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The French government has announced that it will organise three solar auctions in 2020 totalling 2,150 MW of capacity. Two ground-mounted tenders, planned in January and June 2020, will offer 850 MW and 1 GW of capacity respectively, whereas a smaller rooftop-focused auction in February 2020 will offer up 300 MW. The three new tenders will allow France to boost its installed solar capacity by 20%, from the current 9.1 GW.  The country aims at reaching 40% of renewable energies by 2040 and pushes for the development of solar energy, which is expected to reach between 35.6 GW and 44.5 GW in 2028. In early August 2019, the France allocated 858 MW of solar PV capacity in its sixth auction round for ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) projects.

The federal government of Germany has approved the Draft Structural Strengthening Act for the Coal Regions, which plans a €40bn aid over the next two decades to the regions most affected by the coal phaseout (by 2038).

The Egyptian government has succeeded in cutting fuel subsidies by nearly 30% in the 2018-2019 financial year (July 2018 – June 2019), from over EGP 120bn (US$7.31bn) to EGP 85bn (US$5.15bn). …

Iraq has restarted crude oil exports to Jordan, delivering its first truck shipment of 10,000 bbl of Iraq oil since 2014. Crude oil exports to Jordan were suspended in 2014 due to political instability in Iraq. The two countries agreed to resume crude oil trade in February 2019.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has authorised Equinor and its partners to start commercial production from the Johan Sverdrup oil field in North Sea. The Norwegian oil company intends to begin sometimes in autumn 2019 for the first phase of the field development, which will require an initial investment of NOK 83bn (€8.3bn).

According to the Australian government, Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached 538.9 MtCO2eq (+0.6%) for the year to March 2019. The growth is largely due to a 19% increase in LNG exports and to a higher steel and aluminum production.

The French nuclear agency (Commissariat français à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)) has confirmed that it would finalise its ASTRID (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration) project in 2019 and that it would no longer build a prototype sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in the short or medium term.

South Korean power utility Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has commissioned its new Shin Kori-4 nuclear reactor, the fourth unit of the Shin Kori nuclear power plant. With a lifetime of 60 years, the Advanced Pressurized Reactor-1400 (APR1400) reactor, rated 1,400 MW, is expected to generate 10.4 TWh/year of electricity. …

Indonesian state-owned power utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) has submitted a new US$500m loan to the China-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for the development of power distribution infrastructure in East Java and Bali.