Electricity Market Reform
Huhne’s reforms are good if you are the incumbent nuclear operator in the UK, but new entrants may struggle to gain a foothold. That’s because the Coalition’s reforms also represent the biggest muzzling of competition and market discipline since the end of state ownership. Yet because of the disarray that energy policy has been allowed to fall into over the past 15 years, yesterday’s proposals may be about the best set of policies we can hope for. We know that avoiding the energy crunch (keeping the lights on, meeting green targets and securing supply) is going to be expensive. Huhne laudably admitted his reforms would add £160 to an average £450 annual electricity bill.
Telegraph 13th July 2011 more >>
Letter Tim Yeo MP: The white paper on electricity market reform published by Chris Huhne on Wednesday is a big improvement on the governments original proposals, but it is still far too vague about where the electricity sector needs to be by 2030 (Huhne outlines reforms for electricity market, July 13). The energy secretary has acted on the energy and climate change committees recommendations about the need to match the feed-in tariff funding to different kinds of electricity generation and I am pleased to see its long-term goal of open auctions for low-carbon generation. But the government is not providing enough certainty to energy companies and investors about the future direction of travel.
FT 14th July 2011 more >>
As soon as the government published its white paper on electricity market reform, executives from the UK’s “big six” utilities began poring over the document’s 236 pages, trying to judge how it would affect their interests. These energy companies, famed for their lobbying power, made their preferences clear throughout the process of drafting the white paper. Chris Huhne, energy secretary, had to listen to their views because he will depend on the utilities to provide the £110bn ($177bn) of investment in new power stations and electricity networks that the UK needs. Now that his policy choices have become clearer – although not every issue has been resolved – the companies can begin to identify who has come off best. The white paper’s new tariff system, combined with the carbon price support introduced in the last Budget, will favour all provider s of low-carbon electricity. Companies with existing nuclear power stations and big renewable energy assets stand to gain the most. Of the UK’s “big six” power generators, EDF Energy, the UK subsidiary of the French energy group EDF, has most reason to be satisfied. As the operator of 15 of the UK’s 19 civil nuclear reactors, it already stood to make a windfall gain from the introduction of a carbon price floor of about £125m of extra annual revenue between 2013 and 2020.
FT 14th July 2011 more >>
Sizewell
National Grid announces preferred route for Sizewell C pylons
EADT 13th July 2011 more >>
Iran
Iran has begun efforts to shift its nuclear enrichment programme to an underground bunker where experts warn it could stage a last dash for a nuclear weapon.
Telegraph 13th July 2011 more >>
US
Waste storage is one of the biggest problems for the nuclear industry. Again illustrating the problem, the fight over a proposed waste-burial site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has resumed. The most recent development came July 1 when federal courts dismissed a lawsuit from Washington State and South Carolina challenging the Department of Energys decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project. The proposed $11 billion project would store nuclear waste from the nations nuclear power plants 2,000 feet underground, but it faced stiff opposition and almost a decade of lawsuits from local groups before the government stopped pursuing the project.
Climate Progress 13th July 2011 more >>
Japan
Japan should gradually become a society that does not have to rely on atomic power, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday amid the continuing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Japan Times 14th July 2011 more >>
Prime minister Naoto Kan said on Wednesday the Fukushima nuclear crisis had convinced him that Japan should aim at a society that does not depend on nuclear energy and eventually has no atomic plants.
Guardian 14th July 2011 more >>
The sun has only just risen in Iwaki-Yumoto when groups of men in white T-shirts and light blue cargo pants emerge blinking into the sunlight, swapping the comfort of their air-conditioned rooms for the fierce humidity of a Japanese summer. Four months on from the start of the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, this hot-spring resort in north-east Japan has been transformed into a dormitory for 2,000 men who have travelled from across the country to take part in the clean-up effort 30 miles away at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Iwaki-Yumoto has come to resemble corporate Japan in microcosm. Among its newest residents are technicians and engineers with years of experience and, underpinning them all, hundreds of labourers lured from ac ross Japan by the prospect of higher wages.
Guardian 14th July 2011 more >>
Renewables
Efforts to generate cost-effective power from the sea have taken a step forward with the launch of a new wave-energy device. The new Oyster 800 can, at a third of the cost, generate 250% of the power of the first full-scale Oyster device which was installed and grid-connected at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney in late 2009. First Minister Alex Salmond unveiled Aquamarine Power’s next-generation 800kW hydro-electric device at Burntisland Fabrications yard in Methil, Fife.
PA 14th July 2011 more >>
