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It has been revealed that the UK could be saving up to £8 billion a year on energy if it was to implement nationwide smart energy. The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) laid our their vision of the future of the UK’s electricity network, which included more links to mainland Europe and a much larger capacity to store energy.

For the western world, nuclear power has been around for decades, and in Europe the amount of planned new nuclear plants is in decline. France was once leading the way with nuclear power, but now even they are reducing their dependency on nuclear. Countries such as Italy and Spain have been forced by public opinion to abandon any plans to expand their nuclear industry and Germany will phases out nuclear completely by 2022, opting for renewable energy to fill in the gap.

Energy giant Scottish Power is planning on doubling its energy storage facilities because of a huge increase in demand due to renewable energy. As the amount of energy coming from renewables such as wind power increases, the demand for electricity storage also increases. This is due to wind turbines creating the same amount of electricity at night as they do during the day, however, electricity demand is much higher during the day.

A new study has revealed that electric vehicles (EV’s) will represent around 35% of new car sales around the world by 2040. This comes on the same day a separate report revealed that 80% of Londoners said they would consider going green.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its latest medium term oil market report, issuing a warning about supply security. The IEA expects the oil price to rebalance and recover throughout 2017, where we will start to see prices increase to levels we had seen a few years ago.

OPEC oil ministers have travelled to Iran to discuss a possible production freeze between OPEC, Russia, Iran and the US. OPEC hope that the production freeze would push prices higher after they have been lingering around the $30 per barrel mark.

More than half of new energy added to the United States electricity grid was from renewable energy sources, with the amount of new electricity generated from fossil fuels falling. 68% of new energy added to the grid came from renewable energy sources, which has now been the biggest source of new electricity generation for two year running.

After Laggan Gas Field was discovered in the 1980’s, it has taken 30 year to get to ‘first gas’. This is due to deep water gas drilling in the North Sea proving to be a lot more difficult both technically and financially. However, now that first gas has reached the shores could a struggling UK oil and gas industry be turning a corner.

Late on Thursday afternoon there was an announcement from the Russian oil minister that they will be meeting with OPEC in early February to discuss a 5% cut in oil production. The market has been flooded with over supply, which has caused the oil price to fall as low at $27 a barrel, however, this announcement caused a spike in prices with oil hitting $36 a barrel briefly before trading closed.

The UK Government announced in 2015 that it will be closing its remaining coal power stations in favour for cleaner gas power stations by 2025. This was a popular decision, with coal power stations accounting for a very large part of the UKs carbon emissions. However The Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) believe that the plans have been rushed and are currently unrealistic.

The Environment Agency has confirmed that more than 3,000 organisations that are required to participate in the Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) are yet to notify them that they are intending to comply. The original deadline of the 5^th of December was extended till the end of January 2016 due to a large amount of companies that were expected to miss the deadline.

Oil prices on Monday morning fell to their lowest since 2003 as Western sanctions on Iran were lifted at the weekend. The price briefly fell to $27.67 a barrel before recovering slightly due to fears over more oversupply on the market.

You still have between 6 months and 12 months remaining on your current contract and your next contract negotiations are some time away, there is no reason to be looking at the contracts now, right? Not exactly, when looking at the wholesale gas and electricity markets the prices fluctuate on a daily basis and therefore it is when you sign the contract that is  important when trying to minimise costs.

A report by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has revealed that demand for electric vehicles has risen in the UK. The rise in demand is thought to be in the region of 50% with demand for plug-in hybrids also increasing.

Oil prices fell to their lowest in 12 years on Thursday morning due to a continued glut of supply on the market and record levels of storage in the USA and Europe. This combined with lower demand from a slowing Chinese economy is causing market analysts to revaluate what they thought the lowest price could be.

The Government are currently locked in a battle with Lancashire County Council over Cuadrilla’s plans to start fracking in the area. Lancashire County Council say that the drilling will have too great of an impact on the landscape and will create too much noise.

Brent Crude Oil on Monday fell to its lowest price since July 2004 when it sank to $36.05 a barrel. The huge amount of oversupply on the market is causing the price to fall, with experts predicting that we could see prices close to $20 a barrel before it starts to recover, causing a huge headache for the oil industry but a huge relief to consumers at the pumps who can now purchase petrol for under £1 a litre for the first time since 2008.

Clean air zones will be set up in Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Southampton and Derby under plans to cut carbon emissions. The new plans will discourage heavily polluting diesel vehicles such as buses, taxis and lorries from entering the city centres. Park and rides schemes will be implemented, as well as increased infrastructure for electric vehicles and cleaner fuels.

The UK Government has announced that they will be cutting subsidies for solar electricity panels by 64%. The cut has been reduced from the original plans to cut the subsidies by 87% after they came under a lot of criticism.

The solar sector has spoken out against the cuts, claiming that they are being forced to go out on their own before they are ready. However the Government energy secretary Amber Rudd has said that consumers shouldn’t be paying the same amount towards subsidies when the price of the technology has gone down.

A successful experiment in Germany has used nuclear fusion to produce a cloud of helium plasma that reached 1 million degrees Celsius. Nuclear fusion is what creates the Sun’s energy source, and scientist have long believed that unlocking the energy source will create unlimited clean energy.