The EU Commission remains confident that Britain will deliver on its commitments to increase the use of renewable energy sources, despite doubts expressed in London, a Brussels spokesman said Monday. British officials have told government ministers that the country has no chance of meeting its commitments under European Union plans to raise the proportion of energy made from renewable sources by 2020, a British newspaper reported.

Madrid has passed legislation to allow the installation of offshore wind parks along Spain's 4,000 kilometres of coastline. The move has been enthusiastically applauded by supporters of renewable energies but slammed not only by conservationists who fear the turbines will prove to be a chain of offshore eyesores, but by fishermen as well who are deeply concerned about the effect they will have on the local fishing industry.

Twenty-eight of the schemes are being developed by private companies including oil company Shell, wind energy firms Hibernian Wind Power and Atlanticwest Energy and the newly formed Liffey Cable Car Company. The remaining 25 schemes so far submitted to the planning board are being developed by State agencies including Bord Gáis, Bord na Móna, the Railway Procurement Agency, the Dublin Airport Authority, the ESB and several local authorities.

A MAJOR €620m offshore wind farm is being planned for a site in the North Irish Sea and could be up and running by 2013. Revealing details of the venture yesterday, Oriel Windfarm managing director Briasn Britton said the wind farm will have capacity to generate 330 megawatts of electricity. Preparatory work on the project has been under way for several years under the terms of a Foreshore Licence granted to Oriel in 2005.

A grandiose plan to link Europe's electricity grids may recast wind power from its current role as a walk-on extra to being the star of the show. Plug in your toaster-or your television or your vacuum cleaner-and the electricity that surges through it is an alternating current. The question of whether the world would be powered by direct current (DC), in which electrons flow in one direction around a circuit, or by alternating current (AC), in which they jiggle back and forth, was decided in the 1880s. Thomas Edison backed DC. George Westinghouse backed AC. Westinghouse won. The reason was that over the short distances spanned by early power grids, AC transmission suffers lower losses than DC. It thus became the industry standard. Some people, however, question that standard because over long distances high-voltage DC lines suffer lower losses than AC. Not only does that make them better in their own right, but employing them would allow electricity grids to be restructured in ways that would make wind power more attractive. That would reduce the need for new conventional (and polluting) power stations.

The government of Spain on July 20 approved legislation that will allow offshore wind parks to be set up along the nation's vast coastline in an effort to boost the use of renewable energy sources. "This law will allow the installation for the first time of electricity generators in the ocean," the economy ministry said.

An Internet-style bubble is looming in renewable energy stocks with valuations reaching the ozone layer and businesses managing to secure flotations with little or no turnover, a French investment fund has warned. With raw material prices showing no sign of abating, companies that supply renewable energy or equipment such as wind turbines and solar panels could see their margins suffer, Matteo Novelli of Star Innovation at CFD Capital Management said. "There is clearly a bubble forming in the eco-energy market and there could be a hefty correction at some point," Novelli told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. European Union leaders have pledged to get a fifth of the bloc's energy from renewable fuels like wind, solar and biofuels by 2020, three times the current level. Political pressure for a cleaner environment and high oil prices have sparked an investment rush into alternative energy. But Novelli said such businesses were so fashionable that valuations could not be sustained in the short to medium term.

Driven by rising demand for renewable energy sources, the world wind energy market is expected to grow at gutsy speed to generate over 360 thousand megawatts of energy by the end of 2015. Further, harnessing the power of the wind will generate approximately 12% of the world's electricity by the year 2020.

Endesa has begun a €86.9m project to build two wind farms in the town of Valle de Sedano in the province of Burgos, Spain. The Las Pardas and Cantiruelas wind farms, which have a capacity of 49.5MW and 15MW respectively, will be built through Endesa Cogeneracion y Renovables and Prorener. The farms will be built next to the Otero 20/132kV substation in Burgos, which is also part of the project.

The Administrative Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal from the Swedish Municipality of Velling and granted Vattenfall permission to complete the construction of Lillgrund Wind Farm at a planned height of 115m

EDP Energias de Portugal said its US-based subsidiary Horizon Wind Energy has agreed to develop wind power projects with a consortium comprising JP Morgan, ABN Amro and Morgan Stanley. EDP said the consortium will invest about 700 mln usd and the portfolio of projects will have an installed capacity of 722 MW, according to a filing with stock market regulator CMVM. The company added that the deal, which comes in the wake of the acquisition of US-based wind power company Horizon, will allow EDP to get the production tax credits linked to the wind power production of the projects and the depreciation of the Horizon wind parks.

The race to build new sources of alternative energy from the wind is running into a formidable obstacle: not enough windmills...Numerous wind-power projects from Virginia to California have been stalled due to the shortage. But for some renewable-energy companies in Europe, where wind power has been in vogue for almost two decades, the logjam is a lucrative opportunity. These firms anticipated a shortage of turbines and locked in orders with makers. They're now using their considerable buying power to gobble up smaller utilities in the U.S. that couldn't otherwise get their hands on turbines.

CHEERLEADERS for renewable energy are fond of pointing out that patches of desert receive enough energy each year from sunlight to power the entire world. But few deign to explain how the construction of the millions of solar cells required to convert that energy into electricity would be financed. Utility bosses and policymakers tend to dismiss wind and solar power as noble but expensive distractions, sustainable only through lavish subsidies. But new studies suggest that renewables might not be as dear as sceptics suspect...These figures, of course, rely on all sorts of questionable assumptions.

Europe's wind power market will more than double by 2015 as Spain remains the biggest producer, a study said. Europe's installed generating capacity for electricity produced by wind turbines will expand an average nine gigawatts a year to 130.8 gigawatts in 2015, from 48.5 gigawatts at the end of 2006, according to the study by Emerging Energy Research, based in Cambridge, Mass. Spain and Germany will account for more than half of the expansion over the next eight years, though east European markets will grow rapidly as 2015 approaches, it said. Utilities in northern Europe are likely to dominate the growing market for offshore wind power.

GE Energy Financial Services, a division of GE, and Theolia announced today the completion of a previously announced strategic relationship. The alliance is to significantly increase Theolia's wind generation portfolio in Europe, bring it additional capital to fund growth and give it access to additional wind project development opportunities. All necessary corporate and regulatory approvals have now been obtained, including those of Theolia's shareholders and the French financial regulator.

LISBON -(Dow Jones)- Portuguese utility Energias de Portugal SA (EDP.LB) Tuesday said it has finalized the purchase of U.S. wind power company Horizon Wind Energy LLC from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS). "The final price of the transaction was set at an enterprise value of $2.74 billion for Horizon, already including the capital expenditures supported by Goldman Sachs between the end of 2006 and today," EdP said in a statement.

PARIS (Thomson Financial) - Renewable energy company Voltalia said it plans to build a new 44 megawatts wind farm in France, developed by Anelia, a joint venture of Voltalia and Anemos.

Concern about dangers to Britain's biggest birds of prey from windfarms came as 15 White-tailed Eagle chicks were flown to Scotland for a new comeback scheme. The youngsters, when able to fly, will be released in about two months in the first phase of a new project to restore this species to eastern Scotland where it was wiped out by human persecution almost 200 years ago. Now they [up to 80 more to be released over the next four years] and the new population in the Hebridean islands following a similar, post-1970s re-introduction project will face a new hazard - if they happen to move into areas well stocked with wind turbines.

Wind farms will be difficult to set up due to the dense population, Resources and Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit told Parliament on Wednesday. "We would have to go offshore, which means that there are downfalls. We'd have to go quite a way out into the water, which proves difficult because of the depth of the sea bed."