Headlines this week that it is raining in Antarctica should re-affirm that what we talk about in this newsletter is relevant, if that was ever needed.
UK NEWS
Floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea could be worth up to £1.4 billion
The Crown Estate has released new research indicating that the floating offshore wind opportunity in the Celtic Sea could be worth up to £1.4 billion for the UK economy.
The independent study The Celtic Sea Blueprint, conducted by Lumen Energy and Environment, outlines that the supply chain and infrastructure opportunities arising from the development of new floating wind farms off the coast of South Wales and the South West England could also generate up to 5,300 new jobs.
This could be highly beneficial, granting the local regions a skilled workforce for their growing renewable sector.
The study examines the minimum requirements needed to deliver the first three projects outlined by The Crown Estate. It also delves into the gaps, such as ports deep enough for handling the giant turbines, vessels to service the sites, and export cables to transport electricity to land.
In the Celtic Sea, the first three floating offshore wind farms will be able to generate up to 4.5GW of electricity and will be some of the largest in the world, according to The Crown Estate. (current-news)

photo: Hywind/Wikimedia
Government urged to scrap levies on electric heating
Energy companies, green campaign groups, trade organisations, and heat pump manufacturers have teamed up to call on the government to provide a “clean heat discount” for households that use electric heating.
A letter sent to the Chancellor on Wednesday ahead of next month’s Budget calls on the government to remove levies from a proportion of the energy bill for electrically heated homes, arguing the exemption could accelerate uptake of heat pumps while also helping the “significant number” of fuel-poor homes heated by electric heating systems.
E.ON, EDF, Good Energy, Nationwide, Kensa Group, and Vaillant are among the companies to have signed the letter, which argues that customers using cleaner electric heating systems are currently “unfairly penalised” for making the switch away from more carbon-intensive fossil fuel boilers. (businessgreen)
Angus Energy explores storage for more gases at Saltfleetby
Angus Energy and Trafigura Group have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that could see carbon dioxide or hydrogen storage at Angus Energy’s Saltfleetby gas field in Lincolnshire, or additional gas storage.
Within a year Trafigura and Angus will agree and set out specific milestones required to establish a gas storage facility at Saltfleetby. The MoU sets out the terms, and a model for co-operation, under which Trafigura and Angus intend to review technical and commercial feasibility of storage at Saltfleetby and agree commercial terms and schedule for any future storage project.
It is envisaged Trafigura, a commodity trader whose interests include oil, gas, minerals and metals, as well as renewable energy generation and clean energy technologies, would act as initial customer or offtaker of a proportion of the stored product.
Angus says volumetrically Saltfleetby is the UK’s largest onshore gas field and its largest potential subsurface porous rock storage reservoir. (newpower)

photo: Saltfleetby Energy
Heat networks in England and Wales receive £3.5m
£3.5 million is being awarded in Round 4 of the Government’s Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES) to 20 local authorities, housing associations, NHS trusts, universities and private sector organisations. The funding aims to improve the performance of heat networks, so they provide better services to their customers, increased efficiency and reduced energy costs.
This latest announcement of £3.5 million will positively impact 25 heat networks across England and Wales, benefiting 5,700 residents, including students, hospital patients, and other private and public sector occupants. This brings the total funding awarded under HNES to over £28 million. Notably, the news comes as the scheme celebrates its one-year anniversary since opening for applications in February 2023.
Furthermore, capital grant funding will result in annual carbon savings of over 422 tCO2e per year over the next 40 years. Revenue grant funding will also enable optimisation studies, identifying opportunities for additional carbon savings in the coming years. (theenergyst)
EV OF THE WEEK
Lancia Ypsilon breaks cover
The rebirth of Lancia has been garnering quite a lot of press, some of it unfortunate, as when a test car drove into a lake! It is being launched as a premium small hatchback by Stellantis, the ultimate owners, who seem keen to run lots of brands with slightly overlapping niches: Fiat & Citroen at the cheaper end; Alfa Romeo, sporty; Peugeot, quality mid-market; Jeep, rugged and now Lancia slightly posher.
Nevertheless, Lancia is reborn as an electric brand, principally. First up is the Ypsilon, which is quite obviously a Peugeot 208 in new clothing. The 208 is a good car with a 51kWh battery and range of about 250 miles, which is a fair combination for a small electric hatchback. It will be encountering the much anticipated Renault 5, which launches at the upcoming Geneva Show, so I suggest that the marketing people get their message across pretty quickly, although the Ypsilon is only launching in Italy to start with.

photo: Lancia
EUROPEAN STORIES
Ineos’ petrochemical plant in Antwerp faces new legal challenge
The creation of the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe in 30 years faces a new legal challenge by a group of NGOs arguing that the true impact of the development on people, nature and the climate has not been considered.
Client Earth lodged papers on Wednesday evening in court which aim to halt the building of Project One, a vast cracking plant to produce the chemicals to make plastic, which is being built in Antwerp by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company Ineos.
The move comes as part of a long-running legal battle by environmental groups to stop Ratcliffe building a plant that would produce ethylene for plastic production on a scale not seen before in Europe. The last few years have seen large-scale plans for expansion by the global petrochemical sector, despite concerns about plastic pollution and the need to curb rising carbon emissions. (guardian)
FOCUS ON: REPOWERING WIND FARMS
The FT had an interesting article this week about a serious issue facing the onshore wind industry entitled: “The Problem with Europe’s Ageing Wind Farms” (HERE if you have a subscription). The article by WindEurope from 2022, below, details the issue but the FT adds the context that the wind industry is needing to reinvest just as it is facing rising costs, both of materials and money. The Catch-22 of this situation is that many of the oldest wind farms sit on the best wind sites, so repowering them with new and better turbines is important from the point of view of the energy transition, but makes for some awkward corporate decisions.
Repowered wind farms show huge potential
Europe’s first generation wind farms are getting old. 38 GW of onshore wind capacity is reaching the end of its normal operational life of 20 years between now and 2025. When they reach 20 years, there are three options: lifetime extension, decommissioning or repowering.
Repowering a wind farm means replacing the old turbines by more powerful and efficient models that use the latest technology. On average repowering more than doubles the generation capacity (in MW) of a wind farm and triples the electricity output because the new turbines produce more power per unit of capacity. And it achieves this while reducing the number of turbines on average by 27%. We expect more than 20 GW of onshore wind farms will be repowered in the next 10 years.
Some big repowering projects are already happening. A good example is the Windplan Groen project in the Dutch Province of Flevoland. The area used to have 98 turbines with a total capacity of 168 MW. These are now being replaced by 90 more powerful turbines. This will take the total capacity of the wind farm to around 500 MW – enough to power the whole Province. Half of the project will be built by Vestas. They’ll install 37 turbines of 6 MW each. These are Vestas’ most powerful turbines and the most powerful ever built in the Netherlands.
A wind farm in Malpica in Galicia in Spain saw an even bigger transformation. The number of turbines went down from 69 to 7 but true electricity output doubled. Repowering can make that big a difference.
However, fewer than 10% of wind turbines reaching the end of their life are currently being repowered. Operators are discouraged by the slow and complex permitting procedures and changing legislation. Instead most of the onshore wind farms reaching 20 years today get a lifetime extension. (windeurope)
RWE modernises two wind farms and increases power generation
Over the next few weeks, a total of around 100 employees and experts from RWE and its partner companies will be working on two wind farms to dismantle 17 older wind turbines and replace them with 11 new, more powerful ones. By repowering the wind farms in this way, RWE can significantly increase electricity production despite using fewer turbines. This is due to the larger rotor blades being able to capture more wind and produce green electricity even when the wind is weak. At the Lesse and Barbecke sites, the company will increase capacity from 30.6 to 61.8MW and electricity production should triple. (evwind)

photo: RWE
LONGER READ – OCEAN FLOOR GEOTHERMAL
Massive geothermal potential found offshore
It is well known that underground geothermal energy could satisfy a great deal of the world’s energy demand, but geothermal exploration drilling is relatively expensive, and not always successful. So companies have tended to stick to areas they’re relatively sure will deliver – like the Indo-Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a tectonic belt that runs all the way up the West coast of the Americas, across to the Eastern tip of Russia, down through East Asia and across to cover New Zealand. Essentially, where there are volcanoes, the geothermal industry is getting better at developing them as energy resources.
But according to renewable energy tech consultancy CGG, these volcanic areas are quite complex and varied, requiring bespoke approaches to each one, and temperatures rapidly decrease as you move away from the volcano.
On the other hand, there’s a vast and much more consistent resource we could be targeting, says CGG, on the sea floor, right where the tectonic plates are constantly moving away from one another and generating new chunks of crust in a process called “seafloor spreading.”
In these huge undersea rifts, which CGG estimates at around 65,000 square kilometers, the Earth’s magma is reliably quite close to the surface, because it’s literally pouring through the gap created as the plates move apart and solidifying into new rock. Thus, success rates should be much higher than they are on land, and these seafloor spreading zones should also offer more consistent temperatures, as well as consistently benign geothermal fluids.
On the other hand, while these areas will be easier to plumb, they’re further away from electrical grids. Indeed, a lot of this energy will be generated in areas where it won’t be practical to run cables back to the shore. CGG says in many areas it’ll make more sense to capture fresh water from steam the runs up through the turbines, and electrolyze it to produce green hydrogen, which can be shipped as is or converted to ammonia for sale – with fresh water likely left over as another saleable by-product.
CGG has applied for a patent on its “novel combination of geological, geophysical and engineering technologies to help explore and develop these resources,” but the company states (for what it’s worth) that its “motivation for obtaining the patent is to ensure that there will be no patent “blockers” delaying rapid development of these resources.” It plans to license the idea at “reasonable cost” in developed countries and at “easily affordable cost” when working with underdeveloped countries. (newatlas)

photo: CGG
GLOBAL STUFF
Botanical gardens ‘most effective’ at cooling streets in heatwave
A comprehensive review of research into the heat-mitigating effects of green spaces during heatwaves has found that botanical gardens are the most effective. It is a finding the team at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCCAR) hope will inform policymakers planning cities for a warming world.
They are setting up the Reclaim Network Plus, a global web of planners, academics, city officials, charities and businesses who will look at the evidence around the benefits of green and blue space in urban planning.
This particular research found that sites such as the Chelsea Physic Garden and Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, or the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, reduced air temperatures during heatwaves in the city streets around them by an average 5C.
Urban parks and wetlands have a similar effect, and even green walls, street trees and playgrounds were found to significantly mitigate temperatures. (guardian)
photo: Kew Gardens/Flikr
World’s Largest Solar Plus Battery Storage System Goes Live In Mojave Desert
In California’s share of the Mojave Desert, one of the sunniest places on Earth, the largest single solar and battery energy storage project in the world has just become fully operational: the Edwards & Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage facility.
Consisting of almost 2 million solar panels, the sprawling solar farm has 875MW of capacity, the highest of any such facility in the US.
Crucially, it also features 3,287MWh of energy storage that’s enabled using over 120,000 batteries. This storage allows the site to keep the flow of power going even during periods of high demand or no sunlight.
The Edwards & Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage facility covers 1,886 total hectares of land, approximately one-third the size of Manhattan. To link up the whole system, engineers had to lay over 724 kilometers of wiring. (iflscience)

photo: NASA Landsat 9
Pataskala’s Illuminate USA starts solar panel production
Licking County’s newest manufacturer seeks to help meet the country’s growing demand for green energy solutions while bringing 1,000 jobs to central Ohio and highlights the powerful effects of the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The first solar panels rolled off the line Thursday as Illuminate USA began production at its 1.1-million-square-foot factory in Pataskala, which will be one of the nation’s largest advanced solar panel manufacturing facilities, the company announced in a news release.
Illuminate USA will manufacture more than 9.2 million utility-scale solar panels annually at full capacity by the end of 2024. That equals 5 gigawatts of electricity production, enough to power 1 million homes
Illuminate USA was announced last March and is the first company within the 350-acre Red Chip Farms development as part of the Pataskala Corporate Park. The new company is a joint venture between renewable energy company Invenergy, a Chicago-based developer, and Chinese solar panel manufacturer LONGi. (newarkadvertiser)
TECHIE CORNER
UK scientists harness microwave energy to extend EV range
University of Birmingham researchers are developing an energy storage solution named e-Thermal bank to improve electric vehicle (EV) performance.
Led by Professor Yongliang Li, the system combines a chemical heat pump with microwave energy for heating or cooling, enhancing cabin temperature control and minimising energy consumption.
This secondary energy source for EVs is charged at charging stations using microwave energy to store energy within the vehicle.
During discharge, the stored energy is utilised to generate heat through an exothermic reaction and cooling through a liquid-gas phase change process, effectively managing cabin temperature while minimizing energy consumption.
Professor Yongliang Li, Chair in Thermal Energy Engineering at Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering, said: “Heating and cooling the EV cabin requires considerable energy and is the most significant contributor to EV range reduction. We aimed to offload these thermal management tasks to a microwave driven process.
“Microwave is a fast heating method because microwaves penetrate uniformly through materials and so deliver energy evenly into the body of the material.
“The energy cost can be minimised by coupling with a smart meter to charge the system when energy is cheap and the stored energy can then be used at any time.” (futurenetzero)