MAJOR BOOST FOR IRELAND'S RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR - Sweden's Vattenfall is coming to Ireland to develop open wave technology. This could should see Irish homes powered and lit from energy produced by Irish coastal waters rather than Irish bogs. Vattenfall's aim is to build 250 megawatts of generating capacity which would be half the Government's energy target from renewables by 2020. Vattenfall is owned by the Swedish State and is one of the largest utility companies in Europe. It has 38,000 employees and last year had €17 billion of revenues. The company is getting IDA Ireland support to form a joint venture with an Irish wave energy company called Wavebob.
This joint venture is called Tonn Energy and its project director Harvey Appelbe says that Ireland has a vast ocean resource. He says the opportunity is there for Ireland to become a net export of renewable energy if we can tap into it. He says that Vattenfall is driven by a strong motive to become emission neutral by 2030 so they need to bring in large quantities of renewable energy into the European power mix. Ireland has really large quantities of wave resources, he explains. He says today's announcement is about actually getting out into the water and harvesting the power of the waves, by starting the programme of engineering work that is required.
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ICELAND RESOLVES ICEBANK ISSUE - To resolution of a sort of a festering sore between the governments of Iceland on the one hand and the British and Dutch governments on the other over the collapse of Icesave. This was the online bank run by Landsbanki which collapsed along with the rest of the Icelandic banking system during the credit crunch.
Justin Urquhart Stewart, of Seven Investment Management in London, says the sides to the deal, which has yet to be formally announced, are looking at a pot of $5 billion, which will cover about 400,000 savers who were with Landsbanki. Iceland's parliament approved in August a controversial deal to pay back €3.8 billion to the British and Dutch governments for the compensation they forked out to disgruntled savers from Britain and the Netherlands. The analyst says that savers had been attracted to Icebank with rates that seemed too good to be true and few were signalling any dangers.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Newry-based software firm First Derivatives, which provides consultancy to the banking sector, has reported a two thirds increase in sales to £11.4m sterling the six months to the end of August, compared to last year. That is the equivalent of around €12.5m. Pre-tax profits came in at the equivalent of £3.1m, a 36% increase on last year. The company, also announced that it has spent £4.7m on a 15% of a Californian based software provider, increasing its stake to 20%.
*** On the currency markets, the euro is worth $1.4886 US cents and 91.28 pence sterling.
