Mixed Greens: Wave goodbye, as another renewables Co bows out

UK company Renewable Energy Holdings has announced its intention to sell its sell its portfolio of wind and wave-power interests – including a 25.8 per cent stake in Australian marine technology group Carnegie Wave Energy – after deciding it was in the shareholders’ best interests to dispose of the company’s assets and return to them the cash proceeds. Recharge News reports that the sell-off – announced on the same day as Carnegie revealed it had won a $9.9 million federal government grant towards the development of a grid-connected, small-scale demonstration of its ground-breaking CETO wave power technology – comes after a year in which REH struggled in vain to raise funds to continue with new developments and saw its London-listed shares fall from a 2008 high of £0.58 to as low as £0.085 this month. It lost £16 million ($US25.9m) in 2011, including a £12.1m one-off impairment charge relating to its Carnegie investment.

“With the continued difficult capital environment setting the context for the business, the Board explored every avenue for achieving value for its shareholders and it is my view, that the realisable value of the Company’s assets significantly exceeds its current market capitalisation,” REH CEO, Mike Proffitt, said in a statement today. “Accordingly, a return of those funds to shareholders after an orderly sell down of assets is the best course of action in light of the current market conditions.” Proffitt said the company would seek “a strategic investor” for its stake in Fremantle-based Carnegie Wave Energy, and would work closely with Carnegie management in doing so. REH will also look for “qualified buyers” for its 81MW Mynydd y Gwynt wind project in Wales, for which it expects to seek planning consent later this year. The Isle of Man-based company will also seek a buyer for its second wind asset, the fully-permitted 30MW Kobylany project in southeast Poland.

Green cuts?

Reports have surfaced today that $1 billion-worth of federal government incentives to encourage property developers to improve the energy efficiency of older buildings could be scrapped in the federal budget next week. The Australian Financial Review is reporting that the Tax Breaks for Green Buildings Program, promised by Julia Gillard in the 2010 election campaign and due to start on July 1, is yet to be legislated, and government ministers have refused to guarantee the Property Council of Australia that the program will survive the budget process. “Every time we met with a minister in the last year, I have asked them to confirm that it was still a live measure, but two months ago they would not give that guarantee,” Property Council of Australia chief executive Peter Verwer told the AFR. “What they started saying then was that the government had given an ironclad guarantee to balancing the budget.”