Meat consumption ‘must be balanced with alternative proteins’

Researchers suggest this change in diet would lead to significant environmental benefits

Scientists be-leaf fern could prove key to trapping carbon

Scientists say the Azolla filiculoides fern could be used as a carbon sink to help balance out the Earth’s atmosphere

Veolia launches ‘Europe’s first solar panel recycling plant’

The site uses robots to take panels apart and recover glass, silicon, plastics, copper and silver

Three new Dutch coal plants risk early closure

Three new coal-fired power plants in the Netherlands risk early closure after becoming stranded. The plants installed by RWE, Uniper and Engie in 2015 are not as valuable as originally expected and won’t be able to make an adequate return on investment, according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). It […]

Turkey’s largest geothermal plant lent $20m

A London based bank is lending  $20 million (£12m) to help build Turkey’s largest geothermal power plant. The Efeler facility is being built by a subsidiary of Güriş Holding, a Turkish renewable energy company. The plant’s five units – three of them already operational – are situated near the western town of Germencik. When completed later this year, […]

Draft laws to limit emissions from medium plants

New laws to limit the emissions of certain pollutants from medium combustion plants have been agreed. The provisional agreement by the Council and the European Parliament aims at improving air quality in the EU. It intends to cover medium combustion plants which includes those with a rated thermal input between 1MW and 50MW. However it […]

EU approves state aid for Finnish gas plant

The European Commission has approved plans to grant around €10 million (£8m) of public investment to the operator of a gasification plant in Finland. The Vaskiluodon Voima Oy facility will convert forest biomass into gas for electricity generation and district heating instead of using coal. It will replace between 25% and 40% of the coal […]

EDF gathers companies looking to cash in on Hinkley Point C

With a £16 billion budget there’s a lot of money to be made. Power firm EDF Energy held a conference in London this week for companies looking to cash in on the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. It said the event would help potential suppliers understand how to win contracts for the project. The […]

Horizon opts for fewer nuclear reactors at Welsh plant

The Hitachi owned company Horizon Nuclear Power has opted to build fewer nuclear reactors at a proposed nuclear plant in Wales. This means capacity will be 1.3GW lower than it might otherwise have been. Hitachi bought the firm from RWE npower and E.ON last year and said at the time it planned to build two […]

TEPCO starts removing fuel rods from Fukushima nuclear plant

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has begun the slow and delicate process of removing fuel rods from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, starting with reactor four. The 1,500 fuel rods contained within reactor four’s storage pool are expected to be removed by the end of 2014. They will be taken out using a crane in […]