Grid operator to ‘urgently investigate’ Heathrow power outage after fire March 22, 2025 Energy secretary Ed Miliband has ordered the National Energy System Operator to “urgently investigate” the power outage caused by a substation fire that shut Heathrow Airport on Friday. He is working with Ofgem and using powers under the Energy Act to formally launch the grid operator’s investigation. “We are determined to properly understand what happened [...]
Grangemouth: Green future for oil refinery needs £3.5bn, report finds March 19, 2025 Delivering a green future for the Grangemouth oil refinery will require around £3.5bn in private investment, a report has found. The long-awaited Project Willow study, which itself cost £1.5m, sets out nine options for the future of the industrial cluster in central Scotland. Hundreds of jobs are set to be lost this year when the [...]
British Gas: Centrica CEO’s pay slashed in half at FTSE 100 giant March 18, 2025 The boss of Centrica, the FTSE 100 parent company of British Gas, has seen his pay slashed by almost half for the group’s latest financial year. Chris O’Shea took home £4.3m for the 12 months, down from the £8.2m he received in the prior year. O’Shea, who has been CEO of the FTSE 100 company [...]
Kemi Badenoch: Tories to look at ‘achievable solutions’ for clean energy March 18, 2025 Kemi Badenoch has said net zero is “impossible” for Britain to achieve by 2050 and that her party will look at “achievable solutions”. The Conservative Party leader outlined her plans for the Tories to renew their policy programme at a speech in London, as she set out her stall ahead of the May local elections. [...]
Drax ‘misled’ government over wood sourcing, ex lobbyist alleges March 7, 2025 Drax’s former public affairs lead has accused the company of “misleading the public, government and its regulator” over its sourcing of wood for biomass pellets. Rowaa Ahmar was employed by Drax in 2022 amid allegations in a BBC Panorama documentary it had sourced wood from environmentally important forests in Canada instead of using sawdust and [...]
Net Zero: weak economic growth, high energy prices and stagnant productivity? March 5, 2025 How many times have we heard the argument that there is no trade-off between pursuing Net Zero and economic growth? The argument lies at the heat of the country’s economic, climate and environmental policy debate. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, repeats the mantra at every opportunity – “clean energy and Net Zero equals good jobs [...]
Plans for £1bn battery gigafactory and over 1,000 new jobs revealed February 26, 2025 Plans to create a £1bn 10GWh battery gigafactory in Coventry which will create over 1,000 jobs by 2030 have been revealed. Volklec, a battery manufacturing start-up which set up shop in the West Midlands city last year, has entered into an exclusive license agreement with China-based Far East Battery (FEB). The deal will see Volklec [...]
The Week in Business: Is Net Zero going out of fashion? February 14, 2025 Just a few short years ago BP proudly told us they were embarking on a journey – and I quote – “in support of our purpose to reimagine energy for people and our planet, and our ambition to become a Net Zero company by 2050 or sooner and help the world get to Net Zero.” [...]
BP’s Net Zero push has crashed into reality February 12, 2025 I remember when I first encountered a hard copy FTSE 100 annual report. I was a first year undergraduate and my achingly left-wing lecturer in Business and Politics dropped copies in front of us in a seminar room, and asked us to rank the directors “on a fat cat scale.” I can still recall the [...]
BP to target shareholder returns as firm plans fundamental reset February 11, 2025 Oil and gas giant BP has promised to “fundamentally reset” its strategy and improve its performance after profit crashed last year. On Tuesday, the group reported a near 50 per cent decline in profit for the fourth quarter due to a collapse in profit at its refining arm. The results prompted boss Murray Auchincloss to [...]