On 1 April 2010 the Government Feed-in-Tariffs (FITs) scheme, a financial support mechanism to increase the uptake of small scale renewable energy generation (less than 5 megawatts) came into effect. The introduction of FITs is intended to help deliver the UK’s target of sourcing 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The Tariffs are index linked and are set to deliver a return of 5-8% for well sited installations and will run for 20 years.

A range of companies including Europe’s leading energy groups have been awarded licenses to develop wind farms off the coast of Britain.

The £100bn investment programme, which would make Britain a world leader in  offshore wind has been compared, in terms of it’s scale and wider economic impact, to the development of North Sea Oil in the 1970s.

The big winners were Centrica, Scottish and Southern Energy, RWE of Germany and Iberdrola of Spain.

Although the announcement is certainly a step-forward for development of the UKs renewable energy capacity the development of the projects will still depend upon their commercial viability; the development costs associated with off-shore wind energy schemes are very substantial.

Sarwjit Sambhi, managing Director of power generation at Centrica, said “Developing wind energy assets in the Irish Sea zone could dramatically increase our wind energy output.. but these projects are still considered very risky by the investment community.”

John Ditchfield 10/01/2010

According to recent statistics from the Investment Management Association (IMA) ethical funds saw net retail inflows of £54.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from £20.5 million the previous quarter. Total net retail sales for ethical funds for the whole of 2008 were at £152.4 million.

Full article can be found at CityWire.co.uk.

Barchester Green Investment adviser Robin Currie scored 28/35 ranking above three other advice firms in the December Financial Adviser mystery shopping test.

Robin was able to demonstrate a superior understanding of the range of ethical funds available and explained clearly and concisely the our process for fact finding and assessing risk.