The first deal was with American Electric Power and is a long term power purchase agreement for 200 MW from BP Alternative Energy’s Fowler Ridge Wind park. BP Alternative Energy also added 1,300 MW of wind power capacity earlier in the year by purchasing Orion Energy.
Considering that the company is a $210 billion USD company the $8 billion USD it plans to invest in the solar, wind and hydrogen power efforts of it’s alternative energy arm represents a fraction of its income. However considering the size of the overall sector this will no doubt in addition to the other energy giants reshaping the sector have a powerful impact on how the sector moves and develops.
BP is also partnering with Powerspan to looking at C02 capture and sequestration, while this will be a small scale pilot project and only for power plants, no doubt with BP’s carbon footprint generated by it’s exploration activities it will be indeed interested in how the technology continues to develop.
For additional information:
http://www.bp.com/ http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=22&contentId=2006538
