El gigante Électricité de France (EDF) está atrapado en una tormenta perfecta de deuda (37.000 millones de euros); necesidades financieras (55.000 millones hasta 2025, sólo para el mantenimiento de sus 59 centrales nucleares) y de caída de precios y demanda. Bruselas sospecha que la compañía francesa intentará salir del torbellino con ayuda del Gobierno, bien sea directa o camuflada.
El Estado francés, de momento, ha aceptado que la compañía le abone en títulos y no en metálico su dividendo correspondiente a 2015, lo que ha evitado a EDF un importante desembolso en un ejercicio en el que resultado ha caído un 66%, de 3.700 millones de euros en 2014 a 1.200 millones.
Inventev, the Detroit-based cleantech startup working on mobile power generation via plug-in hybrid electric vehicle architecture, announced Monday that it has snagged a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Inventev’s CEO and founder, Dave Stenson, said the company will use the money to model, develop, and test key elements of its drive system for commercial, medium-duty trucks.
The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, a more recent development than its industrial use, has its place in the low-carbon economy of the future, in both buildings and transport.
EasyJet, the Parisian taxi company Hype, Toyota Mirai, PRAGMA bikes, the forklifts used by Ikea, a school canteen on the island of Reunion, and the decarbonisation projects in Dunkirk and Fos-sur-Mer all have one thing in common. They all use hydrogen-based solutions, be it to move aircraft on the ground, to fuel their vehicles, to extend the life of their electric batteries or to heat their buildings.
The current low price of oil makes renewable energies look less profitable when compared with fossil fuels. There is a risk that the EU's and Germany's energy and climate policy goals could be thrown off track, especially if this short-term trend leads to the wrong conclusions: For one thing, the current situation does nothing to change the fundamental scarcity of fossil fuels and for another, renewable energies and in particular onshore wind power are already charting a course to success, which it would be unadvisable to interrupt. Governments are called upon to invest primarily in the expansion of the power grid. But operators, too, need to act.
La aerolínea de bajo coste EasyJet ha anunciado que comenzará las pruebas para instalar un nuevo sistema de célula de combustible en sus aviones que le permitiría reducir sus gastos en 35 millones de dólares al año. La medida forma parte de su estrategia para mantener sus bajos precios y competir con su rival, Ryanair.
Oceantec Energías Marinas, empresa promovida por Tecnalia e Iberdrola, ha ganado el concurso internacional convocado por elEVE para el desarrollo de una tecnología que aproveche la energía producida por la olas. El importe del contrato asciende a 2,5 M€. ¡Salto importante para esta empresa alojada en Kabi 612!
La plataforma de indicadores de mercados energéticos Datener, promovida por el Ente Vasco de la Energía, va a permitir a la Administración y a las empresas acceder a información de gran valor para la toma de decisiones en materia de compra de energía. El objetivo es que dispongan de un mayor conocimiento de los mercados y precios energéticos para mejorar sus estrategias de compra, optimizar costes y ser más competitivas.
According to data released yesterday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a record $329 billion was invested in clean energy worldwide in 2015. Last year was also the strongest ever for installations of renewable energy capacity, with 64 gigawatts of wind and 57 gigawatts of solar power commissioned. Given the relentless plunge in oil prices, now flirting with $30 a barrel, that seems counterintuitive: conventional wisdom says that cheap fossil fuels inhibit the growth of renewables.
MIT Researchers Develop An Incandescent Light Bulb That Partially Uses Its Own Heat For Power – A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully developed an incandescent light bulb that recycles the heat it produces to be used as a source of power.
Published in Nature Nanotechnology, the report states that the MIT researchers used a special crystalline filter to cover the filament of the light bulb to trap the wavelengths of the infrared part of the spectrum — which produces heat — while still allowing the light waves to pass through.
