UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

Go ahead, Angela, make my day

Fly Title: 

Energy

Rubric: 

Fracking for shale gas draws closer—at a snail’s pace

IN 1815 William Smith published a map of British geology that, by identifying coal deposits, helped kick-start the Industrial Revolution. Exactly 200 years later, as the government tries to put more puff into the economy’s sails, it is hoping for a similar boost from another source of hydrocarbons: shale gas. Progress is being made, but painfully slowly, and there is still plenty of opposition to overcome.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has been used before in Britain but never to extract shale gas. The process uses water and chemicals to split rocks deep underground and extract the gas. A group of MPs sought to impose a moratorium on the process, but they were defeated in a parliamentary vote on January 26th. The government undercut them by assenting to a ban on fracking in national parks and to new regulations that will make fracking harder: one, for example, will force companies to monitor fracking sites for …

Source: Utilities
Energy: Drill-seekers

UK Only Article: 
standard article

Fly Title: 

Supermarkets in Europe

Rubric: 

French supermarkets are fighting back against Aldi and Lidl—at great cost

Byline: 

C.R. and M.S.

Location: 

LONDON AND PARIS

Main image: 

20150117_wbp504.jpg

OVER the past year, Aldi and Lidl, two discount supermarkets from Germany, have continued their march around Europe. From Britain and Ireland to Italy and Spain, they have continued to gobble up market share from incumbent supermarket chains. In Britain, they have continued to give the big four local stores—Asda, Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsbury’s—a particularly rough time. All four have now reported falling like-for-like sales over the Christmas period. Tesco is in such as mess that its debt was downgraded to junk earlier this month by Moody’s, a ratings agency. And on January 13th, Morrison’s chief executive, Dalton Philips, was fired for failing to turn the business around after five …

Source: Retailing
Supermarkets in Europe: Halting the discounters' march

UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

Let there be light

Fly Title: 

New business models

Rubric: 

The power industry’s main concern has always been supply. Now it is learning to manage demand

Main image: 

20150117_SRD005_0.jpg

THE BASIC MODEL of the electricity industry was to send high voltages over long distances to passive customers. Power stations were big and costly, built next to coal mines, ports, oil refineries or—for hydroelectric generation—reservoirs. Many of these places were a long way from the industrial and population centres that used the power. The companies’ main concern was to supply the juice, and particularly to meet peaks in demand. Most countries (and in America, regions) were energy islands, with little interconnection to other systems.
That model, though simple and profitable for utilities and generators, was costly for consumers (and sometimes taxpayers). But it is now changing to a “much more colourful picture”, says Michael Weinhold of Siemens, a big German …

Source: Utilities
New business models: All change

UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

Terror in Paris

Fly Title: 

Hydropower in Vietnam

Rubric: 

Hydro-electric projects can spell trouble for the rural poor

Location: 

HO

Main image: 

Farmer’s friend or foe?

Farmer’s friend or foe?

ONE moment Dao A Phau was sitting in his riverside home in Ho, a mountain village not far from Vietnam’s border with China; the next he was under three feet (a metre) of water. The deluge came from a burst giant metal pipe supposed to channel water from a reservoir higher up to an electricity-generation station in the village. After that incident in 2010, Mr Phau was moved to higher ground and given ,000 by the Vietnamese firm responsible for the hydroelectric project. Yet the soil is poorer, and he can no longer grow enough rice to sell. He finds himself 0 worse off each year.
Hydropower has boomed in Vietnam over the past decade and now generates more than a third of the country’s …

Source: Utilities
Hydropower in Vietnam: Full to bursting