An island community is celebrating a £3million windfarm payout - without a single turbine being built. A French company will pay up as part of a "golden au revoir" deal after scrapping its £200million proposal for the Eishken estate on Lewis. Engie, previously trading as GDF-Suez, abandoned the project last October, blaming uncertainty about the laying of a connecting subsea cable to the mainland for its decision.
Solar power company SunEdison aims to expand in the residential and commercial sector after buying Vivint Solar in a $2.2 billion deal.
French power firm EDF may cut output at four nuclear reactors amid hot weather.
More than 200 businesses from the construction, property and renewable energy industries have urged the UK Chancellor George Osborne to reconsider his decision to scrap the zero carbon homes policy.
Subsidies on green energy could be cut further in a bid to hold down energy bills. Ministers are looking to carry out a “big reset” of support given to the renewables industry later this year. The move follows fears that state funding for green energy and a carbon tax on coal and gas will add £175 to the average household bill by 2030. The subsidies currently add around £120 a year to consumers’ costs - some £4.3billion in total.
Former Tory minister Sir Nicholas Bonsor has quit as a director of UK shale company TomCo Energy as part of a boardroom shakeup.
A team of Scots scientists whose technology has been described as significant as James Watt’s steam engine, have won engineering's top “Oscar”.
The number of Scots companies, communities, farms and landowners making their own electricity has risen by more than 50% in the last year generating more than £271million worth of energy, new research has found.
A new non-profit energy company has been set up to sell cheaper power to around 200,000 homes across Scotland.
A new 500 kilowatt turbine scheme has been launched by Harworth Estates.
The number of companies, farms and communities creating their own electricity has risen more than 50% in a year. Figures show 775 organisations have bought generating equipment in a bid to insulate themselves from rising energy costs and to reduce carbon emissions. The report by independent energy firm SmartestEnergy shows the number was just 509 in 2013.
Briggs Marine has won an eight year contract from DONG Energy for contingency and repair of export and array cables for offshore windfarms in the UK and Northern Europe. The deal will cover nine sites in Britain, five in Denmark and four in Germany. Briggs has formed a strong relationship with DONG Energy since last year when it provided interim repair capability for their UK windfarms.
A unique test facility that can help identify and prevent potentially catastrophic pipeline failures around the world has opened for business. The $1.5 million Technology Development Centre in Houston was created by the PRCI (Pipeline Research Council International). It will helps enable operators and pipeline companies to carry out real world testing of onshore and offshore pipelines in one place and then assess how equipment will perform in extreme conditions.
UK green power provider Renewable Energy Generation has extended its contracts with National Grid to provide Short Term Operating Reserve ('STOR') through its existing 26MW bio-power plants.
A leading economist has claimed consumers have paid a £1billion subsidies penalty - to deliver soaring profits to windfarm operators.
Wind farming in Australia suffered another setback with the government banning its A$10 billion ($7.5 billion) renewable energy fund from investing in the industry. The government sent a letter to the Clean Energy Finance Corp. outlining proposed new investment priorities, including a shift away from wind power, Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb said Sunday in an interview on Sky News television The fund should be “investing in new and emerging technologies and certainly not existing wind farms,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott later told reporters in Darwin. His government’s policy is to eventually abolish the fund, he said. Last month, the government outlined plans to appoint a commissioner to oversee wind farms and is backing research into whether they damage people’s health. Abbott has labeled wind farms as ugly and noisy. The decision to prohibit new wind investment is “an extraordinary and prolonged attack on a viable industry,” Australian Wind Alliance National Coordinator Andrew Bray said in an e-mailed statement. Abbott is “hammering in the final nail to the coffin of wind-energy investment himself,” he said. The fund has a mandate to focus on innovation in “the renewable energy space, and not on mature technologies like wind, which can source funds in the commercial market,” Robb said. Plans to change the fund’s investment mandate were first reported earlier by The Age newspaper.
The UK’s biggest railway stations have signed up to a new project turning coffee waste into fuel. Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo, all in London, generate nearly 700 tonnes of coffee waste each year between them. Rather than sending it to landfill, where it would release more than 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, this waste will now go to a factory run by the bio-bean firm to become carbon-neutral biofuels for heating homes, offices and factories.
Communities across Scotland will share £500,000 of funding for projects designed to encourage the use and local ownership of renewable energy.
Green energy provider Renewable Energy Generation has been given planning permission for a new eight megawatt windfarm.
West African power leaders have gathered in Lagos, Nigeria, to discuss how to improve electricity generation and supply in West Africa.
Renewables consultancy SgurrEnergy has completed technical support for two Scottish wind farms.
This week’s summit was a an opportunity for me to hear the industry’s concerns about the recent decision from the UK Government to close the Renewables Obligation early in next April. This of course is a big blow to our industry in Scotland especially as around 70% of onshore wind projects in the UK planning system are in Scotland, this will surely have a disproportionate impact on us. This can only be described as anti-business and the impacts could spread right across Scotland and the wider supply chain, including ports and harbours, transmission and distribution, consultancy, universities and the civil engineering sector. All of this is will come at great personal and economic cost to our businesses and people. I’ve heard from many successful businesses who are at the forefront of renewables technology who are now looking being forced to looking at redundancies as a result of these changes.
Green-energy giant Infinis suffered a near 8% slide in the value of its shares after it confirmed the chancellor’s decision to scrap climate change tax breaks for renewables generators will cost it £7million by March. In Wednesday’s Budget, Chancellor George Osborne said the Climate Change Levy (CCL) exemption, which allows businesses not to pay the environmental tax levied on energy if it has come from renewable power, would be removed in August. The move continues the UK Government’s “crusade” to scale back financial support for renewables, which has not been perturbed by the approach of United Nations climate change talks in Paris later this year.
An emergency summit convened in the wake of Westminster’s decision to scrap a subsidy scheme for onshore wind farms was attended by more than 200 people, the Scottish Government said. Energy Minister Fergus Ewing organised the talks after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced it would end payments under the Renewables Obligation a year early. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and others in the Scottish Government have already spoken out against the decision, which industry leaders Scottish Renewables fears could put up to £3 billion of investment in Scotland at risk.
Onshore wind capacity in Serbia is expected to surge by 2025, boosted by a number of new projects in the country. The total onshore wind installed capacity will increase from just 20 (MW) Megawatts last year, to an estimated 542MW in the next 10 years. Serbia’s wind capacity has been boosted in the past three years by a number of new projects.