Reuters

The Canadian province of Ontario is becoming a magnet for global heavy hitters in the green energy sector, drawn by alluring subsidies at a time when incentives are being scaled back elsewhere.

Already this year, two prominent players -- South Korea's Samsung C&T Corp and Bosch Solar Energy AG -- have said they will set up shop, and more are expected to follow.

Phoenix Solar, Germany's sixth-biggest solar company, is expecting business in the ongoing first quarter to be significantly better than in the year-earlier period, the company's chief executive told Reuters.

"The first quarter of 2010 has been going well so far and it will be significantly above the first quarter of 2009," Andreas Haenel said in an interview on Tuesday.

"Of course, the first quarter of 2009 was very, very weak -- for everyone in the industry," he said, adding the only dampening effect in the current quarter was the cold weather.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc expects electricity-powered vehicles to account for as much as 40 percent of the worldwide car market by 2050, Chief Executive Peter Voser said on Thursday.

Voser, speaking at The Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, said technological improvements and increases in the cost of producing gasoline will give a boost to vehicles that run on alternative power.

"We think between now and 2050, we will go from 1 billion cars to 2 billion cars worldwide," he said. "We think by 2050, roughly 40 percent of those 2 billion cars will be electric."

An electric car developed by French financier Vincent Bollore and Italian car designer Pininfarina SpA may be available by autumn, Bollore told Reuters at the Geneva auto show.

As Europe gears up for electric car launches from major carmakers such as PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault and Nissan, the two companies will launch the Bluecar initially for rental and later for sale.

The car will be available as soon as this autumn, depending on the results of crash tests, Bollore said.

Italy, Europe's third-biggest solar power market, will present a much-awaited new solar power incentives scheme at a meeting on Thursday, Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said on Wednesday.

Asked by reporters if the plan will be presented at a key meeting of a body that oversees relations between the central government and regions, Scajola said "there are many meetings in the programme, there is also that one."

British lighting technology firm Dialight is hoping a switch to low-carbon LED traffic lights across Europe and on cellphone masts will help it to drive revenues over the next few years.

"There's sufficiently strong growth drivers within the signals and illumination business for us to expect double-digit growth," Chief Executive Roy Burton told Reuters after the group reported full-year results slightly ahead of expectations on Wednesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet as expected has agreed to a proposed cuts to state-mandated solar power incentives in July, a government source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The government wants to cut the incentives for rooftop solar power by a one-off 16 percent from July 1 while incentives for conversion sites like dumps and unused army bases will be dropped by 11 percent.

After passing the cabinet, the measure will head to the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, later in March where Merkel's center-right coalition has a comfortable majority.

Shares of BYD rose as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday morning after German carmaker Daimler said it plans to develop electric cars for China using batteries made by BYD.

Shares in BYD, a Chinese car and battery maker backed by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, rose to an early high of HK$66.50 before trimming gains to 3 percent at HK$65.05 by 0203 GMT.

Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd, a solar equipment maker that recently relocated to Toronto from Calgary, may soon land its first large-scale orders in its new home province, the world's newest "go-to" region for solar power.

The company, whose shares have risen 150 percent in the past year, also expects to announce a tie-up soon with a top European solar panel maker to supply the Ontario market with thin-film panels carrying Sustainable Energy's power inverters, its chief executive said on Monday.

Spain needs electric cars and a lot more power links with France to better deal with big swings in wind output and spread the benefits of its clean energy boom across Europe, the head of Spanish grid operator Red Electrica said on Monday.

Spain's 18,700 megawatts of installed wind turbines have supplied more than half of its demand at times this winter, forcing Red Electrica to stop some turbines to keep system stability because a dearth of grid connections prevented the green energy from reaching the rest of Europe.