If you wanted to invest $100 billion in fuel for cars, would you be better off buying crude oil or building wind and solar farms? In a recent report BNP Paribas is clear: crude oil would need to sell at $10 - $20 per barrel to match the energy obtained from the wind and solar [...]
On 10 July Verditek announced that its flexible solar photovoltaic panels had received certification from the IEC[1]as suitable for long term operation in general open-air climates. It can now start manufacturing the panels at the factory of its subsidiary, Verditek Solar Italy (VSI), outside Milan, with plans to produce 1 MWp of panels this year [...]
On 22 July ITM Power announced that it had signed an agreement to lease new premises at the PLP Bessemer business park in Sheffield for the construction of its hydrogen-producing electrolysers. The 134,000 square feet building will give ITM an electrolyser manufacturing capacity of up to 1 GW per annum which, according to the company, [...]
Last year was yet another pivotal year for Active Energy Group (AEG) as it seeks commercial acceptance for its CoalSwitchTMproduct. CoalSwitch is a technique that converts all types of biomass, including low quality forestry materials and wood waste, into pellets or briquettes that can be used directly in coal-fired power stations without substantial retrofitting. The [...]
Concerns about the viability of the US shale gas industry have surfaced regularly over the last few years. It is heavily indebted and loses money, critics say, and is going to come to a sticky end. But then it doesn’t, the critics are silenced and the industry continues as before. So when on 24 June [...]
Powerhouse Energy (PHE), the developer of a modular system for converting waste into electricity and hydrogen, is in the right place at the right time. When yet another report on the problem of plastic waste disposal appears in the news media, PHE’s share price tends to increase. As it is, an agreement to develop the [...]
Decarbonising a developed economy is a difficult task, but it is especially challenging when that economy is a major producer of fossil fuels. For a long time the U.S.A. has been a major producer as well as the leading centre of expertise for the oil and gas industry, but in the last few years its [...]
It is well known that wind speed increases with distance above the ground. Since the power in the wind varies with the cube of the wind speed there is clearly a strong incentive to capture the energy in the wind from as high in the air as possible, which is why wind farms are built [...]
If you can’t produce it, why not import it? Such is the idea behind Atlantic Superconnection, the company that proposes to import electricity from power plants in Iceland that use renewable energy. Iceland produces nearly all its electricity from low carbon sources, about three quarters hydro-electric schemes and one quarter geothermal (hot water or steam [...]
Some of the 700,000 clients of the energy supplier First Utility were surprised when they received an email on 25 March stating that it would henceforth be known as Shell Energy. They should not have been surprised, because Shell had bought the company in 2018, but at that time there was no change of name [...]