• The six-mile wall around Swansea Bay, complete with turbines, could generate electricity 14 hours a day and save 236,000 tonnes of carbon a year
• £750million project, along with four others could meet 10 per cent of the UK's electricity needs from the tides by 2023
• Developer Tidal Lagoon Power believes the project will boost a UK supply chain, create a new export market and plenty of jobs if it gets the go-ahead

According to the http://www.dailymail.co.uk Plans have been submitted to develop the world's first tidal lagoon energy project in the UK.

And the ground-breaking project could provide renewable power for 120,000 homes in Swansea, Wales for 120 years.

Developers behind the £750million to £850million Swansea Bay project believe it could be the first step in developing lagoon technology that could meet 10 per cent of the UK's electricity needs from the tides.

A house builder and a renewable energy technology supplier have joined forces to launch a new limited company, the Zero Carbon Solution, which will provide an affordable out-of-the-box energy system for domestic new-builds and low-rise commercial developments.

The system combines three core technologies, hybrid PV-T solar collectors, a patented inter-seasonal energy store and a heat pump, the system can meet a building’s full heating and hot water requirements all year round, using only solar power.

Following the successful installation of the system into a pilot project, known as the Solar House, the team has received a high level of enquiries into possible applications for the technology. The Solar House gained international recognition for being the UK’s first commercially built fully solar-powered new-build home.

The government is hoping to support up to 16,000 solar thermal systems in the first year of the new domestic Renewable Heat Incentive scheme due to launch later this year.

Speaking at the first of the 2014 Solar Energy UK roadshows today, Steve Roberts, part of the RHI team at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said this was the target figure for the long-awaited scheme’s first year, with more expected the following year.

The 2014 Solar Energy UK roadshows kicked off in Esher, Surrey, beginning the annual event’s six-venue tour of the UK.

Energy savers recommend starting small, appreciating the savings and then doing some more.

Jill Goulder, for example, an archaeologist who lives in a late-19th-century terrace in Lewes has, over the years, reduced her bills by hundreds of pounds. “One of my favourite 'easy wins’ is acrylic secondary glazing, attached to frames with a magnetic strip. It’s unobtrusive, easy to install and stops draughts dead. It’s only about £60 a window,” she says (diyplas.co.uk).

A new report claims that homeowners are unaware of renewable heating options despite 78% of domestic energy use in the UK being spent on heating.

The Renewable Heat Report, published by renewable heating company Innasol and analyst group Frost & Sullivan, reveals that the British public are generally unaware of what options are available to them for generating renewable heat.

In addition, those surveyed who were aware of renewable heating options expressed suspicion over the costs that would be involved in switching to renewable heating solutions.

The paper estimates that the average UK household spends £816 on their annual heating bill, after facing an average energy bill rise of 17% per year for the last decade. With 38% of the UK’s total carbon emissions derived from heating homes and businesses, the need for renewable heat remains imperative if the UK is to drastically cut its emissions.

Electricity consumption in American homes has dropped for the third year in a row and is already back to 2001 levels, according to a study by the US Energy Information Administration. This, the experts say, is down to more efficient gadgets and homes that are cheaper to insulate, according to the telegraph.co.uk

The UK seems to be doing well too – Google's interactive chart of public data shows a significant drop in consumption since our all-time high in 2005 – but it's tough to discover the truth about electricity use in the home. Organisations like the Energy Saving Trust continue to freak us out about our loft linings and draughty windows, and the various Government schemes that promised us huge savings have come under fire for their overblown promises.

In the United States, “connected home” services like home automation, security and entertainment have largely been the purview of cable, telecommunications and home security providers, says Jeff St. John from CleanTechMedia. But in Europe’s deregulated energy markets, they’re increasingly seen as tools for retail utilities to capture and retain customers -- as well as to create new customer relationships and revenue streams to adapt to the changing energy landscape.

After years of pilot tests and targeted rollouts of these smart home services, Europe’s utilities are starting to go big into this still-nascent market. To get there, they’ll need to combine enterprise-scale support for the machine-to-machine networks these deployments represent with a customer experience that can get people outside of the “early adopter” tech crowd to join in.

The National Grid, one of the largest energy utilities in the United Kingdom, has issued over $8 million to wind farms throughout the country in order to temporarily shut them down. The funds are meant to provide the energy firms that manage these wind farms with a financial cushion while their systems are not producing or selling electrical power. The reason behind the move from the National Grid has to do with recent storms in the United Kingdom and the strong winds that these storms have produced.

U.K.-based resurfacing company Pro-Teq is currently testing Starpath, an ultraviolet-powered glow-in-the-dark pedestrian footpath in a Victorian park in Cambridge, England, that hopes to revolutionize the way we light our public spaces.

Starpath is created using an innovative, cost-effective resurfacing process that can be sprayed directly onto existing concrete, tarmac, and other hard surfaces. A polyurethane base, a coat of light-absorbing particles in a range of colors and sizes, and a waterproof, anti-slip finish are applied without the need to remove worn-out surfaces. It dries in 30 minutes, causing minimal disruption.