Environmental News For The Week Ending 23May 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
GEI (but can be posted at other times).
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Covid totals continue to fall, both in the US and worldwide. New US cases during the week ending May 22nd were down 22.0% from those testing positive during the week ending May 15th, and down 64.2% from our mid-April surge high; this week s new cases were also the lowest for a 7 day period since that ending June 19th of last year. US deaths attributed to Covid this week were down 7.1% from the prior week, and less than a sixth of the death rate during the peak weeks of January. US Covid deaths were also the lowest since t
Why Is Wall Street Profiting From Clean Energy Tax Credits?
Tax credits don’t give people money for solar panels and wind turbines up front. That’s where investors come in.
GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images
An early example of a wind farm, in 2006
Since they were first introduced in the 1970s, tax credits for renewables have helped scale up and dramatically reduce the cost of clean power in the United States. But in recent years they have also created opportunities for a small handful of major investment banks to skim billions off the top, extracting lavish fees and control over clean energy projects as part of deals shrouded in secrecy. Public power providers who serve nearly a third of retail electricity customers have trouble accessing clean energy tax credits at all.
Biden wants the U.S. power industry to be emissions free by 2035. He is also asking Congress to extend or create tax credits aimed at wind, solar and battery manufacturing as part of his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan.
North American Wind Prices Fall, While Prices in Europe Are ‘Defined by Stability’
(Credit: Pexels)
Wind prices in the US dropped by 6.2% in the first quarter of the year, after four quarters of strong rising trends, according to LevelTen Energy’s new PPA Price Index. “For the past few years, wind prices as a whole have been rising, and they increased significantly in 2020,” says Rob Collier, VP of developer relations for LevelTen Energy. “The extension of renewable Production Tax Credits (PTC) in December 2020 appears to have tapered that increase. Time will tell if the continuation of such policies will create a stabilizing effect on North American wind prices.”
risk profile governs the choice of
business model and
financial structuring. The success and profitability of the project is largely governed by how well is the deal structured and how efficiently is capital project developed and executed.
The
offshore wind (OSW) in US is a nascent industry, there are about 34 projects with 28 GW capacity in pipeline in USA for next ten years. Several new entrants are expected to avail the opportunity through M&A and looking for the right deal that best suits them.
Understanding risks and making the right decision on deal structure is critica
l, giving the lowest cost and highest return on the investment.