Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition is considering ways to put a price on pollution from heating and transport as a way to close a rift about how Germany can speed up climate protection efforts.

A study by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) shows how through cost reductions, rural mini-grids can quickly scale as a commercially viable business model to provide access to millions of people and businesses across sub-Saharan Africa.

“Specific countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain stand out in the maps as they host the highest economic potential that translates to more options for advantageous investments,” stated the paper, adding, electricity retail prices of 0.30-0.169 Euros/kWh meant rooftop solar could offer electricity savings of 49% in Germany, 44% in Spain, 42% in Italy and 23% in France.

Some 344 Chinese cities were found to have solar systems producing energy at lower prices than the grid, without any subsidies, according to the research published in the journal Nature Energy.

The energy storage market is set to be the latest affected by Trump’s trade war as lithium-ion batteries were excluded from the group of Chinese imports for which the U.S. president announced tariffs would be delayed until December 15.

"In this report, we explore Shenzhen’s experience in the deployment of electric urban delivery vehicles and take on one of the most important questions to accelerating adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in urban delivery: How to effectively provide them with charging infrastructure? To answer that question, this report uses a unique data set with complete driving records of over 10,000 electric delivery vehicles in the city of Shenzhen, supplemented by dozens of interviews with the companies that own and operate those vehicles."

"It is high time to create a new, focused agency, a World Carbon Bank, that provides a vehicle for advanced economies to coordinate aid and technical transfer, and that is not simultaneously trying to solve every other development problem."

"The distributed renewable energy sector has emerged as a significant employer in emerging markets. Although nascent and just beginning to scale, it has already grown a workforce comparative to traditional utility-scale power sectors, and is expected to more than double by 2022–23, according to our early estimates."

Experts and industry insiders warn that there could be consolidation in China’s electric vehicle market and weaker investor sentiment.

This pair of Landsat 8 images highlights the rapid expansion of China's Tengger Desert Solar Park facility. The Operational Land Imager acquired the first image in April 2013 — when just a few solar panels stood in the southern part of the facility — and the second in April 2019.