Renewable energy developer Albion Community Power (ACP) yesterday secured a further £10million investment as it seeks to build a £100million fund for small-scale biogas, hydro-electric, solar and wind projects.
Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) is pumping the latest cash into the fund, which in February raised £50million from the Edinburgh-based UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) and £10million from the Strathclyde Pension Fund.
When he unveiled the fund back in February, the-then business secretary Vince Cable said it would provide equity finance of between £1million and £10million community-scale schemes, including run-of-river hydro schemes, wind turbines on brownfield sites such as industrial estates, and biogas produced at landfill sites and from anaerobic digesters.
A power plant operator in southern Japan has restarted a reactor - the first to begin operating under new safety requirements following the Fukushima disaster.
Kyushu Electric Power said it had restarted the No 1 reactor at its Sendai nuclear plant in Satsumasendai, southern Japan, as planned.
The restart marks Japan’s return to nuclear energy four and a half years after the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the north east following an earthquake and tsunami.
National broadcaster NHK showed plant workers in the control room as they turned the reactor back on. Tomomitsu Sakata, a spokesman for Kyushu Electric Power, said the reactor was put back online as planned without any problems.
There are a lot of important things related to the number 42.
There are 42 US gallons in a barrel of oil. The three best-selling music albums – Michael Jackson’s Thriller, AC/DC’s Back in Black and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon – all last 42 minutes. Buzz Lightyear’s spaceship is called 42. Cricket has 42 laws (apparently!)
I’ll leave you to decide which is the most important out of those.
According to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!” But for us as an industry, it represents a great division of opinion. Why? Think about it; what does three on/three off, or 21 + 21 equal? 42.
£250 a night to stay in a kid’s tree house! Worse still is being stranded in the Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre (AECC) car park. The oil price isn’t what it was, but some things remain the same.
I recently slept in a hotel room that will cost £3,364.09 for Offshore Europe.
I have heard a speaker in the hotel’s function room equivocally refer to it as “beauty comes in many forms”. At least the hotel fits in with the Aberdeen industrial estate around it.
My own experience wasn’t bad, but Northsound over breakfast was more couthy than continental and I wasn’t tempted to pack the hotel’s toiletries. Hopefully its September visitors will get more VIP treatment; good news that the Marcliffe Hotel is still with us to set the standard.
Plans to expand one of Aberdeenshire’s biggest windfarms have been lodged.
The owners of Glens of Foudland, near Huntly, first unveiled plans to add another nine turbines to their existing 20-mast development last year.
After a public consultation revised plans for seven 328ft turbines have now been submitted to Aberdeenshire Council.
Italian energy group ERG is to buy German utility E.ON's Italian hydroelectric power plants for about 950 million euros ($1 billion), expanding its renewable portfolio which mostly comprises windfarms.
E.ON's Terni Hydroelectric Complex, which has 527 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity and produces about 1.4 terawatt hours of electricity a year, was put up for sale in late 2013 along with other assets in the country.
ERG currently operates windfarms in Europe with a total capacity of 1.38 gigawatts, including 1.1 gigawatts in Italy, as well as a gas-fired thermal plant in Sicily with a capacity of 480 MW.
With Brent crude prices falling below $50, widespread trader views of continuing oversupply and massive cut-backs in the oil and gas industry, Shell has begun drilling in one of the world’s highest cost locations, endeavouring to tap the huge reserves of the offshore Arctic!
So what’s going on?
We all know, but often choose to forget, that the oil industry is an extremely cyclical business, the continuing victim of regional wars, global geopolitics and macroeconomics.
After nearly 20 years of subdued prices, oil convincing broke through $50 in the second quarter of 2005, surging to exceed $140 in summer 2008 before collapsing again to $40 during the global financial crisis.
When a power company wants to build a new windfarm, it generally hires a consultant to make wind speed measurements at the proposed site for a period of time.
Dundee University is to lead a major research project to determine whether cheaper, more environmentally responsible and more effective foundations can be developed for the offshore renewables industry.
Ofgem, the gas and electricity regulator, has just published a report on Electricity Security of Supply which it dryly sub-titles: “A commentary on National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios for the next three winters”.
A commentary, perhaps, but also a substantial indictment. One of the basic responsibilities of government is to keep the lights on and the wheels of commerce turning. Nobody reading this report will be encouraged to believe that such outcomes are guaranteed.
Not that the current government deserves any particular blame. This is a long-term problem that has its roots in electricity privatisation; at which point the responsibility for investment passed to private companies which generally found it more profitable to keep old plant running than replace it in good time.
Public policy focused on promoting renewables while failing to take account of the pressing fact that ageing nuclear power stations and environmentally unacceptable coal generators were dropping out of the system.
Natural gas, once seen as a clear winner in President Barack Obama’s push for cleaner power, isn’t looking like much of a champ these days.
That so-called bridge that gas was supposed to be, leading America away from dirtier fossil fuels such as coal and toward renewable power, just got a lot shorter under the final Clean Power Plan released by the US Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.
The agency will reward early investments in wind and solar power to get the nation generating 28 percent of its power using renewables by 2030, up from a previously proposed 22 percent.
The more aggressive goal weakens natural gas’s role in America’s energy future in favor of a quicker transition to zero-carbon sources of electricity. It’s yet another blow for gas producers who’ve seen prices for their fuel slide amid a glut of supply from shale formations.
I find it impossible to feel anything but raw anger towards the Westminster Conservative Government’s policy on renewables and energy policy in general. Here is a government stating on the one hand that the country has to support the “makers” and export more yet on the other effectively stamping out a globally important growth industry with huge potential.
So far, Cameron & Co have scrapped or dramatically reduced support for onshore wind, solar, biomass, the Green Homes scheme, is selling the Green Investment Bank, has done away with the policy of building Zero Carbon Homes, reduced the incentive to move to lower emission vehicles and, of course, decided that the Climate Change Levy, which had been restricted to providers of non-renewable energy to businesses, will be imposed on renewable energy providers as well.
Last month saw a significant moment for this offshore oil & gas industry. What might be considered the single biggest change to affect domestic offshore health, safety and environmental management in many years came into force – the EU Offshore Safety Directive.
Following the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, the European Commission (EC) refocused attention on the potential for major accidents and, in particular, major environmental accidents, deciding that consistent standards were required for offshore operations across the European Union (EU) – particularly as many other European countries, such as Romania and Cyprus, were at the early stages of offshore development.
The initial proposal for an EU Regulation was met by strong opposition from Oil & Gas UK among others – against the threat that Regulation would have swept away our entire legal framework, which is recognised as world-class, used as an example of best practice by countries as far away as Australia.
The oil industry in Scotland is going through turbulent times. The continuing low oil prices are threatening investment and blighting confidence in a sector which has seen prosperity through what were some pretty tough years for the rest of the economy.
Offshore workers are the people on the front line in North Sea oil and gas. When workers on the front line are fed up, the rest of us should sit up and pay attention.
After all, North Sea oil and gas generate huge benefits for the UK and Scottish economies, provide a very good living for many people who rarely venture offshore, and sustain strong local and regional economies across the North and North East.
Of course, it’s not just terms and conditions which are under threat. Shell has just announced thousands of jobs to go across the globe, in the belief that there will be “a prolonged downturn” in the price of oil.
Quelle excitement! The latest UK offshore car boot sale results; or rather the 40 or so 28th Round licence offers that required a bit more deliberation because of environmental sensitivities.
“Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again - Bon Accord!”. Aberdeen’s official toast is more than an excuse to stretch your legs during a civic dinner. Skills shortages will come back round, but retaining teams without the right work for them atrophies skills and erodes shareholder value. Offshore Europe 2015 is taking “inspiring the next generation” as its theme, but that’s not the only strategy for managing the next skills shortage.
I’ve received many questions following recent articles on how to manage during difficult times.
Readers are asking what specific things they could do, or I have done, or we are planning to turn the generic advice into practical measures.
Well, I suppose it all depends. My business situation will be different from everyone else’s, so my decisions may or may not be relevant to others, but I am happy to share some of the tactical options we took to make our business less vulnerable during the current downturn in our industry.
So you’ve decided you can’t cost directly any more. You approach is now to improve processes for maximum efficiency. But what excuses are you likely to meet in rolling out these processes? And what can you do to counteract them?
Through work with Operators, Service Companies & Contractors of all types both in the UK and further afield here’s STC’s ‘top excuses’ (and our most effective approaches to making them go away!):
