When it comes to supporting and accelerating the adoption of renewable energy, Germany’s Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz (EEG – Renewable Energy Act) is widely considered the world’s most effective policy framework. The Act provides for feed-in tariffs to encourage the uptake of alternative energy sources and reach green parity – i.e. the point at which renewable [...]

Emma Marcegaglia, president of Confindustria,  the main organisation representing Italian manufacturing and services companies, calls on Italian government to reintroduce incentives on energy efficiency. Up to Confindustria, these incentives could add a 0.4% to GDP and create 800.000 jobs. In a speech at a conference on environment, Marcegaglia also explained Confindustria position on nuclear and [...]

Renewable energy contributed EUR 8.525 million to the Spanish Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009, of which 6,170 million were direct contributions and the other 2.355 million were indirect, according to a study of the macroeconomic impact of these technologies in Spain during the past exercise, presented by Deloitte. The contribution of renewables is equivalent [...]

Experts in the UK have warned that the new Coalition government’s green energy plans will result in a dramatic increase in energy bills by around £500. Energy and Liberal Democrat Minister Chris Huhne recently unveiled proposals to encourage firms to develop low-carbon plans to help achieve the UK’s carbon emission targets. However, following on from [...]

According to the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), popular acceptance of Germany’s renewable energy drive is likely to weaken when households see the cost of subsidies in their power bills quadruple. Costs will rise significantly in the upcoming years and households will pay 3.5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour of consumed electricity in subsidies next [...]

The Working Group for Energy Balances (AGEB) announced that Germany’s energy consumption increased by 4 percent in 2010 compared with 2009. However, it is still below the level of the year before the economic crisis of 2008. The share of renewable energies in total consumption rises from 9.1 percent to 9.4 percent and the contribution [...]

The President of the Spanish Association of Developers and Producers of Renewable Energies (Renewables Aprea), Mariano Barroso, praised the House of Representatives for deciding on 20.8 percent of renewables by 2020 “the fact that they have decided on a higher rate is much better” he also made clear the need for “the elimination of uncertainty [...]

This project was supposed to be a key element of the national development of renewable energy. Following this announcement, a call for tenders was launched mid-2009. The results were initially expected in the summer. But they were never released. The tender was for the construction by 2011 of a combined capacity exceeding 300 MW. In [...]

RAG and RWE intend to co-develop an integrated wind and pumped storage hydro energy project at RAG’s coal slagheap site in North Rhine Westphalia, the two German energy companies said in a statement on Tuesday. The pilot project proposed at RAG’s waste dump site near Hamm should be completed by 2014. The pumped-storage power plant [...]

Engineers working on the solar panel market or in the other sectors of the renewable energy industry now have gathered into a network. The network will allow them to meet, discuss of industry challenges and reflect on the next steps of their sector regularly. The Welsh Microgen Network was inaugurated by Environment Minister Jane Davidson, [...]