By GreenBiz Staff
Published August 31, 2010
PARIS, France — France's Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) has launched a program to pump €1.35 billion ($1.71 billion) into green chemistry, solar power and other emerging technology research.
Over the next four years, the government will distribute €900 million ($1.14 billion) in loans and €450 million ($570 million) in subsidies.
The funds will go toward biofuels, carbon capture and storage, green chemistry, and solar, marine and geothermal energy. The government has not said how much money each category will receive.
The loans and subsidies will be handed out only for certain research stages, specifically for the research demonstration, pre-commercialization and technological testing stages between research and commercial development.
By the end of this year, ADEME will distribute €190 million, followed by €290 each of the following years through 2014. The government also expects to bring in €2 billion in private investments.
Friday, 3 September 2010
Tidal energy firm’s shortlist generates waves of resentment
Sep 3 2010 by Martin Shipton, Western Mail
PUBLIC relations professionals are angry after a number of Welsh firms were eliminated from the shortlist for a lucrative contract involving an offshore energy project.
Only one Welsh company and three with head offices in England are being considered for a three-year contract for media and communications work relating to the underwater equivalent of a wind farm that could power 1,000 homes in Pembrokeshire.
The project, which is seeking EU funding, is being developed at Ramsey Sound by Tidal Energy Ltd (TEL).
One PR industry insider said: “It is preposterous to argue that you need to bring in English companies to run a short-term communications contract for a relatively small- scale energy project in West Wales.
“The English companies are well respected and they are obviously entitled to compete for the work, but their credentials are no better than those we have in Wales. In fact, some local companies have much better track records for running media and community consultation campaigns in Wales – often involving controversial energy projects.
“We are talking about public money being spent on a Welsh project which is intended to bring benefits to Wales. The English companies do not have our deep local knowledge, they probably have very limited contact networks in Wales, and it is hard to see how they could run a bilingual communications service – which would surely be essential.”
An executive in one of the Welsh companies rejected by the TEL procurement process said: “We were very surprised to be turned down at the first hurdle, as this is the kind of work we do all the time and which we have won awards for.”
TEL development director Chris Williams said: “It is clear from the response to the published contract notice that the PR market is extremely competitive. We had 18 responses in total and were very impressed by the qualities and capabilities demonstrated.
“We have carried out an objective assessment of the proposals against pre-defined weighting criteria which had been advised in the original notice, and have consequently shortlisted four.
“The weighting criteria could not and did not include any allocation for nationality of the bidding company. We fully understand that companies not selected will be extremely disappointed, but we can assure those who were unsuccessful that all proposals were considered carefully.”
PUBLIC relations professionals are angry after a number of Welsh firms were eliminated from the shortlist for a lucrative contract involving an offshore energy project.
Only one Welsh company and three with head offices in England are being considered for a three-year contract for media and communications work relating to the underwater equivalent of a wind farm that could power 1,000 homes in Pembrokeshire.
The project, which is seeking EU funding, is being developed at Ramsey Sound by Tidal Energy Ltd (TEL).
One PR industry insider said: “It is preposterous to argue that you need to bring in English companies to run a short-term communications contract for a relatively small- scale energy project in West Wales.
“The English companies are well respected and they are obviously entitled to compete for the work, but their credentials are no better than those we have in Wales. In fact, some local companies have much better track records for running media and community consultation campaigns in Wales – often involving controversial energy projects.
“We are talking about public money being spent on a Welsh project which is intended to bring benefits to Wales. The English companies do not have our deep local knowledge, they probably have very limited contact networks in Wales, and it is hard to see how they could run a bilingual communications service – which would surely be essential.”
An executive in one of the Welsh companies rejected by the TEL procurement process said: “We were very surprised to be turned down at the first hurdle, as this is the kind of work we do all the time and which we have won awards for.”
TEL development director Chris Williams said: “It is clear from the response to the published contract notice that the PR market is extremely competitive. We had 18 responses in total and were very impressed by the qualities and capabilities demonstrated.
“We have carried out an objective assessment of the proposals against pre-defined weighting criteria which had been advised in the original notice, and have consequently shortlisted four.
“The weighting criteria could not and did not include any allocation for nationality of the bidding company. We fully understand that companies not selected will be extremely disappointed, but we can assure those who were unsuccessful that all proposals were considered carefully.”
Carbon Trading Lurches Off Course
Mick Tsikas/Reuters
Steam and other emissions spew from a chemical manufacturing facility in Melbourne. The Australian Climate Exchange, which introduced the first electronic trading system for greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, discreetly halted business in January.
By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
Published: September 1, 2010
SINGAPORE — In July 2007, the Australian Climate Exchange, known as the A.C.X., introduced the first electronic trading system for greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Voluntary Emission Reductions, or VERs, generated by abatement projects verified by the government-sponsored Australian Greenhouse Office, had been introduced a few months earlier and initial business on the exchange was brisk. It set up a registry for Australian VER certificates and soon was also trading similar instruments from overseas.
But this January, the A.C.X. discreetly halted business, and what had started like a lion went out like a lamb.
“We had to close the business down because we’d run out of funds to continue,” said Tim Hanlin, the former managing director of the exchange. “The government of Kevin Rudd had indicated the focus would move toward a mandatory market and we had made significant investments to get ready for that eventuality. That was our downfall.
“If we had stuck to the voluntary market, probably we would still be in business today, albeit probably in a much reduced way.”
The outlook for the exchange turned bleak once it became clear that governments meeting at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in 2009, commonly known as the Copenhagen summit meeting, would not provide a new direction or stimulus to the market. And there has been little to cheer for the carbon trading business community ever since.
In Australia, the Labor Party government led by Mr. Rudd backpedaled on its planned compulsory emissions trading plan in April, a decision that contributed to Mr. Rudd’s ouster as leader in June by his successor, Julia Gillard.
In the United States, a plan for emissions trading has been stuck in the Senate. There are also concerns about delays in Japan.
“Having held out for that long, we had to close it down because there is really no prospect here in Australia for a market in carbon trading for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Hanlin said by telephone last month. “At the end of the day, we’d made a significant investment and we needed more funds to continue on. And there really wasn’t a story to say that the voluntary market was going to grow to an extent where we could make the business.”
Three years ago, in anticipation of substantial growth in the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, governments and business groups around the Asia-Pacific region were jockeying to establish a regional hub for carbon trading.
New Zealand had dreams of becoming the world’s “Green Wall Street” and the New Zealand Stock Exchange started working on developing a carbon trading system and a carbon registry. The authorities in Singapore also announced plans to pass legislation enabling tax-free carbon trading that would establish the city-state as a major carbon trading hub.
Even India joined in, with the Multi Commodity Exchange in Mumbai, or M.C.X., starting futures trading in carbon credits early in 2008. But interest fizzled out after three months, recalled Jignesh Shah, the founder, chairman and group chief executive of Financial Technologies, a company that owns 10 exchanges, including the M.C.X.
In fact, after three years, little concrete progress has been achieved, though New Zealand, the first jurisdiction outside Europe to commit to a nationwide mandatory carbon pricing plan, started the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme on July 1.
In 2007, the New Zealand Stock Exchange had created a venture known as Time Zone One, or T.Z.1, to provide a trading system for credits created by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and to develop a global registry. But while it managed to develop the registry, selling it in 2009 to Markit, a global financial information services company based in London, it has so far failed to make significant progress on the trading system.
“N.Z.X. has the platform, the technology and the capability to run a carbon market,” wrote Merja Myllylahti, a New Zealand exchange spokeswoman, in an e-mail reply to questions. “We generated a very good return out of the carbon registry business.”
“However, the Emissions Trading Scheme, as it is designed, has very little liquidity. Building the platform does not in itself create the market.” Still, she said, “were this to change in future, we will be ready.”
Helen Robinson, managing director of Markit Environmental Registry, which acquired the T.Z.1 registry, acknowledges that the market has remained “lumpy” as a result of the lack of agreement in Copenhagen and U.S. government delays on the issue. “There are still pockets of great activity taking place in the market outside Europe, but you’ve got to know where to look,” she said, pointing to Brazil, China and some U.S. states.
Amid the financial and economic turmoil of last year, the total transacted value in the global carbon market continued to increase, albeit slowly. In 2009, global market volume totaled $144 billion, up 6 percent from 2008, after doubling in value from 2007 to 2008, according to a report this year from the World Bank, “State and Trends of the Carbon Market.”
The report said the European Union’s Emission Trading System, or E.T.S., remained the engine of the global carbon market, with more than six billion so-called allowances traded in 2009 for a total value of $118 billion. But trading in credits based on carbon-offset projects — in which polluters buy permits issued to finance investments in initiatives like forestry programs or clean-energy production — slumped 54 percent, to $3.4 billion. Trading in credits derived from the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism were worst hit, dropping 59 percent, to an estimated $2.7 billion.
Go to Blog .A separate report by Ecosystem Marketplace and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which looked only at the state of the voluntary market — operating outside regulated carbon emissions reduction plans — showed that the market slowed significantly in 2008, down 47 percent in value, to $387 million, after three consecutive years of growth. The overall economic downturn and uncertainty about future climate legislation were the main factors that affected the voluntary market.
The slowdown has left its traces on the industry. Last month, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the platform for the first cap-and-trade system in North America, was reported to have laid off nearly half of its employees — the exchange refused to confirm numbers — and staff changes and cuts have also been reported on major trading desks.
“For companies that had staffed on the basis that we were a couple of months away from starting really serious trading, they’ve realized they’ve started too soon, which is why they’ve downsized, waiting until something actually happens,” said Henry Derwent, chief executive of the International Emissions Trading Association, an independent, nonprofit organization representing companies involved in carbon trading.
“There are a lot of bearish things about the market at the moment; in particular the slowing down of the expected trajectory of emissions trading in the United States and Australia, and to a certain extent in Japan. But let’s not go over the top,” Mr. Derwent said. Underlying fundamentals are still supportive, he said, and there are also some positive, short-term developments in countries like China, which has restated its commitment to emissions trading.
“However difficult it is for some countries to swallow at the moment, emissions reduction is with us forever,” he added. “On a long-term basis, 7 to 10 years, it’s difficult to see how the world can go anywhere else.”
The recently set-up Carbon Trade Exchange, C.T.X., which started trading in July, indicates that plenty of players still believe in the market’s potential. Based in London, with offices in Australia and New York, C.T.X. bills itself as the world’s first global spot electronic trading platform for voluntary carbon credits.
“We’re seeing more forward thinking toward innovative market development, and the right infrastructure tools to ensure the integrity and transparency of the marketplace,” said Ms. Robinson, of Markit, which is providing credit issuance, registry, transaction and management services for the new exchange.
Wayne Sharpe, chief executive of C.T.X., is also the founder of Bartercard, an Australian business he created in 1991 to apply the credit card business model to barter transactions. Bartercard has since grown into what it says is the world’s largest international system for noncash trades, handling the equivalent of $2 billion in annual revenue.
Mr. Sharpe says that background may be an advantage in getting carbon trading off the ground.
“I think the reason why other exchanges haven’t been successful is because they’ve approached carbon credit trading from the platform of commodity trading,” he said during an interview. “But they are not the same thing. We’ve designed something from the ground up and taken into consideration what the industry really needs; something very simple and cost effective, so that companies don’t see it as a major barrier.”
“Most of the traders that start carbon trading know nothing about carbon,” he added. “They know about trading, so they’re used to dealing with incumbent software solutions that are more like a stock exchange.”
Many of the principles used in C.T.X.’s technology are similar to Bartercard, but transposed into a low-cost and easily accessed Web-based system, he said.
“One of the problems you have with a lot of the incumbent regulated market exchanges is that in order to use the exchange you need to subscribe to the exchange and a clearing house, and also have access to other software to allow you to interface with the exchange,” Mr. Sharpe said.
Go to Blog .“The total cost is so prohibitive that only large financial institutions or traders can afford it. Trading on some climate exchanges in the first year will cost you 40,000-50,000 Australian dollars,” or about $36,000 to $45,000, he said.
For a fringe market with only a few hundred players — even if they are big ones — that sort of cost is disproportionate and a barrier to achieving viable scale, he said. In contrast, annual fees to trade on C.T.X. range from €800 to €2,500, or $1,000 to $3,200, depending on the size of the player.
Mr. Sharpe said that initial trading volumes on C.T.X. were small, but growing. “The reality is that we didn’t expect to have any big trading volume for the first few months,” he said. “Right now we’re still building inventories and relationships with the developers and project originators, and brokers.”
The exchange has already signed up some of the biggest project originators, including South Pole Carbon Asset Management, based in Zurich; Carbonyatra, based in Mumbai; and Climate Bridge, headquartered in London, Shanghai and Chennai, he said, as well as large brokers including Tullett Prebon in London. It is also linked with Masdar City, which is being built in Abu Dhabi as the world’s first carbon-neutral city; and it plans to offer brokerage services to Middle Eastern state-owned companies that want to go carbon neutral. The next step will be to start prospecting for potential buyers of credits, Mr. Sharpe said.
Other carbon exchanges are also under development, including the Indian Climate Exchange, a planned joint venture between the Chicago Climate Exchange and leading Indian industrial companies. In China, the Chicago exchange is working with the China National Petroleum Corp. and a Chinese government agency, the Tianjin Property Rights Exchange, to set up the Tianjin Climate Exchange, announced in 2008.
The new Singapore Mercantile Exchange, a currency and commodity derivatives exchange that started live trading at the end of last month, has also been doing some research to develop a carbon credit product. Still, its vice chairman, Mr. Shah of Financial Technologies, said that for any derivative market to succeed, “the standardization of the physical market is essential. At this moment, the standardization in the actual market is not there.”
“I believe carbon will be very big — like the new-generation oil of green energy,” Mr. Shah said. “It’s bound to work the moment some standardization comes.”
Steam and other emissions spew from a chemical manufacturing facility in Melbourne. The Australian Climate Exchange, which introduced the first electronic trading system for greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, discreetly halted business in January.
By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
Published: September 1, 2010
SINGAPORE — In July 2007, the Australian Climate Exchange, known as the A.C.X., introduced the first electronic trading system for greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Voluntary Emission Reductions, or VERs, generated by abatement projects verified by the government-sponsored Australian Greenhouse Office, had been introduced a few months earlier and initial business on the exchange was brisk. It set up a registry for Australian VER certificates and soon was also trading similar instruments from overseas.
But this January, the A.C.X. discreetly halted business, and what had started like a lion went out like a lamb.
“We had to close the business down because we’d run out of funds to continue,” said Tim Hanlin, the former managing director of the exchange. “The government of Kevin Rudd had indicated the focus would move toward a mandatory market and we had made significant investments to get ready for that eventuality. That was our downfall.
“If we had stuck to the voluntary market, probably we would still be in business today, albeit probably in a much reduced way.”
The outlook for the exchange turned bleak once it became clear that governments meeting at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in 2009, commonly known as the Copenhagen summit meeting, would not provide a new direction or stimulus to the market. And there has been little to cheer for the carbon trading business community ever since.
In Australia, the Labor Party government led by Mr. Rudd backpedaled on its planned compulsory emissions trading plan in April, a decision that contributed to Mr. Rudd’s ouster as leader in June by his successor, Julia Gillard.
In the United States, a plan for emissions trading has been stuck in the Senate. There are also concerns about delays in Japan.
“Having held out for that long, we had to close it down because there is really no prospect here in Australia for a market in carbon trading for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Hanlin said by telephone last month. “At the end of the day, we’d made a significant investment and we needed more funds to continue on. And there really wasn’t a story to say that the voluntary market was going to grow to an extent where we could make the business.”
Three years ago, in anticipation of substantial growth in the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, governments and business groups around the Asia-Pacific region were jockeying to establish a regional hub for carbon trading.
New Zealand had dreams of becoming the world’s “Green Wall Street” and the New Zealand Stock Exchange started working on developing a carbon trading system and a carbon registry. The authorities in Singapore also announced plans to pass legislation enabling tax-free carbon trading that would establish the city-state as a major carbon trading hub.
Even India joined in, with the Multi Commodity Exchange in Mumbai, or M.C.X., starting futures trading in carbon credits early in 2008. But interest fizzled out after three months, recalled Jignesh Shah, the founder, chairman and group chief executive of Financial Technologies, a company that owns 10 exchanges, including the M.C.X.
In fact, after three years, little concrete progress has been achieved, though New Zealand, the first jurisdiction outside Europe to commit to a nationwide mandatory carbon pricing plan, started the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme on July 1.
In 2007, the New Zealand Stock Exchange had created a venture known as Time Zone One, or T.Z.1, to provide a trading system for credits created by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and to develop a global registry. But while it managed to develop the registry, selling it in 2009 to Markit, a global financial information services company based in London, it has so far failed to make significant progress on the trading system.
“N.Z.X. has the platform, the technology and the capability to run a carbon market,” wrote Merja Myllylahti, a New Zealand exchange spokeswoman, in an e-mail reply to questions. “We generated a very good return out of the carbon registry business.”
“However, the Emissions Trading Scheme, as it is designed, has very little liquidity. Building the platform does not in itself create the market.” Still, she said, “were this to change in future, we will be ready.”
Helen Robinson, managing director of Markit Environmental Registry, which acquired the T.Z.1 registry, acknowledges that the market has remained “lumpy” as a result of the lack of agreement in Copenhagen and U.S. government delays on the issue. “There are still pockets of great activity taking place in the market outside Europe, but you’ve got to know where to look,” she said, pointing to Brazil, China and some U.S. states.
Amid the financial and economic turmoil of last year, the total transacted value in the global carbon market continued to increase, albeit slowly. In 2009, global market volume totaled $144 billion, up 6 percent from 2008, after doubling in value from 2007 to 2008, according to a report this year from the World Bank, “State and Trends of the Carbon Market.”
The report said the European Union’s Emission Trading System, or E.T.S., remained the engine of the global carbon market, with more than six billion so-called allowances traded in 2009 for a total value of $118 billion. But trading in credits based on carbon-offset projects — in which polluters buy permits issued to finance investments in initiatives like forestry programs or clean-energy production — slumped 54 percent, to $3.4 billion. Trading in credits derived from the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism were worst hit, dropping 59 percent, to an estimated $2.7 billion.
Go to Blog .A separate report by Ecosystem Marketplace and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which looked only at the state of the voluntary market — operating outside regulated carbon emissions reduction plans — showed that the market slowed significantly in 2008, down 47 percent in value, to $387 million, after three consecutive years of growth. The overall economic downturn and uncertainty about future climate legislation were the main factors that affected the voluntary market.
The slowdown has left its traces on the industry. Last month, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the platform for the first cap-and-trade system in North America, was reported to have laid off nearly half of its employees — the exchange refused to confirm numbers — and staff changes and cuts have also been reported on major trading desks.
“For companies that had staffed on the basis that we were a couple of months away from starting really serious trading, they’ve realized they’ve started too soon, which is why they’ve downsized, waiting until something actually happens,” said Henry Derwent, chief executive of the International Emissions Trading Association, an independent, nonprofit organization representing companies involved in carbon trading.
“There are a lot of bearish things about the market at the moment; in particular the slowing down of the expected trajectory of emissions trading in the United States and Australia, and to a certain extent in Japan. But let’s not go over the top,” Mr. Derwent said. Underlying fundamentals are still supportive, he said, and there are also some positive, short-term developments in countries like China, which has restated its commitment to emissions trading.
“However difficult it is for some countries to swallow at the moment, emissions reduction is with us forever,” he added. “On a long-term basis, 7 to 10 years, it’s difficult to see how the world can go anywhere else.”
The recently set-up Carbon Trade Exchange, C.T.X., which started trading in July, indicates that plenty of players still believe in the market’s potential. Based in London, with offices in Australia and New York, C.T.X. bills itself as the world’s first global spot electronic trading platform for voluntary carbon credits.
“We’re seeing more forward thinking toward innovative market development, and the right infrastructure tools to ensure the integrity and transparency of the marketplace,” said Ms. Robinson, of Markit, which is providing credit issuance, registry, transaction and management services for the new exchange.
Wayne Sharpe, chief executive of C.T.X., is also the founder of Bartercard, an Australian business he created in 1991 to apply the credit card business model to barter transactions. Bartercard has since grown into what it says is the world’s largest international system for noncash trades, handling the equivalent of $2 billion in annual revenue.
Mr. Sharpe says that background may be an advantage in getting carbon trading off the ground.
“I think the reason why other exchanges haven’t been successful is because they’ve approached carbon credit trading from the platform of commodity trading,” he said during an interview. “But they are not the same thing. We’ve designed something from the ground up and taken into consideration what the industry really needs; something very simple and cost effective, so that companies don’t see it as a major barrier.”
“Most of the traders that start carbon trading know nothing about carbon,” he added. “They know about trading, so they’re used to dealing with incumbent software solutions that are more like a stock exchange.”
Many of the principles used in C.T.X.’s technology are similar to Bartercard, but transposed into a low-cost and easily accessed Web-based system, he said.
“One of the problems you have with a lot of the incumbent regulated market exchanges is that in order to use the exchange you need to subscribe to the exchange and a clearing house, and also have access to other software to allow you to interface with the exchange,” Mr. Sharpe said.
Go to Blog .“The total cost is so prohibitive that only large financial institutions or traders can afford it. Trading on some climate exchanges in the first year will cost you 40,000-50,000 Australian dollars,” or about $36,000 to $45,000, he said.
For a fringe market with only a few hundred players — even if they are big ones — that sort of cost is disproportionate and a barrier to achieving viable scale, he said. In contrast, annual fees to trade on C.T.X. range from €800 to €2,500, or $1,000 to $3,200, depending on the size of the player.
Mr. Sharpe said that initial trading volumes on C.T.X. were small, but growing. “The reality is that we didn’t expect to have any big trading volume for the first few months,” he said. “Right now we’re still building inventories and relationships with the developers and project originators, and brokers.”
The exchange has already signed up some of the biggest project originators, including South Pole Carbon Asset Management, based in Zurich; Carbonyatra, based in Mumbai; and Climate Bridge, headquartered in London, Shanghai and Chennai, he said, as well as large brokers including Tullett Prebon in London. It is also linked with Masdar City, which is being built in Abu Dhabi as the world’s first carbon-neutral city; and it plans to offer brokerage services to Middle Eastern state-owned companies that want to go carbon neutral. The next step will be to start prospecting for potential buyers of credits, Mr. Sharpe said.
Other carbon exchanges are also under development, including the Indian Climate Exchange, a planned joint venture between the Chicago Climate Exchange and leading Indian industrial companies. In China, the Chicago exchange is working with the China National Petroleum Corp. and a Chinese government agency, the Tianjin Property Rights Exchange, to set up the Tianjin Climate Exchange, announced in 2008.
The new Singapore Mercantile Exchange, a currency and commodity derivatives exchange that started live trading at the end of last month, has also been doing some research to develop a carbon credit product. Still, its vice chairman, Mr. Shah of Financial Technologies, said that for any derivative market to succeed, “the standardization of the physical market is essential. At this moment, the standardization in the actual market is not there.”
“I believe carbon will be very big — like the new-generation oil of green energy,” Mr. Shah said. “It’s bound to work the moment some standardization comes.”
US Verenium wraps up biofuels business sale to BP
Posted on: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:45:51 EDT
Sep 03, 2010 (MANAVIGATOR via COMTEX) --
US enzyme development company Verenium Corporation (NASDAQ: VRNM | PowerRating) said yesterday it has completed the sale of its cellulosic biofuels business to BP Biofuels North America, part of BP (LON:BP), for USD98.3m (EUR76.7m). The deal includes Verenium's sites in Jennings and San Diego as well as research and development facilities. Besides, BP became the only owner of Vercipia Biofuels and Galaxy Biofuels, two joint ventures set up with Verenium in the past. Under the terms of the agreement, Verenium maintained its commercial enzyme operations, including its biofuels enzymes products. The company plans to use the proceeds from the deal to expand its core business. UBS Investment Bank was the financial consultant to Verenium, which was also legally advised by Cooley LLP. DLA Piper LLP (US) acted as legal advisor to BP.
Sep 03, 2010 (MANAVIGATOR via COMTEX) --
US enzyme development company Verenium Corporation (NASDAQ: VRNM | PowerRating) said yesterday it has completed the sale of its cellulosic biofuels business to BP Biofuels North America, part of BP (LON:BP), for USD98.3m (EUR76.7m). The deal includes Verenium's sites in Jennings and San Diego as well as research and development facilities. Besides, BP became the only owner of Vercipia Biofuels and Galaxy Biofuels, two joint ventures set up with Verenium in the past. Under the terms of the agreement, Verenium maintained its commercial enzyme operations, including its biofuels enzymes products. The company plans to use the proceeds from the deal to expand its core business. UBS Investment Bank was the financial consultant to Verenium, which was also legally advised by Cooley LLP. DLA Piper LLP (US) acted as legal advisor to BP.
John Deere Selling Wind Turbine Division to Nuclear Power Giant
By Leon Kaye | September 1st, 2010
Deere & Company‘s (known to most of us as John Deere) development of its wind turbine business unit is a compelling case study in corporate strategy. Founded in 1837, the company had become an iconic business partner to millions of farmers. Agriculture, however, has changed drastically over the past century, becoming more consolidated, and family farms have slowly disappeared.
Several years ago, the company’s executives brainstormed over how the company could reinvigorate its business as even more family farms closed. Deere’s leadership realized that they had the manufacturing capacity, enjoyed a close relationship with many of its requirements, and in a nutshell, created a business unit focused on wind turbines—which in turn could be built on land owned by many of its customers. John Deere Renewables was born, and includes projects stretching from the Columbia River in Oregon to the thumb on Michigan. John Deere also had a huge role in the rebuilding of Greenburg, Kansas, which was devastated by a 2007 tornado—now it is home to a wind project that powers 4000 homes. Yesterday Deere & Company announced the sales of the business unit to Exelon for almost US$900 million.
Like many large companies over time that bounce their strategies between diversification and consolidation of core businesses, Deere & Company has decided that it wants to focus on its equipment business. Exelon, meanwhile, has watched any enthusiasm for nuclear power ebb in the US. So the nation’s largest nuclear power generator figures John Deere Renewables can give it an anchor in the wind energy sector. The US$17 billion dollar company will acquire about 730 megawatts of installed wind capacity, and has the potential to pursue an additional 1500 MW of new wind projects—or it can choose not to pursue deals that John Deere Renewables had already negotiated.
Exelon bills itself as committed to “responsive, low-carbon energy investment.” The company claims that it will reduce its carbon footprint by 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2020, and extols its pursuit of sustainability throughout its web site. Its CEO, John W. Rowe, testified to Congress on climate change issues back in 1992, and is 1 of the only 8 utilities that participates in the EPA’s Climate Leaders Program. In a partnership with the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC), Exelon has spearheaded plans to indentify rare and endangered plants and animals that make their habitat around the company’s facilities.
Exelon’s acquisition of John Deere Renewables is a peek into the future of renewable energy: the reality is that if renewable technologies such as wind and solar will scale and succeed, large companies like Exelon that have the infrastructure and capital will be crucial for their success.
Deere & Company‘s (known to most of us as John Deere) development of its wind turbine business unit is a compelling case study in corporate strategy. Founded in 1837, the company had become an iconic business partner to millions of farmers. Agriculture, however, has changed drastically over the past century, becoming more consolidated, and family farms have slowly disappeared.
Several years ago, the company’s executives brainstormed over how the company could reinvigorate its business as even more family farms closed. Deere’s leadership realized that they had the manufacturing capacity, enjoyed a close relationship with many of its requirements, and in a nutshell, created a business unit focused on wind turbines—which in turn could be built on land owned by many of its customers. John Deere Renewables was born, and includes projects stretching from the Columbia River in Oregon to the thumb on Michigan. John Deere also had a huge role in the rebuilding of Greenburg, Kansas, which was devastated by a 2007 tornado—now it is home to a wind project that powers 4000 homes. Yesterday Deere & Company announced the sales of the business unit to Exelon for almost US$900 million.
Like many large companies over time that bounce their strategies between diversification and consolidation of core businesses, Deere & Company has decided that it wants to focus on its equipment business. Exelon, meanwhile, has watched any enthusiasm for nuclear power ebb in the US. So the nation’s largest nuclear power generator figures John Deere Renewables can give it an anchor in the wind energy sector. The US$17 billion dollar company will acquire about 730 megawatts of installed wind capacity, and has the potential to pursue an additional 1500 MW of new wind projects—or it can choose not to pursue deals that John Deere Renewables had already negotiated.
Exelon bills itself as committed to “responsive, low-carbon energy investment.” The company claims that it will reduce its carbon footprint by 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2020, and extols its pursuit of sustainability throughout its web site. Its CEO, John W. Rowe, testified to Congress on climate change issues back in 1992, and is 1 of the only 8 utilities that participates in the EPA’s Climate Leaders Program. In a partnership with the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC), Exelon has spearheaded plans to indentify rare and endangered plants and animals that make their habitat around the company’s facilities.
Exelon’s acquisition of John Deere Renewables is a peek into the future of renewable energy: the reality is that if renewable technologies such as wind and solar will scale and succeed, large companies like Exelon that have the infrastructure and capital will be crucial for their success.
Ellen MacArthur: 'I can't live with the sea any more'
The round the world record holder explains why she has turned her back on the sea to crusade for the planet.
By Elizabeth Grice
Published: 6:56AM BST 31 Aug 2010
Nothing mattered more to Ellen MacArthur than the sea, unless it was being the fastest person on its surface. It was her element, the great obsession from childhood. With the boats that took her round the world, she had a kind of symbiotic union. They worked as one. And when she was back on land, everyday life felt trivial, people pressed in too much, and she soon wanted to be out on the ocean again, testing herself against the elements even in places that had nearly destroyed her.
At the end of her Vendee Globe triumph in 2001, she took me down into the tiny, unventilated cabin of Kingfisher on a “tour” of the quarters which had been her cell, home, work station and survival-capsule for 94 days. She talked about the meticulous planning that had gone into provisioning her nutshell of a boat; how she worked out, to the last perforation, exactly how many kitchen rolls she would need.
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Mazda MX-5 reviewPreparation was everything, she said. Proudly, she showed off her unappetising stash of foil-wrapped, freeze-dried food, the tiny one-foot gas stove, the neatly hanging polythene bags of medical supplies and rations – of which days 95-110 were untouched because she had got home so fast. Her housekeeping was as formidable as her sailing
This image of her, fussing over what went where, in a space where she had been “so happy”, yet which anywhere else would have been condemned as unfit for human habitation, sprung to mind as she explained why she is giving up competitive sailing to find ways of conserving the earth’s limited resources.
The boat was her world and she looked after it because her life depended on it. Now, she sees the world as a boat: a small, beautiful, damageable entity whose supplies are running out. “I wasn’t looking for this,” she pleads. “I didn’t want to leave sailing. I just couldn’t imagine it. I never thought it would stop for a second. I was even thinking of building a boat for the Vendée Globe 2008.”
She is only 34, very young to be giving up the thing she seemed made for. This is a woman who could “read” every sound her boat made, the way Thomas Hardy could identify trees in the dark from the noise of the wind through their branches. In 2001, she came second in the Vendée at the age of 24 – the fastest woman and youngest sailor to make the solo non-stop circumnavigation. In 2005, she established a round-the-world solo record in her beloved trimaran B&Q, an experience so savage that it is a wonder she came back. Her story is inspirational, not just for what she did, but for the rare spirit she is.
It’s not as though Britain’s youngest dame has lost her nerve or her skill. She could have done a Robin Knox-Johnston, challenging records and pitting herself against the ocean into middle age.
What happened? “Perhaps it’s like loving someone so much but knowing that you simply can’t live with them any more,” she says. “I just knew I couldn’t go on as before.” She remembers standing at Les Sables d’Olonne watching the boats in the 2008 Vendée slip away to the start line when it struck her that she would never compete again. “I knew that the impossible had happened. My racing years were over. I still felt as much in love with the sea as ever, but something inside me had grown to eclipse that passion.
“I could have gone round the world in a boat with the slogan “Use less” but that would have been just raising awareness. We already know there is an issue. I want to be part of doing something about it. Persuading people that to rethink the way we do things is the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced, a Herculean task.”
Her conversion started on a trip to South Georgia, a desolate island in the south Atlantic, where she helped with an albatross survey. “It made me stop and think. It gave me space and time to see things differently; to realise things I hadn’t let into my head before.” The sight of so many abandoned whaling stations, an industry destroyed by exploitation and greed, struck her as a warning. “It seemed as though we had just taken what we wanted and moved on. That’s what we do.”
When I last saw her, her cheeks were reddened and salt-scoured. She’d cut her hair on the boat and it was sticking up all over the place. Her stubby hands looked meaty, mannish and cracked. She was that gut-wrenchingly small figure in yellow oilskins who had done impossible things and spoke unself-consciously in great gusts of emotion.
Today, she is the same open, square-faced girl with the strong eyebrows and direct stare. But despite the jeans and trainers there’s a femininity and poise that wasn’t there before. When I arrive in at the sail loft in Cowes where she has her office, she's taking a conference call like any other businesswoman.
Before long, she’s pummelling the glass panel beside her with the edge of her fist. “Where will the energy to make this come from in the future?” she asks. “No one is making coal or oil or gas any more. They are a precious asset we have just once. We have to design a way of not using things up. At first, my message was negative – use less – but gradually I realised there was another way of looking at things.” She talks as passionately about reusable industrial carpet tiles as she used to do about keeping her boat’s batteries charged. The possibility of buying, say, 3,000 washing cycles – from a machine that is designed to be taken apart and used again – instead of an obsolescent washing machine fires her up.
For the last three years, she has been touring factories, mines and power stations and talking to government and business about our reliance on finite resources. “I will never be an expert,” she says. “But I am a bit like a sponge. I love learning. This became something I just couldn’t ignore. Sailing, by comparison, seemed incredibly selfish. It was all about me. This is different. It’s about trying to find out how my voice can be the most useful. It really matters.”
On Thursday , she launches the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that will work through business and education to give young people the vision to rethink and redesign a sustainable future. She put £500,000 of her own money into the start-up. “It is the best decision I have made in my life.” Her latest book, Full Circle, is out on the same day, describing her final exhilarating days on the ocean and charting the personal voyage that led her to cut loose from Offshore Challenges, the company through which her sailing career unfolded, and begin the new crusade.
“I do miss the adventure that comes from being at sea,” she admits. “It is what makes me, me. You are so connected to everything around you. You have no time to get lonely. You are focused on the record, on practicalities, on survival. This is a harder thing to get across. “The message will never be as easy as saying: I’m going to be the fastest person round the world. It is complex. I may have been the fastest round the world, but this beats everything I’ve ever done.”
She say she never thought she would die – “not even for five seconds” – though she must have come close when terrifying winds threatened to engulf her trimaran. “I had to be able to stay ahead. I knew I could not afford to stop. The vigilance you live with is totally exhausting. I know people who have said goodbye in the Southern Ocean. I would never do that. You have got to believe you will come through.”
For the first time, Ellen MacArthur sounds moored. After years of living on people’s floors, or on boats, she bought a plot of land on the Isle of Wight where she and her partner, Ian, have built a thick-walled house, designed on ecological principles, with solar panels to heat the water, a Rayburn and two woodburners. They have done a lot of the work themselves – she excavating the foundations with a three-ton digger. She still sails – the couple paddled a canvas canoe through Britain’s inland waterways – but now for pleasure and sometimes in Iduna, the boat that took her round Britain at the age of 18.
She is never comfortable talking about her life away from sailing or campaigning and contrives to make her future seems secondary to the planet’s. Though she loves children – the Ellen MacArthur Trust is dedicated to helping those with cancer – she says it is “not in her mind” to start a family of her own. “But I don’t know where I’ll be in three years’ time. This may be the rest of my life – but then I said that with sailing.”
Full Circle by Ellen MacArthur (Michael Joseph £20.00) is available from Telegraph Books for £18.00 plus £1.25 postage and packing. Please call 0844 871 1515 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0844 871 1515 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
By Elizabeth Grice
Published: 6:56AM BST 31 Aug 2010
Nothing mattered more to Ellen MacArthur than the sea, unless it was being the fastest person on its surface. It was her element, the great obsession from childhood. With the boats that took her round the world, she had a kind of symbiotic union. They worked as one. And when she was back on land, everyday life felt trivial, people pressed in too much, and she soon wanted to be out on the ocean again, testing herself against the elements even in places that had nearly destroyed her.
At the end of her Vendee Globe triumph in 2001, she took me down into the tiny, unventilated cabin of Kingfisher on a “tour” of the quarters which had been her cell, home, work station and survival-capsule for 94 days. She talked about the meticulous planning that had gone into provisioning her nutshell of a boat; how she worked out, to the last perforation, exactly how many kitchen rolls she would need.
Related Articles
Plastic bottle boat: calls for help
British coastal highlights
Whale lands on yacht
The simple pleasures of camping
Asafa Powell: British sprinters are lazy
Mazda MX-5 reviewPreparation was everything, she said. Proudly, she showed off her unappetising stash of foil-wrapped, freeze-dried food, the tiny one-foot gas stove, the neatly hanging polythene bags of medical supplies and rations – of which days 95-110 were untouched because she had got home so fast. Her housekeeping was as formidable as her sailing
This image of her, fussing over what went where, in a space where she had been “so happy”, yet which anywhere else would have been condemned as unfit for human habitation, sprung to mind as she explained why she is giving up competitive sailing to find ways of conserving the earth’s limited resources.
The boat was her world and she looked after it because her life depended on it. Now, she sees the world as a boat: a small, beautiful, damageable entity whose supplies are running out. “I wasn’t looking for this,” she pleads. “I didn’t want to leave sailing. I just couldn’t imagine it. I never thought it would stop for a second. I was even thinking of building a boat for the Vendée Globe 2008.”
She is only 34, very young to be giving up the thing she seemed made for. This is a woman who could “read” every sound her boat made, the way Thomas Hardy could identify trees in the dark from the noise of the wind through their branches. In 2001, she came second in the Vendée at the age of 24 – the fastest woman and youngest sailor to make the solo non-stop circumnavigation. In 2005, she established a round-the-world solo record in her beloved trimaran B&Q, an experience so savage that it is a wonder she came back. Her story is inspirational, not just for what she did, but for the rare spirit she is.
It’s not as though Britain’s youngest dame has lost her nerve or her skill. She could have done a Robin Knox-Johnston, challenging records and pitting herself against the ocean into middle age.
What happened? “Perhaps it’s like loving someone so much but knowing that you simply can’t live with them any more,” she says. “I just knew I couldn’t go on as before.” She remembers standing at Les Sables d’Olonne watching the boats in the 2008 Vendée slip away to the start line when it struck her that she would never compete again. “I knew that the impossible had happened. My racing years were over. I still felt as much in love with the sea as ever, but something inside me had grown to eclipse that passion.
“I could have gone round the world in a boat with the slogan “Use less” but that would have been just raising awareness. We already know there is an issue. I want to be part of doing something about it. Persuading people that to rethink the way we do things is the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced, a Herculean task.”
Her conversion started on a trip to South Georgia, a desolate island in the south Atlantic, where she helped with an albatross survey. “It made me stop and think. It gave me space and time to see things differently; to realise things I hadn’t let into my head before.” The sight of so many abandoned whaling stations, an industry destroyed by exploitation and greed, struck her as a warning. “It seemed as though we had just taken what we wanted and moved on. That’s what we do.”
When I last saw her, her cheeks were reddened and salt-scoured. She’d cut her hair on the boat and it was sticking up all over the place. Her stubby hands looked meaty, mannish and cracked. She was that gut-wrenchingly small figure in yellow oilskins who had done impossible things and spoke unself-consciously in great gusts of emotion.
Today, she is the same open, square-faced girl with the strong eyebrows and direct stare. But despite the jeans and trainers there’s a femininity and poise that wasn’t there before. When I arrive in at the sail loft in Cowes where she has her office, she's taking a conference call like any other businesswoman.
Before long, she’s pummelling the glass panel beside her with the edge of her fist. “Where will the energy to make this come from in the future?” she asks. “No one is making coal or oil or gas any more. They are a precious asset we have just once. We have to design a way of not using things up. At first, my message was negative – use less – but gradually I realised there was another way of looking at things.” She talks as passionately about reusable industrial carpet tiles as she used to do about keeping her boat’s batteries charged. The possibility of buying, say, 3,000 washing cycles – from a machine that is designed to be taken apart and used again – instead of an obsolescent washing machine fires her up.
For the last three years, she has been touring factories, mines and power stations and talking to government and business about our reliance on finite resources. “I will never be an expert,” she says. “But I am a bit like a sponge. I love learning. This became something I just couldn’t ignore. Sailing, by comparison, seemed incredibly selfish. It was all about me. This is different. It’s about trying to find out how my voice can be the most useful. It really matters.”
On Thursday , she launches the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that will work through business and education to give young people the vision to rethink and redesign a sustainable future. She put £500,000 of her own money into the start-up. “It is the best decision I have made in my life.” Her latest book, Full Circle, is out on the same day, describing her final exhilarating days on the ocean and charting the personal voyage that led her to cut loose from Offshore Challenges, the company through which her sailing career unfolded, and begin the new crusade.
“I do miss the adventure that comes from being at sea,” she admits. “It is what makes me, me. You are so connected to everything around you. You have no time to get lonely. You are focused on the record, on practicalities, on survival. This is a harder thing to get across. “The message will never be as easy as saying: I’m going to be the fastest person round the world. It is complex. I may have been the fastest round the world, but this beats everything I’ve ever done.”
She say she never thought she would die – “not even for five seconds” – though she must have come close when terrifying winds threatened to engulf her trimaran. “I had to be able to stay ahead. I knew I could not afford to stop. The vigilance you live with is totally exhausting. I know people who have said goodbye in the Southern Ocean. I would never do that. You have got to believe you will come through.”
For the first time, Ellen MacArthur sounds moored. After years of living on people’s floors, or on boats, she bought a plot of land on the Isle of Wight where she and her partner, Ian, have built a thick-walled house, designed on ecological principles, with solar panels to heat the water, a Rayburn and two woodburners. They have done a lot of the work themselves – she excavating the foundations with a three-ton digger. She still sails – the couple paddled a canvas canoe through Britain’s inland waterways – but now for pleasure and sometimes in Iduna, the boat that took her round Britain at the age of 18.
She is never comfortable talking about her life away from sailing or campaigning and contrives to make her future seems secondary to the planet’s. Though she loves children – the Ellen MacArthur Trust is dedicated to helping those with cancer – she says it is “not in her mind” to start a family of her own. “But I don’t know where I’ll be in three years’ time. This may be the rest of my life – but then I said that with sailing.”
Full Circle by Ellen MacArthur (Michael Joseph £20.00) is available from Telegraph Books for £18.00 plus £1.25 postage and packing. Please call 0844 871 1515 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0844 871 1515 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
Energy secretary Chris Huhne warned not to cut subsidies for green electricity
Reducing funding for household generation of renewable energy will jeopardise job creation and energy security, Huhne is told
Adam Vaughan guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 September 2010 17.36 BST
A coalition of green, countryside and housing groups has warned energy secretary Chris Huhne not to cut subsidies for green electricity and heating as part of the government's spending review. The 22 groups, including green energy trade body the Renewable Energy Association, the National Farmers Union and the Federation of Master Builders, said in a letter to Huhne that cutting schemes that subsidise household generation of renewable energy would jeopardise job creation, energy security and greenhouse gas targets.
The move was sparked by comments from the Department of Energy and Climate Change's minister of state, Charles Hendry, who recently said he was "closely reviewing" the £27bn renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme due to start in April next year to encourage the take-up of green heating devices such as heat pumps, and the £8bn feed-in tariff (FIT) launched in April which pays small-scale generators of green electricity.
"We inherited a situation where we could see who was going to benefit commercially but we couldn't really see how it was going to be paid for and that it would create pretty substantial bills," Hendry told the Telegraph in an article that suggested both schemes could be "slashed". Justine Greening, economic secretary to the Treasury, also recently attended a launch of a report by the right-leaning Policy Exchange thinktank that was highly critical of the FIT and the RHI. "...We will focus on the most cost-effective approaches [to tackle climate change]," said Greening at the event. "In fact, the more you care about climate change, the more value for money counts. We have to make sure every penny saves the maximum emissions possible. And we will put a stop to the last government's obsession with equating high levels of expensive inputs with high impact."
The rate paid for the feed-in tariff is currently due to be reviewed in 2012 and its introduction has caused a solar gold rush in the UK as a record number householders and business installing solar photovoltaic panels to earn the tariff. But the groups behind today's letter are worried such language from senior government figures indicate the FIT and the RHI could be victims of the comprehensive spending review, the results of which are due to be published on 20 October.
"As you know, heat is responsible for 47% of UK emissions and 49% of UK energy demand, so no government serious about climate change or energy security can ignore half the problem," wrote the signatories, including Howard Johns of the Solar Trade Association, William Worsley of the Country Land and Business Association and David Caro of the Federation of Small Businesses. The letter continues: "Costs come down when the industry can plan and invest with confidence, and economies of scale are achieved – that is one of the simple aims of these policy mechanisms."
Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary and Labour leadership candidate, also warned today of cutting the schemes. "This government promised to be the greenest ever but it is already betraying this promise," he said. " Unless we go ahead with the feed-in tariff and renewable heat incentive as planned, we will never achieve the greening of our energy supplies that we need. Instead of creating uncertainty and delay, the government should reaffirm the commitments made by the previous Labour government."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said accusations that the RHI was going to be "slashed" were speculation. "The government is doing what people would expect any responsible government to do, especially in the current economic climate," she said. "That is looking across all our policies and inherited spend, which includes the not insubstantial costs associated with the proposed renewable heat incentive and the feed-in tariff scheme, to ensure that what is being spent is being spent in the best and most efficient way." Climate minister Greg Barker recently also wrote that feed-in tariffs were "at the heart of our efforts to 'green' Britain".
Former Labour MP and sustainability adviser for Friends of the Earth, Alan Simpson, said that mixed messages from government would scare off investors: "You have government scaring the living daylights out of local authorities and businesses, but also the investment community who look at long-term signals. So you risk all investment decisions being put on hold, because different ministers are saying 'maybe we will, maybe we won't' – it sends completely the wrong messages."
In a separate development today, M&S became the latest household name to offer solar panels to consumers. Following British Gas's launch of solar photovoltaic products last week, the high street retailer said it had partnered with Scottish and Southern Energy to offer solar photovoltaic panels and solar thermal systems.
Adam Vaughan guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 September 2010 17.36 BST
A coalition of green, countryside and housing groups has warned energy secretary Chris Huhne not to cut subsidies for green electricity and heating as part of the government's spending review. The 22 groups, including green energy trade body the Renewable Energy Association, the National Farmers Union and the Federation of Master Builders, said in a letter to Huhne that cutting schemes that subsidise household generation of renewable energy would jeopardise job creation, energy security and greenhouse gas targets.
The move was sparked by comments from the Department of Energy and Climate Change's minister of state, Charles Hendry, who recently said he was "closely reviewing" the £27bn renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme due to start in April next year to encourage the take-up of green heating devices such as heat pumps, and the £8bn feed-in tariff (FIT) launched in April which pays small-scale generators of green electricity.
"We inherited a situation where we could see who was going to benefit commercially but we couldn't really see how it was going to be paid for and that it would create pretty substantial bills," Hendry told the Telegraph in an article that suggested both schemes could be "slashed". Justine Greening, economic secretary to the Treasury, also recently attended a launch of a report by the right-leaning Policy Exchange thinktank that was highly critical of the FIT and the RHI. "...We will focus on the most cost-effective approaches [to tackle climate change]," said Greening at the event. "In fact, the more you care about climate change, the more value for money counts. We have to make sure every penny saves the maximum emissions possible. And we will put a stop to the last government's obsession with equating high levels of expensive inputs with high impact."
The rate paid for the feed-in tariff is currently due to be reviewed in 2012 and its introduction has caused a solar gold rush in the UK as a record number householders and business installing solar photovoltaic panels to earn the tariff. But the groups behind today's letter are worried such language from senior government figures indicate the FIT and the RHI could be victims of the comprehensive spending review, the results of which are due to be published on 20 October.
"As you know, heat is responsible for 47% of UK emissions and 49% of UK energy demand, so no government serious about climate change or energy security can ignore half the problem," wrote the signatories, including Howard Johns of the Solar Trade Association, William Worsley of the Country Land and Business Association and David Caro of the Federation of Small Businesses. The letter continues: "Costs come down when the industry can plan and invest with confidence, and economies of scale are achieved – that is one of the simple aims of these policy mechanisms."
Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary and Labour leadership candidate, also warned today of cutting the schemes. "This government promised to be the greenest ever but it is already betraying this promise," he said. " Unless we go ahead with the feed-in tariff and renewable heat incentive as planned, we will never achieve the greening of our energy supplies that we need. Instead of creating uncertainty and delay, the government should reaffirm the commitments made by the previous Labour government."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said accusations that the RHI was going to be "slashed" were speculation. "The government is doing what people would expect any responsible government to do, especially in the current economic climate," she said. "That is looking across all our policies and inherited spend, which includes the not insubstantial costs associated with the proposed renewable heat incentive and the feed-in tariff scheme, to ensure that what is being spent is being spent in the best and most efficient way." Climate minister Greg Barker recently also wrote that feed-in tariffs were "at the heart of our efforts to 'green' Britain".
Former Labour MP and sustainability adviser for Friends of the Earth, Alan Simpson, said that mixed messages from government would scare off investors: "You have government scaring the living daylights out of local authorities and businesses, but also the investment community who look at long-term signals. So you risk all investment decisions being put on hold, because different ministers are saying 'maybe we will, maybe we won't' – it sends completely the wrong messages."
In a separate development today, M&S became the latest household name to offer solar panels to consumers. Following British Gas's launch of solar photovoltaic products last week, the high street retailer said it had partnered with Scottish and Southern Energy to offer solar photovoltaic panels and solar thermal systems.