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B.P. To Expand Renewables Sector

Posted: 29/11/2005

BP says it intends to reveal plans for a major expansion of its renewable power business in a drive that could help it justify its "beyond petroleum" marketing label. Britain's biggest company is to group its solar, wind, and hydrogen power operations together for the first time, with plans to greatly increase investment. The renewables business will still be dwarfed by traditional oil and gas, but John Browne, the chief executive, believes there is now serious money to be made from wind and sun.

BP Solar, with manufacturing plants in Spain, India and the US, was launched in 1997 with a target of $1bn revenues within a decade. It is now in line to easily meet that goal.

Wind power has so far been concentrated on a couple of experimental sites in Holland but the oil major is already looking at other brownfield sites worldwide.

But relatively little of the new investment is expected to end up in Britain despite the huge increase in alternative power projects that are being undertaken here as the country struggles to meet its carbon-reduction targets.

Terry Macalister / The Guardian  
 

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