LiveMint: Solar Tariffs in India Have Fallen by 73% Since 2010
Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot module prices, which have also fallen by about 80% in the same period, Mercom Capital Group said in a report on Friday.
Intense competition in reverse auctions for solar projects due to limited supply of projects has pushed companies to bid lower, sacrificing margins, in order to gain market share, the report said.
“Highly competitive reverse auctions, falling module and component prices, the introduction of solar parks, lower borrowing costs, and the entry of large power conglomerates with strong balance sheets and access to cheaper capital have all contributed to the dramatic fall in bids,” it said.
Reuters: Toshiba's Westinghouse May File Bankruptcy Tuesday
Westinghouse Electric, the U.S. nuclear unit of Japan's Toshiba, could file for bankruptcy protection as early as Tuesday and is seeking support from South Korea's Korea Electric Power, the Nikkei said on Monday.
A Chapter 11 filing could help Toshiba limit damage from losses at Westinghouse, the report by the Japanese business daily said, without citing sources for its information.
Sources told Reuters on Friday that Toshiba had told its main banks it planned to have Westinghouse file for bankruptcy on Friday, expanding charges related to the U.S. unit this business year to around 1 trillion yen ($9 billion) from its publicly flagged estimate of 712.5 billion yen.
Bloomberg: Trump Said to Issue Far-Reaching Reversal of Obama Climate Push
President Donald Trump is set to sign a sweeping executive order on Tuesday aimed at promoting domestic oil, coal and natural gas by reversing much of his predecessor’s efforts to address climate change.
The document lays out a broad blueprint for the Trump administration to dismantle the architecture that former President Barack Obama built to combat the phenomenon, according to details shared with Bloomberg News. Some of the changes would happen immediately, while others would take years to complete.
The order will compel federal agencies to quickly identify any actions that could burden the production or use of domestic energy resources, including nuclear power, and then work to suspend, revise or rescind the policies unless they are legally mandated, are necessary for the public interest or promote development.
The Washington Post: The Mercers, Trump Mega-Donors, Back Group That Casts Doubt on Climate Science
The atmosphere was buoyant at a conference held by the conservative Heartland Institute last week at a downtown Washington hotel, where speakers denounced climate science as rigged and jubilantly touted deep cuts President Trump is seeking to make to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Front and center during the two-day gathering were New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, Republican mega-donors who with their former political adviser Stephen K. Bannon helped finance an alternative media ecosystem that amplified Trump’s populist themes during last year’s campaign.
The Mercers’ attendance at the two-day Heartland conference offered a telling sign of the low-profile family’s priorities: With Trump in office, the influential financiers appear intent on putting muscle behind the fight to roll back environmental regulations, a central focus of the new administration.
Guardian: Trump Presidency 'Opens Door' to Planet-Hacking Geoengineer Experiments
Harvard engineers who launched the world’s biggest solar geo-engineering research program may get a dangerous boost from Donald Trump, environmental organizations are warning.
Under the Trump administration, enthusiasm appears to be growing for the controversial technology of solar geo-engineering, which aims to spray sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s radiation back to space and decrease the temperature of Earth.
Sometime in 2018, Harvard engineers David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to test spraying from a high-altitude balloon over Arizona, in order to assess the risks and benefits of deployment on a larger scale.
Keith canceled a similar planned experiment in New Mexico in 2012, but announced he was ready for field testing at a geo-engineering forum in Washington on Friday.