MADRID/LONDON (Reuters) – A wide rollout of small-scale renewable energy poses a long-term challenge to utilities as households switch to home generation and the supply market opens, executives at green specialists and independents say.

Small-scale renewable energy is more accessible to new entrants compared with the forward purchase of huge amounts of baseload generation from burning fossil fuels, which is the routine business of big utilities.

LONDON (Reuters) – Carbon traders on Wednesday launched a fund targeting markets in carbon credits and renewable energy aiming to exploit market turbulence and government incentives respectively.

Carbon markets allow industrial companies to buy rights to pollute, and appear more risky after the United States last year failed to launch a federal scheme and as U.N. climate talks remain deadlocked on a new round of national carbon caps.

LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) – Britain’s Green Investment Bank
(GIB) will start lending money to fund low-carbon energy
projects from April 2012, a year earlier than initially planned,
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said.
“Possible early priorities for the bank are offshore wind,
waste, and non-domestic energy efficiency,” Clegg said in a
speech to the Climate Change Capital advisory group in London on
Monday.
The bank is also set to borrow money from April 2015
onwards, provided that national debt starts falling as a
percentage of Britain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Britain needs to invest around 200 billion pounds ($324
billion) by 2020 in greener technologies so it can meet targets
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent below 1990
levels and generate 15 percent of energy from renewables.

LONDON (Reuters) – Wood fuel, one of the oldest energy sources on the planet, could become the newest commodity market if it can overcome supply limits and green concerns as demand grows for renewable energy.

Supply constraints are starting to put wood fuel into competition with the paper industry, experts say, in an uneasy reminder of existing tension between the food industry and companies making biofuels from food crops.

LONDON (Reuters) – Wood fuel, the oldest energy source on the planet may emerge as the newest commodity market if it can overcome supply limits and green concerns as demand grows for renewable energy.

Supply constraints are starting to see competition with the pulp and paper market, experts say, in an uneasy reminder of the competition between food and liquid biofuels made from corn.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is to push on with its nuclear plant building plans and let existing reactors run as normal, the government said on Wednesday after its nuclear watchdog dismissed fears of a Fukushima-like disaster in the UK.

Britain’s position contrasts with Japan, Germany and Italy which are re-thinking their nuclear plans after a huge earthquake and tsunami sparked the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years on March 11.

LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) – Britain is to push on with its
nuclear plant building plans and let existing reactors run as
normal, the government said on Wednesday after its nuclear
watchdog dismissed fears of a Fukushima-like disaster in the UK.

Britain’s position contrasts with Japan, Germany and Italy
which are re-thinking their nuclear plans after a huge
earthquake and tsunami sparked the world’s worst nuclear
disaster in 25 years on March 11.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Tuesday committed to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 but made the binding target conditional on the European Union taking similar climate action.

“By making this commitment, we will position the UK a leading player in the global low-carbon economy, creating significant new industries and jobs,” Prime Minister David Cameron said.

LONDON (Reuters) – The APX-Endex energy exchange and the Port of Rotterdam will launch an exchange-traded wood fuel product by the end of the year, the first of its kind, the exchange told Reuters on Monday.

The global biomass market is growing as a result of emerging economy demand and European Union targets to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy, but there are still few international pricing benchmarks.

LONDON (Reuters) – Climate change cut global wheat and corn output by more than 3 percent over the past three decades compared to growth projections without a rise in temperatures, a study found on Friday. The impacts translated into up to 20 percent higher average commodity prices, before accounting for other factors, according to the paper published in the journal Science.

Crop yields rose over the period for example as a result of improvements in practices and plant breeding, and the isolated, negative impact of climate change was equivalent to about one tenth of those advances.