news
Penalties for non-compliance with
the RPO “have not been enforced to a significant extent,” accord-
ing to Sanjay Chakrabarti, head of Ernst & Young’s India cleantech
practice. The falling interest in the market is a clear indicator that
there is a need for a strict enforcement of RPO regulations by state
electricity regulatory commissions, the IEX said. And Suresh Prab-
hu, a former environment minister and power minister, has said
investment in Indian renewable energy is at risk, blaming regula-
tors for their inability to enforce the RPO.
“[The] Renewable Purchase Obligation is part of the Electric-
ity Act itself and regulator has to decide its quantum from time
to time. Non-compliance of this obligation will jeopardise invest-
ments in [the] renewable sector,” Prabhu said. ￮
[ REC Market cont. from p17 ]
China Says It Will Not
Set Carbon Cap
Although several major newspapers of record reported in May that
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)
had proposed introducing a cap on greenhouse gases from 2016,
the nation says it has no such plan.
The Financial Times had reported that Jiang Kejun, a carbon
policy researcher with the NDRC, said China was considering
an emissions cap for the 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) and was
looking into appropriate levels.
Su Wei, China’s chief climate negotiator and director-general of the NDRC’s department of climate change, dismissed the
news reports in a Bloomberg interview while noting that China will
uphold its current agreement to cut its carbon intensity (a measure of carbon emissions in relation to economic output) by around
40 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. Su’s comments are the first by a
senior Chinese negotiator since the reports were published.
“There are lots of ways we can achieve the carbon-intensity
target by 2020,” Su said. “We would certainly make arrangements
in both the 12th and 13th five-year plans to achieve that objective.” NDRC has announced plans to launch a carbon trading
scheme in Shenzhen, which will cover 638 companies that produce 38 percent of the city’s emissions. Six other locations plan
to roll out the scheme in before 2014.
China accounts for almost one quarter of global CO2 emissions. ￮
Geothermal
Energy Set To
Take Off in Asia
Pacific Region
More than 4 GW of geothermal
power capacity are expected to come
online worldwide between now and
2018, according to a new report.
The study by Navigant Research
reveals that at the moment there are
56 projects in either active drilling or
construction stages and all are in the
U.S., the Philippines and Indonesia.
And Mackinnon Lawrence, prin-
cipal research analyst with Nav-
igant, says that the 4 GW figure
could be just the tip of the iceberg:
“This total includes only projects in
advanced stages of development. A
significant, though mostly uncon-
firmed, amount of capacity remains
locked up in early-stage projects. As
a number of these projects are fur-
ther developed and their resource
potential confirmed, the long-term
pipeline — 2017 and later — is
expected to expand proportionally.”
Navigant states that although the
U.S. leads all regions with the largest
number of projects in the pipeline,
the Asia Pacific has the most report-
ed capacity under development, with
7. 4 GW currently in the pipeline, rep-
resenting 40 percent of the global
capacity under development.
Latin America and Africa
account for a combined 3. 8 GW of
additional capacity under development, equal to 20 percent of the
global pipeline.” ￮
