The government has confirmed it will not offer bill payer support to the proposed tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay. Energy secretary Greg Clark said the decision not to back the scheme was made on grounds of cost and value. He told the Commons “the programme of six tidal lagoons, the first of which is Swansea Read more…

Corporate PPAs were seen as the great hope of post-subsidy renewables. But they have perhaps received a disproportionate amount of attention in relation to the volumes of new renewables they have actually delivered, according to Aurora’s Hugo Batten and Dimitri Kyriazis. They argue that market opacity, high transaction costs and a lack of end-to-end expertise are hurdles to Read more…

Simec Atlantis Energy says it will “be pressing forward” with plans over the next 12 months to convert its Uskmouth coal-fired power station to a 220MW plant fuelled by pellets derived from waste. The company thinks it can do this using its existing boilers and turbines and commence generation by 2020. If successful, it plans Read more…

John Laing Infrastructure Fund plans further investment in anaerobic digestion (AD) after buying two plants in the last 12 months. Announcing financial results for the year to 31 March, chairman Richard Morse said AD offers “attractive yield characteristics” and that increasingly competitive secondary solar and wind markets “suggest that more attractive risk-adjusted returns are present” Read more…

Swedish utility Vattenfall will start rolling out electric vehicle (EVs) charging infrastructure in the UK next month, and said all drivers will be able to use its charge points on a pay-as-you-go basis. The firm’s head of E-mobility, Tomas Björnsson, said an open network of chargers, available to all drivers, would enable faster adoption of EVs Read more…

Premier Inn is adding another 1.6MW of solar PV to around 70 hotels, taking its total capacity to 3MW, via Anesco, which will manage and optimise power and revenue. The Whitbread-owned chain expects to complete the rollout by Autumn. Whitbread director of sustainability, James Pitcher said solar was both a “key part of our sustainability Read more…

Drax is partnering with University of Leeds spinout C-Capture to undertake a £400,000 carbon capture and storage pilot at its North Yorkshire power station. The project aims to determine if C-Capture’s solvent works with biomass flue gas. If it does, it could pave the way for further projects to reduce carbon emissions from the power Read more…

Swedish utility Vattenfall said its 22MW battery at the 230MW Pen y Cymoedd wind farm in south Wales started commercial operations this week. The company will use the battery to provide balancing services to National Grid, having won a four year enhanced frequency response (EFR) contract from the system operator in 2016. The Pen y Read more…

MPs have urged government to help councils finance and deploy local energy projects as European funding avenues close off. They also suggest government taps the estimated £2bn sitting in dormant bank accounts to fund low carbon infrastructure. The Environmental Audit Committee’s report on green investment said changes to government policies in 2015 have led to Read more…

Business energy supplier Squeaky has called out biomass as ‘dirty’ power and says consumers are being misled in thinking that all renewable energy is ‘clean’. It wants Ofgem to mandate clear labelling in the form of a traffic light system so that people know whether the renewable energy they are buying is non-polluting. The firm Read more…

Dylan Crompton, head of corporate sales at British Gas Business, outlines why natural gas is stepping stone to a cleaner energy future. Using traditional energy to advance renewable goals may sound contradictory. But that is what’s required to successfully manage the UK’s transformation. Especially when the country is decommissioning energy capacity from coal and nuclear Read more…

Vattenfall is touting power purchase agreements (PPAs) as small as 1MW or 3GWh per annum from its South Kyle Wind Farm in South West Scotland. That means the firms is effectively targeting mid-sized companies as well as corporates. It hopes to convince them to buy renewable power and lock in prices for between 10 and 20 Read more…

At edie Live (22-23 May, NEC Birmingham), we will show you how your organisation can achieve a sustainable energy future, today. This is about increasing engagement and scaling up low-carbon technologies and innovations. This is Mission Possible. With a focus on energy, resources, the built environment, mobility and business leadership, edie Live will empower individuals Read more…

Atlantis says its 6MW tidal turbine array in Pentland Firth, Scotland, has completed all tests and entered its 25 year operations phase. The milestone caps more than a decade of work. The company will turn its attention to scaling its operations and commercialising tidal stream technology. The first phase of the 6MW MayGen project uses Read more…

Many bright minds are trying to harness renewables to decarbonise heat and deliver broader system benefits. The Energyst outlines some interesting projects taking place in the UK and Germany. A weekend heat store Chris Sansom is Associate Professor in Concentrating Solar Power at Cranfield University. His UK research focuses on novel materials for seasonal heat Read more…

Northumbrian Water will power all 1,858 of its sites using renewable electricity for the next four years after signing a deal with Ørsted. Ørsted owns or has a stake in nine UK offshore wind farms (Barrow, Burbo Bank, Burbo Bank Extension, Gunfleet Sands, Lincs, London Array, Walney, West of Duddon Sands and Westermost Rough). It Read more…

Google has hit its target to use 100% renewable power. The firm said it now has contracts in place to purchase 3GW of output from renewable sources and plans to fund construction of more power plants. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for Technical Infrastructure, said Google’s accounting for 2017 showed that it had bought more Read more…

Low carbon sources accounted for 50.4% of power generated last year, according to latest government data, overtaking fossil fuels. However, the UK’s total energy consumption remains more than 80% reliant on fossil fuels, and transport consumption continues to rise. Generation Total UK generation output in 2017 was 335.9 terawatt hours. Of the generation mix gas Read more…

National Grid has said the power system could cope with an overnight boom in electric vehicles (EVs) and that the extra generation capacity required to handle millions of vehicles is no big deal. Nine million electric vehicles on UK roads might require 8GW of extra power generation capacity if people charge them when they like. Read more…