RWE wants to acquire the European onshore wind and solar development platform from Nordex SE with a total pipeline of 2.7 Gigawatt (GW) in France, Spain, Sweden and Poland. The developer has a strong focus in France, with an overall pipeline of 1.9 GW in various project phases. 15% of the whole pipeline is close to final investment decisions (FID) or in advanced development stages; 230 megawatt have secured Contracts for Difference (CfDs) or similar feed-in tariffs. The purchase price will be around €400 million.

This year the Ruggero Bertani European Geothermal Innovation Award 2020 was earned by the Icelandic Carbfix project and German company Eavor on equal merit.

The Carbfix process captures CO₂ and other sour gases from emission sources, transforming them into rocks underground in less than two years. This overturns the common view that mineral storage in Carbon Capture & Storage projects takes hundreds to thousands of years. Carbfix has global scaling potential in and beyond the geothermal industry for decarbonising the economy.

Eavor’s innovation is a novel and scalable closed-loop geothermal system of several deep horizontal wells connected to vertical wells. This overcomes the limitation of deep geothermal systems, which normally rely on vertical single wells only. By running on thermosiphon, it also enables the geothermal industry to offer both a baseload and dispatchable energy source.

The drilling technology and geothermal energy group Daldrup & Söhne has received an order from Aardwarmte Combinatie Luttelgeest B.V., Luttelgeest (ACL) for three geothermal boreholes with drilling lengths of up to 2,440 meters, as well as the construction of a heating plant and a heat network. The current order backlog of the Daldrup Group thus amounts to approx. 51 million Euros.

Business Finland has granted maximum of € 2.6 million for the development of the Keliber (“company”) lithium project. Full redemption of the grant requires the company to implement a comprehensive development plan and to meet the financial conditions.The development and innovation work focus on to contribute that the company's process is sustainable and the end product reaches the quality standards set by the customers. The project covers the period 3 June, 2019 – 31 August, 2022.

The Queensland Resources Council has welcomed a new round funding from the State Government under its Collaborative Exploration Initiative.

This summer, a new European country adopted floating solar and chose Ciel & Terre’s Hydrelio solution: Germany. The country is getting interested in the installation of this state-of-the-art technology combining sunray and water. The solar array, located on an Ossola’s GmbH quarry lake and developed by Erdgas Südwest, was inaugurated earlier in the summer. It was, in the meantime, the inauguration of an unprecedented anchoring system on a FPV plant…

Engineering Performance | DMT Battery Minerals

Electric mobility and the raw materials market: in this article Dirk Harbecke, Chairman of the Board, Rock Tech Lithium, explains how these are interconnected and reports on the collaboration with DMT on the Georgia Lake project in Canada.

Vattenfall reports a third quarter operating loss as a result of impairment charges of SEK 23.1 billion and a continued difficult market situation. Vattenfall is now raising its cost-cutting target for next year and conducting a further review of its investment programme. Parallel with this, a strategic review is being initiated.

Europe is working hard to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by shifting to renewables and decreasing the use of carbon intensive energy sources. The European Commission has set clear targets to reduce carbon emissions by 40% of 1990 levels by 2030 with 27% of Europe’s energy set to come from renewable sources.

Denmark is a world leader when it comes to an innovative approach to energy.

The UK’s offshore wind industry has a big target to hit of reducing costs by 30% by 2020, based on the delivery of 18GW of offshore wind. Atkins has been working with a number of the industry’s leading players to drive down the cost of offshore wind foundations.

On June 25, in Moscow, the State Corporation “ROSATOM” and NAC Kazatomprom JSC have signed Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation in the field of non-conventional (alternative) energy (solar and wind) and production of rare and rare-earth metals.

ANDRITZ HYDRO, part of international technology Group ANDRITZ, has received an order from the utility company Lyse Produksjon AS to supply the electromechanical equipment for the new Lysebotn II hydropower station, Norway. The order value amounts to approximately 40 million euros. Commissioning is scheduled for spring 2018.

Voith Hydro has received new orders to equip two pumped-storage plants in Austria. The company will supply the energy provider Vorarlberger Ill-werke AG with two pumps and a pump turbine for the two projects “Obervermuntwerk II” and “Rellswerk” in Montafon, Vorarlberg.

New IEA publication presents solutions for a successful transition

Removing carbon dioxide from power generation is critical to limit global temperature rise to 2°C. That decarbonisation involves three major challenges: replacing ageing conventional power plants, shifting to renewable energy, and reinforcing and expanding the transmission network to adapt to new, decentralised and variable generation. But existing market designs and regulatory frameworks can make it hard to guarantee a reliable and efficient electricity supply during the massive change.

Alstom’s largest hydropower industrial site was inaugurated in Tianjin, China on September 17, 2013 in the presence of Patrick Kron, Chairman and CEO of Alstom, and Jérôme Pécresse, President of Alstom’s Renewable Power Sector. With an investment of €100 million on this new facility, Alstom aims to further tap into China’s increasing hydropower needs and grow its hydropower business throughout the region.

In the future, aviation will increasingly count on biofuels. However, since - to date - only few raw materials exist for this area and since this industry has very specific requirements, biofuels have so far only been used in individual pilot projects in air traffic. The group project AUFWIND (a German term for up-current, or new impetus) is researching ways for algae production and conversion into aircraft fuels – in addition to the technical implementation, the focus is primarily on an economic and sustainable production of biokerosene. Fraunhofer UMSICHT is participating in this project with its analytical expertise in the area of algae extraction.

A shift from coal-fired to gas-fired power generation will not significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions, new research by the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland has found.