Guardian: Germany Takes Steps to Roll Back Renewable Energy
Germany is taking steps to curb its booming wind farm sector in what it claims is a necessary move to stop the renewables revolution from undermining its own success.
Critics, however, say the step will deal a blow to the country’s reputation as a leader in green energy.
According to leaked plans from the German federal network agency, published on Tuesday in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the government has had to halve its original target for expanding its wind farms in the gale-beaten northern flatlands because it cannot extend its power grid quickly enough to the energy-hungry south.
China Daily: BYD Steams Into Monorail Industry
Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD is entering the railway transportation market, with the announcement of plans to build a monorail service in Shenzhen.
The "Skyrail" will take around two years to build, one-third of the time taken to build the average metro system, and will cost around 20 percent of the latter, according to the company.
With an investment of 5 billion yuan ($757 million) in five years, BYD aims to solve the traffic-jam problem in crowded cities caused by population increase.
Bloomberg: Copying the Copycat
Nobody likes being outshone by a rival -- especially if all they've done is copy your idea.
Take Eon. Back in 2014, the German utility had the foresight to separate its renewable and grids businesses from its loss-making fossil power plants. Rival RWE dragged its feet for a year before copying Eon. Both companies have been hit by a toxic combination of falling wholesale power prices, less demand for fossil power, and Germany's decision to shut down nuclear plants.
Embarrassingly for Eon, RWE's version of the plan turned out to be much the better one.
Climate Central: Scientists Warn Negative Emissions Are a ‘Moral Hazard’
Removing carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere to prevent global warming from becoming catastrophic may be a fool’s game amounting to a “moral hazard par excellence,” according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
Nobody knows if atmospheric carbon removal -- known as negative emissions -- will work, and it could delay critical cuts to emissions while tacitly giving people license to pollute, the paper says.
“Negative-emission technologies are not an insurance policy, but rather an unjust and high-stakes gamble,” write the paper’s authors, Kevin Anderson and and Glen Peters. Anderson is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Peters is a researcher at CICERO, a climate research organization in Norway.
St. Louis Business Journal: SEC Investigating SunEdison, Company Says
Maryland Heights-based SunEdison said Wednesday that it received a notice Oct. 5 from the Securities and Exchange Commission that the regulator is conducting a non-public, fact-finding investigation relating to the bankrupt renewable energy developer.
"The notice was accompanied by a subpoena, seeking production of certain emails and other electronic communications sent or received by certain current and/or former directors and/or officers of the Company, TerraForm Power Inc. and/or TerraForm Global Inc.," SunEdison said in a regulatory filing.