Europe

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) has offered grants worth €40 million to 55 small solar projects to be located on Spain's Balearic Islands, with a total capacity of 326MW.

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of lithium-ion batteries.

A report published recently by the United Kingdom’s National Infrastructure says that the UK’s regulatory system must “adapt to meet the demands of the future” by providing new powers for regulators to ensure utility investments in sustainable infrastructure. The report notes that without such powers, the country will be unlikely to meet its target of zero emissions by 2050.

German utility EnBW will build what is claimed to be Germany’s largest solar park without subsidy support, standing at 180MW in capacity in Brandenburg.

Lightsource BP has announced its entry into the Spanish solar market with the acquisition of a 300MW project portfolio in Zaragoza.

The German developer and independent power producer claims it finished its latest solar project in the country about one month ahead of schedule.

In the run up to our Greenwashing vs. verifiable sustainability webinar, the CEO of pv magazine’s UP initiative partner SMA Solar Technology, Jürgen Reinert, talks about what the inverter manufacturer is doing to prove its sustainability credentials.

New company NGEN appears to have introduced the Powerpack battery to central Europe in a €15 million, 12.6 MW/22.6 MWh project in the northwest of the country which is the first of two planned utility scale systems due for completion by July.

There is movement in the heterojunction space, but will it be enough to surpass PERC’s momentum? New production lines show promise, but they might also be the last roll of the dice for Swiss production equipment supplier Meyer Burger.

The building-sized trucks run on diesel and prompt logistical complications as large amounts of diesel must be shipped to remote mining sites. Attempts to decarbonize the mining sector will have to consider the heavy-duty vehicles.

The German Energy Agency has drawn up a list of proposed measures which it says could help the world’s biggest solar market accelerate its clean energy plans through the adoption of subsidy-free – private – power purchase agreements.

Shanghai-headquartered ReneSola has inked the latest of a series of solar divestments in recent weeks, offloading a portfolio of distributed generation in Hungary.

The utility-scale solar momentum slowly coursing through Latin America looks set to extend to one of the region’s smallest countries, with a large project now progressing through construction.

Europe’s second largest solar market has marked a subsidy-free boost this week, with two players joining forces to deploy a pipeline in a country where PV growth was muted for years.

Scientists at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a new class of electrolytes they say could bring calcium batteries – currently only a lab technology – a step closer to being a practical reality for energy storage.