Embodied by its huge historic port and diverse population, Antwerp has long embraced globalisation. Renewed impetus from stakeholders across Belgium’s second most populous city is ensuring ample opportunities for foreign investors.

Antwerp’s vice-mayor, Claude Marinower, talks about the city's history as a diverse business location, and its plans to promote traditional industries alongside innovative concepts.

Antwerp boasts both Europe’s largest integrated chemical cluster and its second largest port, which forms the bedrock of the city’s economy. Now the authorities are collaborating to foster innovation and sustainability to build on these historic strengths.

With a multilingual population, Antwerp enjoys a diverse talent pool that has made it a popular testbed for digital innovation and entrepreneurship.

Antwerp has long been an attractive retail location in Belgium, while also offering investors an efficient and transparent planning process. 

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.

The Scottish government has given utility Scottish Power the go-ahead to install Europe’s biggest industrial-scale battery to date to store energy generated at the 539MW Whitelee onshore wind farm.

A sparsely populated Chinese province that’s home to the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers is attempting to set a new record for clean energy use, serving as a test bed for the entire country.

Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.

On Wednesday in New Jersey, the world’s largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of waterparks in North America said that its New Jersey park, Six Flags Great Adventure, is now powered by solar energy.

Statkraft announces it has decided to start construction of the 51.6-MW Los Lagos hydropower plant in Chile. The construction is planned to commence in August and completion is scheduled for second half of 2022.

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule and simultaneously repealed the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Here’s the latest wrinkle in the battery boom: National Grid Plc is paying consumers to tap electricity from their power-storage systems.

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.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has entered into an agreement to acquire Cube Hydro, an operator of small and medium-sized hydropower facilities in the northeast and southeast U.S.

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.

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.

The Clean Power Alliance (CPA) has signed three long-term power purchase agreements, including two new solar projects and one existing small hydro project.

EON SE is now supplying all of its 3.3 million residential customers in Britain with 100% renewable electricity, the first of the U.K.’s “Big Six” utilities to do so.

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.

Voith has received an order for the Ritom pumped storage power plant in Switzerland, which began operating in 1920 and will be replaced with a new facility.

Clarion Energy & iTEN Media announce the launch of POWERGEN India 2020 co-located with Indian Utility Week & DISTRIBUTECH India

Clarion Energy’s Teresa Hansen, vice president of global content, for a webcast Wednesday  will be making some important announcements regarding this year’s event in New Orleans. Hansen also will offer key details on content, the exhibit floor and resources available to attendees.

Plans are under way to rebuild one of Ontario Power Generation’s oldest hydroelectric generating stations, which was damaged by a tornado in 2018. Constructed in 1917, the 5-MW Calabogie Generating Station has produced renewable, low-cost electricity on the Madawaska River for decades.

Gas peaker plants may be among the first casualties of a new Minnesota law requiring utilities to include energy storage as part of their long-range plans.

India’s ambitious plan to take the leadership position among nations as one of largest producers of renewable energy may have run into some unfavorable weather.

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.

On Tuesday, July 23 at the HydroVision International keynote, Vice President Marla Barnes asked the audience to close their eyes and envision their next vacation. “Are you sitting on a beach? Are you packing your family into the car for a wild adventure? What do you see,” she asked.

GE Renewable Energy announced at HydroVision that it has signed two hydropower contracts in the U.S. one for FirstLight’s Northfield Mountain project and one for PG&E’s Caribou One hydropower station.

Last week, California’s Glendale Water & Power (GWP) received approval from the Glendale City Council to move forward with a plan to repower the aging Grayson Power Plant with a combination of renewable energy resources, energy storage and a limited amount of thermal generation.

Last week at the HydroVision International plenary session, a panel of three CEOs — Darrel T. Anderson, President and CEO IDACORP and Idaho Power, Mitch Davidson, CEO and Managing Partner, Brookfield Renewable Power, and Paul Jacob, President and CEO, Rye Development — along with moderator Elizabeth Ingram, Content Director, Clarion Energy, discussed both the merits and the challenges of hydropower development in the United States and Canada.

The latest crop of utility participants includes NRG Energy, Cleco Corp., Entergy, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, AEP’s distributed energy ventures group AEP OnSite Partners and Hindustan Power from India.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has announced that the New York Power Authority is launching a 15-year modernization and digitization program to significantly extend the operating life of the Niagara Power Project.

The Skeleton Creek project will be located in three Oklahoma counties

A pale orange-and-gold sunset bathes the macadamia plantations and avocado orchards that sweep down to Australia’s Byron Bay. The coming dusk is a cue for two sleek Tesla battery packs in the garage at Amileka, a secluded holiday villa nearby. They stir silently into action—powering the appliances in the five-bedroom home’s twin kitchens, recharging a $100,000-plus Model X SUV, driving a filter pump for an 18-meter swimming pool sparkling in the shade of a century-old native black bean tree.

This week, DNV GL said that it acted as a technical advisor to the energy company AES Colombia during its planned purchase of the Jemeiwaa Kai portfolio of wind power projects. DNV GL carried out an independent analysis of the La Guajira wind farms wind and power generation regime.

South Australian energy storage company 1414 Degrees and Stone & Wood Brewing Company have agreed to undertake a feasibility study for the integration of 1414 Degrees’ electrically charged Thermal Energy Storage System (TESS-IND).

It may be time to start building power plants in Texas again.

When two U.K. power plants shut down almost simultaneously in London’s first major blackout for a decade, it triggered a storm of questions about how to avoid another failure.

Europe can potentially generate 100 times the current amount of energy generated, and produce enough power to power the world until 2050, if it were to maximize land use for onshore wind capacity.

Freyr AS, a startup planning to build one of Europe’s first battery gigafactories in Norway, has a bigger vision for the region: a “Nordic Battery Belt.”

Bernie Sanders wants renewable energy to power U.S. homes and vehicles by 2030 -- and he wants to do it by enlisting the federal government in building and running new solar, wind and geothermal electricity projects.

Lekela announced that it has reached financial close on its first wind project in Egypt, West Bakr Wind. Construction will begin shortly, delivering 250 MW of clean, reliable power at a highly competitive price.

With its original commissioning dating back to 2008, NextEra’s 150-megawatt (MW) Endeavor Wind Energy Center I & II projects in Osceola County are undergoing a prudent re-powering process. Blattner Energy construction crews moved into the Osceola County wind farm area this spring and started work. Blatter Energy is an Avon, Minnesota based heavy construction contractor.

Brazil has included four hydropower plants among the projects that will receive support as part of the country's investment partnerships program, called Programa de Parcerias de Investimentos or PPI. 

President Donald Trump said he was not willing to sacrifice the abundant fossil energy wealth of the U.S. on “dreams” such as renewable power.

Hydro Tasmania says it is accelerating detailed investigation of three key opportunities for pumped storage hydro development in the state as part of the Battery of the Nation initiative. Work has begun on a full feasibility assessment of pumped hydro development opportunities at Lake Cethana and Lake Rowallan in the northwest and near Tribute Power Station on the West Coast.