“Samruk-Green Energy plans to invest up to $94 million in building of Kazakhstan’s largest wind power plant. The wind farm will have the capacity of 45MW and is expected to be located in the Yereimentau area of the northern Akmola region. Most of the funds for the project are expected to be provided by the Eurasian Development Bank..”
Wind Power Monthly has the full story.
“Europe’s program to halt climate change is in disarray with lawmakers in the region expressing concern the drift is undermining the planet’s most significant effort to combat global warming.
Members of the European Parliament’s environment committee meet today for a second time to revive a plan the full assembly rejected that would have boosted the cost of greenhouse-gas emissions. The rebuff left the cost of pollution near a record low, leaving companies with less incentive to reduce emissions..”
Read the full story on RenewableEnergyWorld.com
“Scottish Enterprise plans to spend more than £1 billion over the next three years to help boost Scotland’s economy and meet a target of creating tens of thousands of jobs.
The publicly funded economic development agency intends to invest £336.4 million across 2013/14, £386.6m during the following 12 months and £297.9m in 2015/16.
The figure for the current year is up from the £302.1m indicated in the last business plan, with Scottish Enterprise saying the rise is due to additional funding being made available to deliver the Renewable Energy Investment fund.
The agency said the latest update has a dual focus on supporting more globally competitive companies and focusing on the growing sectors of Scotland’s economy including energy, financial services, food and drink, engineering, tourism and digital media..”
The Herald have a full story exploring this news which you can read on their website here
Andrew Montague, head of Consensus Capital Property, outlines his £50 million programme to convert disused offices into social housing…
Read more in this pdf.
“As wind power’s share of electricity generation has increased, so have the financial consequences of risks associated with its inherently high variability – risks which don’t 
just affect wind power producers but reverberate vertically through the value chain and horizontally to affect a range of electricity market players. Large utilities can manage risk with a combination of all three basic risk management strategies: limiting exposure to specific energy sources, diversifying, and engaging in extensive trading activities to hedge several types of risks across their operations…”
You can read this report in it’s entirety here (opens in a new window)
Following today’s UK budget release, it helps to have it broken down into easily digested pieces;
> The independent Office for Budget Responsibility predicts Britain will avoid a second quarter of negative growth and slipping into a triple-dip recession.
> OBR forecasts put growth for this year at 0.6%, down a massive 50% on its previous forecast of 1.2%.
> Growth forecasts for the coming years are now: 2014 – 1.8%, 2015 – 2.3%, 2016 – 2.7% and 2017 – 2.8%.
This is just a taster of the information available in a special report by SKY News
The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already noticed some changes to the Consensus Capital plc website.
ccplc.net has been given a makeover with more emphasis on other group operations, and now cotains more details about the people working hard behind the scenes at Consensus (take a look at the Team page). More updates and additional details will be added to the site at regular intervals to ensure the site has the freshest Consensus information available at all times.
“Italy’s borrowing costs rose to their highest in four months on Wednesday at the first bond auction since an election that raises the prospect of prolonged political instability. No party won a parliamentary majority in the weekend vote, rattling investors in the euro zone’s third largest economy and rekindling concerns over the region’s debt problems.
Although the treasury sold the maximum planned amount of 4 billion euros of the new 10-year bond, the yield it had to offer jumped to 4.83 percent, the highest since October. Yields in the secondary market were, however, a little easier than on Tuesday..”
You can get all the details from Reuters
“The 49-year-old Forth Road Bridge would be transformed into a commercial Sydney Harbour Bridge-style visitor attraction after traffic is switched to the adjace>nt Forth Replacement Crossing in three years, under new plans being considered.
With the removal of most of the 65,000 vehicles a day pounding its deck, the bridge could be opened to tourists to explore the structure, including the top of its 500ft-high towers.
Local business chiefs hailed the scheme as a “massive opportunity”, which would build on celebrations to mark the bridge’s 50th birthday next year, the Forth Bridge’s 125th in 2015 and the opening of the new road bridge the following year..”
You can read the full story here
“Wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels in producing electricity in Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Coal-fired power stations built in the 1970s and 1980s can still produce power at a lower cost than that of wind, the research shows…”