05-24-2016, 11:59 PM
It’s worth taking a minute to appreciate the sheer scale of what China is doing in solar right now. In 2015, the country added more than 15 gigawatts of new solar capacity, surpassing Germany as the world’s largest solar power market. China now has 43.2 gigawatts of solar capacity, compared with38.4 gigawatts in Germany and 27.8 in the United States. According to new projections, it seems that trend is going to continue. Under its 13th Five Year Plan, China will nearly triple solar capacity by 2020, adding 15 to 20 gigawatts of solar capacity each year for the next five years, according to Nur Bekri, director of the National Energy Administration. That will bring the country’s installed solar power to more than 140 gigawatts. To put that in context, world solar capacity topped 200 gigawatts last year and is expected to reach 321 gigawatts by the end of 2016.
China Is on an Epic Solar Power Binge
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a bill requiring solar panels being installed on new small and midsize residential and commercial buildings within the city.
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Petroleum giants began investing in clean energy as early as the 1970s, when the oil crisis prompted Exxon to explore solar’s potential. Eventually oil companies settled on a renewable resource more in line with their traditional business: biofuels. Between 2005 and 2013, oil majors invested more than $9.4 billion on ethanol and other plant-based fuels, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Now as wind, solar and other forms of clean energy become more viable, they are drawing more notice from once-leery investors. Renewables were the biggest source of new power added to U.S. electrical grids last year, outpacing coal and gas-fired plants. Global solar capacity is projected to double by the end of 2018, and wind power will increase by 50 percent.
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China’s clean-energy firms face record bond maturities this year, just as investor confidence was shaken by the default of a company that had been the world’s top solar-panel manufacturer. Renewable companies must repay 28.8 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) of bonds over the rest of the year, more than any other previous annual repayments, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. A venture of Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., the top producer of panels until 2014, missed payments on 1.76 billion yuan of its notes. That brings the number of companies that defaulted on bonds to four, involving $1.8 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Overcapacity still plagues the industry after years of aggressive expansion that left the sector with 105 billion yuan of outstanding bonds. While President Xi Jinping has vowed to reduce pollution that’s a byproduct of a 30-year economic boom, the number of solar and wind-power generating plants in the nation lagged behind production of equipment.
China Green Energy Firms Have Record Debt Due as Yingli Defaults - Bloomberg