You have no items in your shopping cart.
Questions about a product?
The UK is on track to meet the challenge of securing energy supplies both internationally and domestically, a new report commissioned by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown concluded today.
The report – ‘Energy Security: a national challenge in a changing world’ report – by the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on International Energy, Rt. Hon. Malcolm Wicks MP complements the actions set out in the recently published UK Low Carbon Transition Plan. It finds that many of the actions being taken to reduce climate risk also need to be sustained to tackle energy security.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the report and said:
“We are already taking a number of responsible far-sighted steps to put the UK on a secure, low carbon, affordable energy footing in the long-term and I am grateful for the work undertaken by Malcolm Wicks. The ability to maximise domestic energy reserves and establish home grown energy sources is vital alongside the UK’s ability to pull on every lever internationally in support of energy security.”
(more…)
As part of war on climate change, or at least as part of the PR game of trying to look as green as possible, the Government is trying to get us all to have smart meters installed in our homes to measure our energy use.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change reckons the smart meter market is set to be worth £9bn by 2020, and one company believes it has got a head start on many of its rivals.
However, even the Aim-listed BGlobal, which manufacturers smart meters, concedes that one of the problems facing the smart meter industry is that customers can change energy provider. Utility companies are therefore reluctant to pay for the meters and leave them in the homes of people who then opt to use other providers.
(more…)
The British Plastics Federation (BPF) is in the final stages of entering into a climate change agreement (BPF CCA) for the plastics sector with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
This Agreement has the potential to save the UK plastics industry more than £50m per annum in climate change levy (CCL) payments until the year 2017.
For companies with a qualifying site in the UK the agreement can result in an 80% discount on the CCL they pay on electricity and LPG. This scheme will be attractive to companies consuming in excess of 250,000 kWh per annum.
Strict entry deadlines have been put in place by DECC and the BPF director-general, Peter Davis, is calling on all plastics firms to act now to start the registration process for claiming their levy discount. “At last the plastics sector has been put on a level playing field with other materials that already have CCAs,” said Davis. “Furthermore, the discount afforded by a CCA will go straight back into investment to improve further the efficiency and competitiveness of the industry.
(more…)
The British energy regulator said Friday that it has fined EDF Energy Networks 2 million pounds for failing to meet mandatory targets for connecting customers to its electricity network. EDF is a monopoly provider of certain connection services in London, southeast England and eastern England.
OFGEM, the Office of the Gas and Electricity Markets, said there had been more than 100 cases since 2006 in which EDF failed to make a connection offer within three months as required. “Customers should not have to accept poor service in any part of the energy market,” said Sarah Harrison, the agency’s managing director for corporate affairs.
“We recognize that EDF Energy has now taken steps to improve its connections service, but they should have taken this action some time ago,” she added. EDF Energy Networks is part of the Paris-based EDF Group.
Dont forget to check out our commercial services and see how much you could save!
A reduced demand for fossil fuels saw carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced by the UK energy industry fall by two percent in 2008.
That is one of the headline findings of the Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2009, which was released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change today.
The digest noted that there was a one percent fall in prime energy consumption last year, which coupled with significant shift from coal to gas, led to the reduction in CO2 emissions.
Electricity generated from renewable energy sources accounted for 5.5 percent of total electricity generation, up from 4.9 percent in 2007.
(more…)
With pressure mounting on airlines to cut their carbon emissions, a new report has suggested that the aviation sector will spend 1 billion (£607 million) on the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).
According to RDC Aviation and Point Carbon, carriers are likely to exceed the sector’s emission cap by 77 million tonnes of CO2 in 2011, an amount that would cost 1.1 billion to cover through carbon offsetting, businessgreen.com reports.
Dell has launched a new range of enterprise IT solutions that the company claims are all compliant with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star 5.0 rating.
The computer manufacturer said that its OptiPlex, Precision and Latitude lines of workstations, desktops and notebooks offer businesses the chance to save money and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Nearly all of the devices are capable of operating in a low-power mode that requires less than five watts.
It is also encouraging clients to adopt its flexible computing model, whereby computer processing power and data storage are stored centrally by the company and accessed remotely by clients.
(more…)
Today, the day the consultation on the introduction of smart metering in every home by 2020 concludes, we are asking the government to take a lead. By the end of October, the government must publish its response and set up a programme to deliver 46m meters to British homes. Ministers need to turn their preferred options into firm policy statements in their consultation response. Smart meters will herald a revolution in the way customers manage energy.
Time is of the essence. The government estimates smart meters will lead to an annual reduction of 2.6m tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020 – the equivalent of taking a million cars of the road – but this will be undermined by each day’s delay in implementing the programme. This new technology will mean the end of estimated bills and meter readers visiting homes, and will provide customers and energy suppliers with accurate and timely information. It will allow customers to compare the electricity and gas they use against their historical use and cost.
(more…)
The government yesterday awarded Vestas Technology £6m but the cash will not stop the Danish turbine manufacturer from controversially shutting its Isle of Wight factory on Friday.
As 25 Vestas workers continued to occupy the factory yesterday, energy secretary Ed Miliband was heckled by protesters over the closure of the renewable energy business while he was in Oxford on ministerial business.
A possession order will be sought by Vestas to regain control of the factory at court on Wednesday. The sit-in by the non-unionised staff began last Tuesday.
The £6m award will go towards Vestas’s offshore research and development division.
Vestas claims it has to close its manufacturing unit with the loss of 600 jobs because the UK onshore wind market is not growing fast enough. It says projects are slowed down by planning objections. It will move production to Colorado in the United States.
(more…)
More than £1 million of finance will be made available to fleet managers in the UK as an incentive for switching to using alternative fuels or electric vehicles.
The Infrastructure Grant Programme is part of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) package of measures to lower the sector’s carbon emissions by 14 percent over the next decade.
Funding will be made available to fleets developing facilities for the use of biofuels or recharging points and other such infrastructure requirements for electric cars.
(more…)
