A round-up of this month's other economics news in brief

THE ESBhas signed a deal with Renault-Nissan that will see it invest €20m in a pilot project to roll out electric car charging infrastructure over the next year

PV CRYSTALOX SOLAR, an Irish-owned solar technology firm in Oxford, increased its profits by 111.5 per cent to €142.7 million last year

IRISH TIDALenergy firm Openhydro has won a contract to trial up to three of its turbines for a public utility provider in Washington State

SOUTH KOREA'Sstate power company plans to invest $2.7 billion in 960MW of wind and tidal energy

UCD RESEARCHERSfound that including 2 per cent of fish oils in the diet of cattle reduces their methane output

TOSHIBA HASunveiled a lithium-titanate based battery that can be charged in about 90 seconds

MIT RESEARCHERSclaim by genetically engineering viruses, they can cleanly and cheaply produce electric car batteries

SPAM EMAILSare responsible for 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, anti-virus software firm McAfee and researchers ICF International have claimed

DUBLIN ISmore polluted than Edinburgh, Munich, Copenhagen and London, with CO2 emissions per capita of 9.7 tonnes, Siemens Ireland has claimed

Event Diary May

8th: Energy Solutions 2009,University of Limerick; cpi.ul.ie

11th: The Case for a Green Stimulus, Europe House, Dublin; iiea.com

20th-21st: All Energy 2009, Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre, Scotland; all-energy.co.uk