Page 10 - AsiaElec Week 45

AsiaElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AsiaElec
CONSUMPTION
CLIMATE CHANGE
rest of the money will be raised through co- financing from the environment ministry, all three state governments and private sectors.
The grant is a part of more than $1bn approved by the GCF for 19 new projects to help developing countries tackle climate change.
RENEWABLES
Australian grid hits 50% renewables for first time
It only lasted for 10 minutes, but renewables provided 50.2% of the electricity available on Australia’s National Energy Market in the first week of November.
The NEM supplies electricity to Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania.
The Northern Territories and Western Australia have their own energy grids.
“We will start to see this happening more frequently. It was just a snapshot in time, but it’s indicative of an underlying trend in the system,” Dylan McConnell of the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College said.
The milestone was spotted using an
online tool developed by McConnell called OpenNEM that monitors the grid in real time using data from the Australian Energy Market Operator.
During those 10 minutes, solar power
led the way, providing 32.5% of the available electricity. Wind was next at 15.7%, and hydro provided 1.9%.
There are more than 2mn small rooftop solar systems in those five Australian states and they provided 72% of the solar power, while solar power plants contributed the other 28%.
Kane Thornton, chief executive of Australia’s Clean Energy Council, said “It is a fantastic achievement to have more than half of the National Electricity Market powered by renewable energy, and it’s worth celebrating. A decade from now it will be completely normal as more renewable energy and storage projects are built to replace retiring coal-fired power stations. At the beginning of the decade South Australia’s power system ran on more than
50 per cent wind and solar for the first time, but today it happens all the time. Renewables and storage can do everything our old coal plants can do, just cheaper, cleaner and more reliably.”
China’s power
consumptions supported
strongeconomicresilience changeincoastalareas
China’s electricity consumption in the January-September period pointed to strong economic resilience and potential underpinning increasingly high-quality growth.
The country’s high-tech sectors kept devouring electricity, the environment sector quickly expanded its energy footprint, and the vast central and western regions continued
to lead the country in power consumption growth, according to the China Electricity Council, a non-profit industry association.
China’s tertiary industry used 899.4bn kwh of electricity in the first three quarters of 2019, with a growth rate almost twice that of total electricity consumption.
Sectors including Internet data services, and software and IT services led the growth. Their power consumption surged 38.5% and 30%, respectively.
A similar rally was found in high-tech manufacturing. From January to September, the power used to manufacture new energy vehicles and urban rail equipment was up over 10% year on year.
Energy consumption in high-tech manufacturing sectors continued to show faster growth, indicating growing momentum in China’s economic structure adjustment and industrial upgrading, said CEC official Ye Chun.
Another notable trend was mounting electricity usage in environmental protection enterprises and a drop in energy-intensive ones. For instance, power consumption in the resources recycling sector went up 15.5% year on year in the first three quarters.
The Maharashtra state government is set to get $25.7mn under the United Nations-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) over six years to combat climate change in coastal towns of Maharashtra and enhance climate resilience of the coastal communities.
The funds come at a time when a
study published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), confirmed coastal habitats are
at critical risk with increased probability of cyclones in the Arabian Sea.
Earlier this month, a more detailed report using satellite maps by Climate Central concluded that coastal cities like Mumbai could be partially inundated by 2050.
This will be the second time that the
state will receive the fund after the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan the scheme to make the state drought-free.
The fund will be disbursed to the state government over six years for climate resilient livelihood programmes and coastal ecosystem restoration projects in four coastal districts – Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Raigad and Palghar.
“We have received communication that the funds have been approved by the Centre and will soon be disbursed to the state.
The inception workshop of all stakeholders is scheduled on November 13,” said N Vasudevan, chief conservator of forests
and joint president of the state mangrove committee.
According to the proposal, the total investment in projects in coastal cities of the state, along with Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, is $130.3mn.
While the GCF has approved $43.4mn, the
Maharashtra receives form UN to combat climate
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Week 45 13•November•2019