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In France, players of solar thermal, geothermal, heat pumps and biomass founded the Alliance Chaleur Renouvelable (translated as Renewable Heat Alliance) in February 2013. "This umbrella organisation speaks with one voice when it comes to the demands and suggestions from the renewable heat industry," says Valérie Laplagne, Initiator of the project and Head of Renewable Energy at Uniclima, the French union for the heating, cooling and ventilation industry. Timing is critical: In November 2012, France launched its energy transition debate, which should result in an important law specifying the new French energy policy by autumn 2013. But after renewable heat players had noticed that renewable energies had been reduced to electricity in the debate, they created the alliance. It lobbies for solar thermal in the retrofit segment, because the solar heat market is currently dominated by new construction (see photo).
In April, two workshops for solar cooling took place in Asia. At the beginning of the month, a workshop in Singapore focused on the use of solar cooling in tropical regions and gathered around 70 participants from research and industry (see photo). The workshop took place at Cleantech One, which is part of Singapore’s clean technology centre. Cleantech One also hosts the Asia office of Austrian turnkey system provider S.O.L.I.D. and the energy research institute ERI@N of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). They both organised the workshop together with the International Energy Agency (IEA). A week later, almost 80 solar cooling specialists participated in the Australian Solar Cooling 2013 Conference in Sydney, an event by the Australian Solar Cooling Interest Group (ausSCIG). Solarthermalworld.org has picked out the highlights from the presentations held at the two workshops.
To protect local solar photovoltaic manufacturers, the Indian government has made it mandatory in its National Solar Mission to use locally made cells and modules. There is no such rule for the solar thermal sector, in which the state subsidises 30 to 60 % of the price of a solar water heater, although a growing number of vacuum tubes have been imported from China. First assessments of the database of the national incentive programme SOLARWHIN show that 75 % of the applications include vacuum tubes and only industrial applications have used flat plate collectors (FPCs). Malaviya Solar Energy Consultancy has asked a few of the leading manufacturers if the subsidies for solar water heaters based on vacuum tubes should be removed, in order to protect the local industry and also to reduce the government’s financial burden with the subsidy scheme.
The California Solar Initiative (CSI) is further extending the number of system types eligible for its CSI – Solar Thermal programme. Already in December 2012, California’s Governor, Edmund Brown, signed a law stipulating that solar heating of commercial pools is to be incorporated into the subsidy scheme. In March 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) published the Final Decision, specifying that solar cooling, space heating and process heat systems should be eligible technologies within the CSI – Solar Thermal. The CPUC, however, still has to work out the specific rule set, something which might delay implementation. The pie chart shows the share of system suppliers within CSI by the end of May 2013. By then, the programme’s administrators had received 1,400 grant applications, half of which had included the system supplier’s name.
