Business advice

The Guardian:  Energy storage boom stalls in Europe Europe’s energy storage boom stalled last year due to a slowdown in large-scale schemes designed to store clean electricity from major renewable energy projects, according to the European Association for Storage of Energy (Ease). A new study by consultants Delta-EE for Ease found that the European market grew by a total of 1 gigawatt-hours in 2019, a significant slowdown compared with 2018, when the energy storage market exceeded expectations to grow by 1.47GWh. The slowdown in 2019 has emerged amid rising concern that the outbreak of the coronavirus may stall the rollout of clean energy technologies in 2020, dealing a double blow to the clean energy industry. These large, utility-scale projects often require planning permission, government financial support or procurement tenders to move ahead. Meanwhile, the rollout of home battery kits, which relies far less on policy support, remained a fast-growing market. Patr...

Profitable Offshore Wind Energy Over the past two decades, the world of renewables has changed dramatically. The latest category to become a popular asset class and undergo considerable de-risking is offshore wind. Currently leading the way is Europe, accounting for roughly 80% of the world’s operational offshore wind capacity. The U.S. sector, too, is showing signs of promise, with tremendous investor interest presenting a positive outlook for future growth. Yet with a limited infrastructural track record for venturing offshore, barriers to growth are significant. Europe Leads Europe’s offshore sector has seen significant value creation over the past decade. Construction and operation costs have been markedly lower than anticipated due to favorable pricing mechanisms, lower costs of capital and excellent operator execution, and development is expected to further accelerate off the back of the EU’s policy target of upping installed capacity from 20 gigawatts to 90 gigawatts b...