Barclays bank has launched a new £100 million investment fund for UK farmers to invest in renewable energy, the bank announced this week. The launch of the fund follows a survey of UK farmers carried out by Barclays which found that over one-third are “expecting to invest in renewable energy, with the majority doing so within the next year.”
Some 80% of the farmers questioned said they think that renewable energy can provide significant cost savings, with 60% saying that renewable energy could generate additional income for their farm business, Barclays said. Meanwhile, Barclays itself predicts that the costs of wind power will fall by up to 50% in the next three to five years. continue reading »
Ireland joins a list of other European countries – including Germany, Austria and Portugal – to launch wind energy education programmes aimed at schools. In this guest post, Johanna Cafferkey from the Irish Wind Energy Association, tells us about a new education project in Ireland.
By: Johanna Cafferkey, IWEA
This August the IWEA (Irish Wind Energy Association), with the support of Gaelectric Group, launched a new training course for primary and secondary school teachers with the objective of strengthening knowledge and understanding of Ireland’s massive reserves of renewable power.
This is an important message as Ireland has the potential to create 28,000 jobs in renewable energy by 2020. In order to realise this potential, it is crucial that we support our educators in building their understanding of Ireland’s cutting edge technology in the wind energy industry. continue reading »
A new report has found that wind power in Alberta, the Canadian province facing global criticism for its highly-polluting oil sands fossil fuel projects, could be the perfect match for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).
Wind turbines create more power at night, when winds tend to be stronger in Alberta. Meanwhile most commuters do not drive at night so that is when they could charge their cars. If grid operators in Alberta could divert more wind energy for recharging electric cars at night then significant energy and emissions savings would result, the report noted.
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Blackstone, one of the world’s largest asset management and private equity firms, are investing in the Meerwind Offshore Wind farm in Germany. They’ve written a guest post for the EWEA blog on why they chose to do this….
By: Sean Klimczak, Managing Director in the Private Equity Group, Blackstone
Earlier this month, Blackstone, leading investment and advisory firm, announced the financial closing for “Meerwind,” the largest German offshore wind farm to complete its full financing process.
The Meerwind project was made possible by the German regulatory framework for offshore wind, which is one of the best designed and practical renewable programs in the world. Meerwind is the first project to close under the recently unveiled KfW-sponsored Offshore Wind Programme. This visionary program, developed by the German government, is designed to help replace the ~25,000 megawatts of power needed as a result of the recent announcement that Germany is retiring its entire fleet of nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear tragedy in Japan.
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Wind power is expected to dominate Africa’s renewable energy sector over the next decade as the continent faces a massive struggle of providing electricity to remote communities, according to a new report by a global consultancy.
A Frost & Sullivan press release issued on Wednesday noted that the total renewable power investment in Africa, which was €2.5 billion by 2010, is expected to grow to €40 billion by the end of this decade.
“The key growth sectors will be wind power, solar power, geothermal power and foreign direct investment (FDI) into energy and power infrastructure,” the release quoted Ross Bruton, Frost & Sullivan’s energy and power systems industry analyst, as saying.
The release noted that Africa is the most poorly electrified continent in the world even though it has enough energy resources to more than adequately meet its existing and growing energy needs. continue reading »
