Schneider Electric, U.K. & Ireland, has been chosen as the preferred bidder for a contract to supply its medium-voltage PIX switchgear range for the £24.5bn (€33bn)Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in the UK, EDF Energy said last week.

Final contract terms for the nuclear power project had been agreed with a number of suppliers including Areva, Alstom, Bouygues TP/Laing O’Rourke and BAM Nuttal/Kier Infrastructure.

Schneider’s UK operations will be responsible for the design, engineering and deployment of the equipment, which is expected to ensure safe operations and reliable energy management at the site.

The firm’s operations in France will be assisting the UK team for the project.

While Areva is to deliver nuclear steam supply system, instrumentation and control for the power facility, Alstom France will be supplying the turbines and Alstom UK is to deliver the services during operations.

EDF has selected Bouygues TP/Laing O’Rourke for the main civil works of the project and BAM Nuttal/Kier Infrastructure for the earthworks at the site.

Hinkley Point C commercial director Ken Owen commented :

“Schneider UK & Ireland is the latest addition to the industrial partnership that will build Hinkley Point C.”

In October, EDF and the China General Nuclear Power Corp. (CGN) had completed a strategic investment agreement to facilitate the Hinkley Point construction and operations. Following the deal, CGN holds a 33.5% stake in the project with the rest being owned by EDF.

The French giant had said that approximately 7 percent of the U.K.’s anticipated electricity demand would be met by the Hinkley Point C facility.

German technology giant Siemens has won three onshore wind orders for projects in Scotland that will provide a combined capacity of 126MW.

The Scottish projects under consideration include the Dersalloch wind farm in the South Ayrshire region, the Ewe Hill project, which is situated at a 15km distance from Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, and another wind development in North Ayrshire.

Following delivery of the turbines, Siemens will also be offering long-term service and maintenance for the projects.

For the Dersalloch project, the firm will be responsible for the construction, installation and commissioning of 23 units of its D3 direct drive wind turbines for a combined capacity of 69MW.

While turbine installations have been scheduled to start in spring 2016, official handover of the site to developer ScottishPower Renewables is expected to be completed in autumn 2016.

For the second order, Siemens will be delivering a total of 22 wind turbines, having a potential capacity of up to 51MW.

While six of its SWT-2.3-93 wind turbine models will be supplied for Ewe Hill Phase I, the second phase of the same project will have 16 similar wind turbine type installations.

Siemens is expected to conduct installation of the turbines for the first phase of the project in spring 2016, while the Phase II installations have been scheduled for autumn 2016.

The third order is for Millour Hill Community Wind farm, under which the German firm is to deliver two SWT-3.2-101 turbines for a wind project in North Ayrshire.

Siemens Wind Power and Renewables Onshore CEO Thomas Richterich commented :

“With their combined rating of 126MW, these three projects will provide reliable, clean energy for the region, equivalent to the demand of both Scotland’s Orkney and Shetland Islands.”

Irish renewables group NTR has booked a €72.6 million profit for the first half of its 2016 financial year.

In a statement this morning, the company says the gain – which is up €67.2 million from the same period a year earlier – is down to the sale of its US wind farms completed earlier in the year.

According to the half yearly results, shareholders’ funds increase almost 30% to €226.6 million with assets including cash and European wind projects at €280.8 million. The company’s cash reserves stand at €177.1 million.

The Dublin-based outfit has also confirmed that it will press ahead with a demerger today, which will see its European wind business become a new company that will retain the name NTR, while legacy assets of the type on which the company was built as a toll roads business will be part of a new company called Altas Investments.

Over the last six months NTR has acquired 42MW of construction-ready onshore wind projects across Ireland and the UK. A further 23MW in acquisitions are due to be announced.

By 2030, Sweden plans to become a fossil fuel-free country and wants be one of the world’s first fossil fuel-free welfare states.

Minister for Strategic Development and Nordic Cooperation Kristina Persson, dubbed the “minister for the future” by the government, said the goal can be achieved by breaking the link between economic growth and increased emissions :

“Since the mid-1990s, Sweden is one of few industrialised countries that has managed a decoupling of economic growth and GHG emissions, creating a rising economy paired with falling emission levels”, said Kristina Persson.

The Swedish government explained greenhouse gas emissions are down 22 percent from 1990 levels. Swedish gross domestic product grew 58 percent during that time. That’s far less, however, when weighed against major economies like the United States.

EU member states are obligated to use renewable resources for 20 percent of their energy consumption by 2020. Eurostat, the region’s statistics officer, reported Bulgaria, Estonia and Sweden were the only three in the bloc to reach their targets ahead of schedule.

A Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator-led programme has devised a methodology to pre-determine the load-bearing capacity of vibrated piles as part of a project to test alternative ways of installing offshore foundations.

What It appears that vibration-driven piling could make installing monopiles and jackets offshore quieter and up to 10 times faster.

The test involved a comparison of the conventional method of impact hammering with the vibration of steel piles on land.

It aimed to prove whether vibratory piling can offer a faster and more environmentally friendly method of installing steel foundations for offshore wind farms and to evaluate the method with regard to stability.

The project participants are RWE Innogy, Bilfinger Offshore, DONG Energy, EnBW, E.ON and Vattenfall.

RWE Innogy said it now plans to build on these tests and launch an additional subproject intended to investigate ways of optimising the installation methodology itself.

Carbon Trust director of innovation Jan Matthiesen commented :

“Finding innovative methods to reduce the cost of installation will help to bring down the cost of offshore wind, making it competitive with conventional energy sources.”

Siemens is to supply a total of 130MW to three wind farms in the Basilicata region of southern Italy.

It will equip the plants with a total 42 direct-drive D3 units made up of SWT-3.0-113 and SWT-3.2-113 turbines by the end of 2016.

The Italian regulatory authority Gestore Servizi Energetici has prescribed an awarding procedure for wind farms with capacities greater than 5MW since 2012.

In this process, developers offer the greatest possible discounts from the defined base rate of €127/MW/h of power that is generated.

Terna Energy, member of large Greek conglomerate GEK Terna, has acquired a 380MW wind energy project from Tri Global Energy in Texas, US.

If terms of the deal have not been disclosed, the facility is due to power around 110,200 homes once completed.

Comprising nearly 32,000 leased acres of privately owned farm and ranch land, the Fluvanna Wind Energy farm will be constructed in phases with the first one expected to be operational in 2017.

As part of the contract, Tri Global will work with Terna during the construction phase, up to the time when the project reaches commercial operation.

The project was designed under Tri Global’s proprietary business model, wind force plan, which enables local landowners and community investors to partner with and have a substantial ownership in the wind project development that leased their land.

Terna Energy S.A., based in Athens, Greece, is a developer, owner and operator of 885 MW of renewable energy projects in operation or under construction in Europe and the U.S.

Moscow and Cairo signed an agreement on Thursday for Russia to build a nuclear power plant in Egypt, with Russia extending a loan to Egypt to cover the cost of construction.

A spokesman for Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom said the plant, Egypt’s first, would be built at Dabaa in the north of the country and was expected to be completed by 2022.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, speaking on state TV, gave few details but said the project would involve the building of a ‘third-generation’ plant with four reactors of 1,200MW each, which “will make Egypt regional technological leader and the region’s only country with NPP 3+ Gen technology”.

Rosatom said that the intergovernmental agreement specifies about future nuclear fuel supply, terms on operation, maintenance and repair of NPP units, treatment of spent nuclear fuel, and training of personnel.

The company, however, did not reveal further details on the terms of the agreement, but Sisi said the loan from Russia would be paid off over 35 years through the production of electricity from the plant.

Egypt has been considering a nuclear plant at Dabaa on and off since the 1980s, but Cairo froze its nuclear plans after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It only announced in 2006, under former President Hosni Mubarak, that it intended to revive them. Mubarak was then overthrown in a revolution in 2011.

Sisi, who came to power in 2014, said in February that he had signed a memorandum of understanding to go ahead with the nuclear project. He has also talked this week of building solar and wind energy facilities in the coming three years to generate around 4,300 megawatts of power.

RWE Innogy has selected the Port of Lowestoft as the base for the construction of its 336MW Galloper offshore wind farm.

The deal has been announced which it said “signifies a multi-million pound investment into the local economy” in terms of lease and port payments and the preparation of the facility ahead of it becoming the project’s offshore construction base.

Around 40 personnel will work from the OGN Group facility onsite over the two year construction period of the Round 2.5 project.

Galloper project director Toby Edmonds said: “The new base, with its excellent quay, office and laydown facilities will be a thriving hub of activity during the Galloper wind farm construction period.”

RWE made a final investment decision in October with the UK Green Investment Bank, Siemens Financial Services and Macquarie Capital each becoming 25% joint equity partners alongside the utility.

The Galloper team will mobilise onsite in March 2016 before moving onto the construction phase of the project in June 2016.

RWE said a final decision on the operations and maintenance base is expected to be made “in the coming months”.

Two bilateral agreements signed in Paris at the International Energy Agency biannual ministerial meeting mark the strengthening of ties and growing co-operation between Ireland and France in the field of energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy security.

The agreement between the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management follows the Ireland-France roadmap including the establishment of the Ireland France Sustainable Energy Forum agreed in May.

Minister for Energy Alex White and his French counterpart Ségolène Royal also signed a bilateral agreement on the reciprocal holding of emergency stocks of crude oil and petroleum products. The new agreement with France gives additional flexibility to Ireland’s National Oil Reserves Agency, which manages these stocks.

Energy minister Alex White commented :

“These two agreements build on existing cooperation between Ireland and France in energy security. They also mark a deepening of our partnership on energy efficiency and renewable technology, in particular in the area of marine energy and smart grids.”