Asia Clean Capital Seeks to Raise $100 Million Amid Expansion

2017-04-20 03:37:14.924 GMT

By Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) — Asia Clean Capital Ltd. is seeking to raise at least $100 million in new financing as it develops more rooftop solar projects in China.

The financing, which will probably take place in the second quarter, will come from existing stakeholders and new institutional investors, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Lapham said in an interview in Shanghai.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is currently Asia Clean Capital’s biggest institutional shareholder, Lapham said. The company has also gained an investment from the Danish Climate Investment Fund, he said.

The additional financing will help the Hong Kong- headquartered company fund new projects in the world’s biggest solar market. The expansion comes as China maintains its subsidies for rooftop installations even after cutting tariffs this year for large-sized industrial solar plants in remote areas.

Asia Clean Capital, with 80 megawatts of projects currently connected to the grid, expects completed capacity to reach 200 megawatts by the end of the year, said Lapham.

The company is likely to get a power-trading license from the government next month, allowing it to buy idle renewable power in one place for sale to existing customers in another location, said Lapham, adding that the new business may start by the end of 2017.

The company already has customers, infrastructure and the needed power meters in place, he said.

“We don’t have any extra capital expenditures; all we do is power trading,” said Lapham.

Asia Clean Capital’s clients include COFCO Coca-Cola Beverages (Hebei) Ltd., SKF AB, and Unilever PLC.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story:

Feifei Shen in Beijing at fshen11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:

Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

Iain Wilson, Abhay Singh

Article from Caixin Energy（WeChat ID：caixinenergy）

【By Mr. Zhang Xudong of Caixin Energy】This is really a “dark horse,” though what we’ve been hearing about before is rather limited.

Passing through a slightly cramped work area, there’s a meeting room at the end. Three young founding partners were already waiting for us. The company has been established in Hong Kong in 2009, previously focused on Ground Energy. In 2015, they transitioned their main business to distributed solar. So far the total capacity of their existing distributed solar projects is approximate 103 megawatts, with a total investment of over USD100million. Still there are only 40 full time staff in the office.

The energy industry is a “dark horse”-rich industry; people have gotten used to dark horses. “It is not strange that you hadn’t heard about ACC before; our company is a start-up company with short history in distributed solar ever since 2016.” Said Mr. Thomas Lapham, the CEO of Asia Clean Capital (ACC) in his fluent Mandarin.

In the past one and half-year, the capacity of ACC’s distributed solar pipeline has reached to 800 megawatts, and around 103 megawatts of distributed solar stations have been put into use. The total investment is nearly RMB700million (on a general cost basis of RMB7.0 per watt). To a company of 40 staff, the core competencies are their financing models and capital management capability.

According to the plan, the company will continue to accelerate the development of its distributed solar business in the future. After the business scale gets larger, the company might consider to expand other businesses. “We sign 25-years contracts with building owners which provides a good platform for other ACC businesses.” said Thomas.

To large corporations, the distributed solar industry is less attractive, difficult to develop, and has lagged behind. ACC, the dark horse, is stirring the market like a catfish.

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Ways to resolve the financing problem

High hopes have been pinned on distributed solar ever since 2012 when the domestic photovoltaic industry was in trouble. The Chinese government has launched a series of policies to support domestic solar market, the nationwide subsidy of 0.42Rmb/kWh based on power generation is one among those earlier polices. But the annual distributed development targets set by energy bureau hadn’t been fulfilled until 2015.

According to the Power Development Plan for the 13^th Five Year period, the target capacity of installed solar power stations is over 110 million kilowatts, and the target capacity of distributed solar is over 60 million kilowatts. However, according to the statistics released by the National Energy bureau, the cumulative capacity of existing distributed solar stations in China was only 6.06 million kilowatts by the end of 2015. There will be 10 million kilowatts under construction annually in order to meet the 13^th Five Year Plan.

Complicated building property right conditions and financing difficulties are two acknowledged thresholds for the development of distributed solar. Domestic banks hardly invest in single solar PV stations, considering their high risks. Only few ground station projects have received financing from banks. The chance to get the financing support from banks for distributed solar stations with capacity smaller than 6 MW is nearly zero.

The main factors influencing financing include the short history of domestic electricity market, the difficulties in getting long term PPA contracts with the national grid for distributed solar projects, the continuous deterioration of the solar subsidy situation, and the unstable income of power stations. Considering it is hard to scale up the distributed solar business due to the characteristic of decentralization, and it always calls for more BD efforts in negotiating small projects one by one, domestic corporations give priority to large ground stations rather than smaller distributed solar stations.

ACC takes a shortcut by targeting MNC customers and high end domestic enterprises in industrial parks. Mr. Lv Liancheng (Michael), the CFO of ACC explained, ACC will sign long term PPA (longer than 20 years) with large power consumers and provide them with electricity at agreed rates lower than when purchased from the local power grid, only very small residual amount of electricity would be sold to the national grid.

Thomas explained that among all ACC projects, the average ratio of grid-connected power is only 20%, for most projects, 95% power generated by ACC solar system will be consumed by the clients. In early 2016, Goldman Sachs invested USD40million dollars in ACC, the equity ratio of Goldman Sachs in ACC is approximate 30%, ACC’s shareholders also including the largest national sovereign wealth Fund of Denmark (IFU).

Of course, even so, according to Michael, there’s no successful breakthrough in obtaining bank loan for unsecured and non-recourse projects. The company has cooperated with the top 4 largest leasing companies in China and always try to keep the capital cost at a lower level. It turned to be easier to obtain other domestic financing after the involvement of Goldman Sachs, the company is also considering to go public in the future.

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A flexible platform dream

Distributed solar PV industry is a capital-intensive industry. But according to a previous survey in solar industry, the complicated ownership of the roof has been recognized as one of the main obstacles to the development of the distributed solar industry. To solar station developers, the future power consumption couldn’t be guaranteed and the investment risk would be high if the power users are not the building owners.

This is also the main obstacle to many developers to invest in distributed solar projects: how do small businesses resolve the problem and concentrate on this area?

Thomas explained, during the transition in 2015, the company had evaluated opportunities for both ground solar stations and distributed solar stations. On the one hand, the capital demand was larger and financing situation was worse for ground solar stations compared with distributed solar stations, while on the other hand, although lack of a set of clear and leading business models for the distributed solar industry, the national subsidy supporting system was getting mature. After evaluating ACC’s resources and advantages, the company initiated its distributed solar investment business and started to select long-term partners from its existing customer base.

“We are not a green energy generation company, we are a green energy solutions company.” Thomas said. ACC aims at good credit MNC companies and starts the cooperation with them by helping them to save electricity bill at very beginning.

From the information ACC provided, we noted that most ACC existing projects are located in Center and East China, this is influenced by their market judgment. There’s a serious shortage of overall renewable energy subsidy fund in China, but ACC believes that renewable energy subsidy fund in East China is sufficient enough to support larger-scale distributed solar promotion, it shouldn’t be an issue even for those projects with extra power sold to the national grid.

And then ACC only focused on large MNC companies with manufacturing bases in China. “Multinational corporations normally have better credit, more sustainable production, and have stronger willingness to use clean energy to achieve their CSR goals.” Mr. Tang Hao, Senior Vice President of ACC added. Up to now, the existing MNC clients of ACC including Coca Cola, Nestlé, Unilever, Volkswagen, Tsuneishi group, as well as many leading domestic enterprises such as COFCO, Wahaha, WISCO, and so on.

“Our partners give priority to build factories by themselves to ensure the sustainability of the project.” Thomas further explained that these multinational companies do not just own one factory in China, with early experience in cooperation, more orders can be obtained. With long-term contracts of more than 20 years, ACC is creating a platform for cultivating other potential services such as power services and potential businesses related.

But exactly what the platform can do, there’s still no clear scheme.

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Future = financial model?

The leader who solves the problems of distributed solar industry by new business model will tack the first chance in the market competition. But how large is the distributed solar market? According to ACC’s evaluation, the distributed solar capacity for high-end multinational projects is 20 gigawatts.

However, as said above, financing and property ownership problems can be resolved following this operation, and part of projects can create more cash flow by financing measures, what exactly this company is, an investment company, a power generation company, or other definition?

China’s distributed solar market is mainly occupied by previous power generation corporations and solar products manufacturers, but develops slowly due to the restrictions of financing and property issues. There’s a consensus in the industry that the geographic distribution of solar energy resources is inverse with the load side, solar energy resources is rich in Northwest China but poor in East China, there’s an inherent disadvantage to distributed solar.

Mr. Li Junfeng, the Senior New Energy Expert who just retired from the Climate Center said at a forum organized by Chinese Energy Research Institute, large ground stations and distributed solar projects should be considered according to the local conditions, it is suitable to build large-scale power station in Northwest China due to the rich solar energy resource and vast land.

The business model ACC is exploring has definitely no question, analyzed by some industry experts, but to the whole industry, the impact is very small on the basis of current project size of 100 megawatts, knowing that the power station sizes invested by domestic manufacturing enterprises are more than hundreds of megawatts.

Tang Hao said ACC is an investment company when he made the introduction. ACC has no manufacturing background and relies heavily on financing and its business model. Thomas thought ACC is an energy services provider, when ACC’s scale is big enough in future, they can provide other new businesses to the existing MNC clients attracted by distributed solar business.

Michael analyzed, the financing channel is get broader, ACC is seeking for other financing models including finance leasing, bank funding, pensions, internet financing and so on. ACC will also consider asset securitization after financing to guarantee plentiful cash flow for future business expansion. If that day comes, ACC may turn to an asset management and configuration company.

Jun 22, 2016 13:03 CEST

(SeeNews) – The world could generate up to 13% of its electricity from solar photovoltaics (PV) by 2030, up from 2% now, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) released today.

Driven mainly by plummeting costs, PV capacity could expand to between 1,760 GW and 2,500 GW by 2030, accounting for between 8% and 13% of global electricity generation, the organization estimates. Today, the world has 227 GW of installed solar capacity.

In a report last week IRENA projected that PV costs could fall by 59% in the next 10 years. In its latest analysis it says that PV costs per kWh regularly come between USD 0.05 (EUR 0.44) and USD 0.10 in Europe, China, India, South Africa and the US, while record low prices set in markets such as Peru, Mexico and Dubai in 2015 and 2016 indicate a continued trend of cost reduction.

The report lists five recommendations to help solar reach a 13% share of global electricity by 2030. These include updated policies based on the latest innovations; government support of continued research and development; creation of a global standards framework; market structure changes; and the adoption of enabling technologies like smart grids and storage.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.887)

Statistical Data Relating to the Solar PV Power Generation Industry in 2015

Date：2016-02-05    Source: National Energy Administration (Summary)

China has become the largest Solar PV Power producer in the world. The total capacity of the Solar PV Power Systems was 43.18GW by the end of 2015. Among this, the total capacity of the large scale Solar PV stations was 37.12GW and the total capacity of Distributed Solar PV projects was 6.06GW. The Central Government’s Solar PV installation target in 2015 was 15GW, by the end of the year and the actual newly increased system capacity was 15.13GW, with an annual power generation output of 39.2 billion KWh. The newly increased Solar PV capacity in 2015 was more than one-quarter of the global newly increased Solar PV capacity. Underpinned by the expansion demand, one-third of China’s Solar module production in 2015 has been purchased and put into use at home.

Most of the Solar PV systems work well when installed and the average utilization time of Solar PV systems in China is 1,133 hours per year, but power curtailment in some Northwest regions is still serious. The average utilization time of Solar PV systems in Gansu province is 1,061 hours per year and the power curtailment rate is 31%. The average utilization time of Solar PV systems in Xinjiang Autonomous Region is 1,042 hours per year and the power curtailment rate is 26% (See Table below).

Solar PV has been developed nationwide in China and the accumulative total system capacity of six provinces in central and eastern China exceeds 10GW, including Jiangsu Province (42.2GW), Hebei Province (23.9GW), Zhejiang (16.4 GW), Shandong Province (13.3 GW), Anhui Province (12.1 GW) and Shanxi Province (11.3 GW). Xinjiang (including XPCG), Inner Mongolia, and Jiangsu are the top three in the newly increased Solar PV market. The respective capacity is 21 GW, 18.7 GW, and 16.5 GW. The Top three largest regions of distributed Solar PV installation are Zhejiang (12.1GW), Jiangsu (11.9GW) and Guangdong (5.7GW).

Appendix：Statistics Table of Solar PV Systems in 2015

For the original contents, please click our Chinese website: Chinese contents

Asia Clean Capital Expands Solar Business in China

Date：2015-02-03 Source: Economic Daily

Asia Clean Capital Ltd. (“ACC”), a leading Distributed Solar PV developer, announced a US$40 million project finance facility from Goldman Sachs.

“The financing facility will allow ACC to accelerate and expand the growth of our rooftop solar solutions nationwide. ACC invests 100% of the project costs and provides the design, implementation, and long-term operation and maintenance of solar systems. ACC’s renewable energy solutions will benefit more and more multinational and domestic corporations of all major industries including Automobile, Consumer Packaged Goods, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Science & Technology, etc. All electricity produced through ACC’s solar projects is then provided to clients at agreed rates lower than when purchased from the local power grid.” Said Mr. Thomas Lapham, CEO of ACC.

“Goldman Sachs has a long-standing commitment to clean energy with a target to finance and invest $150 billion by 2025.” said Kyung-Ah Park, a managing director and head of the Environmental Markets Group at Goldman Sachs. ACC’s renewable energy solutions will help multinational and domestic corporations in China to reduce operating costs, decrease carbon footprint, and meet sustainability targets.

The “Pickiest” Solar PV Company: Why ACC can Obtain a US $40 million Project Finance Facility from Goldman Sachs

Date: 2016-02-02    Source: SolarBe

ACC officially entered China distributed solar PV market at the end of 2014. They have completed several distributed solar PV demonstration projects with Ikea, Unilever, Andritz, Swire, Coca-Cola, and other multinational corporations. ACC has received a US $40 million Project Finance Facility from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has a long-standing commitment to clean energy with a target to finance and invest $150 billion by 2025. ACC’s distributed solar PV scheme has been an integral part of attaining this goal.

ACC Management Team

In an office of over 200 square meters in Chaowai SOHO, more than twenty young people are busy at work. The team leader is an American, Mr. Thomas Lapham, and his Chinese name Tang Hanwen.

The company is headquartered in Hong Kong, with their Business Operations center located in Beijing. The team is made up of a group of highly qualified employees, most of whom have graduated from elite colleges or have experience working in foreign companies. Mr. Thomas Lapham is the CEO of ACC. Tom is a lifelong entrepreneur, prior to joining ACC, Tom cofounded a renewable energy company in the U.S. which he grew to an industry leading position with 5 locations, and eventually sold to one of the UK’s leading renewable energy corporations. Mr. Tang Hao is their Senior VP, and before joining ACC he worked as the Sales & Marketing Director of Landis & Gyr in the SIMENS Group and was the National Head of Sales for the French conglomerate, Nexans. Mr. Lv Liancheng (Michael), the CFO, has more than 20 years of experience focusing on energy, corporate strategy and setup, M&A, investment, and corporate finance. He is a certified management accountant of the American Institute of Certified Management Accountants Association. ACC is a small company, similar to a branch office of some larger enterprises, but the business they are focusing on and the projects they have completed are achievements at which even those large enterprises have failed—the investment and development of Distributed Solar Photovoltaic (PV) projects.Michael has more than 17 years work experience at multinational companies, focusing on energy, strategy and setup, M&A, investment, financing and corporate finance. Certified Management Accountants (CMA); BA in Mechanical Engineering, worked as Sales & Marketing director of Landis & Gyr. Prior to that Hao served as National Sales Head for the French conglomerate, Nexans. worked as Sales & Marketing director of Landis & Gyr. Prior to that Hao served as National Sales Head for the French conglomerate, Nexans. worked as Sales & Marketing director of Landis & Gyr. Prior to that Hao served as National Sales Head for the French conglomerate, Nexans.

ACC Solar PV Scheme

How difficult is it to develop Distributed Solar PV in China? The Solar PV industry has been ranked the top priority by China’s Energy Bureau in the past two years. In addition to the central government’s nationwide electricity subsidy, local levels of government, including provincial governments and city level governments in many regions, have established related subsidy policies to promote the adoption of solar PV systems. The Beijing City government announced a rebate of RMB 0.3 per kWh for 5 years for each distributed solar PV project. In 2014, China set a target of 8 GW capacity from distributed solar PV systems but only managed to install 2.05 GW by the end of the year. After this poor result, China’s National Energy Bureau cancelled its capacity limitation of distributed solar PV. The adjustment of the policy indicates the immaturity of the distributed solar PV industry. After the distributed solar PV market struggled for two years, most companies ditched their efforts to focus solely on larger solar PV power stations.

The distributed solar PV industry has been regarded as immature and challenging to enter into due to unique difficulties faced in China. Until now, it was difficult to find a universal solution for the desired rapid development of rooftop solar PV systems for residential and commercial buildings.

Chinese Style Distributed Solar VS Chinese Style Building Owners

There are several difficulties in deploying distributed solar PV in China:

1. Most Chinese citizens don’t have rooftop property. Due to high population density, most Chinese citizens live in apartments and don’t have control of what development occurs to their building. Coupled with old city transformation and urbanization, the uncertainty of distributed solar PV’s benefits have increased. There are hardly any companies willing to invest in distributed solar PV facilities for residential buildings, and the opportunity cost to the citizens is extremely high due to the lack of professional knowledge in solar PV technology.

2. Commercial building owners don’t want to invest in rooftop solar PV facilities. Most of the time, building owners would cooperate with solar station developers who would finance and install the facilities. The two parties would enter into an Energy Management Contract (EMC) where the solar station developer would sell the power generated by the system to the building owner, while renting the rooftop space for the duration of the EMC. However, the average lifetime of a Chinese company is six years; and when compared with the 25-year lifetime of a solar PV system it makes no sense for the developer to enter into this contract only to dissolve it six years later. There are too many risk for a solar PV developer to consider, leading to the decision to not embark into the distributed solar PV industry.

3. Operation and Maintenance (O&M). Currently, developers operate and maintain their large scale solar PV power stations through the use of smart O&M systems, remote control systems, and site management. But for distributed solar PV, as the project scale is small and widespread, meaning both cost and technical requirements are higher than large scale solar PV power stations.

There are other problems such as long payback periods. The upfront costs of distributed solar PV systems are very large, resulting in long payback periods. Financing through the stock market and assets securitization are two necessary methods to maintain continuous development capability. To define whether one project can be securitized, the developer should make sure the project scale is large enough. Fund-raising institutions prefer to invest in Solar PV power station projects which they view with much fewer risks than distributed solar PV projects.

“Pickiest”: the Second Round Distributed Solar Market Segmentation

ACC has achieved a great performance in China’s distributed solar PV market. ACC officially entered China’s distributed solar PV market at the end of 2014. They have completed several distributed solar PV demonstration projects with Ikea, Unilever, Andritz, Swire, Coca-Cola, and other multinational corporations. ACC has received a US $40 million Project Finance Facility from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has a long-standing commitment to clean energy with a target to finance and invest $150 billion by 2025. ACC’s distributed solar PV scheme has been an integral part of attaining this goal.

Goldman Sachs is the world’s leader in Green Financing field with their Clean Energy Program kicking off in November 2005. They’re the first company that has participated in the Solar Energy Rating Securitization, they have the first U.S.A YieldCo listing, they issued the first Green Energy debenture, as well as the first Clean Energy product securitization. But as of 2012, Goldman Sachs has only invested US $40 billion, far behind their 2025 target. Improving the investment target shows the investment institution’s confidence in the Clean Energy industry.

“The cooperation between Goldman and ACC signifies a substantial vote of confidence in the future of ACC and also in the fundamentals of the rooftop solar industry in China,” said Thomas Lapham, CEO of ACC. “We are excited to work with Goldman Sachs given their deep technical knowledge, global network and experience in investing in China. Some of the world’s largest and most important corporations rely on ACC’s solar solutions. Goldman Sachs’ backing will further ensure that we can continue to enhance our product offerings to meet and exceed their high standards.”

How did ACC obtain the capital? The answer is “fastidiousness”

ACC’s orientation is interesting: they further segment the distributed solar PV market, filter out projects with high risks and a low price/performance ratio, and focus on the roof facilities that are owned by foreign companies and China’s leading companies. “People think the distributed solar PV market is immature in China, but after we conducted the market segmentation, we still can find many qualified projects and clients.” Said Thomas Lapham. The target size of ACC’s projects is normally 1 to 20 MW. The company is focused on investing and operating Solar PV systems on industrial and commercial roofs, and then selling the renewable energy to the clients at a discounted price relative to the local electricity prices.

“We will take our clients’ operation capacity and integrity into consideration,” Said Tang Hao, Senior VP of ACC, “Influenced by the spirit of the contract, the two parties will adhere to the contract terms, and we take into consideration potential problems that may occur in the contract period, resulting in only slight adjustments to the proposed time required for the completion of each specific project”. When negotiating with Fortune 500 companies, the foreign representatives mentioned the potential for their facilities to be moved to other provinces or even outside of China, and how to deal with the responsibility of default. Hao said they’re very happy to see their clients discuss such questions with them, as it shows the emphasis on the contract from the clients’ side. He told the clients ACC will assist clients on the facility transformation, and any additional cost will be shared by two parties at an agreed ratio.

Being picky doesn’t only end with potential clients. ACC is also picky in all internal aspects. Michael Lv, CFO of ACC said, “ACC will take charge of the whole investment, and provide Solar PV system design, government procedures application, equipment procurement, system installation, as well as long term operation and maintenance. The business development, system investment, ongoing project financing and asset management phases are all managed by ACC. ACC only operates with the best Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contractors and O&M suppliers. The entire Solar PV industry chain is an ecosystem. We don’t plan to earn money in each link of the industry chain, and cooperation will enable ACC to focus on its chosen industry link”.

Site Construction

Additionally, high quality enterprises have a strong sense on both the corporation sustainability responsibility and the company’s social mission. The Solar PV cooperation between ACC and Unilever even attracted the attention of Mr. Paul Polman, President of Unilever. He travelled specifically to Tianjin to visit the site where ACC was implementing the distributed solar PV system. Mr. Paul Polman introduced a program in 2011 that the company’s income should be doubled, while its impact on the environment should be halved by 2020. Similarly, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Apple, GE, Siemens, IKEA, and others have kicked off similar programs. Unilever and ACC hope to expand their cooperation this year to develop the rooftop distributed solar PV system for a number of Unilever’s other facilities in the Asia Pacific region.

The capacity of ACC Solar PV system in Unilever Tianjin Industry Park is 1.4MW, composed of 5,492 solar panels. The average daily peak sunlight radiation time in Tianjin region is 4 hours (6 hours in summer, and 2-3 hours in winter). The power output of the Solar system is 4600kwh per day. This will meet 20% of the park’s electricity consumption demand requirements. Compared with conventional thermal power generation stations, the system will reduce CO2 emissions by approximate 42,354 tons within 25 years. ACC’s clean energy solution will help Unilever in reducing its operation costs, as well as make a significant contribution to their CRS goals and local ecological environment construction.

To foreign investors like Goldman Sachs, investing in small scale but highly qualified projects is much more attractive than large scale, low qualified projects. They have forecasted an excellent growth for the Solar PV industry. “Through this facility with Asia Clean Capital, we are able to help expand access to rooftop solar solutions and contribute to China’s goals of accelerating renewable energy deployment.” said Kyung-Ah Park, a managing director and head of the Environmental Markets Group at Goldman Sachs.

“ACC plans to develop 100MW commercial rooftop Distributed Solar PV in 2016. Our advantaged resource platform and brand will surely attract more and more world class partners along with the expansion of ACC’s solar business,” Said Michael Lv, “Solar industry is a capital-intensive industry …we are focusing on financing, efficient asset allocation, asset operation and management optimization. ACC aims to be the largest Distributed Solar Developer in China in the following 3 years!”

Rooftop Solar PV

“Elegant enough to show around to the guests, and diligent enough to make good cuisines.” — Essential Character of Distributed Solar Development

 A good Distributed Solar Developer should have the essential characters of the idea traditional Chines woman, “Elegant enough to show around to the guests, and diligent enough to make good cuisines.” ACC is capable of communicating well with its clients, sharing ideas and thoughts with them, and devoting itself to high quality projects. Normally, the size of Distributed Solar PV is small, delicate management measures to control the cost is also very important.

Mr. Thomas Lapham, CEO of ACC is an American, but is well educated about the Eastern style philosophy and Chinese customs while still maintaining the Western mentality. Tom’s Chinese language level has surpassed “TEM-8.” Initially, the author had asked a series of questions including ACC’s Distributed Solar business, ACC financed business model, the business model comparison between ACC and Solarcity. Tom had waited for a long time and didn’t interrupt the conversation between the author and Michael. At the end of the conversation, even the author nearly failed to remember the previous questions, but Tom duly had the answers to the previous questions replying “SolarCity focuses on residential projects with system capacity under 10Kw, ACC focus on commercial rooftop projects…”

The foreign company work experience and educational background provided by elite schools of ACC staff and high management team doesn’t just look good on paper. Mr. Tang Hao, Senior VP said, “We have similar educational backgrounds and work experience as our clients, making us more familiar with foreign clients’ work style and allowing for easy communication.” Tang Hao told the author for some large scale Distributed project, the Chinese style project development method is to communicate with the building owner, and build relationships with all related people. ACC aims to meet with all project team members involved and win the clients recognition and respect.

To save time and money, ACC team have developed an optimized project development process, similar to assembly line work. When team members are travelling for business, they plan to meet with as many clients as possible to improve the efficiency of the trip and reduce the overall costs.

The reasons that the author likes ACC is because they always stay conscious to their mission and remain grounded. Many companies fly too close to the sun and the development goals they set are too ambitious for their resources and business executive ability. Maybe the rise of ACC will help the solar industry to mature, while remaining down to earth, but making the most of every opportunity under the sun.

Notice of Providing Electricity Subsidies for Solar PV Power Generation Projects in Hebei Province

Date: 2015-11-30    Source: Price Bureau of Hebei Province (Summary)

To further promote the development of Solar PV systems, especially distributed rooftop Solar PV systems in Hebei province, the provincial government has released a serious of policies, including providing electricity subsidy of RMB 0.2 per kWh for all distributed rooftop Solar PV systems which are installed and put into use between 2015 and 2017. For each project the subsidy will last for 3 years. Also, the government will increase the subsidy standard from RMB 0.1 kWh to RMB 0.2 kWh for the Solar PV Anti-poverty programs in the province. The subsidy will last for 3 years and applies to all projects that installed and put into use before the end of 2017. There’s no policy adjustment to Ground Solar PV station projects.

For the full contents of the notice, please click our Chinese website: Chinese contents

The Management of Incentive Funds for the Distribute Solar PV Projects in Beijing

Date: 2015-8-18   Source: Beijing Government (Summary)

To further promote the development of the Distributed Solar PV Power industry in the Beijing region, the city government has released a series of management methods to regulate the related procedures, including subsidy application, project audit and confirmation, and fund appropriation and supervision. For all distributed Solar PV projects installed and connected to the grid in the period of 2015 – 2019, the city government will provide RMB 0.3 per kWh (tax included) for 5 years.

For the full contents of the notice, please click our Chinese website: Chinese contents

Beijing and Shanghai surpass major US cities in green space rollout

Date: 2015-07-09 17:25    Source from: China Daily

China’s green building sector is on a fast track to large-scale development, according to a white paper published by international real estate consultancy CBRE.

Beijing and Shanghai, each with nearly 20 million square meters of green building space, took the top two spots in the ranking of global green buildings, surpassing such cities as Chicago, New York and Washington, according to the document “New Era of China’s Green Buildings”.

Shenzhen and Wuhan were also among the top 10 cities on the list. The white paper suggested that first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have begun to harvest economic benefits from green buildings which are cost-effective, reducing operating costs and creating higher property value.

“Going green” has increasingly become an important element in corporate social responsibility and employee engagement programs for both multinational corporations and domestic companies. As a result, green building certifications are enabling real estate projects, especially commercial properties, to differentiate from their counterparts in the market. Space that is “green” certified can help landlords attract quality tenants, as it can provide a comfortable and healthy workplace and improve productivity.

Findings indicate that the average office rent of Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design-certified space recorded a premium of between 1.5 percent and 25.7 percent. Research also suggested that LEED-certified projects were proven to be more resilient when the market goes down.

“The cost of transformation into green building is not that high,” said Tang Hao, chief marketing officer of Asia Clean Capital (ACC). “Our customers do not need to pay anything but just need to provide the building and coordination”.

The original link

The Implementation of Promoting the Distributed Solar PV Power Industry in Shannxi Province

Date: 2014-12-4   Source: Shannxi Development and Reform Commission (Summary)

To further promote the development of the Distributed Solar PV Power industry in Shannxi province, the local government has recently released a series of implementation procedures. The local government will develop six distributed Solar PV demo projects and 50 Solar PV application model towns and counties in the period of 2014-2016. The target of annual newly increased Solar PV capacity is 100MW. The provincial government will also provide a one-time RMB 1 per watt subsidy to the system developer and user based on the actual capacity in addition to the national electricity subsidy.

For the full contents of the notice, please click our Chinese website: Chinese contents

Further Developing the Solar PV Power Industry in Jilin Province

Date: 2014-12-1   Source: Jilin Government official Release (Summary)

To further develop the Solar PV Power industry in Jilin province, the provincial government has recently released a series of supporting policies. In addition to the national electricity subsidy, the provincial government will provide RMB 0.15 per kWh in additional to the national electricity subsidy. Except for large scale ground Solar PV Power stations, the government encourages the adoption of distributed Solar PV projects, especially the rooftop Solar PV projects for both existing and new buildings.

For the full contents of the notice, please click our Chinese website: Chinese contents

Promoting the Solar PV Power Industry in Zhejiang Province

Date: 2013-9-26   Source: Zhejiang Development and Reform Commission (Summary)

To further develop the Solar PV Power industry in Zhejiang province, the provincial government has released a series of supporting policies on 26^th November. The target newly increased Solar PV system capacity in Zhejiang province will reach 2,000 MW by the end of 2015. The Distributed Rooftop Solar PV will be the key object in the government’s work task compared with Solar power lighting and large scale ground Solar PV. According to the related policy, new commercial buildings with rooftops larger than 3,000 square meters should be designed and constructed according to the installation requirements of the rooftop Solar PV systems. In additional to the national electricity subsidy, Zhejiang provincial government will provide RMB 0.1 per kWh.

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Notice of Using Pricing Leverage to Promote Development of Solar Industry Released

NDRC-PRICE [2013]1638 (Summary)

The notice of using pricing leverage to promote the development of the solar industry has been released by the National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC) on the 26th of August, 2013. Key points of the notice: China will offer Rmb0.42/kWh (incl. tax) subsidies for the distributed solar energy nationwide, the subsidy will be paid by gird companies through renewable energy fund; the price of electricity sold to the grid should be the same as local standard thermal tariff.

For the full contents of the notice, please click our Chinese website: Chinese content