Lightsource has announced refinancing of £284m of its portfolio of UK solar projects.

The portfolio comprises 33 operational, ground-mounted solar projects, which fall under 20-25 year fixed income tariffs under the UK government’s Feed in Tariff subsidy regime.

The refinancing was completed with the Royal Bank of Scotland as Lightsource’s financial partner and takes the amount of project finance debt raised by Lighthouse in 2015 to £1.1bn.

The £284m refinancing represents the first ever sterling, benchmark-size solar bond and the largest sterling renewables bond.

The deal saw M&G Investments provide £247 million of 22-year inflation linked finance with AMP Capital providing a £37 million 8-year mezzanine facility.

Lightsource finance director Paul McCartie said:

“We are delighted to have closed this deal which represents a significant milestone for Lightsource. We would like to thank M&G and AMP Capital for their continued support on the transaction and hope that we can maintain those partnerships with future deals in the pipeline.”

Canadian energy company Enbridge has acquired a 24.9% interest in the 400MW Rampion offshore wind farm, to be located 13 kilometres off the Sussex coast south of Brighton, England.

Enbridge will become a shareholders in Rampion Offshore Wind Limited, joining existing partners Eon, which will remain the controlling shareholder at 50.1%, and the UK Green Investment Bank.

The project received the final investment decision in May 2015, started construction in September and is expected to be fully operational in 2018.

Eon and Enbridge are already partners in the Magic Valley wind farm in Texas and the Wildcat wind farm in Indiana.

Eon Climate & Renewables chief operating officer Michael Lewis said:

“We are happy to strengthen our partnership with Enbridge as a reliable partner, who shares our approach of combining high class assets and safe operations. The company’s background in North American renewables and pipelines complements the expertise of the existing shareholder group. Our collective experience will help realise the successful construction and operation of the wind farm.”

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas made a net profit of €206m in the third quarter of 2015, up from €102m a year earlier, as the company saw the value of turbine orders rise by 50%.

Vestas’ firm and unconditional turbine orders tallied 1508MW worth €1.5bn in Q3, up from 1170MW and €1bn a year earlier. The company received turbine orders for 6275MW worth €5.8bn in the first nine months of 2015, a rise from 4290MW and €3.7bn last year.

The company said Q3 sales were exclusively onshore wind turbines, with no offshore orders booked in the quarter.

Vestas’ net profit for the year to date was €387m, up from €198m a year earlier.

In the third quarter of 2015, Vestas generated revenue of €2.12bn – an increase of 17% a year ago. The company said the value of its wind turbine order backlog amounted to €8.2bn as of 30 September.

In addition to the wind turbine order backlog, Vestas had service agreements with contractual future revenue of €8.2bn at the end of September 2015. The combined value of the order backlog and service agreements stood at €16.4bn – an increase of €3bn on a year ago.

The company also announced a €150m share buy-back programme to adjust capital structure and to meet the obligations arising from employee share option programmes or other allocations of shares to employees.

Vestas chief executive Anders Runevad said :

“With greater clarity on deliveries for the remainder of the year and a very solid financial position, we are raising our guidance on revenue, EBIT margin, and free cash flow and initiating a share buy-back programme.”

For the first time since 2009, the market value of the global mining sector has dropped below US$1 trillion (€909bn), according to a new report by SNL Metals and Mining.

While not by much, the crossing of the line clearly illustrates how battered mining stocks have been as of late.

In aggregate, the 2,684 listed companies tracked by SNL went down a bit over 9% in September alone and a more impressive 43% since mid-2014.

Only four years ago, during the peak of the so-called “mining boom”, the sector was worth nearly US$2.5 trillion (€2270bn).

To put things in perspective, SNL notes that the entire industry is now worth less than Apple and Google combined, which are valued at $650 billion (€590bn) and $440 billion (€400bn) respectively.

Despite this, SNL’s Pipeline Activity Index, which measures exploration and development activity, improved in September after a healthy increase in drilling activity and a slight uptick in announcements of initial resources:

“The upbeat picture was offset by a 50% drop in the number of financings by companies with annual revenue of less than US$500 million”, says SNL.

There were only 12 such financings of over US$2 million last month, compared with 24 in August and 36 in June. This represented the lowest number of financings by exploration companies since at least January 2012. However, the US$171 million raised in September (70% by Canadian companies) was 15% higher than the month before, although still only a third of the US$513 million registered in June.

Last month, most miners experienced one of the deepest intra-day losses in history, after a series of broker downgrades triggered by continued fears over China’s growth and falling commodities.

About $51 billion were wiped from the ASX alone, while on Asia, Europe and North America resources firms were at the forefront of a general sell-off.

EDP Renewables’ revenues increased 16% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2015 to €1.1bn on the back of higher volumes and prices.

EBITDA increased by 22% YoY to €782m, while net profit was €100m up from €53m in the first nine months of last year.

Over the last 12 months, EDPR added 616MW to its installed capacity, of which 70% is located in the US.

The company said that, as of 30 September 2015, it had a global installed capacity portfolio of 9.2GW spread over 10 countries.

Dong Energy boosted operational pre-tax earnings by 14% in the first nine months of 2015 to what it described as “a positive development in the underlying business”.

The Danish company said EBITDA was Dkr14.8bn (€2bn) in the period, up from Dkr13bn (€1.7bn) in the corresponding segment of 2014 :

“The positive development in operations can mainly be ascribed to higher generation from offshore wind farms, completed renegotiation of an oil-indexed gas purchase contract and lower costs in the E&P business”, it said.

Net profit was Dkr3.2bn (€429m), up Dkr2.4bn (€322m) on the year-ago totals. Gross investments were Dkr14.6bn (€1.95bn) mainly on offshore wind construction but also oil and gas fields.

Return on capital employed was 7% on an adjusted year-to-date basis.

Production from offshore wind was up 24% year-on-year with contributions from newbuild projects at Westermost Rough, West of Duddon Sands and Borkum Riffgrund 1. This was offset by sales of a stake in London Array and export cable issues at Anholt.

Dong is planning to pursue an IPO within the next 18 months with preparations already underway :

“The company continued to develop according to expectations during third quarter and we are very satisfied with the operational and financial performance”, said chief executive Henrik Poulsen

Norwegian utility Statkraft suffered a net loss in the third quarter when compared to a year earlier amid record low energy prices in the Nordic region and adverse currency effects.

The company made a loss of Nkr39m (€4.2m), down from a profit of Nkr41m (€4.4m) in the same period in 2014. Operating profit before depreciation fell to Nkr11m (€1.2m) down from Nkr23m (€2.5m).

The big fall in prices means Statkraft has decided to reduce the production from its Norwegian hydropower assets.

Total power production fell by 1.1TWh compared to the same period last year.

The company said that a 58% fall in Nordic power prices from €31.8/MWh in the third quarter of 2014 to just €13.4/MWh.

Negative currency effects due to the weak level of the Norwegian Kroner also contributed to the quarterly loss, reducing profit by Nkr52m (€5.5m). There was Nkr1bn (€107m) of equity injected into the company.

Statkraft chief executive Christian Rynning-Tønnesen said: “We have experienced the lowest power prices in the Nordics in 15 years and have therefore held back water in order to produce more electricity when demand and prices are expected to be higher.”

The company is researching a revised 1000MW wind power project in Norway and has recently completed a 172MW hydropower plant in Peru and has started work on constructing the 36MW Andershaw wind farm in the UK.

Vattenfall’s wind business posted a third quarter operating profit of Skr887m (€94m), up from Skr620m (€66m) in the year-ago period, on the back of higher revenues and generation from onshore and offshore wind.

Net sales at the Swedish utility and developer were Skr1.39bn (€148m), up from Skr918m (€98m) in the previous year’s quarter, thanks in part to the commissioning and operations at the 288MW DanTysk project off Germany and 37MW Clashindarroch onshore project in Scotland (pictured).

Wind generation rose to 1.1TWh in the period from 0.7TWh last time around. Hydro was also up by around 50%.

In the wider business Vattenfall posted net sales of Skr37.5bn (€4bn), up from Skr34.7bn (€3.7bn) in the year-ago period, with pre-tax profits of Skr1.6bn (€170m) compared with a loss of Skr18bn (€1.9bn) last time around.

“The profit increase is mainly attributable to higher production volumes and lower operating costs”, said chief executive Magnus Hall, who also added :

“Market conditions remain challenging however, with a considerable capacity surplus and low electricity prices, especially in the Nordic countries, which is squeezing our production margins. Cost-cutting efforts must continue.”

The UK government consultation on whether “devastating” cuts to the Feed in Tariff should go ahead will close today.

Industry has urged the renewable sector to “make its voice heard” if it hasn’t already done so before the 11.45pm deadline tonight (Friday, October 23).

Greenpeace policy director Doug Parr said: “If this goes ahead the impact will be devastating, but right now, we’ve got a chance to push back.” He also added :

“The government cannot pretend cuts to subsidies for the nascent solar industry are necessary to save families money whilst throwing much more money at well-established technologies. The timing couldn’t be worse as the young and potentially booming solar industry is on track to go subsidy free but if these cuts happen, it will be too sudden, too soon and too dramatic and is likely to irrevocably damage the domestic solar industry losing thousands of jobs and millions in investment.”

For its part, the UK government said it wants to maximise value for money to British electricity bill payers by “reducing FiT expenses”. Last September, the U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd, explained that the government had “overspent” on subsidies, pointing to the runaway success of solar under the FIT :

“Take-up has been so great that we expect to achieve our ambition (of supporting 750,000 installations by 2020) by the end of this year. But this has meant that the overall cost of the scheme has also exceeded expectations.”

On Tuesday, in a seemingly shocking move, environmental group Greenpeace has announced it plans to acquire coal mines and power plants owned by Swedish utility in eastern Germany.

This decision comes after the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has decided to shed its eastern German lignite operations, after writing down the business by $1.8 billion in July, citing a drop in power prices and worsening business due to Germany’s transition to renewables.

But what the watchdog really seeks by buying such assets, one of Europe’s largest coal mining operations, is to transfer their ownership to a charitable foundation, paid for by Vattenfall and the German and Swedish governments, that would oversee the gradual closure of the coal field and six attendant power plants.

Greenpeace estimates the costs of phasing out the plants and replanting the nearby lands used for mining is about $2.27 billion (2bn euros). A sum they are, by no means, willing to fork out.

“We don’t want to pay any money for it, it’s worth nothing,” Greenpeace Energy leader, Nils Mueller, was quoted as saying by AFP.

The group says it intends to operate the mine through 2030, though its main goal is to persuade both Vattenfall and the Swedish government to adopt a transition plan that envisions job growth in renewables, storage, power to gas and other technologies.

Vattenfall’s eastern German operations employ around 8,000 in a region already affected by high rates of unemployment.