WNN - Asian countries continue to dominate the market for new nuclear build, according to a newly-released report from the World Nuclear Association. Of the 10 new nuclear power reactors that started up worldwide in 2016, eight were located in Asia.

A group of private-equity investors led by New York-based Global Infrastructure Partners and China’s sovereign wealth fund will acquire a portfolio of Asian wind and solar energy projects from Singapore-based Equis Pte Ltd for $3.7bn.

Egypt’s fledgling solar industry attracted $1.8 billion of investment, largely from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp.

China installed 38.28 gigawatts of solar power from January to August, up 49.5 percent from the end of last year, according to the China Electricity Council.

WNN - Rosatom and the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) signed a 'program of cooperation' in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Moscow yesterday as part of Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud's state visit to Russia. The program aims to develop the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy the two countries signed in June 2015.

“The point that you can be too early was proved by us,” he says. “We were among the first of the big international oil companies to get into solar and we found out we could not make any money out of it.”

“In light of Facebook’s disclosure of over $100,000 in social media advertising associated with Russian accounts focused on the disruption and influence of US politics through social media, it is likely that Russia undertook a similar effort using social media to influence the US energy market,”

China accounts for the lion’s share of the upsurge. But Middle East and north African countries are scheduled to have installed 14GW in solar plants by the end of 2018 — a seven-fold increase from 2015. Central and South America are also expected to reach 14GW, nearly five times more than in 2015, while India is set to hit 28GW, a jump of nearly six times.

The falling cost of renewable energy will increasingly allow wind and solar projects to make money without subsidies, say the top executives in Europe’s power industry.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that world energy consumption will grow by 28% between 2015 and 2040. Most of this growth is expected to come from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and especially in countries where demand is driven by strong economic growth, particularly in Asia. Non-OECD Asia (which includes China and India) accounts for more than 60% of the world's total increase in energy consumption from 2015 through 2040.