A spokesman for police in the province said the man was travelling back from a mine site with a driver when a group of armed men ambushed their car.

Police said there were no indication of shots being fired and that the car’s driver was left tied up.

Investigations are ongoing into the incident and so far there have been no demands for a ransom.

The man was working for Indonesian energy company Medco Exploration and Production.

No contact

The British embassy in Jakarta said they were in touch with the local authorities and the man’s family.

Authorities have had no contact with the suspected kidnappers.

Aceh is a resource-rich province in Indonesia that had a history of separatist conflicts and violence, including toward foreigners.

But the conflict ended in a peace deal in 2005, and kidnappings and attacks, particularly of foreign nationals, are unheard of in recent years.

Dr Sajjan Gohel, an expert on international terrorism and the director for international security at the Asia Pacific Foundation think-tank, said hostage taking in Aceh was unusual.

He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “Aceh is a very conservative province, so they are somewhat angry at the foreign presence of companies that may be there.

“But nevertheless no-one would have anticipated this happening in Aceh, it’s more likely that other provinces would have been more susceptible to hostage taking.”

The position will require you to actively seek out new opportunities to engage in consultations. You will act as an independent advisor to companies within the supply chain. The work delivered will inspire change inside organisations in this rapidly evolving sector. To enjoy working with us, you will thrive on working on a number of different challenges with a variety of clients, from enablers to private companies, at the same time.

Our team has always been busy; we look for energetic and focussed people who can get out there to win new business, manage their time effectively, take the initiative and show leadership in delivering to the high standards that we set ourselves. In a relatively small industry, we believe that delivering excellence to one customer is the best way to win work from another. We don’t have a dedicated sales team – our best advert is our staff and we all work to win new opportunities that will make a difference. You will need to be excellent with written and verbal communication as well as with technical analysis; this is crucial as the majority of our output includes some form of written report or presentation.

Individual and collective learning is a high priority for us, and we enjoy working in an intellectually stimulating and resourceful environment. In joining us, you will be challenged and supported to grow in the company of other people with knowledge to share and where the power of feedback is recognised. Talking with your references forms an important step in recruitment and also in smoothing your introduction to our team.

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Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s solar energy programme has emerged as one of the first possible significant casualties of the EU China trade war in the UK.

The company has questioned whether it will be able to make continued investment in its growing solar portfolio because of the tariffs planned by the European Commission on Chinese solar imports.

Sainsbury’s has until now been a major investor in solar power and other renewable energies.

The supermarket chain, one of the three biggest in the country, has installed 16MW of solar panels across 169 store rooftops. Collectively they make Sainsbury host to the largest multi-rooftop array in Europe.

It has topped the global Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes review (in the food retailers sector) six years in a row, and last year the company’s chief executive Justin King said the retail sector should take another look at solar energy as a viable way to reduce its impact on the environment. “Supermarkets have the equivalent of football fields on their roofs, many of them underutilised,” he said. “It’s a perfect time to turn that space into something positive.”

But the ongoing trade dispute between EU and China appears to have soured the prospects for further rolling out of solar.

In a statement, Paul Crewe, head of energy at Sainsbury’s, reacted to the threat of increased solar prices as a result of tariffs imposed by the EU: “We are disappointed by this potential measure and hope a solution can be found. Investment in the 82,000 panels on our stores has been dependent on the feed-in tariff and another tariff on top of this would make it difficult for us to justify continued investment.”

Introductory tariffs of 11.8% were introduced by the European Commission last week despite opposition from the majority of EU states.

These tariffs are expected to increase in August to an average of 47%, but already the industry, both up- and downstream, and even its customers, are beginning to feel the negative effects. Crewe continued: “This could have a significant and detrimental impact on the UK solar industry and jobs within the sector.”

Sainsbury’s are keen to point out that they will not yet retract their investment, but will wait to see what transpires in the trade dispute, and how EU trade commissioner Karel de Gucht will handle the ongoing negotiations with China.

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Offshore Oil and Gas Jobs Worldwide

The North Sea oil and gas industry is set to lose hundreds of millions of pounds a year as global warming threatens to unleash increasingly frequent and intense storms, producing bigger waves that could damage platforms and make it harder for staff to do their jobs, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned today.

Plans to build one of the world’s biggest tidal energy projects in the River Severn estuary between England and Wales do not look commercially viable, members of parliament said on Monday.

The Hafren Power consortium wants to construct a barrage across the estuary that could supply 5 percent of Britain’s electricity and would mark an international breakthrough for marine energy.

But parliament’s energy and climate change select committee said the economic case was not strong enough, and recommended in a report that the government should give no more consideration to the project until it received more persuasive evidence.

The scheme is likely to need high-level support for 30 years through the government’s ‘contracts-for-difference’ (CfD) mechanism, which effectively sets a minimum price for renewable energy, the committee said.

“We do not believe at this stage that the barrage would be competitive with other low-carbon technologies,” said Tim Yeo, its chairman.

The report was distributed to journalists before allegations surfaced against Yeo that he used his position as chair of the committee to help a private company influence parliament.

Yeo denies wrongdoing and said he will contest the allegations, which were reported by the Sunday Times newspaper.

Hafren, which includes engineering firm Arup and construction consultants Mott MacDonald, is proposing that the barrage would be fully operational by 2025, generating 16.5 terawatt-hours of electricity a year.

It would stretch across the estuary like a dam and use sluice gates to channel water, turning turbines as the tide flows in and out.

Marine energy is still in its infancy worldwide compared to other sources of renewable energy like wind or solar power, with no large-scale commercial wave or tidal facility in operation.

Britain is betting on its potential, aiming for 100 to 200 megawatts of wave and tidal energy installed by 2020, but has yet to make the leap from prototype to full-scale arrays.

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A new volunteer organisation will be launched in Perth tonight to promote career development of women in the oil and gas sector.

Women in Oil and Gas is the result of discussions among industry representatives and academics recognising that the oil and gas industry needs to further promote participation of female workers.

WIOG founder Veena Mendez said encouraging women’s participation in the oil and gas industry was imperative to increase awareness of the career paths and opportunities available.

“I founded WIOG as a networking opportunity for women working in oil and gas to further support their participation in the industry,” she said.

“Through collaborative partnerships with industry, academia and business, WIOG will assist with the collation of much needed statistics and demographic data on the oil and gas industry.

“Most current research merges the mining and oil and gas industries, however separating the data could help decipher specific opportunities to support women within the oil and gas industry.”

The launch will be held in the Deloitte Boardroom at Woodside Plaza from 5.30pm.

Guest speakers will include senior managers from Chevron, Woodside and Shell.

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Solar Sales Representative – The role
Fenland Solar are recruiting a solar sales representative on a commission only Field based position, with:

• a managed diary and full office support.
• All appointments are generated and qualified for you and with interested parties.
• There will be on-going training and earnings are uncapped but typically range between £30k to £70k with our existing team members.

The company
Fenland Solar Ltd is a successful and highly reputed business with a keen focus on delivering quality. With an “everybody matters” approach we’ve delivered excellent results and take great pride in our standards which won us an award for customer service last year.

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Google’s colossal presence is all too apparent when we log on to the internet, use a mobile phone or marvel at its foray into driverless cars. Now, the technology group’s reach is stretching to something as simple as switching on a light.

On Tuesday it struck its second renewable energy deal in less than a week, this time a 10-year agreement to buy electricity from a Swedish wind farm.

The transaction comes six days after Google announced its first African renewables deal – a $12m investment in a South African solar-power project – and is the first green energy power purchasing agreement it has completed in Europe.

Globally, Google has invested more than $1bn in low-carbon power in recent years, including a $200m West Texas wind farm deal in December and a $280m investment in a fund to finance residential solar projects in the US.

Other big corporations, such as Ikea, are also investing in renewables as business interest in the sector spreads.

The electricity that technology companies need for their data centres has made them a target of environmental campaigners and has prompted some, such as Apple, to start to run their centres on renewable energy. But few match Google’s investment in new low-carbon projects.

The financial terms of Google’s agreement with O2, a Nordic wind farm developer, have not been disclosed, but the deal means that for 10 years, Google will buy all the power generated by a 24-turbine wind farm O2 is building in northern Sweden, due to start operating in 2015.

Google says it will use the equivalent amount of power at its energy-hungry Hamina data centre in Finland, a country that is part of Scandinavia’s integrated electricity market, along with Sweden.

“As a carbon-neutral company, we’re always looking for ways to increase the amount of renewable energy we use,” said Urs Hölzle, senior vice-president of technical infrastructure at Google. “This long-term agreement, our fourth globally, means we can power our Finnish data centre with clean energy – and add new wind-generation capacity to the European grid.”

Although the electricity used at the Finnish data centre each day will not actually come directly from the O2 wind farm, Google’s power purchase deal enabled the developer to go ahead with the project, said O2 chief executive, Johan Ihrfelt.

That meets one of Google’s two criteria for making green energy investments – buying electricity for its own operational needs in a way that adds more renewables to a power system.

Although Google has not disclosed the terms of its power purchasing agreement with O2, it said it believed it would prove financially beneficial.

“We only make a deal on a project that makes financial sense to us,” said Francois Sterin, senior manager at Google’s global infrastructure team.

“It was very important for us to participate in a new project, not to buy from existing renewable energy sources.”

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European plans to impose “swingeing” punitive tariffs on cheap Chinese solar panel imports will cause heavy job losses, inflate costs for consumers and could cause the EU miss its own renewable energy targets.

It has been more than two years since the accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Japan.

But the safety of nuclear energy remains extremely controversial, not just in Japan but around the world.

Taiwan has been building a new plant 30km from its capital Taipei.

But opposition has been intensifying and the public may be asked to decide in a referendum later this year whether the construction should continue at all.

The BBC’s Cindy Sui reports.