Europe and China Agree to Settle Solar Panel Fight

NYTimes.com
The European Union’s trade chief said on Saturday that a deal had been reached with China to settle a dispute over exports of low-cost solar panels that had threatened to set off a wider trade war between two of the world’s largest economies.
The settlement essentially involves setting a fairly high minimum price [0.56€/W] for sales of Chinese-made solar panels in the European Union to try to prevent them from undercutting European producers. (...) The deal immediately met with ferocious criticism from the European manufacturers that had filed the complaint. (...) The agreement “is contrary in every respect to European law,” said Milan Nitzschke, the president of EU ProSun, an industry group. A minimum price of 0.55 to 0.57 euros was at the level of “the current dumping price for Chinese modules,” the group said in a statement.
The arrangement would cover exports from 90 of about 140 Chinese exporters that were examined during the investigation, and that represent 60 percent of the panels sold in Europe, the government official said. Those 90 companies would no longer face tariffs that were put in place in June. Chinese exporters that did not agree to the terms will still face tariffs that are set to rise to 47.6 percent on Aug. 6 from the current level of 11.8 percent, the official said.

China’s MOFCOM levies preliminary duties from 2.4% to 57% on US, South Korean polysilicon

SolarServer
China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties on solar-grade polysilicon imports from the United States and South Korea. Importers of polysilicon from the US must post deposits between 53.3% and 57% starting on July 24th, 2013, and importers of Korean polysilicon must pay between 2.4% and 48.7%.
MOFCOM plans to issue a final ruling in late 2013. A separate investigation into EU polysilicon is still pending, as is a countervailing duty (CVD) investigation into imports of US and South Korean polysilicon.

Projeto português leva energia renovável à Guiné Bissau

Visao.pt
Banbadinca Sta Claro é o nome do projeto que integra o Programa Comunitário para Acesso a Energias Renováveis, levado a cabo pela ONG TESE. O nome não poderia ser mais adequado. Traduzida para português, a expressão crioula significa Bambadinca tem luz. Até ao final deste ano, a energia deve chegar às casas dos cerca de 6500 habitantes desta vila da Guiné-Bissau. (...) A intervenção deverá estar concluída em março de 2015, ao abrigo do programa Engenheiros Sem Fronteiras da TESE e em parceria com a ONG DIVUTEC, o Instituto Superior Técnico, e com o apoio técnico da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa e o financiamento da União Europeia e Cooperação Portuguesa.

China confirms plan to increase to 35 GW solar target by 2015

China State Council
Chinese government confirmed that the country’s solar target to be reached by 2015 has been increased to 35 GW, according to a statement from China’s State Council. The plan was annouced by the counsellor of China State’s Council and president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society, Shi Dinghuan, in early February. At the time, Shi Dinghuan said that the Chinese government intended to raise 69% the installed solar capacity target by 2015, in the frame of the national policy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, without revealing how the government aimed to reach the new target. It yesterday's press release, the State Council said that the new plan will enable the domestic solar market to grow by additional 10 GW annually over the next 3 years and will help the domestic solar industry to face oversupply and reduce its dependence on exports. To that effect, the State Council revealed that the central government will ban local governments from providing financial support to failing solar manufacturers. Instead, the government will actively encourage mergers and acquisitions to ensure a stronger, consolidated Chinese PV industry

China expects to end solar trade spat with EU next month: official

South China Morning Post
China expects to resolve a multibillion-US-dollar solar trade spat with the European Union by next month, a senior mainland industry official said yesterday, after a newspaper reported that Beijing had made a new offer to the EU to settle the dispute. The solar dispute has the potential to affect €21 billion (HK$210 billion) worth of imported Chinese solar panels, cells and wafers from manufacturers such as Trina Solar, Yingli Green Energy and Suntech Power Holdings. (...) [Sun Guangbin, secretary general of the solar department of China's Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products] declined to comment on a report in the Shanghai Securities News yesterday that China had proposed capping the annual volume of its solar panel exports to the EU and setting a minimum price for its products sold there. Under the proposal, China would export no more than 10 gigawatts of photovoltaic modules to the EU a year at a minimum price of 50 euro cents per watt, the paper quoted National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) researcher Wang Sicheng as saying. Any exports exceeding the limit would be subjected to punitive tariffs, Wang was quoted as saying at a solar industry conference on Thursday. In return, he said, the EU should levy no or low taxes on Chinese solar panels.

DESERTEC Foundation is leaving the industrial consortium Dii

DESERTEC Press Release
Today, the DESERTEC Foundation announced the termination of its membership with Dii GmbH. (...)
In 2009, Dii GmbH had been founded as a cooperation between many renowned firms and DESERTEC Foundation to create appropriate conditions for the realisation of DESERTEC in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
The non-governmental Foundation, which is the main idea- and name-giver for the DESERTEC concept, is taking this step as a result of many irresolvable disputes between the two entities in the area of future strategies, obligations and their communication and last but not least the managerial style of Dii’s top management. DESERTEC Foundation also wants to avoid being dragged into the maelstrom of negative publicity about the management crisis and disorientation of the industrial consortium. The dispute at the management level has already led to resentment among the partners of the DESERTEC Foundation and it negatively affects our reputation and trust. This is what the DESERTEC Foundation intends to avoid.
DESERTEC Foundation explicitly emphasises its understanding for the challenges the industrial consortium has to face. “It was always clear to us that our idea of producing electricity from the deserts on this earth was never an easy task and will always face extreme challenges. The employees of Dii have contributed enormously to the global transition towards renewable energy. However, after many months filled with a lot of discussions we had to conclude that the DESERTEC Foundation needs to preserve its independence. This is why Dii and DESERTEC Foundation will go separate ways which does not exclude future cooperation,” said Thiemo Gropp, Director of the DESERTEC Foundation.

CPV: Amonix Founder Speaks, Blames VCs, Laments Lack of Supply Chain

Greentech Media
It's tough times for concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar firms. GreenVolts went under and Amonix went quiet after shuttering its Nevada factory and laying off much of its staff last year. SolFocus is trying to sell itself and finding no buyers. Only Soitec seems to be developing new CPV systems, helped presumably, by a healthier balance sheet. (...) [Amonix's founder] Garboushian described CPV as an impoverished market with 100 megawatts deployed and $500 million invested over the last ten years, compared to the $50 billion received by the silicon industry. Garboushian said that what CPV needs is a supply chain, large-scale manufacturing, consolidation of the technology, and a big corporate backer instead of VCs looking to flip companies in a few years' time. (...) He called CPV bankable technology -- but it's hard to be considered bankable if the vendor is not going to be around in one year, let alone twenty.
A colleague and early employee at a rival CPV firm notes, "The CPV industry remains locked in a battle against declining costs with silicon technologies. The 2012 surge in cost reduction achieved by silicon may ultimately prove to be the death blow to today's commercial CPV providers, though there continue to be innovations in CPV cell efficiency and module design that could keep the technology alive in the highest-DNI environments. The big question is whether silicon will allow some breathing room in 2013 with the price increases that some predict, or whether further cost and price reductions in 2013 make the gap wholly uncrossable."

Obama apoia acesso a energia na África Subsariana com 5,38 mil milhões

Portal das Energias Renováveis
O presidente norte-americano anunciou, este domingo, uma iniciativa para estimular o acesso à energia elétrica, mais limpa e eficiente, na África Subsariana, sublinhando o interesse dos Estados Unidos em que o continente atinja o seu pleno potencial. A parceria "Power Africa" contará com um financiamento dos Estados Unidos na ordem dos 5,38 mil milhões de euros, revelou Barack Obama num discurso na universidade da Cidade do Cabo, na África do Sul, um dos três países visitados pelo chefe de Estado dos EUA (para além do Senegal e Tanzânia) para promover o comércio e o investimento num continente em rápido crescimento.
Este projeto de ajuda pública ao desenvolvimento - que será completado por financiamentos privados na ordem dos 6,91 mil milhões de euros - vai permitir a duplicação do acesso à energia elétrica na África Subsariana, onde mais de dois terços da população não a tem, segundo indicações da Casa Branca..
A General Electric está entre as empresas que contribuirão comprometeu-se a ajudar a levar para a Tanzânia e o Gana 5.000 megawatts de nova energia.
Durante a primeira fase de cinco anos, o projeto deverá traduzir-se na soma de mais de 10.000 megawatts de energia mais limpa e eficiente, que será levada a, pelo menos, mais vinte milhões de lares e empresas, ainda de acordo com a Casa Branca.