Paris Region has kept its fDi European Region of the Future title, while Dublin Region holds on to second place and North Rhine-Westphalia is in third. 

North Rhine-Westphalia is fDi's top large region for FDI Strategy, with the Basque Country topping the table for mid-sized regions and Ireland South East first among small regions. 

London LEP and Thames Valley Berkshire LEP hold on to their respective first and second places in the Local Enterprise Partnership rankings, while Oxfordshire LEP jumps up eight places to third. 

The coronavirus pandemic could change human behaviour more permanently in future.

A government bailout for the ailing subsidiary of the telecoms powerhouse has fallen through. 

Despite recurrent challenges, Afghanistan’s business environment is improving. Now the authorities are working to persuade investors the rewards are worth the risk through a series of economic and legal reforms. 

Asia outstrips the world for tourist arrivals and is still experiencing growth. Constant maintenance and upgrade are essential to maintain this lead.

German chemical giant BASF has begun construction of its $10bn mega project in southern China, which will be the country’s first wholly foreign-owned chemical complex. 

Mohammad Nafees Zakaria, Pakistan’s UK high commissioner, talks about his country’s potential for foreign investors.

China's coronavirus outbreak is having a seismic effect in Asia and beyond, writes Lawrence Yeo.

We are currently in a state of heightened business and economic disruption and sociopolitical activism, which only looks set to intensify. 

Early reports on the new trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada – known as the USMCA – suggest that the US is getting the better end of the deal. But what are the implications of the new rules of origin?

While governments grow more protectionist over trade and physical borders, companies such as Microsoft are bridging the gap by funding international collaborative enterprises.

Moldova's wine industry has gained some international recognition but the country remains largely untroubled by tourists, a combination that is enticing some foreign investors.

FDI into Brazil has increased by 66.48% in a little under two years. Jonathan Wildsmith reports.

Canada has seen a four-year peak in FDI, with the technology, real estate and aerospace sectors enjoying substantial growth. Zara Fennell reports.

Dubai outstrips other Middle East cities as top destination for office openings.

GE Renewable Energy announced the shipment of the four tower sections that will be part of GE’s Haliade-X 12 MW prototype to be installed later this summer in Maasvlakte-Rotterdam (NL). The four segments at tower manufacturer GRI’s site in Seville, will be arriving in the Netherlands before the end of the month.

Iowa economic development officials are tentatively endorsing a tax credit for battery storage to complement the state’s wind and solar generation.

Hydrogen, which has been touted as the fuel of the future much of the past five decades, may finally be on the verge of converting its potential to reality.

New York is poised to pass its own version of the Green New Deal with a climate bill that would more than triple the state’s solar capacity and aggressively promote development of wind farms off the state’s coast.

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act passed the Assembly early in the morning of June 20 and will now await the governor’s signature. Solar advocates praised the state legislature’s adoption of long anticipated legislation that will require at least 70 percent of electric generation come from renewable sources by 2030 and providing needed funding to low-income and environmental justice communities.

Homeowners and businesses may now have an easier time getting solar panels on rooftops thanks to software developed at Sandia.

Last week, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced it selected Ocean Wind, an offshore wind energy project proposed by Ørsted with support from PSEG, to develop an 1,100 MW offshore wind farm. Ocean Wind will be located 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City. Construction is expected to commence in the early 2020s, with the wind farm operational in 2024.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the twin forces of privatization and deregulation of public infrastructure services ascended to a global paradigm of progress and development. Government management of services such as telecommunications, transportation, water, and energy was deemed inefficient, underperforming, and monopolistic. Private industry – accountable to the profits and losses of an open market and, thus, believed more efficient than government – was proclaimed the better way for consumer choice and a more efficient use of taxpayers’ expenses.

POWERGEN International Week truly begins Monday, Nov. 18 with POWERGEN University. This year’s set of three, four and eight-hour PGU classes include detail educations on crucial power generation topics such as effective project management, gas turbine long-term service agreements, safety processes, digitalization, business plans for emerging markets, microgrids, cogeneration, machine learning, boiler technologies, building the generation fleet of the future and the consideration of natural gas vs. diesel for on-site power gen-sets.

This week the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) launched the first edition of its Global Offshore Wind Report, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the prospects for the global offshore wind market, including forecast data, market-level analysis and review of efforts to lower costs.

An Abu Dhabi-based company that builds drilling platforms for oil giant Saudi Aramco plans to diversify into renewable energy by supplying gear for offshore wind farms.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (the NDRC) issued a Circular on Policies of Improving the Electricity Price for On-Grid Wind Power (the Circular) at the end of May 2019. According to the Circular, the price of electricity from offshore wind power projects is cut to 0.8 yuan per kWh [US $0.12 per kWh] in 2019 and will further drop to 0.75 yuan [US $0.11] per kWh in 2020.

Solar Foundation and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) are joining the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), several national residential solar companies, and other nonprofit organizations to develop new automated permit software for distributed solar and storage, reducing the cost of solar installations and saving resources for local governments and taxpayers.

On July 1, Public Service of New Mexico filed a plan with regulators in the state for how it plans to get to a 100 percent emission-free power by 2040. The utility reviewed four scenarios, all of which involved the early retirement of the San Juan Coal Plant, to arrive at its recommended path forward.

According to data recently released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Association, the number of public charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) owned and operated by its members totaled 401,000 units as of May 2019, of which 229,000 were AC charging stations, 171,000 were DC and 500 AC/DC were integrated, representing a year on year increase of 50.5 percent and 9,658 units from the previous month. Between June 2018 and May 2019, the number of public charging stations for EVs showed an average monthly increase of some 11,205 units.

Dominion Energy has begun construction on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, which will feature two 6-MW wind turbines and power about 3,000 homes.

Chinese solar company Hanergy Thin Film Power Group has won a deal to build the first solar PV plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to a review by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), within the past month, the agency has dramatically revised its three-year forecast for changes in the U.S. electrical generating capacity mix. Sharp declines are foreseen for fossil fuels and nuclear power while accompanied by even stronger growth in renewable energy (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) than earlier projected.

This week artificial intelligence (AI)-driven energy storage services provider Stem said that it had formed a partnership with New York-based private equity company Syncarpha Capital to build 28.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) of large-scale storage projects co-sited with solar in Massachusetts.

Arlington, VA based Summit Ridge Energy (SRE) announced that it will acquire 11 projects from Pivot Energy in Illinois totaling 29 MWs, increasing SRE’s portfolio of community solar projects in the state to more than 20.

Energy generation and consumption is rapidly transforming into a decentralized, decarbonized, and digitized model due to a number of market forces. The declining costs of solar energy systems, as well as the increasing price of energy from the grid has led to grid parity. This has caused PV proliferation to accelerate to such an extent that in the past five years alone, PV installed capacity has increased by 300%. Simultaneously, the EV market is also on the rise and is expected to reach the electrification tipping point by 2030. This is due to support from governments trying to limit the effects of climate change, thus leading to automotive manufactures transitioning their fleets from standard petrol- and diesel-powered cars to EVs. As a result of the acceleration of both of these markets, EV charging has created demand patterns causing an even steeper and faster ramp-up in the evenings than the PV duck curve. , This is causing the grid’s balancing act to be increasingly complex. In order to support this new energy dynamic, advanced management software is required to ensure grid stabilization and to unlock the value of these energy resources.

GE Renewable Energy has taken a major step to cement its offshore wind operations in China.

The projects include a 999-MW wind facility being built north of Weatherford, a 287-MW wind facility being built southwest of Enid, and a 199-MW facility being built south of Alva. They are being developed by Invenergy.

Solar company Hanergy announced that its thin-film solar modules will cover the 150,000 square meter roof of the ‘Rafael Gallery’ located at a Tech City in Shanghai.

The HydroVision International event is now under way in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, with more than 3,000 hydropower professionals from around the world coming together for four days of learning and networking.

On Monday, July 22, about 30 HydroVision attendees visited the beautiful Hood River Valley outside of Portland, Oregon to tour in-conduit hydropower projects and learn how modernizing irrigation districts is a sustainable solution to help combat a changing climate.