Energy

Google has announced its investment in the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC), a project to erect a 350-mile stretch of wind turbines off the US Atlantic coastline.

Stretching down the coast from New Jersey to Virginia, the AWC will be able to connect 6,000 MW of offshore wind turbines—equivalent to 60 per cent of the wind energy that was installed in the whole of the US last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.

Aberdeen-based energy services company John Wood Group has won a £100 million power station contract in California.

The contract is to construct and commission the conversion of the Tracy Peaker Plant in Tracy, California, owned by GWF Energy, in order to make it more environmentally friendly.

The work will be carried out by the company’s power division, Wood Group GTS.

US gas company Chesapeake Energy is to sell a third of its interest in the Eagle Ford Shale project to China’s CNOOC for $1.08 billion.

Chesapeake will continue to manage the project in South Texas, conducting all leasing, drilling, operation and marketing activities.

CNOOC will fund 75 per cent of Chesapeake's share of drilling and other costs until an additional $1.08 billion has been paid, which Chesapeake expects to happen by the end of 2012.

The Czech Republic's Energeticky a Prymuslovy Holding (EPH) and France's GdF Suez are said to have made the shortlist for a 51 per cent stake in Poland's Enea.

EPH has offered 25 zlotys per share, valuing the controlling stake at 5.63 billion zlotys (approximately €1.41 billion), while GdF Suez offered 24.9 zlotys per share or 5.6 billion zlotys (approx. €1.4 billion) for the stake.

The two other bidders are France's EDF and businessman Jan Kulczyk, who offered 5.4 billion and 5.2 billion zlotys respectively.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MPSA) has broken ground on a $100 million wind turbine nacelle manufacturing plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, crediting a coalition of elected officials and the region's business community for creating the environment that allowed them to site the facility in America's heartland.

The nacelle, which is located at the top of the wind turbine tower and functions to convert wind energy to electric power, consists of the wind turbine rotor axis, generator, multiplying gearbox, control system and electrical equipment.

Bob Dudley, the new chief executive of UK oil giant BP, has signed a deal to develop a major natural gas field in Azerbaijan.

The agreement is to develop the deepwater Shafaq-Asiman field, which lies 125 kilometres south-east of Baku. The deal was signed by Rovnag Abdullayev, president of Azerbaijan’s national oil company SOCAR, and Rashid Javanshir, president of BP Azerbaijan.

The gas field has estimated reserves of 17,000 billion cubic feet, similar to the Shah Deniz gas field (also in Azerbaijan), in which BP has a 25.5 per cent stake.

Genera Energy focuses on advancing biomass-fuels technologies that could help alter the economics of non-food biofuels. Now the University of Tennessee spinoff is developing a first-of-its-kind Biomass Innovation Park that it hopes will become a model for the rest of the country, as Keith Regan discover.

Zambia is beginning to benefit as the world wakes up to the possibilities of green power—and power utility ZESCO is at the forefront of the changes.

Saudi Arabia has an insatiable appetite for electricity, which has turned one local business into an international giant, as Jeff Daniels learns.

Although it has to be said that not all projects have yet received their financial green light, Saudi Arabia has an impressive programme of converting its oil dollars into other forms of essential infrastructure. Billions are being spent on water desalination plants and even more on ever increasing electricity capacity.

Camco International Limited, a global developer of emission reduction and clean energy projects, has announced a joint venture agreement with Khazanah Nasional, the investment holding arm of the Government of Malaysia.