QUICK NEWS, September 20: Survey Shows People Oppose Fossil Fuels; Solar Bargain Hits World Record; China In Record Wind Build Rate
Survey Shows People Oppose Fossil Fuels [54%] favor federal regulations that would reduce U.S. coal use, survey says
Bill Loveless, September 18, 2016 (USA Today)
Editor’s note: Other findings from the survey in this Quick News item were used posted yesterday.
“…[Just two months before the November elections, energy and climate change are ‘important issues’ for about half of likely voters as they cast their ballots, according to authors of a new survey by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 54%] of Americans (67% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans) favor federal regulations that would reduce U.S. coal use, though that support slips to 45% when the question is paired with the assertion that such regulations have resulted in the loss of coal jobs…Moreover, the results raise questions about the extent of local support for a legal challenge of Obama administration climate policy by 24 states…[Other] findings aren’t good for the gas industry and its supporters…Of the six in 10 respondents who had an opinion on fracking, twice as many oppose the practice as support it…” click here for more
Solar Bargain Hits World Record A Jaw-Dropping World Record Solar Price Was Just Bid in Abu Dhabi; It’s for a planned sprawling solar farm for a utility in the Middle East.
Katie Fehrenbacher, September 19, 2016 (Fortune)
“A shockingly low price [of 2.42 cents per kilowatt hour] for energy from solar panels was recently bid during an auction for a [350 MW] solar farm near the [sun-rich] city of Abu Dhabi…[by a] consortium of the Chinese solar panel maker and project builder JinkoSolar JKS -1.56% and the Japanese developer Marubeni…That’s by far the lowest solar panel farm bid out there. A few ultra low-cost large solar panel farms have recently achieved around 4 cents per kilowatt hour, and earlier this year the previous record bid for a solar panel farm in Chile was 2.91 cents per kilowatt hour…In comparison, in the U.S. average costs for energy from all types of new sources, like gas and coal, can cost between 5 and 6 cents per kilowatt hour. So getting to under 2.50 cents puts solar panel farms in an entirely new category and makes it competitive with fossil fuels…[And] that bid is for an auction that hasn’t yet concluded…” click here for more
China In Record Wind Build Rate China embarked on wind power frenzy, says IEA; China has been building two wind turbines every hour…
Roger Harrabin, 20 September 2016 (BBC News)
“This is the world's biggest programme of turbine installation [ever], double that of its nearest rival, the US…The nation’s entire annual increase in energy demand has been fulfilled from the wind…But the [International Energy Agency (IEA)] warns China has built so much coal-fired generating capacity that it is turning off wind turbines for 15% of the time…[because] coal-fired power stations are given priority access to the grid…The average European wind farm is forced to stop generating between 1-2% of the year…State media has reported China’s plans to impose a moratorium on all new coal-fired plants until 2018…The IEA says China installed more than 30,000 MW of new wind energy in 2015 – partly thanks to a rush driven by the Chinese government making its existing subsidies less attractive…Construction has slackened in 2016, but only to a level of more than one turbine per hour…” click here for more
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