The state-owned Great British Energy has put an interim chief executive in place as it continues its search for a permanent leader. Dan McGrail, currently the chief executive of trade body RenewableUK, will be seconded to the role for six months. The appointment comes after industry sources warned that the government faces a struggle to find someone who has the credentials to take charge of GB Energy’s £8.3-billion budget but who will also work for a civil servant’s salary and be based at its headquarters in Aberdeen. In a statement, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said McGrail “will be based in Scotland, working from the Aberdeen headquarters”. Currently his workplace at RenewableUK is in London. DESNZ added he will take up his post in March and recruitment for the permanent CEO “will also begin shortly”. The entity has yet to select physical premises in the Granite City. McGrail, who currently sits on the board for WindEurope, was previously CEO of Siemens Engines and managing director of Siemens Power Generation. Juergen Maier, who is designated as GB Energy’s “start up chair”, was his boss in his role as CEO of Siemens UK. Maier said: “Dan brings invaluable experience from a long career in clean energy and joins Great British Energy at a critical time to help spearhead our work to help make Britain energy independent. “I look forward to working with him to back innovation, create sustainable jobs, and grow our supply chains.” In January, the organisation appointed five new non-executive directors. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:  “With the appointment of Dan McGrail as interim CEO we now have a fantastic team in place to lead Great British Energy and start delivering on our plan for change.” McGrail said:  “Together with the talented leadership team, I’m excited to

Elliott Investment Management is seeking seats on the board of oil refiner Phillips 66, the latest effort in a multi-year campaign pushing the company to sell assets, improve operational performance and bolster board oversight.  Phillips 66 received a notice from Elliott that the activist investor plans to nominate board candidates at the company’s annual meeting, the refiner said Wednesday in a filing. Elliott will also request that the board hold annual elections for directors. Phillips 66 said the board will review the notice. Elliott, which began pressing for changes at Phillips 66 in 2023, said earlier this month that it’s now one of Phillips 66’s top five investors and believes the company hasn’t followed through on promises to improve operations. The fund, controlled by billionaire Paul Singer, wants the company to streamline its business and set more ambitious refining targets. The third-largest US refiner by capacity is already undergoing a multi-year cost-cutting initiative targeting $3 billion in asset sales. But Elliott wants the company to divest its pipeline business, do the same for its 50% ownership of petrochemicals joint venture Chevron Phillips Chemical and finalize a plan to sell European retail assets that operate under the JET brand. Elliott has said that by selling its pipeline unit, Phillips 66 could “command a premium valuation in excess of $40 billion.”  The activist investor has in recent years pushed multiple refiners to separate their retail, refining and midstream assets to focus on their core business of turning oil into fuel. Marathon Petroleum sold its 3,900-store Speedway gas stations in 2019 for $21 billion following activist engagement by Elliott.  In a February presentation, the hedge fund called for Phillips 66 to follow what it calls the “Marathon Path”. Canadian oil company Suncor Energy Inc., which operates refineries in Canada and the US, did not sell its

The global oil and gas industry experienced a 15 percent quarter on quarter decrease in total contracts, GlobalData noted in a release sent to Rigzone recently. The company outlined in the release that this figure dropped from 1,596 in the third quarter of last year to 1,353 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Despite the dip in volume, the overall contract value remained stable, driven by the announcement of some major contracts in Africa, GlobalData stated in the release, which highlighted a recent company report on oil and gas industry contracts. This report revealed that overall contract value came in at $39.2 billion in the fourth quarter and $38.8 billion in the third quarter, the release highlighted. A chart showing oil and gas industry contracts by scope in the fourth quarter of 2024, which was included in the release, revealed that 670 contracts had an operations and maintenance scope, 403 contracts had a procurement scope, 139 contracts had multiple scopes, 78 contracts had a design and engineering scope, 62 had a construction and installation scope, and one had an asset retirement scope. “The major contracts announced in the African region include Tecnicas Reunidas and Sinopec Engineering’s $4 billion new deep conversion oil refinery project in Algeria’s Hassi Messaoud region, and $1.4 billion Wuhuan Engineering and WeDo’s ammonia and urea plant project in Angola,” GlobalData said in the release. The company stated that some other notable contracts during the quarter were Bram Offshore and Starnav Servicos Maritimos’ $2.74 billion construction and charter contract from Petrobras for 12 Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs) and Saipem’s $1.9 billion contract from TotalEnergies EP Suriname for the EPC, supply, pre-commissioning, and commissioning assistance for the Subsea Umbilicals, Risers, and Flowlines (SURF) package for the GranMorgu project in Suriname. “These contracts demonstrate continued investment and expansion in

Dive Brief: Nuclear reactor restarts and capacity uprates could get a financial lift in 2025 and onward from the Inflation Reduction Act’s technology-neutral Section 45Y production and Section 48E investment tax credits and Section 45V clean hydrogen production tax credits, though recent Treasury Department guidance leaves some questions unanswered and executive-branch reforms could affect Nuclear Regulatory Commission activities, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius attorneys said Wednesday on the law firm’s Q1 2025 nuclear regulatory webinar. To qualify for the credits, restarted nuclear reactors must have ceased operations for at least one calendar year, be authorized to restart by federal nuclear and energy regulators, and meet an “anti-abuse” test meant to prevent reactors from shuttering to later qualify for federal tax credits, Morgan Lewis attorney Jared Sanders said on the webinar. Absent incremental capacity uprates, existing nuclear generation facilities are not eligible to claim the technology-neutral production or investment tax credits and can only claim the 45V tax credit up to a maximum of 200 MW under certain conditions, Sanders said. Dive Insight: Since 2023, the owners of three prematurely retired nuclear power plants have announced plans to restart operations by the end of the decade: Holtec International’s Palisades plant in Michigan, Constellation Energy’s Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, and NextEra Energy’s Duane Arnold facility in Iowa. TMI Unit 1 — now known as the Crane Clean Energy Center — ceased operations in 2019. Duane Arnold shuttered in 2020, followed by Palisades in 2022. All are likely to qualify for federal tax credits, though Constellation spokesperson Paul Adams told Politico last year that it was the company’s 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft, not federal tax credit eligibility, that made the restart possible. Holtec also plans to bring two 300-MW SMRs into operation at the Palisades site in the early

Krishna Rangasayee is CEO of SiMa.ai, a software-centric, embedded edge machine learning system-on-chip company. As the last year falls further into the rearview and we are full steam ahead into 2025, the discussion surrounding AI’s massive energy consumption has reached an inflection point. The rapid advancement of AI has resulted in unprecedented demands on global energy infrastructure, threatening to outpace our ability to deliver power — and AI benefits — where they’re needed most.  With AI already accounting for up to 4% of U.S. electricity use (a figure projected to nearly triple to 11% by 2030), reducing the strain on our energy systems is a priority, requiring a thorough reexamination of how AI’s energy needs could affect our long-term climate goals, infrastructure, resource availability and the scale at which this technology operates. And the hype doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. A new executive order was issued last month to prioritize and speed up the development of AI infrastructure, including data centers and other power facilities, while proposing new restrictions on exports of AI chips to keep innovation local.  While political debates rage about energy sources and environmental regulation, the fundamental challenge lies in the stark mismatch between AI’s accelerating power requirements and our aging energy distribution infrastructure. This has now become a race against time, and though AI has inevitably become a “problem” — it also offers the path to a solution. The scale of AI’s energy challenge Most AI applications we use today — from chatbots to image generators — rely on the cloud to run models and process queries. These AI data centers serve as a hub, steadily accounting for around 4.4% of U.S. electrical demand, potentially increasing to more than a tenth of the total U.S. electrical demand by 2028. Recent data points to

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration is trying to cancel waivers it issued under the Biden government for three regulations in California that aim to curb transport emissions. “[T]he EPA will be transmitting to Congress the Biden Administration’s rules granting waivers that allowed California to preempt federal car and truck standards promulgated by EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration”, the EPA said in an online statement. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said, “The Biden Administration failed to send rules on California’s waivers to Congress, preventing Members of Congress from deciding on extremely consequential actions that have massive impacts and costs across the entire United States”. During previous president Joe Biden’s last days in office, the EPA granted waivers for California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII) and Heavy-Duty Omnibus. “Under the Clean Air Act, California is afforded the ability to adopt emissions requirements independent from EPA’s regulations to meet its significant air quality challenges”, the EPA said December 18, 2024. ACCII sets emission standards and raises sales of zero-emission vehicles for model years 2026-35 so that all new light-duty passenger cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs sold in California are zero-emission by 2035. ACCII builds on ACCI, adopted 2012 for model years 2015-25. “By 2035, all those vehicles must be zero-emission, which includes the option to sell plug-in hybrid vehicles”, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) said separately at the time. “The regulation does not ban fossil-fueled cars and pickup trucks; residents can drive existing internal combustion vehicles as long as they want. “The regulation will save drivers of clean vehicles $7,500 in maintenance and fuel costs over the first 10 years of use. It also will cut harmful pollutants by over 25 percent, save lives and save Californians $13 billion in health costs