The Trade: Links We Like

Posted on 28 August 2009

- Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures and Gigaton Throwdown has a very good report on Gigaton website.  The report looks at nine clean technologies and estimates the cost and scale that each would require to offset a gigaton of annual emissions by 2020.  The quality is excellent and we especially appreciate being given the hard data behind the analysis.

- The Wall Street Journal breaks an interesting story regarding Chinese production capacity in polysilicon and wind turbine manufacturing.  The massive growth in these two sectors is too much for domestic markets to handle and the government is looking to curb further capital investment.  We find this timely given the allegations of dumping, particularly by the Germans, of solar modules by Chinese companies.

- The California Public Utilities Commission (CUPC) takes a new tack on feed-in tariffs by leaving pricing open to bidding on new renewable projects between 1MW and 10MW.  Feed in tariffs have been too low in California to spur the kind of real growth in renewables that would allow the state to meet RPS standards.   Ratepayers and utilities have had the upper hand in pricing to date while RPS has carried little consequences.  It will be interesting to see if a bidding process will provide the CUPC enough political cover to finally start imposing the higher rates necessary to spur development.