WIND and solar, accompanied by hydro power, biomass and geothermal energy, will pave the way to a 100% renewable power generation, "very probably within the first half of this century", according to Germany's Energy Watch Group. The organisation sees wind and solar as being particularly important vehicles to achieving this - and especially wind.
The UK's Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has decided to award its first tranche of funding to four maritime energy projects - three offshore wind and one tidal technology.
A Scottish company has developed an installation system that offers the potential to revolutionise the installation of wind turbines offshore. Two variants of the technology have been drawn up - one to handle steel monopile foundations, the other for the concrete gravity base equivalent.
In the current economic climate, the risk of companies becoming insolvent is rising rapidly. The move of Oilexco into administration has sent shock waves through an industry that has rarely seen insolvencies among operators.
RECESSION - it's official now. It seems we had better get used to using the "R" word as the crisis which originated such a short time ago in the financial sector quickly impacts on the whole economy.
Oil&gas companies are operating in a changed landscape, with a number of them no longer able to escape the effects of the global economic downturn and unprecedented market volatility.
This is the first in a series of short articles about the OSO or, to give it its full title, the Offshore Supplies Office. It was an organisation that, at one time, had a fearsome reputation as it strove to ensure that British industry secured a fair share of the huge opportunities generated by the advent of North Sea oil.
THE lifeblood of a company like Chevron is, of course, the resource it exploits and, in this case, this US super-major has a pipeline of billion-dollar-class project investments worldwide, especially offshore West Africa, in the US Gulf and Asia-Pacific.
RICHARD Bell has been with Hallin Marine unit Prospect since joining as an engineering graduate in July, 2005. He is an example of the kind of talent that the North Sea industry is hungry for.
A £3MILLION initiative - the so-called Midlands Energy Graduate School (MEGS) - has been launched in a bid to provide a pipeline of home-grown sustainable energy specialists, including people with practical engineering skills and a grip on new-generation energy technologies now coming forward. The graduate school, not a trace of which can be found on the internet beyond a single news story, will also pilot and develop new methods of training and research collaboration.
If any of you are fans of David Attenborough's wildlife programmes on the BBC then you might have seen his visit to a termite mound in Africa.
WINDFARMS pose less of a threat to farmland birds than previously feared, new research has found. A British Ecological Society study blows a hole in claims that birds and windfarms don't mix. Indeed, it may be that windfarms could help reverse dramatic declines in biodiversity on European farmland by offering havens to wildlife.
FOR many in Britain, central heating is part and parcel of normal life, but it is expensive to run and is a major drain on the Bank of Mum and Dad.
It's a sobering fact that if you lose your hearing it's gone for good - time and quiet won't bring it back. Regardless of your age, if your working environment has dangerous levels of noise, you are in danger of permanently damaging your hearing.
Transocean has cancelled a $550,000-a-day rig lease to Burgundy Global Exploration of the Philippines, the company having failed to lodge the required escrow.
During a record year in which the oil price averaged around $100 a barrel overall, the UK sector saw the highest level of exploration and appraisal drilling for a decade.
SEADRILL has taken delivery of its seventh consecutive deepwater drilling unit in just 10 months. West Aquarius is a product of the DSME shipyard in South Korea.
LUNDIN Petroleum has successfully completed the first Luno appraisal well on production licence PL338 in the Norwegian North Sea, block 16/1.
ISLAND Oil & Gas has declined its option with Lansdowne Celtic Sea to farm into its SEL4/07 encompassing part blocks, 49/11(p), 49/12(p), 49/13(p), 49/17(p) and 49/18(p), in the Celtic Sea offshore Ireland.
STATOILHYDRO is preparing for fresh operations in the Arctic and is planning a new drillship tailored to Arctic conditions which can be employed for exploration and development drilling in the northern Barents Sea.
AUS-BASED oil&gas operator took time out to party in Aberdeen to celebrate bringing its first North Sea field onstream.
STAFF of Petrotechnics in Aberdeen enjoyed a masked ball at the city's Marcliffe Hotel - and no one enjoyed the role of Spiderman more than managing director Phil Murray.
ABERDEEN firm Motion Software has won two contracts worth more than £100,000 with energy-sector firms.
CHEVRON Canada has for now abandoned its plan to drill a deepwater exploration well that it had planned offshore Labrador in Orphan Basin.
Oil and gas industry leaders, more than 100 exhibitors and 2,000-plus visitors from around the globe will descend on Aberdeen next week for Europe's largest subsea exhibition and conference.