China's New Policy Will Move Solar Closer to Regions Where It's Needed

China’s plan to introduce a system to monitor and evaluate the solar-power market will help direct new investments to regions where fewer plants are idle, according to industry researchers.

The policy, which targets mostly ground-mounted projects, will provide data on where to avoid and where to invest, so it “will alleviate some idle solar capacity,” said Peng Peng, director of policy research at the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. 

New Solar Policy Playbook Calls for Greater Cooperation, Not Competition, With China

A group of experts lays out a sprawling plan for reforming policy support and trade practices for solar.

The quest to make solar energy a major source of the world’s electricity will not succeed if national policies and industries compete as though it is a zero-sum game. 

That is just one of many findings of The New Solar System, a sprawling report released earlier this week by Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, a joint research center that includes the university’s business and law schools. The result of two years of work -- including interviews with dozens of government officials and industry executives in China and the U.S. -- the report sketches out a future where the scale of solar depends on self-interested cooperation.

The Money Problem With Germany’s Renewable Energy Law in 3 Charts

The world’s solar leader grapples with how to make its solar policies financially sustainable.

As the German government gets ready for a major overhaul of its landmark renewable energy act, the fundamental problem is cost.

The Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, or EEG law, set up the country's system of feed-in tariffs (FITs) and mandatory purchases for independent renewable energy producers. This system has been highly successful, driving down solar costs and prices around the world. It has reduced emissions, diversified the power supply, reduced fuel imports, created jobs and driven down wholesale market prices.

Policy to Promote Solar Energy in India

The Energy Department has set up a committee to prepare a draft solar policy to promote the use of solar energy in the State to support development and address the problem of energy security.

The seven-member committee headed by Joint Secretary, Energy department, Sangamjit Nayak will examine the draft policy prepared by the Science and Technology department and solicit opinion of energy experts of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) to make necessary changes in the draft policy, official sources said.

CLP: Better, Not More Solar Policies Needed in United States

Cleantech Law Partners (CLP, San Francisco, California, US) has published an analysis of US state-level laws that promote greater penetration of solar energy, which concludes that the substantive quality of the legislation is more effective in generating clean energy than the number of laws enacted.