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In its updated 5-year strategy announced today, ABB also said tight execution on cost and productivity—aiming for annual productivity improvements equivalent to 3-5 percent of cost of sales—will further contribute to increasing profitability over the period, along with targeted expansion of its service and software businesses.

ABB’s strategy is built around five components: increasing competitiveness by matching production to local market needs while driving productivity and quality improvements; capitalizing on macro trends such as emerging market growth, resource efficiency and climate change where markets are growing faster than global GDP; leveraging its leading market positions and technologies in core businesses like power grids and industrial automation to take market share; continuing its successful acquisition policy to accelerate growth in priority gap areas; and exploiting disruptive opportunities, such as direct current (DC) technologies, to enable a wide range of energy efficient automation and power solutions.

Meanwhile, the deal will nearly double Mitsubishi’s annual copper output to 250,000 tonnes a year at a time when some analysts are optimistic about the outlook for copper prices. Demand continues to grow but production has risen less than 1 per cent annually over the past five years despite strong prices, according to Macquarie Securities

BEIJING -- China has released a plan for the development of its new strategic industries from now to the end of 2015, according to a latest statement released by the State Council.  The seven new strategic industries include energy conservation and environment protection, new information technology, biology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new materials, new energy and new-energy cars, according to the plan.  The seven industries will maintain an average growth rate of more than 20 percent during the 2011-15 period, the plan said.  The total value-added output of the industries will account for around 8 percent in China's GDP by 2015, it said. 

I consider Schneider Electric one of the smart grid's Big Five industrials along with ABB, Alstom Grid, General Electric and Siemens. But Schneider has a different mindset. The others originally approached the market from the utility side. Only recently have they begun to expand their customer-facing activities (end user-facing).

The growing economies such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar are likely to focus more on the transmission grid expansion and reliability. Rural electrification and increasing the overall electrification ratio will be their top priority.

There’s little doubt that HVDC will continue to be rolled out by most utilities, but the costs and complexity mean an HVDC supergrid is some way off. Innovation doesn’t stand still, however, and advances in key areas that reduce equipment costs, aid development of IT tools and control algorithms, could one day make the case for supergrids irresistible.

China has promulgated the Development Plan for the Energy-saving and New Energy Automobile Industry (2012-2020) and the 12th Five-year Development Plan for the New Materials Industry, giving explicit encouragement to the development and application of automobile weight reduction technology; the Investment Guide for Industry Reform and Upgrading published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also places automobile weight reduction on a prominent position of the auto industry

The terminal is a vast building and houses the world’s largest  controlled-lighting system, with 120,000 light fittings and 2,600 sensors designed to switch them off when no motion is detected. The airport’s operators now plan to replace all the bulbs in one go with LEDs that are expected to last at least five years.

This page is devoted to featuring the top five exotic technologies that we know of that are closest to market.

or attendees, the five-day conference is a chance to find out what big names in the field such as Nobel-prize-winner Andre Geim think about graphene’s prospects.

In all, the government is selling stakes in five of the power generating companies it controls, part of a privatisation programme to sell 25bn zlotys in assets this year, deemed vital if public debt is to be kept under control.

Five years ago, there was not a single kilometre of high speed track in China. Today, it has more than Europe and by 2012, it will have more than the rest of the world put together.

State-owned Hindustan Copper Ltd, which has expressed interest in bidding for the development of mines in Afghanistan, is also embarking on an expansion plan to increase its mine capacity from 3.2 million tonnes to 12 million tonnes per annum in this financial year, which started in April. The monopoly producer of the metal ore is set to invest around $985 million over the next five years in its expansion drive.

Promoted by key projects including large-scale long-distance power transmission, ultra-high voltage grid construction, power grid construction in new rural areas and railway electrification reconstruction, the power transmission and distribution and control equipment industry of China achieved rapid development in 2009, with the annual sales revenue and total profit of RMB 656.19 billion and RMB 49.13 billion, a YoY rise of 15.7% and 19.5% respectively. Boosted by the fast growth of power transmission & distribution and control equipment industry, five sub-sectors mounted up vigorously in 2009. In particular, capacitor and corollary equipment sub-sectors showed the most rapid growth, with the prime operating revenue and total profit increasing by 28.3% and 63.3% respectively from a year earlier. This can be ascribed to the following three factors: firstly, China has made much progress in the development of ultra-high voltage and extra-high voltage technologies; secondly, it is the period from 2009 to 2010 that the ultra-high voltage demonstration projects in China have been constructed in succession, characterizing huge investment; thirdly, China has actively promoted the concept of energy conservation and emission reduction and paid increasing attention to voltage quality, safety and electricity saving, etc.

isted Kazakh miner Kazakhmys PLC (KAZ.LN) said Thursday its copper output should rise 67% in the next five years due to the development of new projects, to take total annual output over 500,000 metric tons.

China is expected to unveil soon details of a five-trillion-yuan ($736 billion) investment plan for clean energy in the next decade