4 December
According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global rate of energy efficiency improvement has reached its lowest in a decade. This comes as a result of lower energy demand encouraging low fuel prices. Alongside this, factors including a slump in the aviation industry and plummeting automobile sales contributed to the decline. The pandemic-induced economic slump may act as a catalyst for transitioning to renewable energy and reducing carbon footprint. Read more here.
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Utility customers across the US owe around $35bn to $40bn of debt because of financial difficulties following the Covid-19 pandemic. The economic crisis has forced both residential and commercial business customers to defer payments. State regulators have not yet decided on how utility customers can clear the unpaid bills. Customers were granted a moratorium on payment of power bills earlier in the year.
The Vietnamese government’s newly proposed Feed-in-Tariff extension is expected to decrease prices of wind development, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). The council believes the tariff could lower prices of onshore and intertidal wind power by 17.4% and 13.6% respectively. The tariff extension would compensate for permitting postponements, triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. These postponements mean Vietnam will fall 41% short of its wind power capacity target of 800MW. The council proposes a 180 day-extension on the present tariff, followed by marginal decreases starting in May 2022.
