Weekly news round-up - 16 April 2014

Which countries have got their energy plans best sorted? Find out in our update of the week's infrastructure stories.

Thomas Paterson
16 April 2014
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  1. Top 10 countries in terms of well planned energy strategy according the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2014 are: Norway, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Colombia, Spain, Costa Rica and Latvia.

  2. The Liberal Democrats are pushing for construction of three new garden cities of 15,000 homes each between Oxford and Cambridge to provide a solution to the south east’s chronic housing shortfall.

  3. Fracking is part of the solution to global warming according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but alongside a massive expansion in green energy. The panel says it is possible to limit the average rise on global temperatures to 2C by 2100. But to do that the world has to treble its use of low carbon power such as wind farms, nuclear plants and solar power and places shale gas in the list of options for low carbon fuel sources.

  4. Skanska Balfour Beatty – Connect Plus –  has opened England’s first section of all lane running motorway on the M25 between junctions 23 and 25 in Hertfordshire. Hard shoulder running and variable speed limits have been trialled elsewhere in the country but this is the first time all the elements have been combined into an all lane running smart motorway.

  5. The public needs to be convinced that tough choices on upgrading national infrastructure are necessary according to anew poll of more than 1000 members of the public by Ipsos MORI for the CBI. The research shows that government and businesses need to do a much better job of explaining the UK’s infrastructure investment needs, shifting the focus to why it matters locally and what benefits the projects will bring, CBI said. Nearly half of respondents were satisfied with the state of national infrastructure with only 27% dissatisfied.

  6. People affected by Britain’s floods should consider spending up to £15,000 each on extra flood defences as many are under insured, director of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has said. According to latest RICS research the average cost of restoring a flood hit, three bedroom house is around £30,000.

  7. Atkins, Mace and Areva have been announced as preferred bidder to restart Sellafield’s nuclear waste encapsulation project. The £800M - £1.4bn scheme for the Silos Direct-encapsulation Plant was retendered after Vinci and Nuvia pulled staff off the job two years ago when the contract was halted after significant cost overruns.

  8. Costain’s Alan Kay has started his new role as chief executive of ABC Electrification, a business jointly owned by Alstom, Babcock and Costain which recently won two frameworks as part of Network Rail’s £2bn electrification programme over the next seven years.

  9. A high speed rail network from Melbourne to Brisbane in Australia could be completed by 2025 and at AUD30bn (£16.78bn) less than previous estimates, a new study has found. The anaylsis by climate change think tank Beyond Zero Emissions says that the 1800km route taking in Canberra and Sydney could be completed in 11 years at a cost of Aus$84bn (£47bn).

  10. The six Local Enterprise Partnerships in the West Midlands have agreed on priorities for transport spending including investment in the road and rail network, improving links to HS2 and developing freight activity at Birmingham Airport. In Birmingham and Solihull alone more than £340M of transport projects including three extensions to the Midland Metro are planned.