The signing ceremony took place in front of attendees and media at RE+ 2022 in Anaheim, California. Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media

FlexGen has signed a multi-year supply deal with CATL that the energy storage company’s CEO said puts it ahead of the queue in a crunch time for battery supply.

Kelcy Pegler spoke exclusively to Energy-Storage.news immediately after signing the 10GWh, three-year deal with the Chinese battery manufacturer, live at the RE+ 2022 tradeshow in Anaheim, California.

Throughout the show, supply chain constraints for battery storage have been a constant topic of discussion among the 20,000 attendees.

While the sector has long benefited from the scale and cost reductions coming from mass production of electric vehicles (EVs), demand from the EV market has now grown so much that it is eating up nearly all available supply, leaving little to none left for battery energy storage systems (BESS).  

“The market has become clear that there will be haves and have nots of battery supply, and we’ve really made it our intention to make sure that our customers will be in the have column,” Pegler said.

“This capacity agreement ensures that our customers’ projects will have batteries on time and will lead to successful projects.”

FlexGen’s Master Supply Agreement covers the delivery of CATL’s containerised liquid-cooled battery system, EnerC, which the energy storage integrator and software specialist will use for customer projects in the US.

EnerC is claimed to have an energy density of up to 259.7kWh per square metre and is targeted for multi-megawatt-hour applications, with an expected 20-year system lifetime.  

Model of CATL’s EnerC system at the RE+ tradeshow. Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media.

CATL is one of the world’s biggest battery manufacturers, and crucially has also pursued a strategy of building up dedicated manufacturing capacity to serve the BESS market, which FlexGen’s Kelcy Pegler said was “at the forefront of our attraction to this partnership”.

Also key was CATL’s reputation and bankability as a Tier 1 supplier, Pegler said.

CATL’s hardware will be integrated with FlexGen’s Hybrid OS energy management system (EMS) software platform to create turnkey BESS solutions for utilities, merchant electricity markets and cooperative and municipal energy suppliers.

FlexGen’s current projects include integration work at a 2.15GWh, three-project BESS portfolio clean energy company Ameresco is building for utility Southern California Edison (SCE). In August it announced that it will provide software and battery storage systems to a 100MW Texas BESS portfolio owned by sustainable investment group SUSI Partners.

The firm has drawn significant recent investment: in August 2021, a US$150 million equity investment was arranged by asset manager Apollo and in July this year a Series C funding round closed with US$100 million raised from investors including Dutch energy trader Vitol.

FlexGen and CATL have already worked together on around 2.5GWh of energy storage system projects and Pegler said customer demand is so high that the contracted 10GWh will be “absorbed” into the energy storage integrator’s project pipeline with “reasonable ease”.

“This agreement allows everyone to plan more transparently together, not just for this quarter or this year, but through that portfolio visibility of several years,” Pegler said.

Continue reading

Jennifer Morris (Credit: The Nature Conservancy)

Microsoft Corp., Planet Labs PBC and The Nature Conservancy are launching the Global Renewables Watch (GRW), a living atlas intended to map and measure all utility-scale solar and wind installations on Earth using artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite imagery, allowing users to evaluate clean energy transition progress and track trends over time.

With initial mapping of solar and wind energy installations in Germany and India, as well as solar installations in Brazil and Egypt completed, the GRW is being built to serve as a publicly available renewable energy atlas with country-by-country insights into production progress and development trends. With access to satellite data dating back to 2018, and plans to update the atlas twice annually, the GRW aims to show countries’ renewable energy capacity, assist in understanding that capacity, and recognize patterns about the potential impact of the renewable energy siting on the landscape over time rather than as a moment in time.

The first full global inventory is expected to be completed by early 2023, at which point the results will undergo both scientific and technical validation. For this joint program, Microsoft is providing the AI and platform technology, Planet is contributing the underlying satellite imagery, and The Nature Conservancy is overlaying the subject-matter expertise to analyze the output.

“The theme for Climate Week NYC this year is ‘getting it done,’ and to do that, we need to move from pledges to progress,” says Jennifer Morris, The Nature Conservancy’s CEO. “Global Renewables Watch, which is a result of collaboration between Microsoft, The Nature Conservancy and Planet, is exactly the kind of action we need to see. This will be a publicly accessible resource to help researchers and policymakers understand current capacities and gaps so that decision-makers can scale much-needed renewable energy resources in a responsible, nature-friendly way.”

Current methods for tracking solar and wind energy projects globally are an immensely complex undertaking, cutting across countless jurisdictions and with much of the data held by private organizations. The GRW aims to provide this data by coupling AI with high-resolution satellite imagery and presenting it in a dynamically updated time series.

“Each of the partners brings unique knowledge and value-add to this initiative,” states Will Marshall, Planet’s co-founder and CEO. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so by combining Microsoft’s AI and cloud computing capabilities, Planet’s comprehensive and high-resolution satellite imagery, and The Nature Conservancy’s deep subject-matter expertise, we hope to build a powerful platform for surfacing – and democratizing access to – renewable energy data.”  

The partners will continue to map additional countries and are aiming to build awareness of the tool among those tasked with managing the world’s clean energy transition in the weeks leading up to and during the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, taking place in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, Nov. 6-18, 2022.   

“The world needs access to data in order to make responsible environmental decisions, and the Global Renewables Watch will serve as a critical tool for understanding humanity’s progress toward fulfilling the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all,” mentions Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft’s VP and chief data scientist.

Continue reading

The LDES Council is aiming for deployment of between 85TWh and 140TWh of long-duration energy storage worldwide by 2040. Image: Kenueone / Pixabay.

Oil and gas major TotalEnergies, thermal energy storage system company 1414 Degrees and six other companies have joined the Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Council.

The CEO-led organisation, founded at COP26 last year, said the new members have joined towards the end of quarter three.

The LDES Council has welcomed four new technology members – companies providing long duration energy storage solutions – and four new anchor members – companies with interests or operations within the broader energy sector.

The new technology members are: molten silicon thermal energy storage system (TESS) provider 1414 Degrees, high-density hydro energy storage startup RheEnergise, broader heating solutions company Thermowatt and Mine Storage, a company which says it operates medium-to-large-scale power storage solutions in underground mines.

New anchor members are UAE state-owned aluminium conglomerate Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), energy company EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, mining and metals group South32, and TotalEnergies.

The Council was set up to enable the deployment of between 85TWh and 140TWh of long-duration energy storage worldwide by 2040. It recently said the LDES sector will need significant policy support to achieve this until 2030-35.

Continue reading

The company’s String Optimizer. Image: Ampt.

Power conversion technology provider Ampt has received an order for its String Optimizers to power a large solar-plus-storage plant with an energy capacity of 600MWh in California.

The Colorado-based firm will provide its Ampt String Optimizers to connect the PV system to 600MWh of energy storage through a shared DC bus. The plant will supply power to the California grid operated by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO).

The nameplate power of the solar PV array is 380MW, making this the company’s largest project order to-date. In July, it delivered 240MW of its String Optimizers to Latin America’s largest solar-plus-storage project in Chile, as reported by Energy-Storage.news’ sister site PV Tech.

Ampt String Optimizers are DC/DC converters that improve system performance by applying maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to each string of PV modules and then delivering that full power at a high and fixed voltage, whereas other systems suffer from a variable and lower voltage, the company claimed.

It added that this reduces the requirements of entire systems, which then lowers the costs of electrical components such as cables, battery converters and inverters, and that the predictable DC bus voltage also simplifies battery and inverter controls to improve grid responsiveness of the power plant assets.

Continue reading

The zinc-iron flow battery technology was originally developed by ViZn Energy Systems. Image: Vizn / WeView.

Shanghai-based WeView has raised US$56.5 million in several rounds of financing to commercialise the zinc-iron flow battery energy storage systems technology originally developed by ViZn Energy Systems.

WeView announced yesterday (21 September) that it had completed the fundraising rounds in the last six months with a total amount raised exceeding RMB400 million (US$56.5 million). Investors include Gaorong Capital, Songhe Capital, Ultrasound Juneng, Dashu Evergreen, ZhenFund and other venture capital firms.

The money will go towards the development of its zinc-iron liquid flow batteries and the construction of gigafactories, with an aim to exceed a gigawatt of production capacity by the end of 2023. The company appears to be directly continuing the work of the original developer of the technology, US group ViZn Energy Systems.

In 2019, WeView partnered with ViZn, which had developed the zinc-iron flow battery technology, as reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time. The companies said then that WeView was preparing a GW-scale manufacturing facility in China for ViZn’s energy storage technology, in a deal which also involved WeView taking a minority stake in ViZn as well as a technology licensing agreement for the China market.

The deal came shortly after ViZn had to furlough a majority of staff in 2018 because of a lack of funding after a major investor was unable to lead a further fundraising round, as CEO at the time Steve Bonner told Energy-Storage.news.

Bonner was succeeded shortly after that by John Lowell, who secured the deal with WeView. His LinkedIn profile says he stayed at the company until August this year, and appears to reveal that a Chinese company, presumably WeView, acquired a majority stake in ViZn in 2020.

“Controlling interest in ViZn was successfully sold to Chinese strategic partner in Q1 of 2020,” it reads.

ViZn still has a website but it has not been updated since 2016.

WeView, founded in 2018, describes itself as a company focusing on grid-level energy storage technology targeting system integrators, new power plants, power grids and commercial and industrial (C&I) users with the ‘world’s leading zinc-iron flow battery technology’.

It was founded as a joint venture company formed by companies including Hasen Electric and Shanghai Lingxin (controlled by Jingyi Electrical), both power conversion and switchgear equipment makers.

WeView plans to invest around RMB10 billion (US$1.4 billion) in its technology over the next five years, building a 5GW factory, research & development base and electrolyte production centre.

Continue reading

The Commission and Parliament have ramped up their energy policy announcements in the past week. Image: European Union 2017 – European Parliament.

Recent policy announcements from the European Union could boost the energy storage market, an analyst says, but also reveal inherent weaknesses of the bloc’s free electricity market.

Energy was a prominent theme in Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address on 14 September, and was preceded by a raft of proposed market interventions by the European Commission and followed by the European Parliament approving the 45% renewables target for 2030 set out earlier in the year by RePowerEU. Some countries have also increased their own targets.

“There is no doubt that the more intermittent renewables on the grid, the more flexible technologies such as energy storage will be required to integrate them,” Corentin Baschet, head of market analysis at energy storage consultancy Clean Horizon told Energy-Storage.news.

The Commission’s proposals for temporary market intervention to mitigate the energy crisis, which is set to amplify substantially over winter, are three-fold.

The first is a mandatory target to reduce electricity consumption during peak hours by 5%. The second is a cap on the revenues of energy producers with low production costs, like renewables and nuclear, and for those excess profits to be re-invested to support the vulnerable (energy storage is not classed as one of these ‘inframarginal’ producers). The third is a solidarity contribution, or windfall tax, on the record profits of oil and gas companies.

Taking France as an example, Baschet said that the installation of 3,500 MW/7,000MWh of energy storage would be enough to achieve the 5% reduction there, if the assets charged and discharged twice a day (night and morning, and then afternoon and evening, respectively).

“However these measures are meant to be effective from December 2022 to end of March 2023 which means that there is not enough time for the deployment to take place,” he cautioned. “What will determine whether or not storage will benefit from this obligation is the set of measures that will be enforced in each country to deal with this obligation”.

We could see some residential and commercial & industrial (C&I) customers install and commission energy storage units within that timeframe to reduce their peak demand, but the effect of these on the overall system will be marginal, he added.

And the more telling aspect of the EU’s announcements is not necessarily the interventions themselves but what they reveal about the energy market today, Baschet said.

“I believe that this set of emergency measures also reveals a key weakness of the European free electricity market: private sector investors make decisions based on market prices which are highly volatile, it is thus very complex for them to make investment decisions.

“These type of incentives to reduce dependency on imported gas would have a lot more effect if they were planned ahead with clear mechanisms to remunerate infrastructure over the years (for instance encouraging C&I to reduce their peak consumption for the next five years rather than for the next four months).”

The limitations of formulating a business model based on market prices was something alluded to by German contacts discussing the country’s utility-scale market in a special report published in Vol.32 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry.

Continue reading

Gov. Kathy Hochul

Gov. Kathy Hochul has released New York’s sixth competitive solicitation calling for 2,000 MW or more of new large-scale renewable energy projects. The projects will have the capacity to power at least 600,000 New York homes and maintain the predictable pace of state-contracted opportunities for private renewable energy developers. Once selected, the development of these projects is expected to spur nearly $3 billion in clean energy investments and create over 2,000 family-sustaining jobs in the green economy. Bringing more clean energy onto the grid accelerates progress toward achieving New York’s goal to obtain 70% of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030.

“Renewable energy is the backbone of New York’s sweeping approach to cleaning our electric grid and offers the industry a reliable path to join in our clean energy transition for the benefit of all New Yorkers,” states Gov. Hochul. “The strong public-private partnerships formed to build these projects will allow us not only to drastically lower emissions in our fight against climate change but will result in thousands of new green jobs, billions of dollars in economic growth, and an injection of private investment into local communities.”

New York is contracting with over 120 new large-scale land-based renewable energy facilities including solar farms, onshore wind farms, and hydroelectric facilities – some of which have been paired with energy storage. The projects selected through this solicitation are expected to generate approximately 4.5 million MWh of renewable electricity per year.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) expects to notify the awarded developers in the spring of 2023. Payments under these awards will not commence until projects have obtained all required permits and approvals and become operational to power New York.  

“Coming off a historic award group earlier this year, New York is moving ahead with full force as we look to build more large-scale renewable energy projects across the state in our march towards the state’s renewable energy goal and beyond,” says Doreen M. Harris, NYSERDA’s president and CEO. “Gov. Hochul is committed to ensuring local communities have a voice in the development of these projects, and NYSERDA looks forward to working with the selected developers and host municipalities to ensure these projects are advanced responsibly and bring forward substantial community and economic benefits.”

Notable provisions in this solicitation include delivering job creation and benefits to disadvantaged communities by favorably evaluating projects that can tangibly advance benefits for these historically underserved communities, and strongly encouraging workforce development commitments and partnerships with labor and trade organizations.

It sets a minimum U.S. iron and steel purchase requirement to encourage the utilization of domestic steel in the construction of solar and wind facilities and requiring developers to provide opportunities for U.S.-based steel suppliers to participate in the renewable energy industry, in keeping with the intent of the New York Buy American Act.

The solicitation requires that workers associated with the construction of any awarded facility be paid the applicable prevailing wage to ensure construction quality and ensure family-sustaining jobs for New Yorkers. It encourages and preferentially evaluates developers that commit to utilizing New York State Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses (SDVOBs). It also incentivizes proposers to avoid development on the highest-quality agricultural lands and commit to co-utilization measures to support continued agricultural operations as well as funding to support regional agricultural operations.

The solicitation ensures that communities that will host successfully awarded projects are fully involved in the development process, and that proposers demonstrate a commitment to frequent and active community engagement. It continues to encourage proposals that cost-effectively pair renewable energy with energy storage technologies, including preferential evaluation of proposals that site storage facilities in primarily fossil-served regions of the state to combat the acute impacts of pollution that disadvantaged communities have disproportionately borne. 

Eligible projects include any large-scale renewable project that can be certified as a Tier 1 renewable technology and entered operation after January 1, 2015. Participating projects not yet in operation must show evidence that they are capable of reaching commercial operation May 2025, with the option to extend to May 2028.

Interested proposers can apply on NYSERDA’s Tier 1 Solicitations webpage. Step One Eligibility Applications are due on November 16, 2022, by 3:00 p.m. ET.

Read more about the solicitation and additional comments by officials here.

Continue reading

Fluence’s Kiran Kuraswamy (right) and American Clean Power Association VP for energy storage Jason Burwen celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act on the White House lawn last week. Image: Jason Burwen via LinkedIn

The US’ Inflation Reduction Act legislation is an unexpected “huge shot in the arm” for the energy storage industry and may have doubled the addressable domestic market almost overnight.

Energy-Storage.news spoke with senior figures from battery storage system integrators Fluence and Wartsila Energy at the RE+ 2022 clean energy trade show in Anaheim, California, who discussed the landmark climate legislation and other topics.

Fluence’s VP of growth and head of commercial Kiran Kuraswamy said people at the show were “beaming with confidence” due to the surprise passing of the act’s US$369 billion in climate and energy security funding.

The introduction of the investment tax credit (ITC) subsidy for standalone energy storage means that for the first time, batteries don’t have to be paired directly onsite with solar PV generation to avail of around a 30% reduction in the upfront cost of their project equipment.

Not only is that an obvious financial boost, but today the majority of energy storage projects proposed or in interconnection queues in the US are paired with solar PV in order to qualify for the ITC. As we heard a few weeks ago from energy industry lawyer Morten Lund at Stoel Rives, it will mean battery storage projects can now be sited where they make the most sense, rather than arbitrarily needing to be built at solar farms.

Decoupling the solar and storage “development pathways” will also reduce project timelines, Kuraswamy said.

“Previously, if you did renewables-plus-storage, you would think about development from the perspective of getting land and getting permits and going through interconnection [processes] in a combined fashion to avail the ITCs,” Kuraswamy told Energy-Storage.news in an interview at the California show.

Getting interconnection on a crowded grid does remain one of the biggest development hurdles and headaches Kuraswamy said, but it is a “different dynamic to solve” and the industry will have to see what the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act really will be on deployment over the next 18 to 24 months.

Kuraswamy said Fluence also expects that the IRA’s supportive policies will drive as much as a doubling in demand for energy storage in the US by 2030.

While the details of how it will all be implemented remain to be sorted out, the legislation has “unlocked 10 years of certainty” for the marketplace, he said.

‘Coordinated policy approach to support domestic manufacturing’

Wartilsa’s head of energy storage and optimisation Andy Tang was among those surprised by the IRA and how quickly it was passed, after its predecessor Build Back Better act floundered and failed following opposition from Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.

The bill had gone through “all of a sudden,” with Manchin coming to agreement on its terms with House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“All of a sudden, we went away on Friday, and it was dead, and we woke up on Monday, and had the approval from Manchin,” Tang told Energy-Storage.news.

“I was actually very, very, very happy to see that. It’s a huge shot in the arm for the US industry.”

Tang said the act’s support will turbocharge an industry already setting deployment records in almost every quarter over the next couple of years.

It also sends good “motivation” to the energy storage industry supply chain, with the IRA’s tax credit rules including adders for domestically sourced and produced content. That could be another vital boost at a time when the battery storage industry struggles to compete with the electric vehicle (EV) sector for supply of battery cells, for example.

While the IRA is a carrot incentivising domestic manufacturing and materials processing, the US’ Section 301 tariffs on imported Chinese goods including lithium batteries, are the stick.  

“You do have some suppliers that are waiting for the details of the letter of the law. And I think that’s a bit of a mistake to wait too long on what the detail is. You have to look at the IRA in a dual context: the IRA is one component and the other component is the so-called Section 301 tariffs,” Tang said.

“These are the tariffs that are lobbied against specific Chinese goods. List 4A is the current list for batteries right now. And the section 301 tariffs were put in place against Chinese goods in 2018 under the previous [presidential] administration, it actually had and continues to enjoy bipartisan support; one of the few things where there is bipartisan support in the US, and 2023 is when they are up for renewal. I think conventional wisdom is that they’re not going away.”

While those tariff levels are set at 7.5% for batteries – the lower end of a scale that goes up to 25% — they are expected to step up in the coming years, which would obviously impact manufacturers and their energy storage industry customers further and further.

“I actually think that what we have here is a really coordinated policy approach on how we build domestic manufacturing. You need to incentivise people to come onshore and do manufacturing, and you need to give them some period of years to do that. Factories take two three years to build,” Tang said.

“And then the incentive alone may not be enough. So, you need to have the threat of that stick that basically says your projects won’t be economically viable by a certain point in time.”

People are still “wrapping their heads around” what the details and letter of the act will really mean, Kuraswamy told Energy-Storage.news, but it is undoubtedly a “remarkable” step forwards, he said.

Continue reading

The Moss Landing area in Monterey Bay, where the BESS project is located.

A fire at PG&E’s Tesla-supplied Elkhorn Battery energy storage system at Moss Landing, California, is considered fully controlled and road closures and shelter-in-place advisories have been lifted.

A statement from the County of Monterey authority, where the system is located, said that a fire at the plant started at 2am local time on 20 September (yesterday).

The fire was isolated to a single battery pack and led to the closure of Highway 1 from Molera to Jensen Road and local residents were advised to shelter in place with windows closed, due to the risk of hazardous materials.

A statement later that evening, 7.18 pm local time, said the incident was considered fully controlled and the North County Fire Department and Monterey County Sheriff’s Office had lifted the shelter in place advice and all road closures due to the incident, effective 6.50 pm.

The statement added that smoke could still occur and residents were being advised to remain vigilant.

CNBC quoted a captain of the fire department who said it was too early to know the cause of the incident.

PG&E commissioned the Elkhorn Battery, a 182.5MW/730MWh BESS which uses Tesla Megapacks, in April this year.

It is not to be confused with the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility, a 400MW/1,600MWh BESS which is located at the same site but is an entirely separate system owned by Vistra Energy, but also providing power to PG&E. That project came back online in July after several months offline due to an overheating incident.

Continue reading

Source: BloombergNEF. Note: Map colored by which technology was most installed in 2021 alone. Depicts the percentage of nations that installed the most MW of each technology. It is based on country-level data for 136 countries but excludes countries that have not recorded any capacity additions. Solar includes small-scale PV.

The world’s wind and solar projects combined to meet more than a tenth of global electricity demand for the first time in 2022, according to research company BloombergNEF (BNEF). At the same time, overall electricity demand, production from coal-fired power plants and emissions all surged in 2021 as the global economy regained its footing following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“New spikes in coal generation are a troubling sign for the economy, our health and the fight against climate change,” says Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions, and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. “This report should be a rallying cry to leaders around the world that the transition to clean energy requires bigger and bolder actions, including actions that empower nations that have contributed the least to climate change – but bear many of its worst consequences – to make progress tackling it.”

With nearly 3,000 TWh of electricity produced, wind and solar accounted for a combined 10.5% of global 2021 generation, BNEF found in its annual Power Transition Trends report. Wind’s contribution to the global total rose to 6.8% while solar climbed to 3.7%. A decade ago, these two technologies combined accounted for well under 1% of total electricity production. In all, 39% of all power produced globally in 2021 was carbon free. Hydro and nuclear projects met just over one quarter of the world’s electricity needs.

Every year since 2017, wind and solar have accounted for the majority of new power-generating capacity added to global grids. In 2021, they hit a record three-quarters of the 364 GW of new capacity built. Including hydro, nuclear and others, zero-carbon power accounted for 85% of all new capacity added.

“Renewables are now the default choice for most countries looking to add or even replace power-generating capacity,” states Luiza Demôro, head of energy transitions at BloombergNEF. “This is no longer due to mandates or subsidies, but simply because these technologies are more often the most cost-competitive.”

Solar continued to expand at a particularly fierce pace in 2021, both in terms of new capacity additions and new markets. Solar was half of all global capacity added, at 182 GW. Its contribution to global grids topped 1,000 TWh for the first time. Solar has also become essentially ubiquitous. In nearly half of all countries tracked by BNEF where some capacity was added, solar was the top choice in terms of volume. At least 112 countries now have at least one MW of solar capacity installed.

Despite the incredible inroads renewables have made, the Power Transition Trends report paints a stark picture of the enormous work that remains for the power system to address its role in climate change. As the global economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, electricity demand surged 5.6% year-on-year, putting new strains on existing infrastructure and fossil fuel supply chains.

Lower-than-expected production from hydro plants and higher natural gas prices also helped put coal-fired power back in the spotlight in more markets. Production from coal plants set records by jumping 8.5% from 2020-2021 (up 750 TWh on a net basis), to 9,600 TWh. Over 85% of that generation came from 10 countries, with China, India and the U.S. alone accounting for 72%.

Meanwhile, countries continued to complete constructions of new coal plants in 2021, and coal still accounts for the single largest share of global capacity at 27%. One small bright spot: the speed at which new coal is being added to the grid is slowing. Just 13 GW of new coal-fired capacity was completed in 2021, down from 31 GW in 2020 and 83 GW in 2012.

Nonetheless, the result was a commensurate 7% spike in global CO2 emissions from the power sector in 2021 compared to 2020. Power-sector emissions set a new high at 13,600 mega tons of CO2, BNEF estimates.

“It was a year of highs and highs, for the best and worst reasons,” comments Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BNEF. “Renewables grew very fast, but coal’s comeback and the fact that countries – including those that have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions – continue building coal is really disconcerting.” BNEF’s Power Transition Trends report was produced in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and will be officially released at the United Nations Climate Action: Race to Zero and Resilience Forum in New York today. Read the full report here.

Continue reading