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News August 2019

Nuclear Finance

Council bosses have raised concerns over government plans to fund large-scale nuclear projects through residents’ electricity bills. The funding model proposed last month would let energy companies charge consumers a set amount, to be spent on future infrastructure provision. The government said it was “essential” to attract private finance. But councillors in Copeland, Cumbria, are worried residents could have to pay for plants that may never be built. The chairman of the council’s strategic nuclear and energy board, Steven Morgan, was concerned they would be paying for a plant “long before it returns any electricity”. “This does reduce the financing cost and therefore reduces what you have to pay in the long run,” he said. “But, in the near term, you are paying for plants that haven’t been built yet and may never be built.” Endorsing a “substantial increase in our electricity rates” to pay for new nuclear plants was “not something we should sleepwalk into”, Mr Morgan said.

BBC 24th Aug 2019 read more »

Wylfa

Council officers have reiterated their plan to grow Anglesey’s housing stock by at least 500 over the coming decades – despite uncertainty over Wylfa Newydd. Anglesey is one of 11 Welsh authorities that still owns its own housing stock for rent, of which it currently holds over 3,800. In 2015 councillors rubber-stamped ambitious plans to increase this by at least 500 over the next 30 years , planning that around two thirds would be new builds with the remaining third bought in from private ownership.

Daily Post 24th Aug 2019 read more »

BBC 24th Aug 2019 read more »

Poltics

If Greta Thunberg wants to beat climate change by 2030, she needs to convince conservatives and the middle-aged, not young, metropolitan liberals. This is possible only if environmentalism sheds its exclusive association with the liberal left. While shaking young people out of their complacency and rallying passive environmentalists is laudable, this is a well-trodden path. I share many of Thunberg’s aims, but her campaign may have damaged her cause by deepening the movement’s leftist tint. A YouGov sample of nearly 150 people who said they liked her Facebook page reveals that 13% voted Conservative in 2017, while 87% opted for Labour, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens. This won’t do Thunberg much good unless Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn or the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson pulls a rabbit out of their hat next election.

Times 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Utilities

Letter: The possible failure of some smaller energy suppliers might not raise major issues, even for their customers, but clearly illustrates the stupidity of privatisation of such vital national resources (“Small energy companies risk going bust in financial shock”, News). Oil and gas prices are determined by global markets, so there is little scope for competition there; in fact, the artificial competitive elements might even contribute to increased prices as British suppliers outbid one another in order to get enough for their needs. The dozens of companies involved, all with shareholders, managers and employees to be paid, inevitably increase costs when compared with the state-run enterprises that successfully ran the businesses for decades.

Observer 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Energy Policy – Scotland

IN THE 1970s and ’80s, North Sea oil was the key symbol of Scotland’s political impotence and lost economic sovereignty. In the future, renewable energy could occupy a similar place in our national psyche. Maybe it already does – or is beginning to. As the climate crisis intensifies – July was the hottest month ever recorded in human history – other small European countries are using the full powers of independence to navigate the challenges of environmental breakdown. Norway, as ever, is a case in point. In March, the Norwegian government announced that the country’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind anywhere on earth, was going to ditch investments in companies committed to major new fossil fuel extraction projects.

The National 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Ireland

Leo Varadkar has warned that Ireland will not vote for the proposed EU-Mercosur trade agreement unless Brazil, one of the four South American parties to the deal, gets its environmental house in order, starting with the forest fires burning out of control in the Amazon. “There is no way we can tell Irish and European farmers to use fewer pesticides, less fertiliser, embrace biodiversity and plant more of their land and expect them to do it, if we do not make trade deals contingent on decent environmental, labour and product standards,” said the taoiseach. This looks like a brave and principled stance, but it is not. It is gesture politics that will cost Ireland precisely nothing and matches nicely with the government’s cause du jour: the environment. And, like so much eco-politics, it is also immensely hypocritical.

Times 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Renewables

The future is being driven by dropping prices. That’s nothing new. It’s when innovative products drop in price, moving from the elite to reach a mass market, that they become transformative. Think cars, mobile phones, personal computers and air travel. It’s true also of the tipping point where one technology replaces another. And that’s what we’re currently seeing with renewable energy. Subsidy was used to help onshore wind farms develop. They are now commercially viable, and only seek a floor price through the subsidy auction in case the price drops. Offshore wind may eventually go that way, its price driven south by the downward pressure of government auctioning the right to supply the grid at a floor price. Slow to start, the efficiencies have accelerated. A danger to wind is that solar keeps plummeting in price. I’m told that, even at the efficiency level you can get out a solar panel in Scotland, they’re now so cheap that they’re becoming commercially viable. That’s on open land, at least. It’s becoming a viable crop for farmers. The cost of putting them on your roof is still a sizeable financial hurdle. And it’s a technology that could eventually be overtaken by the arrival of photo-voltaic tiles, replacing the entire roof. According to Professor Keith Bell, an energy systems expert at Strathclyde University, electric vehicles, or EVs, have to hit three tipping points, and they may be coming sooner than you’d think. One is on cost – when the high capital and lower running costs of an EV undercut the lower upfront and higher fuel costs of an ICE (internal combustion engine). The second is to counter range anxiety. Car batteries have to offer a longer range, to reassure owners they won’t get stuck on a long journey with a powerless car. And allied to that, there has to be the charging infrastructure to reassure them that they won’t be too far from a top up. That’s obviously of particular interest in rural areas.

BBC 24th Aug 2019 read more »

Renewables – offshore wind

The largest offshore wind farm in Scandinavia is officially open. In a ceremony Thursday, state-owned Swedish energy firm Vattenfall inaugurated the Horns Rev 3 facility, which is located in the North Sea, off Denmark’s west coast. Horns Rev 3 consists of 49 turbines which stand 187 meters tall. If the turbines’ foundations are taken into account, they each weigh nearly 1,500 tonnes. The facility has a capacity of 407 megawatts (MW), which Vattenfall says is enough to cover the yearly electricity consumption of around 425,000 Danish homes.

CNBC 24th Aug 2019 read more »

Fossil Fuels

The UK’s only fracking site has been hit by the largest-ever tremor caused by the practice on British soil. Energy firm Cuadrilla said a 2.23-magnitude tremor was recorded at its facility near Blackpool at 11.01pm on Saturday – the third “micro seismic event” this week. The movement was stronger than the 1.55-magnitude tremor observed at the site on Wednesday – which previously held the record.

Independent 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Drill or Drop 25th Aug 2019 read more »

Climate

David Wallace-Wells is the deputy editor of New York magazine. In July 2017, he wrote a long-form essay about the dire prospects for human civilisation caused by the climate crisis. It became the most read article in the history of the magazine and led to a book, The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future, which is being published in paperback in September. The first line of your book states: “It is worse, much worse, than you think.” If you were sitting down to write the book again, would you be inserting another “much” into that sentence? I still think the public aren’t as concerned as they should be about some of the scary stuff that’s possible this century. But I do think things have changed quite a bit. And I also think the politics have changed quite a lot. When I turned in the book in September, nobody had heard of Greta Thunberg. Nobody had heard of Extinction Rebellion. In the US, very few people had heard of Sunrise. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had not even been elected.

Guardian 25th Aug 2019 read more »

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