In electricity, this would mean “at least” doubling today’s share of renewables from 32% to “around 65% or more,” the Commission points out.
But those efforts, as impressive as they seem, will not be sufficient to displace fossil fuels altogether. “Our assessment shows that the energy mix in the European Union will still be dominated by fossil fuels, but significantly less than today,” said an EU official who was briefing the press after the presentation of the bloc’s new 2030 targets.
According to the Commission, buildings and power generation can make “the largest and most cost-efficient emissions reductions” to reach the bloc’s new climate goals for 2030, with EU estimates pointing to potential CO2 cuts “in the order of 60% and more compared to 2015”.
Buildings, in particular, will continue relying chiefly on fossil fuels if nothing is done to overturn this by the end of the decade.
“Many homes are still heated with outdated systems that use polluting fossil fuels such as coal and oil,” the Commission points out, reminding that the building sector today is responsible for 40% of the EU’s final energy consumption and a whopping 36% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.
Addressing this would require at least doubling the renovation rate of buildings, which currently remains stuck at around 1% annually. “In particular, deep renovations addressing building shells, smart digitalisation and the integration of renewable energy together need to increase strongly,” the Commission says.
In fact, deeper energy savings need to be applied across all sectors of the economy, the EU executive argues, saying consumers could achieve savings of 36-37% while primary energy consumption could fall by 39-41% with stronger policies in place.
Source: Euractiv
Reaching Zero with Renewables
To avoid catastrophic climate change, the world needs to reach zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in all all sectors of the economy by the 2050s. Effective energy decarbonisation presents a major challenge, especially in key industry and transport sectors.
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