Europe

The prototype tube lighting LED is said to be twice as efficient as those currently used in offices and industry across the globe, while offering the same amount of light.

Lighting is believed to account for almost 20 percent of global electricity consumption, therefore being able to halve the amount of energy used could potential bring huge cost and energy savings. The prototype tube lighting produces 200 lumens per watt (200lm/W) compared with 100lm/W for equivalent strip lighting and 15lm/W for traditional light bulbs.

The deal, which has been announced as being worth 7.5 billion euros, will see JAB adding the brand to what is already an impressive stable of similar products including Caribou Coffee and Peet’s Coffee & Tea.

JAB was already the largest shareholder in DE Master Blenders, which itself also owns Senseo coffee and Pickwick Tea, with a stake of more than 15 percent.

The move comes as Opel, which is also recognised for carrying the badge of Vauxhall in the UK, enters its fourteenth year of losing money. This long period of making loses has sparked a great deal of speculation that the business might be sold.

Despite these rumours, GM’s chief executive, Dan Akerson said: “As a global automotive company, GM needs a strong presence in Europe and therefore we see Opel as key to our success. As such it continues to enjoy the full support of its parent company.”

The company is currently working on the development of a hydrokinetic energy generation device and will be supported by a £100,000 award from Scottish Enterprise.

Samuel Lewinter, chief executive of ResHydro, said: "We are pleased to have the opportunity to open our Scottish subsidiary where we will have access to significant technical expertise and where market conditions will contribute to the most expeditious commercialisation of our technology."

Solar power is a great idea, but it is no good at night or when the sun does not shine – right? Wrong! In southern Spain there's now a solar power plant that can run constantly. We are used to seeing solar panels on houses and in solar arrays. These work by converting sunlight directly into electricity using photoelectric cells, but Torresol Energy was formed to introduce and test new technologies that make concentrated solar energy an economically competitive option and a real, viable, ecological and sustainable alternative to traditional energy sources.

In what is the latest in a series of announcements aimed at transforming the Atlantic’s role as an oil-producing region, the consortium, which also includes Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, has said that drilling has already begun on the first of five wells planned over the next two years. Up to 12 wells could be drilled, depending on initial results.

Clair, located to the west of Shetland, is already known as a "monster" field, holding eight billion barrels of oil. However, up until now it has been technically difficult to bring this ashore.

Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) originally developed its Oxygen Concentratorin 2011 as a way of delivering life-saving oxygen to frontline battlefields. It works by cycling air pressure in chambers filled with a gas absorbing substance to concentrate atmospheric oxygen to 95 percent purity.

When we last spoke to Harry Anagnostaras-Adams, Managing Director of EMED Mining, it was late 2009 and he had been hoping to get the company’s flagship project, Rio Tinto open-pit copper mine near Seville in Spain into operation by 2010. That was at any rate the original objective of the company, which in 2005 had been floated on London’s AIM market by a group of Australian mining specialists who saw a real opportunity across Europe and the Middle East.

“The US alone,” managing director, Gordon Stove enthuses, “represents the single largest geophysics space in the world, with a revenue generation of over $2.4 billion a year from geophysical survey services alone. This is just one of the reasons why we are so keen to expand into that part of the world.”

The proposed £14 billion power plant, to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset, would eventually be capable of powering some five million homes.

It is believed that EDF hopes to build two new reactors at Hinkley that would provide approximately seven percent of the UK’s electricity needs, while employing 25,000 people on the construction of the project alone. The energy giant says the project would generate taxes equivalent to a few percentage points of what the entire financial sector yields for the exchequer.