Page 12 - AsiaElec Week 43

AsiaElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AsiaElec
computing and other heavyweight IT functions use huge amounts of power, making them a priority for ‘greening’ with renewables.
Data-intensive web-based giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook have struck corporate power purchase agreements with renewables generators around the world to cover the consumption of their own data centres.
Adani recently announced plans to power a huge petrochemical plant from a custom- developed wind and solar project, in a joint initiative with partners including BASF.
Macquarie confirms
Siemens Gamesa for
Taiwan’s Formosa 2
Macquarie and Swancor have begun construction of the 376MW Formosa 2 offshore wind farm in Taiwan, with Siemens Gamesa supplying turbines, after announcing financial closure for the $2bn project.
Macquarie Capital, which owns 75% of Formosa 2 through its Green Investment Group (GIG) unit – said the project, due online in 2021, wpi;d be financed through a consortium of 20 institutions, international and Taiwanese.
The developers confirmed Siemens Gamesa as supplier of its SG 8.0-167 DD turbines to the project, with a 20-year service agreement.
Construction at the project site off Miaoli will begin next year, adding Formosa 2 to the existing Formosa 1, which became Taiwan’s first major offshore wind farm when it was completed earlier in October.
Formosa 2 has a 20-year power deal from Taiwan utility Taipower and a feed-in tariff of $186 per MWh.
The project is due to see big changes in its ownership structure. Macquarie has agreed to sell a 49% stake in Formosa 2 to Japan’s JERA,
while control of Swancor Renewable Energy is due to pass to New York investment group Stonepeak.
GIG global head Mark Dooley said: “Taiwan is fast becoming Asia’s foremost offshore wind market and we are proud to be playing a leading role in its offshore wind story.”
New $9.8bn pledges for Green Climate Fund
Donor governments pledged $9.8bn fresh financing for the Green Climate Fund, set up to help developing nations tackle global warming, the head of France’s Treasury said.
The fund’s executive director Yannick Glemarec said the amount was nothing
short of historic, though environmental and development groups such as Oxfam had hoped the pledging conference in Paris would raise as much as $15bn.
French Treasury head Odile Renaud-Basso said a number of donor countries, including Britain, France and Germany, had doubled their latest pledges, helping make up for a loss of funds from the US.
“Now what is at stake is making these pledges concrete so the fund can work efficiently and disburse (money),” Renaud- Basso said
The fund became operational in 2015 after governments pledged $10.3bn in a first round of funding. That amount was later reduced
to $8.3bn after the United States announced plans to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
However, fluctuations in the value of
the dollar against other currencies further reduced the amount to $7.2bn, of which 5.2bn has so far been committed to support 111 projects.
The money was used to help finance projects ranging from low-cost green housing in Mongolia’s polluted capital, to a rapid- transit bus system in Karachi using methane,
and restoring climate-threatened ecosystems in Namibia.
The South Korea-based fund provides financing alongside public lenders like the World Bank or in partnership with commercial banks.
Britain was the biggest contributor in the latest round of funding, followed closely by France and Germany, Glemarec said.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
VW ramps up China electric
car factories, taking aim at
Tesla
Volkswagen is ramping up production of electric cars to around 1 million vehicles by end of 2022, enabling the German carmaker to leapfrog Tesla Inc and making China the key battleground.
Volkswagen is readying two Chinese factories to build electric cars next year.
The Chinese plants will have a production capacity of 600,000 vehicles, according to Volkswagen’s plans, which have not been previously reported - revealing VW’s ability to industrialise production faster than other pioneers in the electric vehicle market.
Tesla is still trying to reach its goal of making more than 500,000 cars a year
by building a new factory in Shanghai, China, while VW can rely on an established workforce in two of its plants in Anting and Foshun to build zero-emission cars.
The scale and speed of VW’s electrification push marks a shift in favour of established manufacturers that can use existing factories and profit from combustion-engined sport utility vehicles (SUVs) to scale up faster than startups.
“The truth is barriers to entry in autos remain high,” said Max Warburton, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Making cars is hard. The move to electric vehicles will be expensive, but will probably be led by traditional manufacturers.”
VW is leveraging its large infrastructure
of suppliers, factories and workers, long a handicap to its profitability, more aggressively than rivals BMW, Renault SA, General Motors Co and Tesla, which were all quicker to sell a custom-designed electric car.
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Week 43 29•October•2019