Japanese Environment Minister Satsuki Eda has vowed to maintain Japan’'s pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, despite uncertainty hanging over Japan’'s power generation future in the aftermath of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
China will start a pilot carbon emissions trading project, and gradually set up a carbon emissions trading market, according to one of China’s top climate change officials.
H B Doggett, President and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), has said that Texas could face a shortage of electrical generation within a few years if the federal government moves forward with a new rule to reduce power plant smokestack emissions.
American Electric Power (AEP) said it was putting a hold on its plans for a commercial-scale CO2 capture and storage project in West Virginia, USA because of uncertainty surrounding US climate policy and what the company described as a weak economy.
The Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) has released its “2011 Global Status Report”, which said that renewable energy supplied 16 percent of total energy usage and 20 percent of electricity generated globally in 2010.
Gazprom has signed a deal with Renova Group to merge assets and create a state-controlled national power utility, part of plans partially reversing the recent privatisation of the Russian power industry.
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan's Annual Global Power Generation Forecasts 2011, shows that electricity generation will expand at a growth rate of 2.7 per cent through 2020, with the growth rate declining to 1.8 per cent per annum over the subsequent decade, as growth rate in the emerging markets becomes less pronounced and energy-efficiency measures begin to have a significant impact.
Vietnam’s state-run Petrovietnam has awarded two contracts worth a combined $1.2 billion to two subsidiaries to build a 1200 MW coal-fired power plant.
The state of Gujarat, India, has experienced an unprecedented 545 per cent growth in wind power generation capacity between 2006 and 2011, moving from a mere 338 MW to 2175.5 MW in half a decade. The state currently produces around 15 per cent of the total wind power generation in India.
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced offers of conditional commitments for loan guarantees of $4.5 billion to support three AC Cadmium Telluride (Cd-Te) thin film PV solar generation facilities to be located in California.