Europe

The Netherlands has launched the latest round of its renewable energy subsidy programme SDE+ this week, with a budget to the tune of €5 billion (~US$5.6 billion).

US renewables developer Origis Energy revealed on Tuesday that it had hired Renewable Energy Systems (RES) for engineering, procurement and construction of its 57.5MW solar farm in Mitchell County, Georgia.

The World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has agreed to provide a financing package of US$50 million to Kiev-based firm OTP Leasing for sustainable energy investments in Ukraine.

Consolidation is coming to Spain’s red-hot solar market, but in a post-subsidy world the landing will be relatively soft.

Ukraine’s favorite solar module manufacturer has posted another encouraging set of returns, after a difficult year in 2018. And Risen – which boasted 6.6 GW of annual production capacity at the end of last year, according to analysts at PV InfoLink – is committed to adding another 2.5 GW before 2022.

A study from Sweden seeks to consider how PV could be sympathetically installed on historic buildings. The researchers propose a target-based approach for assessing panel visibility.

Iberdrola’s record investment into renewables and networks is outperforming expectations, freeing the utility to invest even more creating a “virtuous circle of growth”, the company’s chairman has said.

Where seasonal storage is paramount, hydrogen comes into play. Under-the-radar solar market Sweden has presented its hydrogen projects and technological solutions to overcome the country’s natural solar barriers.

Italian asset manager Green Arrow Capital (GAC) has agreed to acquire a 320MW portfolio of renewable energy projects from London-based Quercus Investment Partners for an undisclosed sum.

Origis Energy USA announced it has selected Renewable Energy Systems to construct the Origis Energy Tanglewood Solar project, a 57.5-MWAC solar farm in Mitchell County, Georgia. Origis Energy developed the solar site as one of the facilities under the Georgia Power Renewable Energy Development Initiative (REDI) serving the utility’s customers participating in the Commercial and Industrial REDI (C&I REDI) program. This contract represents the first construction partnership between Origis Energy and RES. Origis Energy will own and operate the facility.

Luminous Energy has commenced connection works on its 162MWac solar farm in Australia, with the developer eyeing up 1.2GW of works across multiple markets.

After several years of stagnation, Spain has started to see a revival in its PV market, writes IHS Markit’s Maria Chea. The country’s newfound growth has been due to a combination of tender and private PPA projects, along with decreasing component costs.

The French energy giant will provide supermarket Tesco with electricity from 17 rooftop PV installations and two wind farms for a renewables portfolio generation capacity of 59 MW. The groceries retailer has announced plans to install 187 solar rooftops.

U.S. oil major Chevron did not respond to pv magazine’s questions. Exxon Mobil and BP did not produce figures for their clean energy investment activity and Total responded only with its ‘low carbon electricity’ spending. Shell stated it had invested €1.6 billion in clean energy from late 2016 up to June.