Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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Seven days... National media Vattenfall puts O rmonde up for sale A windfarm in the Irish Sea has been put up for sale by Vattenfall. The Swedish utility is understood to have appointed Morgan Stanley to find a buyer or investor for its O rmonde project, comprising 30 turbines 10km off Barrow-in-Furness. It could fetch up to £500 million. The Times Consultants pocket £8m in fees for Hinkley Nearly £8 million was spent on government advisers to broker the deal for the UK's first nuclear power station in 20 years, an amount critics claim "stinks like a rotting fish's head". The Independent Compare the Market plans energy app There will soon be an app to help people beat energy price rises and get the best deal on electricity or gas, according to the managing director of Comparethemarket. com, Paul Galligan. The company's successful assault on the insurance market was spearheaded by its anthropomorphic Russian meerkat, Aleksandr. Energy will use another meerkat, special agent Maiya. The Telegraph £600m The cost to the UK economy of flooding in 2012, according to the Environment Agency story by NUMBERS Collective switching inches forward Collective switching received a boost this week with the announcement of the winners of two major schemes. 3 Scottish Power, British Gas, and independent supplier Green Star Energy were named the successful bidders in the Big Community Switch and the Big London Energy Switch schemes. 29,470 participants registered to take part in the Big Community Switch scheme. 13,697 consumers registered for the Big London Energy Switch. RWE bins Atlantic Array citing 'prohibitive' costs The outlook for UK renewables was bleak this week, as RWE Innogy pulled out of a £4 billion offshore wind project amid industry warnings that investment in the sector had "reached a tipping point". RWE iced plans for the A tlantic Array, a windfarm of up to 1.2GW in the outer Bristol Channel, citing "technological challenges and market conditions". The company said the costs of placing turbines in "substantially deeper waters" and in adverse seabed conditions were "prohibitive". Meanwhile, renewable developers have been warning that proposed offshore wind subsidies may not be enough to help the UK meet its 2020 renewable energy target. Speaking at a Westminster "It is completely illogical to be paying for coal-fired power plants to be built in other countries" Energy secretary Ed Davey announces the withdrawal of financial support for overseas coal plants 4 | 29th November - 5th December 2013 | UTILITY WEEK Energy, Environment and Transport Forum (WEETF) on Monday, Keith MacLean, policy and research director at SSE, said there was a growing risk of support and investment "falling away", although he thought 2020 targets would be met. He said government policy towards renewables had changed, and consequently the "underlying level of investment is very low indeed". Ross Fairly, partner and head of energy and environment at the law firm Burges Salmon, agreed that policy change had unsettled investors. He said clients were "curtailing developments" for up to two years as a result, and added that the political "silly season" ahead of the 2015 election was also harming confidence. MD and MB €180bn The EU budget for climaterelated policies and projects in 2014-2020 – a third of its overall spend over the same period