We discuss major investments in offshore wind projects in the UK and Brazil by Marubeni and TotalEnergies, highlighting the opportunities in these growing markets. Then we shift to how Berkshire Hathaway Energy has leveraged tax credits to achieve negative income tax rates, underscoring the financial incentives driving renewable energy development. Key takeaways are the attractiveness of offshore wind and how tax policy is fueling clean energy growth.



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Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of InterStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at InterStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out InterStor at InterStor. com.



Japan's Marubeni Corp and its partners have pledged to invest 10 billion pounds, about 12 billion U. S. dollars over the next decade in clean energy in the United Kingdom. Among the planned investments, the 3. 6 gigawatt ASEAN Floating Offshore Wind Farm in Scotland will be the largest project. Marubeni which plans to invest around 1 billion pounds of its own, expects various support from the UK government, including helping with the ASEAN Offshore Wind Project.



Japan and the UK are really aggressively seeking renewable energy, particularly offshore wind at the moment, Phil. This seems like a good combination between the two, and ten billion pounds is a lot of money.



Philip Totaro: It is, Allen, and it's great to see but what's interesting about it is a couple of things.



First is, most of this money is earmarked for project development. And most of it for offshore and floating offshore in particular. And I think one of the reasons why they want to do this, Marubeni wants to be able to get a lot of lessons learned on offshore, floating offshore investments in the UK, where they're obviously ramping up and rolling these projects out.



They want that knowledge base and that experience when they start doing some more of these deep water projects in Japan. Which they're still getting their pardon the pun, but they're still getting their feet wet with. So they're... They're leveraging this investment as something that will also benefit not only the UK with the cash, but Japan from the experience.



Allen Hall: Brazil's energy minister announced last week that France's TotalEnergies is investing almost 100 billion in boosting its presence in Brazil, including offshore wind projects. According to the announcement, the money will be used in the areas of oil and gas research and exploration, as well as offshore and onshore wind.



Plus some solar projects. Again, a hundred billion dollars is a lot of money to be pumping into Brazil. I guess TotalEnergies sees a really bright future below the equator.



Joel Saxum: Smart money spent, because if you've got someone that's coming in that's willing to they're looking at offshore oil and gas research and exploration as well as offshore and onshore wind.



If they're smart, offshore wind and oil and gas research and exploration can be co located and co spent. Because every one of those needs site characterization, they need seismic studies, they need near surface studies, they need all kinds of stuff that has a vessel in country doing a lot of work...