Mixed Greens: Ceramic replaces Dow as it moves to Europe

Ceramic Fuel Cells has announced that Brendan Dow is stepping down as CEO of the company and will be replaced by Bob Kennett, the former head of PowerGen Combined Heat and Power, and a director of Ceramic since 2006. The changes follow Ceramic’s recent announcement about its effective move offshore, as it pursued more lucrative markets in Europe and moved its manufacturing and marketing bases there. The company said it had undergone “significant changes” and as a result of its move to Europe, Kennett had been chosen to lead the team in the next stage of the company’s commercial development.

“On behalf of the whole board, I should like to thank Brendan Dow for his many years of hard work at the Company and wish him well in his endeavours,” chairman Alasdair Locke said in a statement. “I am delighted Bob Kennett has accepted the role of CEO. He has brought a wealth of knowledge to the company as a non-executive director and now, as we approach the critical stage of fully commercialising our products, his experience will deliver the next stage of our growth strategy.”

Europe’s carbon market interventions

European Union carbon permits rose above €9 today for the first time since March, after the bloc’s regulator announced plans to delay sales of as many as 900 million carbon permits to curb an oversupply in the world’s biggest emissions market. Bloomberg reports that the European Commission wants to postpone sales for the three years through 2015 to the last two years of the next trading phase, which ends in 2020, according to a draft document published today on an EU website. “The figure of 900 million allowances has been put forward in the light of views expressed by member states and stakeholders in response to the initiatives taken by the commission,” the regulator said in a statement on Monday.

And some carbon relief for airlines, too, with Brussels also revealing that it would freeze its carbon regulations on flights to and from the EU for a year, giving the UN’s international aviation body that time to deliver a global deal for tackling greenhouse gas emissions from the sector. BusinessGreen reports that European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the move followed the “very good news” from last Friday’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) meeting where delegates recognised global market-based measures (MBMs) for tackling emissions were feasible and agreed to deliver a final package of proposals within a year.

In other news…

Japan is looking to switch the focus of its solar PV installation from rooftop solar to ground mounted utility scale systems. Till now, Japan has been the largest rooftop solar PV market in the world, with 80 per cent of its capacity going on rooftops, compared to just 10 per cent of capacity going on rooftops in Germany. Japan has set generous feed in tariffs for solar PVm and expects to boost its capacity from 4GW as at April, 2012, to 34GW by 2020 and 100GW by 2030.

A new survey has found that the US has passed 1,000MW of large scale solar PV installations of more than 10MW or more. (Australia has one 10MW solar farm).  The US has installed 46 plants over 10MW in size worth 1.045GW by the end of October and had 14.72 GW more in the pipeline. Germany, on the other hand, has installed 2.262GW across 73 plants, and has just 11GW remaining in its development pipeline

Meanwhile, France and Denmark have signalled they will wind back solar PV subsidies due to the falling technology costs, while the Indian sate of Andhra Pradesh is invited bids for up to 1,000MW of solar power capacity.