A university spin-out company that generates energy from industrial wastewater has won its first significant contracts with a series of food and drink manufacturers. Wase has signed £1.1 million of deals for the use of its technology, including a £500,000 contract with the Sussex brewery Hepworth to create biomethane that will be used to power…

A £3 billion wind farm project off the Scottish coast that has been 12 years in the making has begun generating power after the first four turbines in the development started turning. The owners of the Seagreen project, the FTSE 100-listed energy giant SSE and France’s Total, said yesterday that the first turbine was connected…

Car manufacturers are restricting sales of petrol and hybrid vehicles to avoid net zero fines and meet government targets, one of the country’s largest motor retailers has warned. Robert Forrester, the chief executive of Vertu Motors which has 192 outlets nationwide, said manufacturers were delaying delivering cars until next year to avoid breaching government quotas….

Q. I have a well funded self-invested personal pension (Sipp) which I will be using to finance my retirement, starting immediately. Most of my fund is in a global equities tracker, with a smaller percentage in gilts. What would you suggest is a good strategy for allocating my funds across different asset classes, such as…

With billions of pounds of investment, national energy security and tens of thousands of jobs on the line, the next few months could be defining for Britain’s oil and gas industry. Companies operating in the North Sea are accustomed to political meddling, but now they are waiting nervously to see if the Labour government will…

Euan Blair’s workplace training business has bought a technology company that uses artificial intelligence to select candidates for job vacancies. Multiverse, a business launched by Blair to train people without university degrees, has acquired Searchlight for an undisclosed sum to help provide organisations with employees using machine learning technology that claims to identify candidates four…

The future of a big oil and gas project in the North Sea has been thrown into doubt after the lead developer said that it would curb investment in light of an increase in windfall taxes and the potential introduction of more stringent emissions rules. The £900 million Buchan project had been scheduled to start…

This week’s European rentrée from the summer break has been hijacked by a deepening Franco-German headache. In Berlin, the political establishment has been shaken by a historic electoral breakthrough for the Alternative for Germany, a hard-right party, in regional elections that have raised questions about a premature end to Germany’s shaky three-party coalition. In Paris,…

Any family plans for a traditional Christmas lunch at the pub have been thrown into doubt after landlords warned they face an “extinction-level event” this winter because of soaring energy costs. Almost three quarters of publicans fear that they face closure later this year if no help is forthcoming from the government. The poll, by…