Chinese makers of solar panels turn to building solar farms
Dec-17-2013 By : agxadmin
China’s loss-making manufacturers of solar panels believe they may have found a way out of their nightmare – by becoming one-stop renewable energy shops with their own solar farms. Many of the country’s panel makers are now looking to invest in solar farms to help them return to profitability. For manufacturers, generating projects mean a predictable source of demand for their panels and a more lucrative business than manufacturing panels. They offer an annual gross return of about 10%, depending on the proportion of debt financing and project location. JA Solar said in August it planned to develop 300 megawatt (MW) of generating projects in Hebei province, in what its Chief Executive, Jin Baofang, said was a major step “to increase the role project development plays in our overall revenue mix”. Shunfeng Photovoltaic, a small Chinese solar cell maker listed in Hong Kong, has said it will enter agreements to develop 1,079 MW of solar power projects and have 600 MW in operation or under construction by the end of this year. Like their overseas peers, Chinese panel makers may eventually spin off their power plants by listing them or selling them to funds and insurers to take profit and alleviate potential funding strains, analysts say.
China to have biggest absolute increase in renewable energy
By : agxadmin
China will see the biggest absolute increase in power generation from renewable energy in the next 20 years, more than the increase in the European Union, the United States and Japan combined as the country faces a serious battle against pollution, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said. China will be the strongest driver in the global trend where renewable energy will account for nearly half of the increase in global power generation by 2035, with variable sources, notably wind and solar making up 45% of the expansion, the IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook report. “The good news for China playing an active role in developing renewable energy is that it will help decarbonize the global energy system,” said Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist, in an interview with China Daily. “The main challenge for global renewable energy today is that it is costly. If China builds a lot of renewable energy projects, it will help bring down the cost and enable it to compete with traditional sources of energy, namely coal and gas,” he said. Earlier reports said that China plans to invest CNY1.85 trillion in the renewable energy sector as part of its effort to curb the increasingly serious air pollution. The country has pledged to increase the non-fossil energy consumption to 15% of its energy mixture by 2020, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Nevertheless, the IEA report forecast that China will continue to dominate the global energy demand for traditional energy sources because it has become the world’s largest oil importer. China’s consumption of coal will peak in 2020 and become stable as a result of improved energy efficiency and stabilized economic growth. India will replace China as the world’s largest importer of coal by the early 2020s, it added.
Solar panel makers shift to new markets
By : agxadmin
Chinese solar panel manufacturers are selling more to new markets after trade disputes with the U.S. and the EU. Wang Guiqing, Vice President of the China Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, said that exports to Europe have fallen to less than 30% of the total now from 70% in 2012. Exports to the U.S., formerly the second-largest export destination, are down to about 10% of the total-half the previous level. Japan has taken the place of the U.S., making up the second-largest market and taking 20% of China’s solar exports. The successful shift has helped many Chinese solar manufacturers by boosting their revenue, reducing capital-draining inventories and providing funds for research and development (R&D). Japan’s high feed-in tariff rate has been a catalyst for that country’s solar industry, and China’s own goal of having 35 GW of installed solar capacity by 2015; and its policy support for solar plants has lifted sales of solar products in recent months, Wang Hao, Analyst with Orient Securities Co noted. “Sales to the European market have contracted sharply, but we are able to make up for the loss of market share by higher sales elsewhere,” said Zhang Hanbin, Senior Market Director of Nasdaq-listed Canadian Solar, which is based in Jiangsu province. Higher sales to the fast-growing Japanese market helped Canadian Solar halve its second-quarter loss and prompted it to forecast profitability on a full-year basis in 2013. Exports to India approached USD700 million in the first nine months of this year, compared with USD100 million in the final four months of 2012, Zhang said. Zhang Longgen, Chief Financial Officer of Jiangxi Jinko Solar Co said that the potential for growth now lies in China and Japan, and that 40% of sales are likely to be within China next year, with Europe and the U.S. each taking up less than 20% of total shipments, the China Daily reports.
China’s reduced coal use ends golden decade for coal
By : agxadmin
China’s drive to reduce coal consumption is having an impact on investments in the coal industry worldwide. “China is kicking its coal addiction,” said Chen Yafei, Vice Director at the China Coal Research Institute. “With slower economic growth and a big push towards gas and renewables, the golden decade for coal is over.” China’s coal imports grew 17% in the first 10 months of the year, down nearly half from the 30% in the same period last year. With weak demand and high domestic output, inventories have been stuck at record-high levels of 300 million tons most of this year. China’s massive jump in coal use – to 3.8 billion tons last year from 2.5 billion tons in 2006 – drove prices of benchmark Asian thermal coal to an average of USD121 a ton in 2011 from less than USD50 five years earlier. But a raft of mine expansions during the boom years and weak demand caused by the global slowdown in economic growth pushed prices to a three-year low near USD80 a ton in October last year, and they have stayed below USD100 since. Goldman Sachs expects seaborne coal trade to grow at just 1% until 2017, compared with 7% from 2007-12. Miners bullish on demand are planning projects in areas that need significant infrastructure investment, such as the Galilee basin in Australia and the Sumatra region in Indonesia, but they need high prices for the projects to make sense. India’s GVK Power & Infrastructure and Adani Enterprises are among those spending billions of dollars on new mines in the remote Galilee Basin. In Mozambique massive spending is needed on railways and ports to allow companies like Rio Tinto and Vale to make the most of potential reserves. “The prospect of weaker demand growth and prices at near marginal production costs suggest that most thermal coal growth projects will struggle to earn a positive return for their owners,” Goldman Sachs said in a report. Beijing is mulling proposals to scrap a 10% coal export tariff, a move that could easily cause shipments to jump fourfold as Chinese coal becomes more competitive. Plans by the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to double the volume of coal carried on dedicated railroads to 2.4 billion tons by 2015 will cut production costs, as will an ongoing mine consolidation, the South China Morning Post reports.
Premier Li Keqiang encourages private and foreign investment in green industries
By : agxadmin
China will open its energy conservation and environmental protection industries to foreign and private investment, Premier Li Keqiang at a meeting in Beijing. Li’s remarks may signal a change in China’s approach to the clean-energy sector, which has used government subsidies to create national champions and been criticized as protectionist in nature. He told foreign members of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development that China is willing to work with the international community to strengthen technology and other forms of cooperation to improve the environment. “We encourage private capital to enter the field,” the China Daily quoted Li as saying. At present, foreign companies can invest in equipment manufacturing but can only have limited stakes in clean-energy projects like wind farms. “We also hope China’s energy conservation and environmental protection products will enter the overseas market, and we will open the industry to the international market”, Premier Li Keqiang said. The government’s strategy of using subsidies to create national champions in wind and solar energy was partly successful in that it spawned some of the world’s largest manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines, but it also created an investment glut as local governments rushed to jump on the investment bandwagon. Many solar power and wind farms remain disconnected from the main power grid, and the country still remains overwhelmingly dependent on domestic coal and imported fossil fuels.
- KURT VANDEPUTTE (UMICORE) APPOINTED CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF THE FLANDERS-CHINA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (FCCC)
- Webinar: “Knowing Your Chinese Partner” – May 26, 2021, 10 am – 12 am
- EMA starts rolling review of CoronaVac, WHO approves Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use
- The Global Times warns not to politicize the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)
- Hainan to become biggest duty-free market in the world