Hinkley
A report that the European Competition Commissioner is set to clear the way for the first of Britain’s new generation of nuclear power stations to rise on the West Somerset coast has dismayed anti-nuclear campaigners. The deal between the British Government and the developer EDF, to set a guaranteed price for the electricity generated was called in for scrutiny by the commissioner at the end of last year. Stop Hinkley campaign spokesperson Allan Jeffrey said: “Surely the job of the European competition commissioner is to make sure taxpayers’ and electricity consumers’ money is spent on the most cost effective measures to reduce carbon emissions and provide energy security. Hinkley Point C is neither.
Western Daily Press 20th Sept 2014 read more »
Moorside
If the nuclear reactors proposed for Cumbria are so safe, why has this CEO sold a million shares in his own company BEFORE AP1000 reactors in the USA have even been built?
Radiation Free Lakeland 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Nuclear Status
The cost of keeping uranium out of the hands of terrorists and safe from natural disasters is sidelining nuclear energy, which officials once dreamed would power a Utopian future of cheap, almost limitless electricity. The amount of power produced by nuclear reactors has dropped to a 32-year low, the International Atomic Energy Agency will tell its 162 member states meeting in Vienna today. The agency will also present lower forecasts for future output as governments in developed nations seek other sources of power. Even as a new generation of campaigners promote carbon-emission-free nuclear power as part of a strategy to tackle climate change, growth has stalled in Europe and North America while Japan’s reactor network, the world’s third biggest, remains idle following the 2011 tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima plant. Concerns that Iran, Syria, or even some terrorist group, might squirrel away fuel for bomb-making have pushed up the price of nuclear power in the rest of the world.
Bloomberg 22nd Sept 2014 read more »
Saudi Arabia
To help address its energy needs, last week Saudi Arabia announced plans to incentivize both private and public investments in energy sources other than oil. Within 20 years, the Saudi Royal Family aims to invest $80 billion and $240 billion so that nuclear and solar, respectively, will each provide 15 percent of the Kingdom’s power needs. The transition is intended to happen quickly, with the first nuclear reactor expected to come online in only eight years. Beyond minimizing carbon emissions, the nation’s energy efforts are an instance of an energy symbiosis, whereby energy production techniques are uniquely suited to consumption practices and the landscape where production occurs.
Oil Price 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Finland
Finland’s government has accepted changes to the application for a new nuclear power plant at Pyhäjoki in North Ostrobothnia. As a result the Green League–which had opposed the Fennovoima reactor project–announced their resignation from the cabinet.
YLE 18th Sept 2014 read more »
US
No other industrial sector has been knocked down — and gotten back up — more than nuclear companies. But the latest fight over whether to continue funding the “Ex-Im Bank,” has been a blow delivered by its “backers,” or conservative lawmakers who generally support such development. Now, though, those congressional members have momentarily caved to a broad swath of the bank’s friends, consisting mostly of members who are pro-business and who want to see U.S. companies expand their franchises internationally. The ultimate question is whether that concession is temporary or permanent.
Forbes 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Community Energy
Letter: How silly of Jenny Turner, in her review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, to refer so patronisingly to the “knit-your-owns”. Of course governments should be taking on this threat – and of course we keep on telling them so. But voluntary groups like Ovesco, a community-owned and -funded renewable energy company, also create large amounts of green energy through lots of hard and mostly unpaid work. Organisations like ours are the means by which many people know about climate change, understand that renewables are simply common sense, and see that there are ways in which they can act. Big things arise from little things; governments will not take notice until the many start demanding that they do. It will be a welcome day when/if we are able to pass the task over to them; I am quite looking forward to doing some.
Guardian 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Energy Efficiency
A Labour government would insulate at least five million draughty homes to help families save £270 a year on their heating bill, Caroline Flint, the shadow energy secretary, will say on Tuesday. The senior Labour MP will make the announcement at the party’s autumn conference – exactly a year after the promise to freeze energy bills for 18 months if Ed Miliband wins power next year. Speaking in Manchester, Flint will set out five new policies to deliver permanent savings on energy bills, building on the temporary price freeze. This will include at least five million homes being upgraded over 10 years, saving the average household £273 a year. She will also unveil plans for a million interest-free loans for DIY improvements to help lower energy bills, in contrast to the government’s green deal, which carries high repayment costs. Flint said one of the main reasons energy bills are so high – currently around £1,300 a year – is that our homes are some of the least energy efficient in Europe, leaking heat from their roofs, walls and windows. Other measures include personalised home energy reports for half a million households a year and a new target for landlords to get cold and leaky properties up to a decent standard. In the event of a Labour government, Energy efficiency would be designated a national infrastructure priority.
Guardian 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Russia’s Gazprom could lose 18 per cent of its revenues as a result of competition from US liquefied natural gas exports, according to a New York-based think-tank. European consumers can expect to pay 11 per cent less for their gas as a result of the downward pressure on world prices created by rising US LNG exports, hitting revenues of the Russian state-controlled gas group, according to an analysis published on Monday by the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia university. However, while the loss would be significant for Gazprom, the impact on Russia’s total export revenues would be more modest, suggesting that US gas exports are unlikely to be an effective tool in forcing policy change from the Kremlin. The analysis also finds that Europe is likely to remain a large consumer of Russian gas, so will need to strengthen its energy infrastructure to cope with potential supply disruptions.
FT 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Climate
Hopes of keeping global warming below the long-established target of two degrees above pre-industrial levels are rapidly eroding, according to a collection of papers in two Nature journals today. That might sound like a gloomy backdrop to this week’s climate summit, convened by UN director-general Ban Ki Moon to refocus world leaders’ attention on climate action. But chalking up the two degrees target as a political failure is a “naive” way to look at climate ambition and could even obstruct future negotiations, the authors argue.
Carbon Brief 21st Sept 2014 read more »
New data on carbon shows that China’s emissions per head of population have surpassed the EU for the first time. The researchers say that India is also forecast to beat Europe’s CO2 output in 2019. Scientists say that global totals are increasing fast and will likely exceed the limit for dangerous climate change within 30 years. The world has already used up two thirds of the warming gases researchers calculate will breach 2 degrees C.
BBC 21st Sept 2014 read more »
FT 22nd Sept 2014 read more »
Times 22nd Sept 2014 read more »
Street protests demanding urgent action on climate change have attracted hundreds of thousands of marchers in more than 2,000 locations worldwide. The People’s Climate March is campaigning for curbs on carbon emissions, ahead of the UN climate summit in New York next week. In Manhattan, organisers said some 310,000 people joined a march that was also attended by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
BBC 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Thousands of people have taken part in a march for climate action in London – one of more than 2,000 marches which took place around the world.
BBC 21st Sept 2014 read more »
Curbing global warming could support growth, not kill it. Climate politics makes for strange bedfellows. Among opponents of action to combat global warming, those who support it are often known as “watermelons”, because they conceal their true socialist agenda beneath their green skins. Some in the environmental movement, many of whom took the streets in protests around the world on Sunday, agree with that view. They see climate change as justification for abandoning market economics in favour of some generally ill-defined alternative. Naomi Klein, a veteran campaigner against globalisation, describes global warming as a historic opportunity to create a “more just economy”, with less “mindless consumption”. Other environmentalists go further, arguing that the only way to keep the earth habitable is to stop economic growth altogether. As a strategy for addressing the genuine and u rgent threat of climate change, this radical agenda is bad politics, and bad economics. It is bad politics because it stands no chance of winning widespread popular support. If the prospect of catastrophe was certain and imminent, people might be prepared to make great sacrifices to avert it. But the potentially cataclysmic effects are decades away, and the unavoidable uncertainties in climate modelling make it impossible to be sure when particular consequences will strike, if at all. Radical environmentalists want people to give up freedom and prosperity now to avoid distant disaster, which may not happen anyway. Good luck with that. Fortunately, this dilemma is imaginary. The report last week from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate former president of Mexico, made a convincing case that “we can achieve both better growth and a better climate”.
FT 21st Sept 2014 read more »
The backlash against fossil fuels is growing so fast that nearly 700 financial institutions controlling £30bn of assets have pledged to pull their money out of investments that exacerbate climate change, it emerged yesterday. Among the institutions switching into cleaner power sources are the British Medical Association, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and the Quakers, all of whom are part of the “dirty-energy divestment” campaign. Around 40,000 people marched in London yesterday to demand urgent action on climate change as new research shows the world is billowing record quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Independent 22nd Sept 2014 read more »
The UK can expect to see increasingly extreme weather as climate change pushes temperatures up in the Arctic at twice the global average, according to new research. The rising Arctic temperature is causing the jet stream – a key determinant of the weather – to take a more amplified and wavier path, which will lead to more storms, says Professor Jennifer Francis, of Rutgers University in the US. The disproportionate warming of the Arctic has reduced the temperature difference between the region and the “mid-latitudes”. This is having a major impact on the jet stream, the five- to seven-mile high ribbon of air which controls much of the weather in North America and Europe. As the tempe rature difference declines, the jet stream slows and weakens, making it follow a wavier route.
Independent 22nd Sept 2014 read more »
Children born today will see the world committed to dangerous and irreversible levels of climate change by their young adulthood at current rates, as the world poured a record amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere this year. Annual carbon dioxide emissions showed a strong rise of 2.5% on 2013 levels, putting the total emitted this year on track for 40bn tonnes. That means the global ‘carbon budget’, calculated as the total governments can afford to emit without pushing temperatures higher than 2C above pre-industrial levels, is likely to be used up within just one generation, or in thirty years from now. Scientists think climate change is likely to have catastrophic and irreversible effects, including rising sea level s, polar melting, droughts, floods and increasingly extreme weather, if temperatures rise more than 2C. They have calculated that this threshold is likely to be breached if global emissions top 1,200 billion tonnes, giving a “carbon budget” to stick to in order to avoid dangerous warming. Dave Reay, professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, said: “If this were a bank statement it would say our credit is running out. We’ve already burned through two-thirds of our global carbon allowance and avoiding dangerous climate change now requires some very difficult choices. Not least of these is how a shrinking global carbon allowance can be shared equitably between more than 7bn people and where the differences between rich and poor are so immense.”
Guardian 21st Sept 2014 read more »
