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EcoCrops International reports that Industrial wood pellets, as opposed to domestic wood pellets, are currently trading at an all-time high.  With the Argus 90 day Industrial wood pellet index trading at US$210 per tonne, up strongly from July 2018 where they were trading at US$175. The steep increase in prices is primarily driven by higher demand from European Power Stations.  Such as new power station coming online in the Netherland, Belgium, and Italy.  And existing Power stations such as the huge UK Drax power station burning more wood pellets and burning less coal. This trend is set to increase due to a number of factors: The EU climate change targets for reducing its greenhouse emissions, transforming the EU carbon-based fuel (coal) police towards a low carbon economy by 2050.  With targets for the reductions of greenhouse emissions is set for 2020 and 2030. Germany’s plant to phase out all coal power stations by 2038.  And the increased efficiency of carbon capture a

Ecocrops internationa l reports that the Stations would orbit 22,000 miles from Earth and would weigh over 1,000 tons, that is 600 tons more than the International Space Station.  They plan to deploy small and medium stations between 2021 and 2025 and a megawatt level satellite in 2030. Space-based solar power has two major advantages over Earth-based solar power:  due to the orbit they can collect energy 24 hours a day, and they collect more energy as the sunlight is not filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere. Under the plans, huge satellites would be put into orbit to collect the sunlight with huge solar rays.  Once the energy is collected it would be sent back to receiving stations on earth as microwaves.  On Earth, these microwaves would be converted to electricity and fed into the grid. Due to the huge size of the satellites, the Chinese are proposing to fabricate with 3D printer technology and then assemble in the Earth orbit with robots. Pang Zhihao, a researcher from the C

Due to greater use of renewable power ( wood pellets ) Drax Group Plc recorded a 9% rise in full-year earnings. The company reported a profit of £13.8 million for the full year to December 31, 2018. Compared to a pre-tax loss of £204 million for the previous year. Operating the UK’s largest power station in North Yorkshire it generated revenues of £4.23 billion in the period as opposed to £3.86 billion in 2017. Drax was previously powered by coal but they converted four of its six coal-fired plants to use biomass wood pellets.  With wood pellets making up 75% of the company’s feedstock, energy in 2018 up by 65% from the previous year. Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax Group, said: “Drax is now one of the leading generators of flexible, low carbon and renewable electricity in the UK. “As the grid decarbonizes, our ability to support intermittent renewables will become increasingly important as we strive to deliver our purpose of enabling a zero carbon, lower cost energy future.” He c

Drax’s wood pellet power station has started to capture all C02 produced from the combustion of its wood pellets feedstock. A small demonstration plant located in a facility near Selby, North Yorkshire is capturing the C02 by using an amine-free solvent-based process called C-capture. C-capture was developed by the University of Leeds in conjunction with Drax who invested £400,000 in developing the plant. The Director of Engineering of C-Capture. Said “Working at this scale is really where the engineering gets interesting. The challenge now is to get all the information we need to design and build a capture plant 10,000 times bigger. It’s only really when we get to those sorts of scales that we can start to have an impact on the climate.”  James Grainger of Ecocrops Internationa l said the implication for the wood pellet market is enormous as it will change wood pellets from being carbon neutral fuel source to being carbon positive fuel source. www.ecocropsinternational.com

Insolight a new solar business has developed new solar panels that offer yield s of up to 29% as compared to many panels on the market today which offer yields of around 17 to 19%.  They are achieved this by using an optical system that concentrates the light on tiny cells, similar to space satellites' panels systems. It’s the latest in a line of big improvements from the solar industry, which has seen a number of innovative launches amid lowering costs. The startup, which outlined its technology to its former university on Tuesday, decided to use highly efficient cells normally used to power satellites. These cells are expensive, so to keep costs down the team developed a layer of optical lenses, held in place with a frame and covered by protective glass, that focuses the light onto the cells by a factor of 100. That means the cells themselves, which measure one square millimeter each, only take up around half a percent of the surface area of the panel. Horizontal movements

Shell already spends up to 2 billion a year on low carbon energy and is looking to increase this to $4 billion a year, with a move to look to a future beyond oil and gas. Maaten Wetselaar the new head of the Gas & New Energy Units which already generate a third of the company’s revenue said he wants to increase the company’s investment in low carbon energy. In an interview with the Guardian, he stated “I would like my current business to be financially credible enough for not only the company but shareholders, to want to double it and look at more’. Shell is following in the trail of other Oil Majors such as British Petroleum which changed its name to BP (Beyond Petroleum) Norway’s state oil company has rebranded as Equinor to reflect its move towards becoming a “broad energy company”, France’s Total has gone big on batteries, and BP has returned to solar six years after exiting the sector. Shell is considered an industry leader on the switch, having invested in gas, sola