Nuclear Subsidies
The Government is taking a tougher stance in its long-running talks with power firm EDF Energy over the £14 billion scheme to build two new nuclear reactors after recent surveys suggested Britain may have vast reserves of cheap shale gas. The Department of Energy has been struggling for months to agree a strike price with EDF – the figure it would guarantee to pay for any electricity generated by EDF. The French group is proposing to build the new plant in Hinkley Point, Somerset. Talks are believed to have focused on a price of £90 to £95 per megawatt hour. The sum would guarantee tens of billions of pounds of income to EDF over the lifespan of the contract, which could be as long as 40 years. But sources said that the Government now felt able to take a tougher negotiating line with the French state-controlled power group after recent geological surveys showed that there might be 1.3 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the north of England – double the previous estimates.
This is Money 13th July 2013 read more »
Politics
There’s just a week left of the Parliamentary term to go before MPs go back to their constituencies to mull that awkward pay rise over the summer. But one thing that’s keeping Tory MPs from relaxing is the possibility of a ministerial reshuffle next week. The names of supposedly vulnerable ministers include energy minister Greg Barker.
Spectator 12th July 2013 read more »
Tory MP John Hayes was fired as Energy Minister for secretly plotting to persuade an electricity boss to challenge Government policy. Climate change sceptic Mr Hayes had asked the head of power giants E.on to warn of blackouts unless the Coalition watered down its green crusade and made a U-turn on the closure of coal-fired generators. But Mr Hayes’s boss, Energy Secretary Ed Davey, hit the roof when he found out about the ‘treachery’ – and demanded he was sacked.
Daily Mail 13th July 2013 read more »
Energy Policy
Christopher Booker: Last week, when my colleague Richard North and I revealed the Government’s “secret weapon” in the battle to provide back-up for when the wind isn’t turning the tens of thousands of useless wind turbines it hopes to see built, we had no idea what a huge story this is turning out to be. Under its STOR (Short Term Operating Reserve) scheme, the National Grid has been signing up, at vast expense, thousands of diesel-driven stand-by generators to provide instantly available power to “balance the grid” when the wind isn’t blowing. But so huge are the sums the grid is offering to make this power available that hundreds of canny investors have seen that this is one of the great money-making rackets of our time. In old industrial sites, quarries and supermarket premises all over the country they are piling in to install dedicated “generator parks”, capable of producing up to 100 megawatts (MW), in return for “availability payments” of up to £47,000 a year for each MW of their capacity. They then receive additional payment for the amount of electricity they actually feed to the grid, giving them an equivalent of £600 for each MW hour supplied – 12 times the going market rate.
Telegraph 13th July 2013 read more »
James Dellingpole.The dirty secret of Britain’s power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there’s no wind for turbines – and other insane but true eco-scandals
Daily Mail 14th July 2013 read more »
Congo
A SINGLE coil of shiny razor wire winds along the top of a crumbling 4ft concrete wall. A solitary guard clutching a battered Kalashnikov assault rifle mans the main gate. There is little else to suggest that here, within the cluster of dilapidated, poorly protected buildings an hour’s drive from Kinshasa, lies enough enriched uranium to build a “dirty bomb” capable of causing mass casualties. Welcome to Africa’s oldest nuclear reactor. The reactor itself has been shut since 2004, after it overheated and the bottom plate that held the nuclear fuel cylinders warped. Now the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo wants to start it again.
Sunday Times 14th July 2013 read more »
Japan
In the past few days Tepco – the Tokyo Electric Power Company – has finally admitted that radioactive water is leaking from the site into the beautiful, hauntingly clear pacific waters here which teem with fish. Researchers on 9 July found levels of Caesium 134 here that were 150 times the legal limit. Levels of Caesium 137 were found to be 200 times the legal limit. These are the highest readings since the disaster and nobody knows why. In this once delightful town on a lush plain between mountains clothed in forest and the Pacific, our radiation alarms go off regularly in “hot spots”. In a garage forecourt overgrown with weeds – the now-familiar beeping. The ground here giving out radiation around three times that of a chest x-ray. Dangerous? Not for a short time really. But if you worked here now, or lived here? A rather different scenario.
Channel 4 News 13th July 2013 read more »
China
China has abandoned plans for a $6 billion (£4 billion) nuclear processing plant in the southern province of Guangdong after hundreds of protesters took to the streets to air their environmental concerns.The proposed facility was expected to drastically boost the country’s capacity for enriching uranium, but caused unease in neighbouring Hong Kong and Macau, as well as amongst residents.
Independent 13th July 2013 read more »
Russia Today 13th July 2013 read more »
Trident
Westminster warnings that the bill for ridding an independent Scotland of Trident would run into billions have been undermined by revelations that the UK Government previously put the cost at £150 million. the Sunday Herald can reveal that the cost of dismantling all the UK’s nuclear warheads was officially estimated as being significantly lower – less than £150m – by the MoD in 2006, in answer to an MP asking for a breakdown of the nuclear decommissioning costs. Westminster could argue that the “tens of billions” figure does not involve dismantling the warheads but rather the decommissioning of Faslane and the costs of rehousing the submarines outside Scotland. However, it is far from clear why the Scottish Government would be expected to pick up any of those costs. Getting rid of Trident can be achieved by the far cheaper option of simply dismantling the weapons. The difference between the costs has been seized on by the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND), which last year published a four-year timetable for dismantling Trident, endorsed by the Scottish Government and experts. “Scrapping Trident would be far cheaper than building a new base in England, even if, as is unlikely, the MoD found a suitable site,” said SCND co-ordinator John Ainslie.
Sunday Herald 14th July 2013 read more »
Britain could lose its continuous nuclear deterrence programme under a scenario that has been outlined in a government-commissioned report examining alternatives to Trident. The report, to be published on Tuesday, is expected to discuss a range of alternatives to the current system under which a submarine armed with nuclear warheads is at sea and ready to be deployed at all times. It provides explicit detail on the costs associated with Britain’s commitment to nuclear weapons and is expected to be the subject of a parliamentary debate on Wednesday.
Observer 14th July 2013 read more »
Renewables
Scientists claim a single super turbine would be capable of providing electricity for a year for between 15,000 and 20,000 households. Its blades would each be about 410ft long and sit on a tower up to 700ft high, making the structure, from base to the tips of the blades, about 1,100ft high, taller than The Shard in London, western Europe’s tallest building. The project was approved by the EU at the end of last year. It will run for five years. Peter Hjuler Jensen of the Technical University of Denmark, the project’s coordinator, said: “This is something we will see in the coming years. Everybody would like these to be built within 10 years.” Mr Jensen said it is most likely the turbines would be built at sea and require new techniques for building foundations more cheaply. The Great Plains of the US, he suggested, would also be ideal locations. The biggest wind turbines are currently capable of producing about 8MW using blades about 180ft long. The Innwind project involves 27 different institutions including scientists at three British universities – Sheffield, Strathclyde and Bristol.
Telegraph 14th July 2013 read more »
THE number of wind farms across the UK could be almost doubled following Scottish trials of a revolutionary radar system that is expected to end safety concerns over installing turbines near airports. Scotland on Sunday has learned that the first live demonstration of the 3D holographic radar, carried out at Prestwick Airport last week, successfully proved the technology’s ability to detect the difference between aircraft and the movement of turbine blades, which it can block out individually on air traffic control screens.
Scotland on Sunday 14th July 2013 read more »
Long-term subsidies for wind farms are to be cut by a quarter, the Government will announce this week. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, will announce the cut in subsidies for new wind farms as part of a radical overhaul of the electricity market.
He will say that the subsidies, which are added on to household electricity bills and paid for by consumers, will last for 15 years rather than 20 – effectively a 25 per cent cut. The plans, which will affect all wind farms built after 2017, will be outlined in an Energy Bill now before Parliament.
Telegraph 14th July 2013 read more »
Energy Efficiency
Geoffrey Lean: The High Court refused a judicial review of Eric Pickles’s perverse decision to scrap the so-called “conservatory tax” – which did not affect conservatories and was not a tax, but obliged people extending their homes to improve insulation on the existing building. Taking out a Green Deal loan to pay for this would have enabled householders to make money, not lose it. And by ministers’ own calculations, the provision would have stimulated 2.2 million loans, provided £11 billion to boost the construction industry, and saved 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Ministers insist these are “early days”, and that the Green Deal is a “20-year programme”. But with energy prices rising and shortages looming, we need the savings now.
Telegraph 12th July 2013 read more »
About 12m people live in the countryside in the UK, 1m of these in Scotland. Energy efficiency schemes aimed at lowering carbon emissions and reducing fuel poverty, including the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), are failing vulnerable consumers due to the way policy-makers have placed responsibility for the administration and implementation of the schemes in the hands of the “Big Six” energy companies.
Sunday Times 14th July 2013 read more »
Fossil Fuels
The coalition may be promoting the controversial practice of fracking for gas because senior figures from that industry sit in the heart of Government, campaigners have warned. The former BP boss Lord Browne, Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw and BG Group director Baroness Hogg have all been accused of the potential for conflicts of interest, as they hold senior advisory roles at a time when the Government is heavily promoting fracking.
Independent 14th July 2013 read more »
Brtain’s push for shale gas will step up a gear this week as ministers unveil long-awaited details of tax breaks for fracking and pledge to cut red tape for the industry.
Telegraph 13th July 2013 read more »
Centrica’s £1.4bn plan to convert an empty gas field into a storage facility to help with any future energy crisis could be shelved after the Government signalled that it did not believe Britain needs more storage.
Telegraph 13th July 2013 read more »
