Sellafield
Sellafield is to scrap the £1m plus it spends every year subsidising workers’ travel to and from the site.
The money is paid directly to Stagecoach and Northern Rail. The companies, in turn, provide cheaper fares for workers but Sellafield Ltd has confirmed that bosses are looking to end the subsidy by April 2010.
Blackpool Gazette 17th Feb 2008 more >>
Micro-renewables
BERR is set to under spend the paltry £18m in domestic grants of its low carbon buildings programme by £10m over the three years to March 2009. This in spite of strong demand for renewables among the general public. How bad is the situation? Well, BERR handed out grants for part of the cost of fitting solar photovoltaic systems covering only 270 houses last year. The Germans fitted 130,000. We have a total installed capacity (including commercial) of 16 Megawatt peak (Mwp). They have 3,800 Mwp. But even worse, during the year the pace of grant-giving slowed. Last May BERR simply slashed the grants and made them more difficult to get. The result, entirely predictably, was a collapse. Throughout much of 2006, for example, it was making 30-40 grants a month for ground source heat pumps. In the last three months of 2007, no such grants were made. There is a similar decline for solar thermal (hot water) and micro wind turbines. Not a single grant was allocated for a domestic solar PV system last month while the Germans installed about 12,000 systems.
Guardian 18th Feb 2008 more >>
Russia
A clear majority of west Europeans regard Russia as an unreliable energy supplier but remain resistant to paying more for alternative supplies from renewable energy sources.
FT 18th Feb 2008 more >>
