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Rochdale Borough Council have recently broken ground on what is to be the UK’s first publicly owned commercial solar farm. In its quest to become the UK’s most environmentally green local authority, the Council have undertaken a project to develop a sector of waste ground into a 250 kWp commercial solar plant.
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Swedish Flat-pack giant Ikea started a partnership with Chinese thin-film solar manufacturer Hanergy to bring easy Solar PV to domestic properties across the UK. Following an initial trial period the scheme was rolled out to all 18 of the Nordic superstores UK locations and saw huge uptake. Read the rest of this entry »

Following the cabinet reshuffle, the UK’s Solar champion in government, Greg Barker replaced new Secretary of State for Energy, Matt Hancock. Mr Hancock reaffirmed his faith in the UK’s solar potential several times in a Parliament debate on renewable energy this week, the new secretary was keen to point out how Solar PV was one of the largest potentials in the UK renewables race Read the rest of this entry »

Technology giants are seeing a new area of competition with each other, sustainability.

California based household name, Apple, have made a switch to renewable energy. Currentlyall of their US data centres are run on clean energy. Their North Carolina data centre located in Maiden is currently supplied by a 400, 000 square metre solar array.

Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives and the former head of the US Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), told Sky News why Apple had invested in the solar array. Read the rest of this entry »

Minister for climate change, Greg Barker, has announced plans to boost the growing uptake in commercial solar installations in the UK. Speaking to representatives at the British Photovoltaic Association’s Commercial and Domestic Rooftop Solar recently in the capital, Mr Barker echoed his long repeated statements on the importance of Solar Power to the UK and the governments desire to continually increase uptake of commercial solar power for UK roofspace. Read the rest of this entry »

New data released by the research firm IHS, details that up to 69% of the planned solar installs across 2014 and 2015 throughout Europe are planned to take place in the UK. Approximately 7 gigawatts of solar pv are planned to be installed across Europe of the coming 18 months. With that factored the UK can expect at least 4.8GW of solar photo voltaic power installed over the next 18 months. Read the rest of this entry »

members of the UK public are firmly behind renewable energy

The UK public has continued to show support for renewable energy in a series of surveys conducted across the UK. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change 80% of those who responded to the survey stated that they were in support of electricity, heat and fuel to come from renewable sources. In addition to this nearly 2 thirds of UK inhabitants said they would be happy to see a large scale renewable energy development in their area.

The purpose of this questionnaire was to ascertain what the major challenges to the UK are in today’s climate including inflation, energy supply and taxation among others. Among the topics of importance those relating to energy have jumped several places to the forefront of concerns among UK residents. 85% of those surveyed stated that they had considerable concern for future increases in energy costs. However, this is could be down to the increased profile of energy bills in the recent months as many political parties have been using them as an emotional point with voters. Read the rest of this entry »

Hot on the heels of the UKs freshly launched (and pioneering for Europe) Solar Strategy, the UK government granted approval for 8 renewable energy projects in the UK for 2014. These are the first set of projects to be awarded under the government’s energy market reforms. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Month Engineering and Technology giant Siemens announced their plans for large scale wind turbine production and installation facilities in the north of the UK. The 2 sites are the Green port Hull project which has been announced previously, and will cover service construction and assembly and the newly revealed plan for a new rotor blade manufacturing facility in Paull, East Riding.

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