The week in green numbers …

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150,000: The number of solar photovoltaic panels installed at the Greenough River 10MW solar farm, Australia’s first utility-scale solar farm, 50km south-east of Geraldton in WA, which was officially opened on Wednesday.

858,000: The number of homes in Australia that have installed rooftop solar photovoltaic panels, totalling almost 2GW of installed capacity, according to the latest data from the Australian Clean Energy Regulator.

1,000,000: The number of Australian homes (10 per cent) that current projections suggest will have installed rooftop solar PV by June 30, 2013.

600,000: The number of Australian homes that have installed solar hot water systems.

1,780: The megawatts of clean energy capacity that Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has approved, as of the end of September under a government incentive program.

83: The percentage of the above clean energy projects which are solar – 1,480MW (wind – 292MW).

4: The gigawatt amount of offshore wind capacity that is installed in European waters.

150: The gigawatt amount of offshore wind capacity Europe has in planning and is expected to build at least 1,000 megawatts (1GW) per year through 2020.

75: The record length in metres of each of the rotor blades of Siemens Energy’s 154-meter wind turbine rotor – the world’s largest – which the company recently started testing for use for its 6MW wind turbine in Denmark.

59-77: The gigawatt amount of US coal power that is likely to be retired by 2016, according to an updated report by research outfit the Brattle Group – that’s almost double the amount the report previously estimated, and would amount to the shutting-down of 20-25 per cent of America’s entire coal fleet in less than a decade.

16: The number of coal power plants that the Chinese government plans to build – mostly in the western part of the country – in the next three years, according to a recent report from environmental group Greenpeace. By 2015, the country plans to increase its coal production by 2.2 billion tonnes a year.

5: The percentage of China-made solar PV panels and wind turbines that are used domestically, according to a report in the Scientific American – the rest are exported to Europe and America.

Sophie Vorrath

Sophie is editor of Renew Economy and editor of its sister site, One Step Off The Grid . She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.

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