By Julian Singer When we last wrote about Suzlon in April 2020 the company had just defaulted on its debts and had entered into the Reserve Bank of India’s framework for the resolution of stressed assets. The main cause of the problems were a high level of debt combined with an oversupply of manufacturing capacity [...]
By Julian Singer The H100 Fife project is designed to be a real life test of the use of hydrogen for heating homes. The idea is to build a facility in Levenmouth, Fife, that will use offshore wind power to generate hydrogen from electrolysers. The hydrogen will be stored on site and used to feed [...]
By Julian Singer On 19 October Ceres Power announced that it had expanded its strategic collaboration with the South Korean conglomerate Doosan. The original agreement in July 2019 consisted of licensing, technology transfer and engineering services for Ceres’s SteelCellTMsolid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Apparently this has gone well, as in the new agreement Doosan will [...]
By Julian Singer Bushveld Minerals, a vanadium mining company, reported a revenue of US$43.1 million for the first half of 2020, down from $78m for the first half of 2019, and leading to a loss of $10.3m after a profit of $30.8m in H1 2019. At the same time sales and production of vanadium both [...]
By Julian Singer Floating offshore wind turbines are starting to receive a lot of publicity, but people have been working on them for some time. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) small-scale tests were being performed in the 1990’s. They have much in common with offshore oil field platforms, so it is not [...]
By Julian Singer Which was the first European oil company to invest in renewable energy? In 2002 under John Browne, BP famously re-named itself Beyond Petroleum but abandoned this vision after his departure and following the Macondo disaster in 2010. DONG Energy (Danish Oil and Gas) sold its oil and gas business to INEOS in [...]
By Julian Singer Maybe it was euphoria from the easing of covid-19 restrictions or maybe it was the bright summer weather, but between the middle of May and the middle of June the share prices of most companies involved in renewable energy and listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) rose substantially. [...]
By Julian Singer During the 2020 monsoon the power output from India’s wind turbines was reported to be 30 to 40 per cent below that expected[1]. This is important because seventy per cent of India’s annual wind power is normally generated during this season, which runs from June to September. It is also surprising because [...]
By Julian Singer As discussed in a previous article (Greenbarrel, 13 October), the Prime Minister’s recent commitment to offshore wind has been welcomed by a wide range of business and environmental leaders, albeit with comments as to how the target will be achieved. Perhaps inevitably given the PM’s preference for dreams, some of the claims [...]
By Julian Singer When we last wrote in January 2019 about Proton Power Systems, the Munich-based producer of hydrogen fuel cells, the company had just announced a joint venture with two German companies to produce power systems for heavy-duty trucks. But it seems that this venture did not take off as it is not mentioned [...]
