Bloomberg: China Tycoons to Invest $5 Billion in Indian Renewable Power
Chinese tycoons Liang Wengen and Nan Cunhui plan to pour $5 billion into India’s renewable power sector as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a major expansion of clean energy in one of the world’s biggest polluters.
Liang’s Sany Group will install 2,000 megawatts of capacity and generate 1,000 jobs from 2016 to 2020 at a cost of $3 billion, a statement released at a briefing in New Delhi on Thursday showed. Chint Group Chairman Nan said at the same event that his company will invest $2 billion in solar power and equipment.
New York Times: For Pickens, Wind Claim May Be Last Power Play
T. Boone Pickens made billions drilling for oil and gas and squaring off in bare-knuckled corporate takeover bouts. Now the 87-year-old tycoon is embroiled in what may be the last big battle of his career. Only this one is aimed thousands of miles north of his Texas home. And it is over wind power.
Mr. Pickens and Mesa Power contend that Florida company NextEra was granted exclusive access through private meetings with important government officials that ultimately tilted the bidding in its favor.
The province of Ontario granted NextEra $3.8 billion in energy contracts. Mesa Power contends that $18,600 in donations that NextEra made to the ruling Liberal Party in Ontario before elections in 2011 had undue influence on the auction.
Vox: The Democratic Party Has Come a Long Way on Climate Change, but CNN Hasn’t
In Tuesday's Democratic primary debate, the candidates mentioned climate change several times unprompted. Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton all touched on it during their opening statements. O'Malley and Sanders hit it again in the context of national security, and Clinton when defending herself from the charge of flip-flopping on the Keystone XL pipeline.
But there was no question on climate change until the final segment of the (gruelingly long) debate. O'Malley tried again to bring up a "green revolution" in energy, and Cooper cut in with this segue for the ages.
Public awareness of climate change has come a long way since then, and so has the Democratic Party. CNN, it seems, has not.
Fortune: It's Time for Electric Cars to Go Mainstream, Says Volvo
By 2020, the company expects 10% of global sales will be electric vehicles.
Volvo Car Group says it will add plug-in hybrid vehicles across its entire product range, develop a whole new line of electrified smaller cars, and build an all-electric car for sale by 2019.
“We believe that the time has come for electrified cars to cease being a niche technology and enter the mainstream,” Volvo Car Group President and CEO Håkan Samuelsson said in a statement. “We are confident that by 2020, 10% of Volvo’s global sales will be electrified cars.”
Guardian: Energy Giants Want to Be Part of a Green Agenda, but Will They Go Far Enough?
From Brent Spar to the Arctic 30 protesters, oil and gas companies have traditionally been regarded as the environment movement’s most implacable foes. So it is hard to overstate the significance of the letter sent in June by six of the largest European oil and gas firms to the United Nations and its member governments. Their message, in essence: “We would like to be part of the climate change solution, not part of the problem.”
The companies, including Shell and BP, called for “widespread and effective pricing of carbon emissions.” They also backed a bigger role for natural gas, the burning of which releases around half the carbon emissions of coal. The companies are expected to publish more detailed proposals on Friday, ahead of this year’s potentially pivotal U.N. climate summit in Paris.