REN21’s Renewables 2013 Global Status Report provides a comprehensive overview of renewable energy market, industry, investment and policy development worldwide. In a free webinar on October 7, REN21 experts will discus the status of renewables in South America. Click here to register.  Full report is available here.

Globally, 2012 saw:

• A shift in investment patterns from industrialized to developing countries
• A decrease in overall clean energy investment in dollar terms but simultaneously saw an increase in installed capacity in gigawatts due to significant technology cost reductions
• Renewables progressively supplementing established electricity systems demonstrating that the implementation of suitable policies can enable the successful integration of higher shares of variable renewables
• The emergence of integrated policy approaches that link energy efficiency measures with the implementation of renewable energy technologies.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) this month proposed an order requiring the state’s investor-owned utilities to procure 1,325 megawatts (MW) of grid-scale energy storage (excluding large-scale pumped storage) by 2020. The procurement targets address three grid storage domains: transmission-connected, distribution-connected, and behind-the-meter and are designed to dramatically increase the amount of advanced energy storage capacity on the state’s electric system and to catalyze market transformation in the emerging energy storage industry.

Energy storage is a suite of technologies that capture and store energy for use at a later higher value time.  Energy can be stored in many ways: chemically (e.g. batteries), gravitationally (e.g. pumped hydro, pictured here), mechanically (e.g. flywheels) and thermally (e.g. molten salt).  On the electric grid, where supply must always equal demand, energy storage increases efficiency by avoiding expensive transmission and distribution upgrades and substituting for the most polluting “peaker” power plants. Energy storage is also expected to play a key role in enabling the grid to integrate large quantities of variable renewable energy resources such as solar and wind.

Climate change projections indicate that rainfall in the Amazon could decrease 40-45% by the end of the century if temperatures rise 5 ° to 6 ° C, according to a new report released this week by the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change, a national scientific body that gathers, synthesizes, and evaluates scientific information on climate change. Climate scenarios also suggest a future increase in extreme and prolonged drought events, especially in the Amazon, Cerrado and Caatinga regions. The implications of these projections are profound: The most biodiverse rainforest in the world could turn into a savanna, and such a dramatic decrease in rainfall would severely impact hydropower production. (More than 90% of new large hydro in Brazil is planned for the Amazon). This report will likely add to the intense debate around Brazil's hydropower expansion program and its social, environmental, and economic impacts

Projected Impact of Climate Change on Rainfall in Brazil
(Source: Brazilian Panel on Climate Change)

Mauricio Tolmasquim, chief of the Brazilian government's Energy Research Company, EPE, told Reuters it was "unlikely" the government would proceed with plans to build four new nuclear plants by 2030 to meet rising demand for electricity.

The 50 most-polluting U.S. power plants emit more of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide pollution than every nation except six worldwide, according to a new report released by the Environment America Research and Policy Center. The report, America's Dirtiest Power Plants, finds that of the nearly 6,000 electricity generating facilities in the United States, most of the U.S. power sector's global warming pollution comes from a handful of exceptionally dirty power plants: About 30% of all power-sector carbon dioxide emissions in 2011 came from the 50 dirtiest power plants; about half came from the 100 dirtiest plants; and about 90% came from the 500 dirtiest plants.The report includes a list of the top 100 dirtiest power plants in the U.S.

Non-traditional renewable energy technologies (NRETs) —solar, wind, geothermal, ocean, small-scale hydropower, and advanced bio-energy—together with improvements in energy efficiency—are now ready to play a major role alongside hydropower in meeting the energy needs in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a white paper recently released by the Inter-American Development Bank. The authors note that the costs of these technologies are falling rapidly, and in many cases are competitive with fossil fuels. Globally, the scale of recent developments in renewable energy suggests that a historic energy transformation is underway. NRETs —assembled in large power plants as well as widely decentralized small systems— are rapidly diversifying the energy economies of many nations.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto presented his long-awaited energy reform proposal in August. Worldwatch Institute analyzes it here.

The latest edition of Greenpeace's Energy Revolution study for Brazil (in Portuguese) offers an ambitious outlook for the development of solar photovoltaic (PV). The report projects that the country could install as much as 2.8 GW of photovoltaic solar capacity by 2020, up to 24 GW by 2030, and up to 100 GW by 2050. (More on Brazil's solar PV outlook here). Overall, the study projects that the country's electricity mix in 2050 could consist of hydropower (40%), wind (21%), solar PV (13%), solar thermal (10%), biomass (7%), natural gas (7 %), and tidal (1%).

Brazil's latest wind-power auction contracted new wind power generating capacity for an average price of 110.51 Brazilian reais ($46.37) per megawatt-hour. About 1,500 megawatts of new generating capacity is set to come online by September 2015 and supply backup energy to Brazil's national electricity grid for a period of 20 years. The wind farms will require an estimated investment of about BRL5.46 billion. This was the first wind-power auction that operated under stricter rules, according to the Wall Street Journal. To participate, companies had to have access to existing transmission networks.

An analysis of data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows that in the first half of 2013, the U.S. added 959 megawatts (MW) of wind, 979 MW of solar, and 116 MW of biomass. The total new installed capacity from these renewable sources (2,054 MW) exceeded new coal power capacity (1,579 MW) but was less than half of new natural gas capacity (4,852 MW).