By Barney Smith The bottled water industry is relatively new and has “Come from nowhere”. Who would have thought that we could be made to pay for bottles containing what used to be free from the tap? Yet some simple statistics would suggest that the sale of bottled water became big business. Apparently, in 2017 [...]
By Barney Smith Following the thoughts on Oil and Gas in Greenbarrel of 19 January 2021, it is now clear how crucial future governmental policy on Buildings will be. As the beginning of Chapter 4 of the Energy White Paper (WP) makes it explicit that for the UK to reach the net-zero target by 2050 [...]
By Barney Smith On second thoughts, it seemed only sensible for Greenbarrel to devote a bit more coverage to Oil and Gas in the context of the Energy White Paper, as a whole chapter (one of six) was devoted to this subject by the Government. Furthermore, Greenbarrel has already commented on the so-far somewhat limited [...]
By Barney Smith As a result of the combined news-appeal of the new strain of the Corona Virus and Christmas, the Government’s launch of a massive Energy White Paper on 18 December 2020 did not attract the attention which it would otherwise perhaps have merited. The Paper is long, but worth reading in full. This [...]
By Barney Smith On Tuesday afternoons, some of us have been tuning in to a series of interesting webinars hosted by Oxford University about different facets of climate change and decarbonisation (www.energy.ox.ac.uk). This has given rise to a set of rather random thoughts stimulated by, but not directly related to, the Oxford webinars. One early [...]
By Barney Smith On 19 November the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, spoke to, and formally released, plans for a ten-point “green” industrial revolution, the details of which had previously been widely leaked. Overall the plan “will mobilise £12 billion of government investment to create and support up to 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs in the [...]
By Barney Smith Greenbarrel of 6 October reported the opening gambits by Veolia, the world’s largest environmental services company, to take over Suez, another large French environmental services company, and closed with the observation “This one may run and run”. That verdict on the final prospects still looks good; but at least the initial game [...]
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 Barney Smith In France, things are different, though not necessarily better. The authoritative French newspaper, Le Monde, has reported that on Sunday 30th August Veolia, a large French environmental services company, had made an offer for 29.9 percent of the shares of Suez, another large French environmental conglomerate and an ancient rival. The 29.9 [...]
By Julian Singer The government has talked a lot about the need for regional investment and the importance of spreading the spending on infrastructure away from the major centres of population. An example of this was the recent announcement by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) to fund seventeen research projects which [...]