Tag Archives: north
Positive sentiment on future house price growth in UK slips to three year low
Household sentiment on future house price growth in the UK has slipped to a three year low with 23.7% believing that the value of their home increase over the last month. Some 4.4% believe that prices have fallen, according to the latest house price sentiment index from Knight Frank and Markit Economics with the reading falling from 61 to 59.7. Households in the North East perceived that the value of their home fell in June, the first time that households in any English region perceived house prices had fallen since August 2013. The future HPSI, which measures what households think will happen to the value of their property over the next year, fell to 67.7 in June from 70.3 in May. This is the lowest reading recorded by the index since August 2013. The gap between sentiment in the North and South of the UK is now wider than at any time since the inception of the index. But some 6.5% of UK households said they planned to buy a property in the next 12 months, up from 5.4% in May and the highest number since August 2015. ‘The decline in the future household sentiment index to a near three-year low coincides with growing uncertainty over the result of next week’s European Union referendum as the debates over the UK’s future step up a gear,’ said Gráinne Gilmore, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank. ‘The proportion of households who expect the value of their home to fall over the next 12 months rose to the highest level in nearly two years, but overall households still expect the value of their property to continue rising in the coming year, despite the uncertainty about the result of the vote,’ she explained. She also pointed out that the regional disparity in the index readings highlights the multi-speed housing market in the UK at present, with gap between sentiment in the North and the South widening to the biggest margin since the index began in 2009. Tim Moore, senior economist at Markit, agreed that heightened political and economic uncertainty seems to have weighed on house price sentiment to some degree in June, with expectations for the year ahead slipping to the lowest since August 2013. However, he pointed out that the month to month easing in house price sentiment was relatively modest, suggesting that UK households perceived little fundamental change in property market conditions since May. ‘Instead, ultra-low mortgages, improving labour market conditions and little sign of impending interest rate rises all appear to have helped keep house price sentiment at an elevated level in comparison to the survey’s historical average,’ he added. Continue reading
Turning Wood Chips Into Gasoline? NJ Firm Hopes To
Published: Thursday, 3 Oct 2013 By: Brad Quick, CNBC field producer Source: Primus Green Energy View from the north side of the demonstration plant. A New Jersey company has opened an energy facility that converts cheap natural gas into gasoline, and the firm hopes to eventually convert biomass—wood chips or switchgrass, for instance—and even to make jet fuel. The process being carried out by Primus Green Energy at its synthetic gas-to-gasoline, or “STG+,” facility, which launched Wednesday, is not new, but the size and efficiency of this particular plant are. Primus hopes to create about 100,000 gallons of gas a year—a small amount compared with modern oil refineries, but still making it the largest facility of its kind anywhere in the world, Primus said. Primus takes cheap natural gas and through a chemical process, converts it into more expensive gasoline that can power your car. Primus is using the new plant as a testing facility, a scaled-down version of how it hopes its future plants will operate. The company hopes the operation will be enough to show investors that the technology is both economically feasible and possible to build on a larger scale. Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst with Raymond James, said Primus has to prove it can raise capital before it can be successful. “This is an early stage company. They’ve yet to produce gasoline commercially. It’s going to take some time to scale up,” Molchanov said. “With any scale up comes the need for a large amount of capital. Raising capital is never easy, particularly for an early stage business.” To date, Primus has raised about $60 million, all of it through an investment from IC Green Energy, the renewable energy arm of Israel Corp . Primus is working with Credit Suisse to raise additional capital by the end of the year. ( Read more : Six myths about renewable energy) A larger facility that will produce 28 million gallons a year, which the company hopes have built by 2016, will cost roughly $280 million. That’s cheaper than what it would cost to build an oil refinery of the same size. Natgas price worries? Not really, says CEO Source: Primus Green Energy Primus Green Energy CEO Robert Johnsen Molchanov said he sees the cost of natural gas as another potential headwind. “If natural gas prices go up, it would not be helpful for their margins,” he said. “I’d like to see what would happen if prices doubled.” Primus CEO Robert Johnsen said that’s not a scenario that keeps him up at night. The natural gas industry just released its winter forecast, and both supply and demand look as if they’ll remain steady, with prices hovering at around $3.47. Johnsen estimates that at current natural gas prices, it costs him about $1.65 to create one gallon of gasoline, far cheaper than the big oil refiners. And with those kinds of margins, prices would need to move significantly higher before the process was no longer profitable. “Natural gas would have to be in the double digits for us to be uneconomic, given the current forecast for gasoline prices,” Johnsen said. Continue reading
North American Pellet Exports Set Record
North American wood pellet exports reached a new record of over 1 million tons during the first quarter of the year, according to Wood Resources International LLC’s North American Wood Fiber Review. According to the review, pellet exports from the two primary pellet-producing regions in North America—the U.S. South and British Columbia—showed no signs of slowing in early 2013, with growth likely to accelerate during the second half of the year. Export volumes from the U.S. South to Europe in 2012 are estimated to be in excess of 1.7 million tons. Canadian exports for the year equaled approximately 1.5 million tons. According Wood Resources International, the U.K. continues to be the primary destination for North American pellet exports. More than two-thirds of export volumes from the U.S. and Canada went to the U.K. during the first quarter of this year. Continue reading
