By Julian Singer Verditek’s main business is the manufacture of lightweight, flexible solar modules at its plant in Milan. In spite of the heavy toll from the corona virus in that city it had announced on 6 April 2020 that it was restarting its production line and expected to report its first revenue by the [...]
By Julian Singer As discussed in a recent Greenbarrel article on the Energy White paper, the government has reversed its earlier disinterest in small nuclear reactors and is now talking about putting the UK at the cutting edge in a field that it once led. The White Paper divides these reactors into two groups: Small Modular [...]
By Julian Singer As discussed in theGreenbarrel article of January 14, the recent government energy white paper restates the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan of reaching an offshore wind capacity of 40GW by 2030. What is the chance of achieving this? There are many steps in constructing an offshore wind farm. The process starts with the Crown [...]
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. [...]