Politics
George Osborne tells the environmental lobby today that Britain should not be “in front of the rest of the world” in tackling climate change. In an interview with The Times, the Chancellor dismissed as a gimmick Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices, but he signalled that he could ease green measures if prices continued to rise. “I think we have to keep a very, very close eye on the affordability of energy prices going forward,” he said.
Times 28th Sept 2013 read more »
Oliver Hayes: Greg Barker, the UK’s Energy and Climate Change minister, has been doing the media rounds today in response to the IPCC report. Barker said on the BBC’s Daily Politics show (and presumably elsewhere – he’s been almost omnipresent) that “Government has a record of solid action [on climate change], the rest of the world needs to pick up the pace”. The second half of that is uncontroversial. Friends of the Earth agrees that all nations need to join together to tackle the unprecedented challenge of curbing global emissions to avoid the worst impacts of a warming planet. But you can hardly expect to have any credibility calling for this on the international stage without some evidence that you’re stepping up at home. The former diplomat and UK’s chief climate change negotiator, John Ashton CBE, said as much in a highly revealing speech hosted by Friends of the Earth earlier this year.
FoE 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Energy Costs
Donna Hume: I’m just back from Brighton, where Ed Miliband has set the Big Six energy companies in a tizz by announcing that a Labour government would freeze energy bills for 20 months after the next election. And surprise surprise, the energy companies don’t like it. The first thing they say will have to go if they are forced to freeze prices is investment in clean energy. Projects like new wind turbines, energy storage and wave power. An interesting response. What about profits? Which have increased by 74% in 2 years. Or executive pay? With the British Gas’ parent company’s CEO taking home £36 000 a week, after tax. Or what about a bit less investment in climate-changing fossil fuels? The truth is the Big Six energy companies have for too long kept us hooked on increasingly expensive and polluting fossil fuels while making record profits – and to deliver an energy system that works for people, you have to be serious about taking them on.
FoE 26th Sept 2013 read more »
The Tories are in disarray over Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy bills for almost two years. Ministers could not agree whether to back or attack the Labour leader’s announcement – following warnings from the big energy firms that the plan could lead to blackouts. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said power shortage fears were “a genuine threat” if Mr Miliband pressed ahead with his plan to block gas and electricity price rises for the first 20 months of a Labour government. But his cabinet colleague Michael Gove, one of David Cameron’s closest allies, said voters should take such scare stories “with a pinch of salt”.
Mirror 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Letter David Lowry: If Labour wants to freeze power bills for 20 months, why does Caroline Flint, the shadow energy secretary, simultaneously attack the Coalition for failing to finalise the planned so-called “strike price” and “contracts-for-difference” for new nuclear power plants? The strike price would freeze power prices at double the current rate for up to 40 years to the benefit of the French state nuclear generator, Électricité de France (EDF Energy), which plans to build a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Telegraph 27th Sept 2013 read more »
EDF Energy has told customers it can only recommend lower cost gas and electricity tariffs on annual bills if they “opt in” to receive advertising material. In a letter to one customer on a standard tariff, EDF this week said: “As you’ve chosen not to receive marketing messages from us, we can’t tell you about our other options to save you money.” The stance goes completely against the spirit of proposals unveiled by the regulator Ofgem last year and given complete backing by the Prime Minster.
Telegraph 28th Sept 2013 read more »
The Labour leader says he will freeze energy prices if he wins the next general election. But many households want a quicker answer to spiralling bills.
Telegraph 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Sellafield
Letter Janine Allis-Smith: Your paper’s coverage of Core’s campaign for signs advising of the presence of radioactive particles to be erected on West Cumbrian beaches has, as expected, drawn the usual complacent and poorly informed comments from Copeland’s shakers and movers. In some cases, the review we presented to various health protection agencies has clearly not been read by these commentators and, in others, has been deliberately misquoted. For example, council leader Elaine Woodburn’s claim that no-one wanted beach signs cannot be reconciled with Core’s snapshot survey this summer which showed an overwhelming consensus (97 per cent) amongst both locals and holidaymakers that they not only had a “right to know” about the presence of radioactive particles but also that advisory beach signs would be an acceptable way of providing that information.
Whitehaven News 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Bradwell
Campaigners say they fear a licence to pour waste from the nuclear industry into a river could harm an historic oyster industry. Magnox, which runs Bradwell Power Station, wants to release a treated liquid from the decommissioning of Bradwell into the River Blackwater. The Environment Agency, which granted permission, said the process was safe. But campaigners said they were concerned for both the oyster and tourism industries. The granting of the licence to Magnox comes four years after the Environment Agency prosecuted the company for allowing radioactive waste at Bradwell to seep into the ground. Magnox was fined £250,000 for the offence, which happened over a 14-year period. The River Blackwater, along with the Rivers Crouch, Colne and Roach, is home to native oysters which have been harvested for thousands of years.
BBC 27th Sept 2013 read more »
SMRs
Nuclear power proponents pinning their hopes on small modular nuclear reactors to resurrect the industry’s fortunes will likely be disappointed, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The report, Small Isn’t Always Beautiful, concludes it will be extremely difficult for small reactors—which are less than a third the size of a standard 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor—to generate less expensive electricity and, at the same time, be safer than their larger cousins. “Nuclear safety and security don’t come cheap,” said UCS Senior Scientist Edwin Lyman, the author of the report. “A utility that thinks it can have its own little nuclear reactor at a bargain-basement price may get exactly what it pays for: a plant more vulnerable to serious accidents and terrorist attacks.”
Union of Concerned Scientists 26th Sept 2013 read more »
Japan
All the resources our species can muster must be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4. Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own. Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima. The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.
Truth Out 23rd Sept 2013 read more »
Fukushima Crisis Update 24th to 26th Sept 2013.
Greenpeace 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Watanabe laboured through the disaster at the Daiichi plant until he reached his annual limit for radiation exposure. He then cycled through the remaining jobs for nuclear workers in Fukushima, ending up with a decontamination crew, cleaning up the radiation that poisoned his home. The irony wasn’t lost on him but he says he bears no grudges. “We have to fix the mess we made.” Clean-up workers in Fukushima make about €100 a day. Most are employed on short-term contracts. It seemed Watanabe had reached the bottom of the pile for a qualified nuclear maintenance engineer, but worse was to come. Earlier this year, he was made redundant. Tepco no longer had money to pay subcontractors, he says. (Tepco declined to comment on this allegation.) If it seems odd that the utility is running out of cash to clean up from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, that’s because it is, says Watanabe.
Irish Times 28th Sept 2013 read more »
Tepco has made its first application to bring nuclear reactors back on line. The income from power generation would support the clean-up tasks at Fukushima Daiichi and avoid use of expensive imported fossil fuels.
World Nuclear News 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Iran
THE US and its European allies have hailed a new tone and a significant shift in attitude from Iran in talks aimed at resolving the impasse over the country’s disputed nuclear activities.
Herald 28th Sept 2013 read more »
Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president, has vowed that his country will never deviate from its pledges at nuclear talks and promised to propose a new plan to break the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme at next month’s talks in Geneva.
Telegraph 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Guardian 27th Sept 2013 read more »
The U.S. is hopeful that years of standoffs over Iran’s nuclear programme are coming to an end after UN talks yesterday. Secretary of State John Kerry met one-on-one with the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the end of the summit, shaking his hand and sitting beside him in the highest-level contact between the two nations for six years. However officials want the Islamic nation to draw up a detailed plan of action to reassure the world it is not secretly trying to develop an atom bomb.
Daily Mail 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Baroness Ashton’s biggest achievement has been keeping Iran nuclear talks going at all. This was very hard indeed when Saeed Jalili was the chief Iranian negotiator. It is much easier now and she will have a crucial role representing the European Union over the next six months as agreement is thrashed out. I cannot think of anyone who could do the job better.
Telegraph 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Canada
The thought “Dumb and Dumber” came to mind as I recorded the work of Canada’s Joint Review Panel Sept. 23 and 24, here in Ontario, on the east end of Lake Huron. The JRP is currently taking comments on a proposal to dump radioactive waste in a deep hole, 1mile from the shore of this magnificent inland sea. What has to be called just plain dumb, is that the nuclear bomb industry branched out to build nuclear power reactors and, as E.F. Schumacher said, to “accumulate large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages.” Unfortunately in the case of radioactive waste this has happened here, in Canada, etc. Then, the giant Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG) proposes to bury its radioactive waste in a limestone dug-out, or “deep geologic repository,” one mile from the Great Lake Huron.
Counterpunch 27th Sept 2013 read more »
US
The US Department of Energy has proposed a new phased approach for clean-up of the Hanford waste storage site in Washington state. The site, which is currently storing 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste, was used in connection with plutonium production during World War II and the Cold War. US secretary of energy Ernest Moniz described the clean-up effort as one of the ‘highest priorities’ for the DOE. He said that it is critically important for the department to continue working closely with the state of Washington on the clean-up.
Modern Power Systems 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Renewables
A long-delayed undersea cable to the Isle of Lewis looks set to be snuffed out after government proposed insufficient support for Scottish island wind generators. The £780 million link can only go ahead if there is guaranteed to be enough generation on Lewis to make it worthwhile. However, high costs to connect to the transmission network are one of the main barriers to more than 300MW of consented projects getting investment. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last week proposed a guaranteed power price of £115/MWh for Scottish island wind. That is higher than the £100/MWh offered on the mainland. It is expected to be enough to bring on Orkney and Shetland projects but falls short of the £129/MWh independent consultant Baringa said the Western Isles needed.
Utility Week 24th Sept 2013 read more »
Britain’s leading role in the development of experimental marine and tidal technology was under threat on Friday as it emerged that SSE, one of the major investors, is talking to partners about scaling back its investment in key schemes. The move follows similar ones by other major players and comes in the middle of a fractious debate about renewables and the future of the wider power market following Ed Miliband’s promise to freeze energy prices and break up big power firms if Labour wins the 2015 election. The lobby group that represents wave and tidal power said the difficult regulatory environment has depressed forecasts of how much capacity could be deployed and slowed the progress of the sector.
Guardian 27th Sept 2013 read more »
A major new fund is promising to pay a yearly dividend of 6%, tax-free if held in an Isa, from investing in eight of the biggest solar power farms across the UK. The days may be shortening after this year’s long hot summer, but in the City of London interest in solar power has never been brighter. In the latest of a string of stock market funds investing in Britain’s renewable power industry, asset manager Foresight is launching a £220m fund that says it will benefit from government subsidies and falling technology equipment costs.
Guardian 28th Sept 2013 read more »
Fossil Fuels
A green energy company has promised never to supply gas obtained by fracking to households in the UK. Ecotricity said it wanted to give consumers the choice not to buy gas sourced through fracking, the controversial method of extracting shale gas.
Telegraph 27th Sept 2013 read more »
A British journalist is among the 30 men and women in custody in Russia for suspected piracy after a Greenpeace protest at an Arctic oil rig. Kieron Bryan, a freelance video journalist, is not a member of the environmental organisation but was hired by it to document a voyage around Norway and the trip to the Barents Sea, where the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom is preparing to begin offshore oil drilling.
Times 28th Sept 2013 read more »
Climate
The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up. If people continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere could mean that within as little as two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather. This calculation of the world’s “carbon budget” was one of the most striking findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the expert panel of global scientists who on Friday produced the most comprehensive assessment yet of our knowledge of climate change at the end of their four-day meeting in Stockholm.
Guardian 27th Sept 2013 read more »
The financial markets are humanity’s only hope in the battle against global warming, the world’s top climate expert declared today as he presented the most overwhelming case ever made that humans are responsible for rapidly increasing the Earth’s temperature.
Independent 27th Sept 2013 read more »
Nick Butler: The world is not about to adopt a collective shift in energy policies which keeps emissions below the “safe” level of 450 parts per million. In the real world cheap coal prices are encouraging the rapid development of coal-fired stations in China and India which will lock in power-generation capacity with high emissions for the next two or three decades. A shift to shale gas in China could help but is unlikely to be sufficient, or timely enough, to change the overall picture. Unless you believe in the geo-engineering solutions I can only see two answers. The first is adaptation, which means protecting the vulnerable places and people and adjusting patterns of agriculture and housing that would be at risk if the worst projections of climate change and extreme weather come to pass. That seems like a sensible insurance policy to adopt though it is certain to be dismissed as defeatism by some. To me it seems as logical as rearmament was in the late 1930s. The second is to invest in science and to encourage an urgent search for new sources of energy supply that are not only cleaner but also cheaper. If that could be achieved the market would soon distribute the technology. New advances are needed given the disappointment of existing renewables and other low-carbon sources. Offshore wind is a technology with little scope for technical gains to reduce costs. Nuclear, as shown by the new stations being built in Finland and at Flamanville in France, is getting more rather than less expensive. An optimist has to believe that if scientists can produce mobile phones and tablet computers which can carry and transmit fantastic amounts of data at very low cost they can also apply their brilliance to the global challenge of energy.
FT 27th Sept 2013 read more »
