Excellent news for Glasgow yesterday that Scottish and Southern Energy had agreed to join with The University of Strathclyde (renowned for wind power research) in Glasgow to create a new Centre of Engineering Excellence for Renewable Energy (CEERE). The new facility will primarily become a new a new research and management centre for wind farm projects.
SSE Manging Director Ian Marchant:
“Our Centre of Excellence which will be known as CEERE will play a crucial part in helping SSE to realise its renewable energy goals in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, helping to secure energy supplies and contributing to the development of a lower carbon economy.
“Having considered all of the options in mainland Europe, Ireland and the UK, we have settled on Glasgow as the best location for CEERE, and the city’s own sustainable energy ambitions also make it a very appropriate choice.
“Working with the University of Strathclyde, and with the support of the Scottish Government, we will create and secure several hundred skilled jobs for Scotland.
“Scotland’s ambition to become a leader in renewable energy is well known and we are delighted to be making this investment in Scotland. We’re very positive about the prospects for creating new jobs to harness Europe’s renewable energy resources and the potential make a significant contribution to the achievement of Scotland’s ambitions.”
Strathclyde University Principal (and Professor) Jim McDonald said:
“If we are to address the challenges of climate change, rapid and widespread deployment of renewable energy technologies is critical.
“The new partnership reflects Scotland’s potential to be at the forefront of the UK and European renewable energy sectors, creating new jobs and research and development opportunities.”
The Scottish Government is investing £2.8m into the scheme, First Minister Alex Salmond spoke on the new energy centre yesterday.
Good news for Glasgow and Scotland – this is a considerable commitment to the green economy and hopefully another step on the way for Scotland to become a true renewable energy hub.
Knowing that oil reserves are fast running out it seems that the penny has finally dropped with leaders of the world who are now scrambling around for alternative energy resources. With the practical ideas like wind farms and hydro damns leading the way there is a lot of impractical and odd ideas flirting around with investors who think that some of these ideas might just be the way forward in the future. One of these wacky ideas is kites flying above New York City utilizing the near constant wind power that swirls around the state. This is just one of the wacky ideas and not only is these designs meant to reduce our carbon footprint; they are also being designed so that residents can benefit from greener and cheaper energy and could see the price of their utility bill fall, Cheap Gas and Electricity bills all year round for all.
Scientist have done some research into this and the plan is to capture high altitude winds that if done properly could supply the world’s energy needs 100 times over. The research suggests that the best places on earth to harvest high altitude wind power would be the eastern United States and East Asia.
A lot of questions still need to be answered on this alternative energy source, one popular question being is how will it affect air travel when there is massive kites flying at 30,000ft? Although this sounds like something from a Sci-Fi film it is actually being seriously looked at and a lot of investment has already went into researching this idea!
Europe’s largest ever green electricity business “Ecotricity” has won a well deserved environmental achievement award. The company set up in 1996 in Gloucestershire founded the green electricity market. Firstly set up to provide market places with environmental friendly electricity by Dale Vince.
Later on in 2009 Ecotricity will be rolled out to domestic customers who can join in on the environmentally friendly energy with some such company’s such as Thames Water, The Millennium Dome and The co-Operative bank.
In the last four years Ecotricity has went from a turnover of around £13000 to £50,000,000, most people are led to believe that many green electricity products and services are more costly and in many cases they are, but here at Ecotricity we succeed in challenging this issue.
We can’t quite believe it but it is actually mid-April. Therefore, with one-quarter of the year gone we thought that it would be interesting to compile our top 5 green energy related stories of 2009 so far. It has definitely been an eventful start to the year, the majority of energy news is understanably resonating from the new US administration and the continuing global economic situation. These combined events have seen some of the biggest institutions in the world begin to adapt their policies and practice in order to fall in line with the green revolution. Anyway, here are five of our top green stories of Q1 2009.
The Pentagon turns green! – Not exactly renowned for making either cost or energy efficiciency savings, the news that the US Defence HQ was installing 4,200 LED lights in Wedge 5 of the labyrinthyne building is a strong indication of the level of green agenda penetration. The new lights use 22 percent less power than the fluorescent bulbs replace, which will pay back their extra expense in 4 years.
Green Pentagon
Oil giant Shell drops green investments – You know that an economy is in trouble when giants such as Shell stop investing in anything – sadly, in this case it is their green energy initiatives which have bourne the brunt of cost-saving.
China orders Governments to focus on Green Energy – The importance of China grabbing the green initiative shouldn’t be underestimated. The country which houses 20% of the world’s population can have a huge impact on the environment of planet earth.
China - going green
We have saved the Ozone Layer – is this right!? – For years the central message of the CO2 emission reductiuon policies has been to ’save the Ozone Layer’ – well, according to the latest research we have actually managed to do it. Is this right, it all seems a bit improbable.
Thats our five top green stories of 2009 so far – what would be your choices?
With the alternative energy industry now reaching an annual turnover over of $9.2 billion pounds it is pretty easy to understand why the modern day investers are filling up their portfolios with energy stock investments. The long term growth of these investments is pretty good looking as we sail in to the 21 century.
It is true to say that if you where to invest in a new start-up green electricity company you could be investing in the Apple Mac or Google of our generation in terms of return in investment, people are getting fed up with rising fuel costs and by investing in these new alternative energy sources you would be acting as a market maker for the people who want to be receiving more green electricity and paying less on their energy bills.
Required Reading – BBC/Channel 4 Green Energy Q&A – EU Energy Policy
The complexities of EU bureaucracy can be difficult for anyone to comprehend, particularly when it comes to the issue of climate change. Thankfully, good old Auntie Beeb and Channel 4 have recently published excellent Q&A pages regarding the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). I have struggled with the comncept of this scheme for ages – therefore it was interesting to have it clarified by these two sources. Many of the issues regarding the function of the ETS are covered, including:
What is the ETS?
How will the ETS develop?
Is the ETS working?
What is carbon capture?
What about CO2 emissions not covered by the ETS?
What are carbon offsets?
What role does the EU envisage for renewables?
Included in the BBC report are EEA Graphs which detail the scale of the task ahead for the new UK Deptartment of Energy and Climate Change. Due to starting from a low initial renewable energy base, the UK has to increase its capacity more than any country in th EU in order to meet the EU 20% renewable energy target by 2020. Good luck, Mr Milliband.
Following on from our previous post on the rise of green power, further evidence that big business is beginning to wake up to the benefits of Renewable Energy – Drinks company Diageo (Smirnoff, Guinness) has revealed plans to build a £65m bio-energy plant at its Cameronbridge Facility in Fife.
The UK government have finally announced the details of their commitment to renewable energy. Whether or not these targets are attainable is another matter. However, from our point of view, any focus at all on this issue is to be welcomed. If this can be the start of the green energy revolution then hopefully in the future we will power our homes with cheap electricity and gas from clean sources.
For the unititated TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference which brings together some of the world’s greatest minds and challenges them to deliver the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (no pressure then!). The best of these are available online. Obviously the theme most relevant to us at Greener Power is ‘A Greener Future’. There are a total of 28 talks here on green issues and climate change, including big hitters such as Al Gore and Norman Foster. Our favourites include Juan Enriquez on ‘growing energy’, Edward Burtynsky’s photography and Marjora Carter’s heartfelt speech on greening her neighbourhood in the South Bronx-inspiring stuff. It would be great if the movers and shakers in the UK Energy industry could be influenced by these. There is also a great blog on TED, which is regularly updated with the latest happenings in Science and Technology. We haven’t had the time to go through the entire site yet, are there any others we should be watching?
Hi-Yep it is good to see that big business is recognising that by going green it does not necessarily follow that profits will suffer. They are finally beginning to realise that they could capitalise on the rise of ‘Green Consciousness’ amongst the UK population, and if thats the case then it should bode well for the environment.
Indeed, it is encouraging to see Scottish Hydro Electric implementing what they call their ‘better plan‘, which sounds like an excellent scheme to induce households accross the UK into increasing their day to day energy efficiency (100% hydro-electricity offered).
However, there is still a long road ahead as according to Statistics Estonia, although electricity generation from Renewables is increasing steadily (+7.5% from 2005-2006), the overall percentage of UK electricity generated in 2006 was only 4.6% – this is comapred to Germany (10.5%), France (11.3%), Sweden (54.3%), Austria (57.4%) and Norway (108.4%!).
So, hopefully now the green energy momentum is staring to build in both the business sector and in the case of individual households we can look forward to closing the gap on the rest of Europe.
With the 
