The ‘use it or lose it’ rule means that Lufthansa is using its routes even when it hasn’t sold seats. The airline company Lufthansa will operate 18,000 “empty, unnecessary” flights this winter that would have otherwise been cancelled due to lack of passengers. The empty flights will run because of rules imposed by the
Labour has called for a windfall tax on North Sea Oil and Gas companies to help fund measures to protect households from expected energy bill increases in April. Oil refinery plant at night With gas prices throughout Europe going up exponentially in 2021 and remaining high into 2022, the price cap is
Vattenfall and its technology provider subsidiary Feenstra are launching a new high-temperature heat pump. A criticism often raised against heat pumps is the need for additional upgrades to heating systems to accommodate their lower temperature, in particular the need for insulation. This can increase the cost and complexity of switching from a traditional gas
Used lithium-ion batteries taken from carmaker Audi’s electric vehicles (EVs) have been repurposed into a ‘second-life’ stationary energy storage system by energy company RWE at a project in Herdecke, Germany. RWE has deployed the system, which has a capacity of around 4.5MWh, at the site of its pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant at
New data has shown that power from fossil fuels on Britain’s electricity grid fell to an all-time low last week, delivering the UK’s greenest Christmas. The data – from Drax Electric Insights – shows that at 23:45 on Wednesday 29 December, fossil fuels generated 1.7GW of electricity, with this just 6% of the power
A new law will force car advertisements in France to carry messages that encourage more eco-friendly forms of transport such as cycling and public transport. Many products in France are required to carry warnings: “Smoking kills”; “Avoid eating too much fat”; “Abuse of Alcohol is dangerous for your health”. From March 2022, a new law will
The price cap could jump 46% for summer 2022, hitting approximately £1,865 as wholesale power prices remain high. Currently, the winter 2021-22 cap is set at £1,277 per annum – which is itself a record high – but could increase by almost 50% when the new cap is set by Ofgem in February 2022,
Changes to how solar PV park land in the UK is managed could see sites support four times as many bumble bees, new research has found. Specifically, this can be achieved by managing land as meadows rather than turf grass, with researchers at Lancaster University coming to this conclusion through the use of a model that simulated
Heat pumps and solar thermal are among technologies suggested by the government to help meet new carbon reduction goals. Under the new regulations, announced by the government yesterday (15 December), CO2 emissions from new build homes from 15 June 2022 must be around 30% lower than current standards and emissions from other new buildings,
Octopus Electric Vehicles is preparing a path for its vehicle-to-grid (V2G) project Powerloop to become the first to enter National Grid ESO’s Balancing Mechanism. Developed by a consortium run by Octopus Electric Vehicles and Octopus Energy in partnership with UK Power Networks (UKPN), Energy Saving Trust, Open Energi, CPS, and Guidehouse, Powerloop has allowed