Hinkley
A director at the UK’s leading solar power generator Lightsource Renewable Energy has written to Prime Minister David Cameron describing how the UK PV sector could match the capacity of the planned nuclear power station at Hinkley within just two years. Operations Director Mark Turner says the nation’s solar industry has the capability to deliver the same energy production at Hinkley Point C within 24 months and at comparable cost.
Nextgen 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Just two weeks ago, energy minster Greg Barker laid down a crystal clear challenge to the solar PV sector. The only way to maximise solar’s contribution to the 2020 renewables target would be to “squeeze out subsidy” and to “compete like-for-like with fossil fuels”, he said. That’s some challenge, but it is one that is not being extended to any other low carbon technology. Certainly not to nuclear. The contrast between the minister’s uncompromising message to our industry on 8 October and the Hinkley Point C deal announced by DECC this week could not be any clearer.The very suggestion from energy secretary Ed Davey in the House of Commons on Monday, that the nuclear price “is competitive with projected costs for other plants commissioning in the 2020s”, is frankly absurd. Indeed it is so absurd that I had to check and double-check Hansard to make sure that that was really what his speech writers at DECC had written for him. Nuclear industry claims that this deal makes its technology the “cheapest” low carbon energy technology are even more outrageous, confusing, as they do, the headline £92.50/MWh CPI-linked 2023 nuclear strike price with next year’s draft renewables strike prices. The correct comparison is with projected costs for renewables projects completing in 2023 and beyond not in just six months’ time. Such is the projected pace of cost reduction in the solar PV sector that the Solar Trade Association (STA) has been able to ask for a strike price of £91 in 2018. It is inconceivable in my view that DECC will now set a higher solar strike price than £91 in 2018. So even if we were to leave out the multi-billion loan guarantees and the other sweeteners required for new nuclear, solar PV will be beating nuclear on strike price alone by 2018, some five years before Hinkley Point C is due to be completed. By 2019, the Solar Trade Association predicts that the industry will require a strike price of £86, falling year on year thereafter, paid over 15 not 35 years and with no nuclear-style small print permitting a possible increase in strike price once those terms are set.
Solar Portal 24th Oct 2013 read more »
How can we characterise the much trumpeted ‘deal’ on Hinkley C now that it has actually emerged? Well it’s not much of a deal I guess, more a kind of semi crayoned-in statement of intent and a very expensive one at that. The bit we do know is that if all the bits that aren’t yet crayoned in (e.g. all that stuff about state aid approval) are in the fullness of time, then we’re stuck with an upwardly indexable ‘Contract for Difference’ payment of £89.50 per mwh. Or if EDF don’t build any more reactors, a payment of £92.50 for, er, 35 years. A deal where you get more payouts if you don’t deliver anything else than if you do is a new one to me but there you go. At the moment there seem to be a lot more things that we don’t know than things we do know about this deal. Like, for example, exactly what form the contract to enable financial closure will look like.
Alan Whitehead MP 24th Oct 2013 read more »
ENVIRONMENTALISTS have reacted angrily to the government’s decision to give the go-ahead to a new nuclear power plant just 14 miles away from Barry. The development will see new reactors being built in the UK for the first time in 18 years, across the Bristol channel in Hinkley Point, Somerset. The Barry and Vale Friends of the Earth group has long been opposed to the new plant, being built by French energy group EDF with additional investment from Chinese firms.
Barry & District News 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Letter Ed Davey: Your report “Energy bills top £1,500 after new price hikes” (Oct 22) gave the wrong impression about the effect of new nuclear power stations on energy bills, with the incorrect claim that Hinkley Point C will add £8 a year to bills for the next 35 years. First, no one will see any effect on their bills from the construction of Hinkley Point C until 2023, when the plant starts generating electricity. Second, our projections indicate that our new nuclear programme is likely to save people about £75 a year on their bills in 2030, compared with a future with no new nuclear. Building Hinkley Point C is a good deal for Britain – including Britain’s billpayers. It will help to keep the lights on in the decades ahead and reduce our reliance on volatile foreign i mports, at a price that’s competitive with the predictions for all other forms of generation, including gas.
Times 25th Oct 2013 read more »
Sizewell
Energy giant EDF’s final commitment to build a new nuclear power station in Suffolk may not be made until the end of the decade, energy secretary Ed Davey has admitted. The Liberal Democrat cabinet minister told parliament that the French owned company was focussing on the project in Sizewell more than it was before in the wake of an agreement over a guaranteed price of energy from Hinkely Point C in Somerset, but was obviously not going to commit to it yet. In its consultation document EDF said that the government’s policy had identified Sizewell as one of the sites potentially suitable for the deployment of a new nuclear power station by the end of 2025. But the company said it was too early to give a precise date for a final investment decision for Sizewell C, but the first stage of the consultation was completed in February. But asked about the progress towards making Sizewell C a reality by Ipswich MP Ben Gummer, Mr Davey said that while going through the design process for the Somerset plant would shorten the planning time for Sizewell, the final decision was not expected until the end of the decade.
East Anglian Daily Times 23rd Oct 2013 read more »
The creation of a third nuclear plant in Suffolk could bring significant benefits and a major jobs boost for Ipswich, the town’s MP Ben Gummer said today. Mr Gummer hailed the announcement that key commercial terms had, in principle, been agreed for a new station at Hinkley Point in Somerset as fantastic news, as it brought the prospect of Sizewell C closer to reality.
Ipswich Star 23rd Oct 2013 read more »
Council launches video to outline fight for Hinkley C community fund.
Burnham-on-sea.com 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Nuclear Investment
When David Cameron makes his long-awaited trip to Beijing, he will proudly trumpet a simple message: Britain is open to Chinese investment. The prime minister is hoping to take up an invitation from Xi Jinping, China’s president, before the end of the year to build on the deals announced during a visit by George Osborne last week. The chancellor’s agreement for two state-owned Chinese companies to take a 30-40 per cent stake in the planned Hinkley Point nuclear plant cemented the UK’s reputation in Beijing as the most open western economy for Chinese investors. The stake taken by China General Nuclear Corporation and China National Nuclear Corporation in Hinkley Point attracted barely a flicker of political controversy. Although Mr Cameron’s national security council has discussed energy security issues, ministers are more concerned about an over-reliance on a single source of energy or supplier, not foreign stakes in individual projects. “We can’t see any reason why China would have an interest in running the power station badly or dangerously,” said one ministerial adviser. Andrew Large, a nuclear adviser, claims Chinese companies would find “considerable difficulties” in working under a nuclear safety regime imposed by an independent British regulator.
FT 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy Subsidies
A leaked document from the European Commission reveals the true scale of EU energy subsidies. Each year member states spend €40 billion on supporting fossil fuels (including indirect subsidies), €35 billion on nuclear, and just €30 billion on renewable energy. When it comes to state aid, renewables are the poor relation! The figures emerge from an official EU document published by the Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger. But not from the official version which is sanitised of this key information. The original version written by his civil servants was suppressed, and only discovered by the journalist Cerstin Gammelin of the German news daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. She believes that the key passages showing the scale of subsidy for fossil fuels and nuclear power were deleted by Commissioner Oettinger himself.
Ecologist 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy Costs
David Cameron plans to halve the green levies in energy bills while clearing the way for a windfall tax on suppliers before the next election. ScottishPower became the latest of the leading energy companies to increase prices yesterday, warning its 2.2 million customers of above-inflation rises that will add £113 to the average dual fuel bill. Just days after Sir John Major said that millions of people would face a choice between eating and heating this winter, public health officials said that there were “too many avoidable deaths” from the cold, adding further to the pressure for government action. The Prime Minister, who was accused by Liberal Democrats of a “panicky U-turn” for his surprise announcement on Wednesday that he would “roll back” green taxes, has earmarked four levies on energy companies for abolition. They will be discussed with Liberal Democrat ministers before an announcement in the Autumn Statement on December 4, according to senior Conservatives. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader, struck a more conciliatory note yesterday, suggesting that at least one levy — the Warm Homes Discount — could be removed from bills and funded by government revenue. The £135-a-year rebate for poorer pensioners adds £11 to the cost of an average household energy bill. Another levy, the Energy Companies Obligation, which passes the costs of insulating the homes of poorer consumers to large energy companies, could be amended to reduce the burden on suppliers. Both levies have already been identified by Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers seeking a response to Ed Miliband’s promise to freeze energy bills for 20 months after a Labour victory.
Times 25th Oct 2013 read more »
Nick Clegg said David Cameron’s plan to roll back green levies would be an “own goal”, but hinted that a compromise could be found in the coming weeks. The Deputy Prime Minister sounded more conciliatory than other Liberal Democrats who have savaged Mr Cameron’s surprise announcement in the Commons yesterday. Mr Clegg said that he would work with the Government to find an agreement before the autumn economic statement.
Times 24th Oct 2013 read more »
David Cameron announcement that he wanted to “roll back” green levies pushing up energy bills was unexpected, Nick Clegg has said. “It’s not something that I fully agree with,” the deputy prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. But the Lib Dem leader confirmed that the government was to look into whether its environmental policies could be delivered more cost-effectively. They may be funded in future from taxes rather than green levies, he suggested.
BBC 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Taxpayers may fund the cuts in energy bills promised by David Cameron as he tries to deliver his pledge to “roll back” the green taxes which add £112 to the average annual charge. Nick Clegg warned that he would block any moves by the Conservatives to scale back the element of the green levies which help people in fuel poverty, and fund home insulation grants and renewable energy like wind power. But he opened the door to switching part of the £2.7bn cost from gas and electricity consumers to general taxation. He believes that would be progressive because a bigger share would be borne by the better off, and many poor people who face high energy bills do not pay tax.
Independent 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Nick Clegg has opened the door to a possible resolution of the coalition dispute over energy prices, saying he is willing to see the burden of some of the green levies shifted to general taxation and away from energy consumers’ bills. David Cameron had stunned the Liberal Democrats by announcing he was going to roll back the environmental levies, giving Nick Clegg 30 minutes’ notice of his plan to make the announcement at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions. But Clegg’s aides noted that schemes to help the fuel-poor, such as the Warm Home Discount scheme worth £135m to two million poorer customers, would be more progressive if funded by general taxation rather than a flat levy on consumers.
Guardian 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Labour accused the coalition of a “panicked wheeze” to contain energy prices as Scottish Power became the latest company to raise bills. Nick Clegg had earlier suggested that the burden of green levies could be switched from bills to taxes as a way to close a coalition rift over energy policy. The Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister said he would resist attempts by the Conservatives to cut tariffs aimed at subsidising bills and insulation for poor people.
FT 24th Oct 2013 read more »
In 2006, then leader of the opposition, David Cameron, argued the Tories “want to see an increase in green taxes as a proportion of the total”. Seven years later, he’s reversed his position. How did the change come about -and how have the media framed the issue? Cameron’s surprise pledge to roll back green subsidies reflects political infighting between coalition partners. The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have started to see the green agenda as a ‘wedge issue’ – a method by which the coalition partners can distinguish themselves from each other. The newspapers have also played their part in fanning the flames against ‘green taxes’. Indeed, Cameron’s announcement may be more geared towards the media and his political critics rather than the public. Polling suggests consumers continue to support green measures – and blame energy companies for price rises despite the media campaign. But whether this would have continued in the future as green levies rose is unknown. We’ll have to wait and see what the government comes up with before we know where attention will fall next.
Carbon Brief 24th Oct 2013 read more »
The media are scrambling to make sense of the fallout following after Hurricane Green Taxes hit parliament yesterday. Following news that energy companies are raising prices yet again, the wishes of some sections of politics and the media may have come true: the government may now ” roll back” some ‘green’ charges on bills. Here’s our roundup of the media coverage.
Carbon Brief 24th Oct 2013 read more »
The deal to build the UK’s first new nuclear power station since 1995 brings a sharp new focus to the energy price debate. On the one hand, politicians are browbeating the big six energy suppliers for raising energy prices, while on the other they are standing atop plans for Chinese nuclear power stations applauding a deal that locks the government into paying double the current electricity price.The big six’s issues contrast starkly with the improving credentials of renewable energy suppliers. Consider two businesses. The first, growing cash profits at over 20 per cent a year at an operating margin of over 20 per cent, and the second with an operating margin of just under 7 per cent last year and loss-making for several months of this year. Which is the well-established energy player and which the risky, renewable upstart? Well, the first is soon-to-float renewables firm Infinis, and the second is the residential arm of Centrica’s British Gas. All of which makes Ian Marchant’s recent shift from chief executive of SSE to chairman of Infinis look canny.
Investors Chronicle 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Britain’s Big Six energy giants were savaged for showing “contempt” to the Government and the public last night after it emerged that only one supplier is sending their chief executive to a showdown with MPs next week. The Energy and Climate Change Select Committee revealed that the heads of British Gas, EDF, Scottish Power, SSE and Npower have all chosen to avoid a hearing into the reasons for inflation-busting hikes in gas and electricity prices. Tony Cocker, of E.ON is the only chief executive due to attend.
Telegraph 25th Oct 2013 read more »
The heat over energy bills turned up this week as David Cameron pledged to “roll back” green regulations and charges. If he pursues this course rather than Ed Miliband’s price freeze or Sir John Major’s proposed excess profits tax, then the Prime Minister has three options open to him. First, he could cut energy efficiency measures. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO), which has been running since January, costs the average household about £47 per year or around 4pc of their dual fuel bill. It is aimed at providing new boilers and insulation for Britain’s 2.4 million fuel poor homes—including many pensioners and vulnerable people. In theory, this should help reduce their demand for energy and bring down their bills. There are concerns that the policy has not started well with small numbers of fuel poor homes actually benefiting. But this is an argument for reforming, rather than repealing the scheme. In any case, the Lib Dems are committed to these charges so the best that Mr Cameron could hope for is moving the £1.3bn charge from bills to general taxation as Alex Salmond has said he’d like to do for Scotland.
Telegraph 24th Oct 2013 read more »
ScottishPower has taunted ministers over the threat to levy a windfall tax on energy company profits after making a loss this year, which it blamed on having to fund the Government’s expanding social and environmental programmes.
Times 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Letter: THE Prime Minister claims he will reduce energy bills by scrapping green Government levies on electricity and gas bills. Yet most of the levies have nothing to do with renewable energy or reducing CO2 emissions. They are to reduce energy bills for the poorest households. Only four are “green” measures – the Renewables Obligation, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Price Floor and Feed In Tariffs, which allow consumers to save on their bills by generating electricity using small wind turbines or rooftop solar panels. The four together put £50, or about 3.95%, on the average household’s annual bill of £1267 a year. The other two main Government levies on fuel bills, the Energy Companies Obligation and the Warm Home Discount, reduce bills for people on low incomes . The final two and smallest are for smart meters and better billing to reduce all consumers’ energy bills. These four non-green levies add £61 a year to the average bill or 4.81%. So green measures are under 4% of the average bill. This is before considering how much more demand for fossil fuels would be outstripping supply globally, and so pushing up wholesale gas prices worldwide, if no renewables had been invested in to provide extra generation capacity.
Herald 25th Oct 2013 read more »
New Nukes
As George Osborne hails a renaissance for nuclear power in Britain, Alex Macbeth reviews Pandora’s Promise, a new documentary film that asks whether we’ve got nuclear energy all wrong.
Ecologist 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Generation III power technology and advances in small modular reactors are driving developments in the nuclear power generation market.
Engineer Live 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Radwaste
Letter: On the Nuclear Waste Repository issue, quite clearly, our lords and masters in Whitehall are adamantly determined to get their own way. Having been told ‘no’ by Cumbria County Council, they are now busily engaged in ‘moving the goalposts’. There is surely a case for arguing that this behaviour amounts to not merely ‘misfeasance in public office’ but ‘malfeasance’, which is a criminal and arrestable offence. And for which, all of those persons who have knowingly and deliberately made themselves a party to it, are equally indictable.
Whitehaven News 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy Supplies
Users will be financially incentivised to turn their power off for short periods at peak times, easing the burden on the national system, while energy companies that had planned to decommission power plants will be paid to “bring them back up and running at times of stress”. Steve Holliday, chief executive of The National Grid, said that the measures were necessary to prevent blackouts across Britain, following a dramatic fall in the amount of coal-burning power plants that are in operation. The drop in power generation means that Britain will be running with a buffer of just 5pc this winter, the lowest reserve energy supplies since 2007. That figure could drop even lower in 2014 and 2015 as more and more power stations fall out of operation.
Telegraph 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Uranium
A narrow majority of the Greenlandic parliament passed a measure to overturn the country’s ban on uranium mining.
Arctic Journal 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Guardian 25th Oct 2013 read more »
Politics
It is a sad reflection of the dire state of politics and the media that it falls to a celebrity comedian such as Russell Brand to speak truth to power – and an even sadder reflection that mainstream cultural commentators find themselves incapable of even understanding his key message. “Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. A system that is apathetic, in fact, to the needs of the people it was designed to serve.” Take the issue of environmental policy. As I’ve shown in my previous articles here, both the Tory and Labour parties’ approaches to the questions of fracking and energy prices are incoherent. Ed Miliband’s lofty declaration of intent to freeze gas and electricity bills, just like David Cameron’s promise to review green taxes, were simply hot air that overlooked the fundamental deeper systemic crisis: that we are transitioning to a new energy era in which fossil fuels are now increasingly dirtier, costlier, and more difficult to extract. And yesterday, I revealed the financial connections of Cameron acolyte, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, illustrating that his stance on deregulation and fracking was hardly objective. If we want our children to inherit a habitable planet, rather than bashing Brand for not having a more coherent solution, we need to start being part of it.
Guardian 25th Oct 2013 read more »
Japan
A team of Reuters journalists has uncovered systemic worker abuse in the biggest nuclear clean-up in history. Correspondent Antoni Slodkowski details his discoveries at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Reuters 25th Oct 2013 read more »
As part of Japan’s efforts to rebuild its nuclear power industry after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster and the subsequent fall in confidence in nuclear power plants, the government is now considering a radical overhaul that will merge the companies operating the country’s 50 operating reactors, into one organisation.
Oil Price 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Proactive Investors 24th Oct 2013 read more »
South Korea
The South Korean Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) will shut another nuclear power reactor to facilitate welding quality checks related to the safety of a steam generator. The shutdown, which raises concerns of power shortages in the forthcoming winter season, follows the regulator’s decision to stop the operations of a 950MW nuclear reactor in Yeonggwang county, southwest of Seoul, in September 2013, Reuters reports. NSSC did not provide any timeline for the reactor restart.
Energy Business Review 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Dubai
As of last week, Dubai could generate just a fraction of the solar power of Britain or Germany despite the fact that it receives a nearly-guaranteed 10 hours of sun a day. That changed on Tuesday when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, switched on phase one of a solar power plant 50km out of the city, as part of Dubai’s bid to host the 2020 World Expo. It will have a capacity of only 24MW to start with, but in the next 15 years will grow into a monster 1GW plant covering 20 sq km of desert.
Guardian 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Nuclear Testing
Since the U.S unleashed the first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in 1945 there have been a staggering 2056 nuclear tests recorded worldwide. It took almost a year until the next substantial tests took place but by the mid-50s and 60s, nuclear experiments were being recorded across the globe on almost a monthly basis. To demonstrate the scale and development of this technology, Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has plotted all these explosions that took place from 1945 up to 1998 in a time-lapse video map
Daily Mail 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy Efficiency
In 2008 Eric Pickles was chairman of the Conservative Party. In that role, he championed a wholesale conversion of the party’s environmental image, under the slogan “Vote Blue, Go Green”. Now as Communities Secretary he is presiding over a Department that seems determined to undermine a whole range of sustainable energy measures – including seeking to repeal a key Act of Parliament that he was largely instrumental in placing upon the statute book. Perversely this seems to be in direct defiance of the Prime Minister. Earlier this year David Cameron made a much-publicised seminal speech at the Royal Society. He was unequivocal. He pledged to make Britain the “most energy-efficient country in Europe.” He stated: “We are in a global race. And the countries that succeed in that race… are those that are the greenest and the most energy efficient.” The Planning and Energy Act provides local authorities with the ability to set specific carbon, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets for new build properties (the so-called ‘Merton Rule’). It also extends local authorities’ power to specify higher standards of energy efficiency and lower carbon energy production than required as the minimum under the building regulations.
ACE 14th Oct 2013 read more »
Fuel Poverty
The government is urging people to use their heating this winter as part of its plan to prevent some of the thousands of avoidable deaths that occur each year due to the cold weather. The official cold weather plan for England says people should keep their homes warm, with living room temperatures of 21C (70F) and bedrooms and the rest of the house heated to 18C (65F). It says temperatures above this “may waste money” but below this “may risk your health”. If people are unable to afford to heat all their rooms, they should heat their living room during the day and bedrooms just before going to bed. The plan was published by Public Health England (PHE) in collaboration with the Department of Health, NHS England and the Local Government Association (LGA). It says there are “too many avoidable deaths each winter”, with just over 24,000 each year in England and Wales. The “causes are complex, interlinked with fuel poverty, poor housing and health inequalities, as well as circulating infectious diseases, particularly flu and norovirus, and the extent of snow and ice,” it added.
Guardian 25th Oct 2013 read more »
The UK is second only to Estonia among European countries for the number of people struggling to pay their energy bills, according to campaigners. Members of fuel poverty alliance Energy Bill Revolution have written to Prime Minister David Cameron demanding that party leaders act on the “national scandal” of cold homes.
Telegraph 25th Oct 2013 read more »
Fuel poverty campaigners have written to Prime Minister David Cameron demanding cross-party action on the “national crisis” of cold homes.
BBC 25th Oct 2013 read more »
The number of people seeking debt advice about their energy bills has surged following recent announcements of price rises. Citizens Advice has reported a 55pc increase in the number of people seeking online advice about their energy bills following the first price alert from supplier SSE on October 10.
Telegraph 24th Oct 2013 read more »
Community Renewables
Give community wind power the same EMR terms as Hinkley C!
Ecologist 22nd Oct 2013 read more »
