The power plant has a capacity of 18.65MWp and is located on a 116 acre site - previously used as a Russian military training ground - in Brandenburg an der Havel, approximately 50 miles from Berlin.

Google said it will provide clean energy to more than 5,000 homes in the surrounding area.

The 3.5m Euros(£3.06m) investment is part of a joint project involving Capital Stage, a private equity company with experience in the German renewable energy market.

The proposal still requires the formal approval of the German competition authorities and is subject to other customary closing conditions, Google said.

Google has previously invested in a number of clean energy schemes in the US but this is the first time that the company has invested in a European initiative.

In 2010, Google announced that it would invest $38.8m (£23.8m) in two wind farms in North Dakota, capable of powering 55,000 homes.

It also joined a scheme to build a transmission backbone off the mid-Atlantic coast in order to accelerate offshore wind development. If successful, the project could generate enough energy to serve 1.9 million households.

Researchers have tipped the UK to land a £10bn share of the worldwide carbon capture and storage (CCS) market by 2025, after a report found rocks under the Moray Firth could hold up to a century's worth of CO2 output from Scotland's power industry.

Yesterday's report predicted the industry could grow to support 13,000 jobs in Scotland and another 14,000 elsewhere in the UK by 2020. Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS), the government-funded body that produced the report, said the industry could grow even further if provided with adequate support.

The results are particularly significant given that the EU has said three of the eight CCS plants it plans to fund under its demonstration programme must inject into saline aquifers such as the Captain Sandstone rock found beneath the Moray Firth.

"The Captain Sandstone is just one of many rock formations filled with salt water in the central and northern North Sea," said Professor Eric Mackay from SCCS. "We have shown that this is a feasible site that could store massive amounts of CO2, helping the UK meet its targets for carbon emissions reduction. The future potential for this and other areas of the North Sea is immense."

Scottish Energy minister Jim Mather welcomed the results of the report, titled 'Progressing Scotland's CO2 storage opportunities', arguing that it "cements Scotland's position as the number-one location for CCS technology development and deployment in the world".

But he urged Westminster to help kick-start the industry north of the border by backing ScottishPower's Longannet project, the only remaining entrant in the government's own £1bn CCS funding programme.

"CCS can create thousands of new low carbon jobs in Scotland and we must move quickly to seize the full economic and environmental opportunities," Mather said. "We now need the UK Government to recognise the Scottish potential and award a CCS demonstrator project to Longannet, the outstanding contender left in the UK competition."

The scheme, to be formally launched in early April, promises to offer a corporate version of the government's proposed Green Deal scheme, allowing firms the opportunity to cover the cost of the financing through the energy savings that result from increased efficiency.

Siemens Financial Services Ltd will provide the £550m of financing over the next three years and manage the supply of the funding, while the Carbon Trust will use its experience of managing energy efficiency projects to assess the carbon, energy and cost savings of loan applications in order to ensure that the financing pays for itself through reduced energy bills.

The scheme will welcome applications from businesses as of April 4 and will also be reinforced later this year by the launch of a new joint venture between Siemens and the Carbon Trust that will offer firms procurement support designed to ensure they purchase effective energy efficiency equipment from accredited suppliers.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said that the scheme would aid businesses to bridge the financing gap that hampers many energy efficiency projects. "A missing ingredient at present is access to affordable finance to enable business to make green investments," he said. "This new major finance facility will improve business competitiveness, cut carbon, and boost green growth."

The proposal was also welcomed by John Sauven, executive director at Greenpeace, who predicted that it could provide a template for further green financing schemes. "A green growth strategy can only work if it is backed by green finance," he said. "Deals like this, alongside the development of a green infrastructure bank, could be a tipping point that the U.K. economy needs to get out of the current doldrums."

The new venture will also provide a major boost to the Carbon Trust in the wake of the announcement last month that it will see its budget slashed by 40 percent next year as a result of the coalition's spending cuts. About 35 jobs are expected to go at the government-backed company as a result of the cuts and a number of services will be scaled back.

However, the Siemens deal appears to provide a template for how the Trust can continue to offer effective services by strengthening ties with commercial organizations.

More demanding greenhouse gas emissions targets would help spur Europe's economic recovery, rather than damage the bloc's prospects as some critics have claimed.

That is the conclusion of a major new study released yesterday by Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which predicts upping the bloc's mandatory emission reduction target from 20 per cent to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 would increase European investment levels from 18 per cent to around 22 per cent of GDP.

The report claims that by 2020 the additional investment would help create up to six million extra jobs and increase GDP by up to €620bn, compared to the current target. It concludes that far from exacerbating the economic downturn, "post-crisis Europe can revitalise its economy by tackling the climate challenge".

The authors of the report, entitled A New Growth Path for Europe - Generating Growth and Jobs in the Low-Carbon Economy, point out that countries recovered from the 1929 economic crash by investing heavily in the military and public projects. They insist that today's governments can echo the success of their forebears by stepping up investment in innovative clean technologies.

"What we are showing here is that by credibly engaging in the transition to a low-carbon economy through the adoption of an ambitious target and adequate policies, Europe will find itself in a win-win situation of increasing economic growth while reducing greenhouse gases," said professor Carlo Jaeger, lead author of the report. "It is time for Europe to understand the opportunities and the challenges from the transition to a low-carbon economy."

The report was released on the same day as a major new study from the UN Environment Programme, which similarly argued that increased investment in the development of a "green economy" would create more jobs and faster GDP growth than business as usual.

A number of countries, including the UK, France and Germany, have been pushing for the EU to adopt more ambitious targets, but the bloc has long maintained that it will not move to tougher emission goals unless other large emitters like the US follow suit.

However, Connie Hedegaard, European commissioner for climate action, backed the latest findings, saying they showed that "economic growth and climate action are complementary and not each other's opposites".

Chris Huhne, the UK's energy and climate change secretary, added: "Until now, studies have worked on the basis that new resources to tackle carbon emissions would have to come from competing uses, and would therefore cost a small amount. This study is arguably more realistic in showing how green growth can create work for the unemployed and generate new income and prosperity."

For SAP shops, deploying this version of the SUSE Linux, called SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, could cut time and work needed for installation and upgrades, the company claims.

Novell worked with SAP to iron out all the potential tricky parts in deploying SAP applications on servers running SUSE Linux. The package can easily deploy a wide range of SAP applications, including SAP Business Suite software, SAP Business All-in-One solutions, the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search, SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

The distribution is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 with SP1 (Service Pack 1). It features a framework designed to ease installation of SAP applications by using a workflow that knows which applications to install first. The package also has the prerequisite libraries and other tools that are needed for these programs to run.

The company claims that by using these tools, installations can be automated and completed in a matter of hours, instead of days as is the norm.

The distribution also offers a number of other features to extend the use of SAP software in different environments. It includes a copy of the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, which allows administrators to set up off-site backups of the applications that can be quickly pressed into production should the main servers go offline for some reason. It has also been tweaked to support large databases that can run entirely within the working memory of one server, or a cluster of servers.

On the hardware side, both Fujitsu and IBM have pledged to support this package on their own servers.

The system, which will be deployed at Sainsbury's new store in Hythe, Kent, will monitor the National Grid and activate a Sainsbury's biofuel generator when there is an increased demand for electricity.

If successful, the technology will be rolled out across the rest of its stores.

The generator uses waste oil and fat from Sainsbury's stores to act as an auxiliary power source.

"There are many power stations in the UK that are kept on stand-by, ready to come into action when required. The trouble is that two-thirds of the UK's stand-by power comes from high-carbon-emitting non-renewable sources," said Neil Sachdev, Sainsbury's property director.

"By introducing this technology, we will cut the UK's dependence on fossil fuels, reduce our own energy costs and reduce our CO2 emissions."

The monitoring technology at the Hythe store will also deactivate or reduce the store's heating, ventilation and lighting systems at peak times.

We are an extremely agile business so can implement changes by ourselves, rather than waiting for climate change legislation to bring about change," added Sachdev.

"When we find a technology that can work at scale, we immediately set about planning how we can roll that into the rest of our business."

The strategy, which is due to be launched this week, will include a plan to shift British clocks an hour forward all year round, bringing the UK into line with mainland Europe.

However, the proposals are likely to require support from the Scottish Parliament, where some politicians are opposed to the idea, if they are to be approved.

Campaign group Lighter Later, which is lobbying for the move, has said the darker morning and lighter evenings brought about by the change would slash energy consumption and save 447,000 tonnes of CO2 every winter.

The idea was introduced by Conservative MP Rebecca Harris last year as a private members' bill, which is currently being scrutinised by a committee of MPs after passing its second reading.

Prime Minister David Cameron and the influential Energy and Climate Change Committee have both lent their support to the proposal, along with tourism bodies and safety campaigners, although fears have been raised that road accidents on dark mornings would increase in Scotland as a result of the change.

Now the tourism strategy, set to be published by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the next few days, has adopted pushing the clocks forward as a method of increasing the numbers of visitors to the UK and potentially testing the strength of public feeling on the issue via consultation.

"We're still very much focusing on the bill," said a spokeswoman for Lighter Later. "But potentially including it in the tourism strategy is like [the government is] giving the idea their approval."

This is not the UK's first flirtation with clock changes - a three-year experiment between 1968 and 1971 saw British Summer Time applied through the year.

However, following a raft of complaints from Scotland the clocks reverted back, despite the fact that subsequent studies suggested road accidents had actually fallen as a result of the change.

Nick Medic, head of communications at RenewableUK, noted that this will particularly be needed as the industry grows over the next ten years to provide more than 70,000 new jobs.

"As we have more and more employment posts, there is obviously going to be a need for the right type of candidates," he said.

He noted that such schemes have worked in Scotland where young people are being urged to consider a career in wind energy development or sustainable construction.

Earlier this month Acre Resources found that the green jobs market outperformed the rest of the market, experiencing five per cent growth since 2009.

Energy and climate change minister Greg Barker also recently stated on BusinessGreen.com that more people should take up apprenticeship schemes in installation, retrofitting and design, building a "low carbon army".

Modeled on popular Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services for functions such as payroll, human resources and IT support, the new Energy, Carbon and Sustainability Business Process Outsourcing service will allow firms to hand responsibility for their environmental reporting processes to Capgemini.

The consultancy firm will use CA's ecoSoftware application suite to collect and manage customers' environmental data, including energy use and carbon emissions, and ensure they are compliant with reporting requirements such as those included in the government's Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme.

Speaking to BusinessGreen, Sonny Masero, vice president for sustainability in EMEA at CA Technologies, said the service would allow companies to hand responsibility for increasingly complex data management and environmental reporting tasks to third-party specialists, providing in-house sustainability managers with the opportunity to focus more on developing and delivering green business strategies.

"CapGemini has proven in the past that this type of BPO brings opportunities for cost savings and opportunities to deliver more robust systems and processes," he said. "It also allows sustainability teams to spend more time focusing on future performance and less time chasing down data for the previous 12 months."

Stuart Neumann, senior manager at analyst firm Verdantix, hailed the new service as one of the first of its kind for the growing carbon software sector. "Capgemini's reputation for business process outsourcing is well-suited to complement CA ecoSoftware," he said. "This alliance between CA Technologies and Capgemini delivers a strong sustainability management capability to the market."

The Swedish vendor's announcement comes on the heels of Alcatel-Lucent's lightRadio concept, which was launched on Monday.

The basic idea is the same: operators can use smaller base stations and cells, in addition to large cells that dominate today, to expand their networks in new ways. The new base stations also use fewer units and fewer interconnections compared to traditional sites, according to Ericsson. For operators, that means lower costs due to shorter installation time and reduced power consumption.

For mobile subscribers, the Air base stations can open the door to coverage where there was none before, such as in street and indoor environments that are hard to reach with traditional base stations, according to Jan Häglund, vice president and deputy head of product area IP and broadband at Ericsson's Networks unit.

Both Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson are planning to demonstrate their systems at Mobile World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona from Feb. 14 to Feb. 17.

The Air base stations integrate the antenna unit into the radio unit. The first generation of the product will put the baseband unit, which handles the data and call processing, into a separate box. But in the future it will also be integrated into the main unit, according to Ericsson.

The Air base stations can be used in 2G, 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks, and will come in different sizes. The smallest ones will be the size of a one-liter milk carton, and can cover an area with a cell radius of up to about 100 meters, according to Christian Hedelin, head of radio product marketing at Ericsson's Networks unit.

For the smaller base stations to work, automated configuration will be a key feature. The Air units will be able to listen in to the network, and themselves configure the relationship to other base stations located nearby, a feature called self-organising, according to Häglund.

Air is the result of a partnership between Ericsson and the German antenna marker Kathrein. The products will be commercially available in the second half 2011, but the smallest versions will arrive in 2012, according to Ericsson.