Energy Policy

Rebecca Long-Bailey: Labour can win in 2024 with my plan to tackle the climate emergency. To win, Labour needs to make sure 2024 is a climate election. Too often we have fought on terms defined by the Tories. David Cameron and George Osborne dominated politics in the aftermath of the financial crisis, winning two elections by pinning the blame on Labour’s fabled “overspending”. Last December, the narrative was defined by “Get Brexit done”, and we failed to provide a convincing answer. Labour can only win the next election by confidently setting the agenda. Our shift to the politics of anti-austerity under Jeremy Corbyn put the Tories on the back foot and enabled the gains made in 2017. But as our devastating loss to Johnson showed, standing still is not enough. That’s why as leader, I’ll centre Labour’s plans to tackle the climate crisis in everything we do, and make sure it defines the next election. I know that we can build a winning electoral coalition around our green industrial revolution, uniting working people everywhere with a just, aspirational response to the climate crisis. Long before the next election, people in every community up and down the country need to know concretely what this will mean for them. Well-paid, unionised green jobs in every town, city and village; economic renewal and pride for communities left behind by deindustrialisation; and a leading role for our country in combating the climate crisis across the world. This isn’t just a set of policies that need to be sold better, it has to be the core of our vision for a socialist future.

Guardian 24th Feb 2020 read more »

Nick Butler: We need a world institution for climate and energy. It’s time to move the debate on and put in place the detailed steps necessary to get to net zero. An international organisation is needed to combine both analysis of the challenge and the development of practical solutions. The first task would be to give substance to the worthy but rather empty 2050 commitments.

FT 24th Feb 2020 read more »

Dave Elliott: UK FIRES, a £5m government-backed project bringing together academics from six universities in conjunction with businesses across the supply-chain, have written a report, ‘Absolute Zero’, looking to an ‘absolute zero’ emission 100% all-electric non fossil 2050 UK future. It assumes that renewables ramp up rapidly and a bit of nuclear stays with us, but CCS does not happen in time, so that there will still be a gap- and the ‘absolute zero’ idea seems to imply that this can’t be filled with carbon offsets or illusions to ‘net zero carbon’ balances. The gap is actually one between the electricity supplied and the total energy needed, but that’s arguably a bit misleading. Evidently keen to get away from inefficient and dirty fossil fuel combustion, the study insist that everything has to be done with electricity, with that ‘delivering all the transport, heat and goods we use in the UK’, which it says ‘would require 3x more electricity than we use today.’ No doubt- and it says it can’t be done: so we need big cuts in energy use: ‘If we expand renewables as fast as we can, we could deliver about 60% of this requirement with zero emissions in 2050. Therefore, in 2050 we must plan to use 40% less energy than we use today.’ Hence the need for big cuts – including for flying and shipping. Meat eating too. Tough stuff. Is it right? Well first off, it’s not clear why a 3 times renewables expansion cannot not be done by 2050. CAT’s ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ did that and beyond, with more favouable assumptions about renewable growth. Secondly, what happens if we don’t try to do it all via electricity? In the FIRE study, biomass is seen as a no go area (due to land-use conflicts), solar heat doesn’t even get a mention. But what about solar heat inputs and biogas-fired CHP linked to district heating networks and community heat stores? And biogas for some heavy vehicles – using waste-derived biomethane?

Renew Extra 22nd Feb 2020 read more »

British companies are lagging far behind their European neighbours in low-carbon investment after contributing only 3% of the continent’s €124bn (£104.2bn) green spending last year. A report has revealed that German-listed companies invested 11 times more in low-carbon investments such as electric vehicles, renewable energy and smart energy grids than UK firms. London-listed companies spent €4bn on green research and technologies compared with €44.4bn from German groups, including the carmaker Volkswagen, which invested more than a third of Europe’s total low-carbon spending in 2019. The report, from the climate disclosure organisation CDP, said Germany, Spain and Italy topped the company league table for low-carbon investment last year while the UK finished sixth, below France and Denmark.

Guardian 25th Feb 2020 read more »

The electric transport revolution isn’t as green as you think. The shift to electric vehicles is inevitable, but electric waste poses a significant question over their green credentials. Germany’s courts were witness to a strange row between unlikely enemies last week when Tesla was pitched against a group of environmentalists. Work on the electric car firm’s new German factory was briefly halted after eco-warriors objected to the company cutting down trees. The protesters were ultimately overruled, and work resumed on the plant – but the case was a reminder that the journey to an electrified future is not without its own environmental complications. The shift to electric mobility now seems almost inevitable, and a necessary step to make city air cleaner and reduce emissions. But there are pitfalls, and one of them is what we do with the millions of lithium-ion batteries which will power the electric vehicles set to take over our roads.

Telegraph 24th Feb 2020 read more »

Efforts to clean up London’s chronic air pollution problem appear to be paying off, with City Hall policies helping spur a significant reduction in illegal nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels over the past four years, according to the Mayor of London. Latest air monitoring data for London released on Friday showed that last year only one site in London recorded a breach of both national and EU legal limits for NO2 on just over 100 occasions, marking a 97 per cent reduction on the 4,000 breaches recorded across the city in 2016.

Business Green 24th Feb 2020 read more »

Households face a hike in their energy bills after a surge in subsidy payments to switch off turbines, an analysis has found. In the first six weeks of this year, £55.7 million was paid out in constraint payments, according to research by the Renewable Energy Foundation. The money is given out as compensation to energy firms for turning off turbines when the network is unable to cope with the power they produce. Last year, the total paid was £130 million, which was at that point the largest to date. The payments are made by the National Grid but charged to consumers and added to electricity bills. A high-voltage submarine power cable between Scotland and England was supposed to help to reduce the figure by allowing energy to be exported south of the border and keeping the turbines on more regularly. However, Prysmian, the Italian company which manufactured cables for the £1 billion project, said on January 10 that it had failed. It came back into operation on February 7.

Times 21st Feb 2020 read more »