WBG - The World Bank Group will no longer finance upstream oil and gas, after 2019.

FT - OCI — the world’s third-largest polysilicon maker by capacity and South Korea’s biggest — this month reported a 3,373 per cent increase in operating profit to Won78.7bn ($72m) for the July-September quarter, its best performance in five years. Rival Hanwha Chemical saw third-quarter net profit jump 25 per cent to a record Won252bn. 

TransCanada Corporation has entered into an agreement to sell its Ontario solar portfolio comprised of eight facilities with a total generating capacity of 76 megawatts to Axium Infinity Solar LP, a subsidiary of Axium Infrastructure Canada II Limited Partnership, for approximately $540 million.

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.

"Brazil is a core area for Statoil where our ambition is to deliver safe and sustainable growth in a significant energy market. Entering into solar in Brazil adds to the positions we have already in the producing Peregrino oil field and in the offshore licenses BM-S-8 and BM-C-33 which include the yet to be developed discoveries Carcará and Pão de Açúcar respectively. We are excited to have entered our first solar project with an experienced partner like Scatec Solar," says Irene Rummelhoff, Executive Vice President of New Energy Solutions in Statoil.

“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.”

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.

Bob Dudley, BP group chief executive, said: “Global energy markets are in transition. The longer-term trends we can see in this data are changing the patterns of demand and the mix of supply as the world works to meet the challenge of supplying the energy it needs while also reducing carbon emissions. At the same time markets are responding to shorter-run run factors, most notably the oversupply that has weighed on oil prices for the past three years."

Specifically, a plan to boost wind and solar energy capacity in coming years was likely to bring in $13 billion in investment, Procaccini said. There also is potential for $30 billion in mining investments to help Argentina catch up to neighboring Chile, and efforts to cut labor costs will help attract investment in oil and gas.

Peak electricity demand has grown nearly 13% over the past two years as a growing middle class seeks new services, such as air conditioning, which continue to place higher demands on the system. Over the next 25 years, energy demand is expected to more than double as a result.

The deeply troubled power industry accounts for almost one-tenth of all bank loans in India, and thus poses a threat to already weakened lenders, according to data from Morgan Stanley. What is more, like so many other industries, the power business is facing significant technological challenges as the cost of solar energy continues falling.

The growing world economy will require more energy, but consumption is expected to grow less quickly than in the past - at 1.3% per year over the Outlook period (2015-2035) compared with 2.2% per year in 1995-2015.

China will launch the trading of green certificates for solar and wind power on July 1 in a bid to help reduce government subsidies to the renewables sector, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said.

OPEC’s biggest crude producer is embarking on a domestic renewable-energy program costing $30 billion to $50 billion. The country’s only solar plant in operation, aside from a limited pilot project, is a 10-megawatt facility on top of a parking lot at Saudi Aramco’s headquarters. The national utility, Saudi Electricity Co., is seeking bids for two solar plants to generate a combined 100 megawatts.

We expect global GDP to more than double over the next 20 years, while energy demand increases by only 30%. The difference between those two things is improving energy efficiency or declining energy intensity. That is critical in underpinning the shift we expect to see in the rate of growth of carbon emissions. We think the energy intensity of GDP will decline much more rapidly than we’ve ever seen before.