Wind farm contract delay diverts £1bn in savings from consumers

Wind farm contract delay diverts £1bn in savings from consumers

Consumers could miss out on more than a billion pounds of energy bill savings from the world’s biggest offshore wind farm after its owner delayed a contract to provide cheap power from the project. The Hornsea Two wind farm, capable of supplying 1.4 million homes, is fully operational, Orsted said yesterday. The Danish energy group…

Ofgem backs down after threatening The Times over prepaid meters exposé

Ofgem backs down after threatening The Times over prepaid meters exposé

Britain’s energy regulator has ditched its attempts to force The Times and one of its reporters to hand over confidential personal notes in a row over journalistic independence. Officials at Ofgem had sent notices to the newspaper and Paul Morgan-Bentley, its head of investigations, asking them to hand over all the reporter’s relevant materials —…

Artificial intelligence didn’t write this, but we must embrace it

Artificial intelligence didn’t write this, but we must embrace it

This article has not been written by artificial intelligence, though it has benefited from generative AI. My iPad predicts words or phrases that it thinks I’m about to use and helpfully (though often incorrectly) prompts me. Search engines personalise results and chatbots summarise complex articles, but what you’re reading is the result of human thinking…

How three small UK craft companies are conquering the US market

How three small UK craft companies are conquering the US market

Manhattan is a long way from the pottery kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, but the high-end China cups and saucers made by Richard Brendon look at home in New York’s famous Saks Fifth Avenue department store. The United States is now the eponymous tableware brand’s fastest-growing and largest retail market, with the entrepreneur, who received the 2024…

Price support ‘looks too low’ for any new wind farms to get built

Price support ‘looks too low’ for any new wind farms to get built

The government will fail to secure any new wind farms through a recently launched auction because the financial support on offer insufficiently reflects soaring costs, the boss of SSE has said. Renewable energy developers are encouraged to invest in Britain by auctions for contracts guaranteeing consumers will pay a fixed price for the electricity their…

Nine new offshore wind farms secured in renewable energy auction

Nine new offshore wind farms secured in renewable energy auction

Nine new offshore wind farms were among the record number of projects agreed in the Labour government’s first renewable energy auction. The sixth annual auction round for state subsidies yielded 131 new green infrastructure projects. This was the highest yet, and up from 92 in the previous auction, according to the Department for Energy Security…

VW considers closing German factories for first time

VW considers closing German factories for first time

Volkswagen is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time as it pursues ways to save several billion euros in a cost-cutting drive at its namesake brand. The carmaker, whose brands also include Skoda, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche and Ducati, considers one large vehicle plant and one component factory in Germany to be obsolete,…