Dungeness
Britain’s Dungeness B-21 nuclear reactor went offline on Monday morning in an unplanned outage, operator EDF Energy said in a regulatory update on its website. The 550 megawatt (MW) unit was taken offline at 0003 GMT and its capacity will be reduced to zero for the next seven days, the company said.
Reuters 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Oldbury
NEW cancer cases and deaths from the disease in the vicinity of Oldbury nuclear power station are generally lower than the South West average. Public Health England said there was no evidence of an increased cancer risk for people living in the area around the plant, which stopped generating in February 2012 and is now being decommissioned.
Gloucestershire Gazette 9th Nov 2014 read more »
Chapelcross – radwaste
Three public meetings are to be held on proposals that could lead to radioactive waste from nuclear subs being stored at Chapelcross. The submarine dismantling project team will be in Annan’s Victoria Halls on Friday and Saturday, November 28 and 29, and on Thursday, January 15. Chapelcross’ own nuclear rods were removed last year after a major defuelling project and the site is currently being decommissioned. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence – which needs to find somewhere to store waste from 27 nuclear subs – revealed Chapelcross was one of five UK sites being considered.
Daily Record 10th Nov 2014 read more »
China
Candu Energy welcomed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Natural Resources Canada and the China National Energy Administration to advance collaboration between the two countries in the field of civilian nuclear energy including development of advanced fuel reactors and exports to third markets. Candu signed a framework joint venture (JV) agreement with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) to build Advanced Fuel CANDU Reactor (AFCR) projects in China and develop opportunities for it globally. This followed a positive recommendation earlier this week from a Chinese Expert Panel Review on AFCR technology which concluded the proper time should be chosen to “initiate the construction of AFCR to unlock and utilize its various advantages.”
Energy Business Review 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Iran
Iran has stopped a controversial practice that could allow it to enrich uranium faster, the United States said on Monday, ceasing an activity one expert saw as violating an interim nuclear deal.The development was disclosed as Tehran and Washington hold talks on an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and dispel concerns, that Iran denies, that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a confidential report about Iran to its members on Friday saying that since its previous report in September Iran had intermittently fed natural uranium gas into a so-called IR-5 centrifuge.
Reuters 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Top officials from Iran and six world powers meet in Muscat Tuesday as fears grow that a hard-fought deal on Iran’s nuclear programme may not be reached by this month’s deadline.
EU Business 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Syria
Gunmen killed five nuclear engineers, four of them Syrian and one Iranian, on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday, a monitoring group said. The engineers were killed while riding in a small convoy toward a scientific research centre near the northeastern district of Barzeh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the area controlled by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian and Iranian state media did not mention the incident
Reuters 10th Nov 2014 read more »
South Africa
South Africa and China have signed an intergovernmental framework agreement on nuclear cooperation. It follows the recent signing of similar accords with France and Russia. The agreement was signed in Pretoria on 7 November by South African energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and China National Energy Administration director Wu Xinxiong.
World Nuclear News 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Renewables – Hydro
Perth-based Green Highland Renewables has begun construction work on three separate hydro schemes near Achnacarry in the Scottish Highlands, all linked by a six-mile long private grid network. All three hydro schemes will be powered by Austrian Kössler turbines. The three mutually supporting schemes are located on the north shore of Loch Arkaig, about 15 miles north of Fort William, and together total 2.5MW of generating capacity – enough to power nearly 2000 homes.
Scottish Energy News 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Community Energy
Later this week, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey is expected to unveil a package of measures to help with the technical challenges communities face as they look to progress local renewables project. The package is likely to include funding for feasibility studies and measures allowing communities more time to access pre-accredited feed-in tariffs as they go out to raise funds. But perhaps more significant is a major announcement from the government-backed Green Investment Bank late last week that it is looking to invest £200m directly into community scale renewable energy projects.
Business Green 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Green Jobs
New renewable energy projects create 10 times more green jobs than similar-sized fossil fuel investments, new research has found. A study by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) taking data from the US, Europe, and China, suggests green energy could provide a boost to employment, through both short term construction jobs and lifetime plant jobs. Dr Will Blyth from Oxford Energy Associates who led the two-year research project said the paper showed government-led investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency can boost the economy in times of recession by bolstering employment.
Business Green 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Micro-CHP
An innovative energy business has announced a further agreement with South Shields-based Utilitywise that could see the North East firm include a pioneering new power product in its range of services. Energy management consultancy Utilitywise, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sheffield-based Inspirit Energy, which has been spearheading the creation of an mCHP “micro co-generation boiler”. Combined heat and power (CHP) boilers are already in use in Northern Europe and Russia as a well-established method to simultaneously generate power and useful heat on a large scale and reduce energy transmission losses. The method lowers dependence on centrally generated grid electricity and CHP plants can be found worldwide, and in Europe and Russia heating for entire districts can be linked to a CHP plant. The last few years, however, has seen mCHP emerge – systems based on the same concept but on a smaller scale, making it suitable for use in commercial and domestic environments.
The Journal 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Energy Efficiency
LEDs are the rising heroes of energy efficiency around the world. LED technology is advancing so fast that LED light bulbs are quickly becoming an affordable and even more efficient replacement for the cool spiral of the previous icon of efficiency, the compact fluorescent bulb, or CFL. Three years ago, LED bulbs were roughly as efficient as compact fluorescents, emitting around 70 lumens of light per watt of power. That efficiency increased a bit over the next year or so, but it has really taken off just in the last few months. Today, the average efficiency of an LED lightbulb is about 100 lumens per watt, about 20 percent higher than the LED lights available just last January. At the same time, CFL efficiency has stayed flat — between 55 and 70 lumens per watt. Incandescent bulbs, by comparison, provided up to only 18 lumens per watt before a nationwide phase-out began in 2012.
Renew Economy 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Labour will this afternoon publish its long-awaited energy efficiency green paper, setting out detailed plans to boost the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock over the next parliament. The five-point plan, which will be enacted if the Opposition forms the next government, was first unveiled at Labour’s party conference in late-September alongside a pledge to improve the efficiency of five million homes. However, today’s green paper is expected to provide more detail on how Labour’s shadow energy and climate change team plans to fund the new programme and shift from the current Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO) to a new policy regime. Labour’s strategy will propose using funds raised through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme to offer half a million free home energy reports each year to households to help people identify where they can make energy savings. The new reports would then be backed by an expansion of the Green Deal pay-as-you-save financing model, whereby households will be offered interest-free loans that make it more financially attractive for people to proceed with upgrades. In addition, Labour said further reforms to the ECO scheme would see a further 200,000 fuel poor households offered subsidised energy efficiency improvements each year, while Flint has signalled that tough new energy efficiency standards for private rented property would be imposed from 2027, building on the standards that are currently due to come into effect in 2018.
Business Green 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Today’s Independent front page reports that the UK is set to miss its carbon targets because of coal-fired power stations staying open longer than expected. The story is based on Imperial College research commissioned by WWF. The research concludes that coal-fired power stations could stay open into the 2030s, much later than the government expects. Running coal into the 2030s would make carbon budgets hard to meet because coal is one of the dirtiest ways to generate electricity, with carbon emissions roughly double a gas-fired power station.
Carbon Brief 10th Nov 2014 read more »
“Imperial College’s economic modelling shows that it is unwise to simply assume that coal-fired power stations will all close in the 2020s,” said Rob Gross, the report’s lead author. “We modelled a variety of scenarios and, with the UK’s existing suite of energy policies, in every instance coal still played a role in generating electricity and 2030 emissions targets were missed.”
Business Green 10th Nov 2014 read more »
A WWF funded report by Imperial College’s Energy Policy and Technology Unit found that with current policies, nearly half of the UK’s existing 40-50 year old coal-fired generating capacity could still be operating in 2030. This directly contradicts current Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) assumptions that existing coal will close as a result of age and/or because of local air pollution legislation by the mid-2020s. Imperial College’s report looked at a number of plausible future scenarios with existing UK policies on energy and the 2030 carbon emissions target was missed in all of them.
WWF 10th Nov 2014 read more »
World governments have been breaking promises to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, a report says. The Overseas Development Institute says G20 nations spent almost £56bn ($90bn) a year finding oil, gas and coal. It comes despite evidence that two thirds of existing reserves must be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.
BBC 11th Nov 2014 read more »
The UK Government is providing £750m a year in tax breaks to North Sea oil and gas, despite a pledge five years ago to end fossil fuel subsidies, campaigners said. A further £414m in public money is going into fossil fuel exploration overseas – from Siberia in Russia to Brazil, India and Nigeria – a report by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International said. The organisations accused the UK Government of providing a total of £1.2bn in subsidies a year despite signing up to a pledge by G20 countries in 2009 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
STV 11th Oct 2014 read more »
Guardian 11th Nov 2014 read more »
London-based fossil-fuel energy firm Cluff Resources has announced plans to extract gas from the Firth of Forth following a major coal find. AIM-listed Cluff Natural Resources said a report by independent assessors estimated there were up to 335 million tonnes of coal to be mined in the Forth estuary. Cluff said the find was enough to power millions of homes and it now plans to build the UK’s first deep offshore underground coal gasification (UGC) plant.
Scottish Energy News 11th Nov 2014 read more »
BBC 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Independent 10th Nov 2014 read more »
STV 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Times 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Express 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Herald 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Editorial: A Scotland powered by 100 per cent renewables is no pipe dream; it could become reality, but never will unless the nation ceases to rely on fossil fuels.
Herald 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Scotsman 11th Nov 2014 read more »
A consortium led by ScottishPower ran a year-long experiment looking at the costs and effectiveness of capturing and storing the carbon emitted by Longannet power station but found it was too expensive. The energy required to gasify the subterranean coal may also be a cost too much, particularly when compared with the price of the imported shale gas that Grangemouth owner Ineos plans to use. But if Cluff can cross these hurdles, the need for reliable base-load electricity generation means that this is a scheme Scotland may not be able to do without.
Scotsman 11th Nov 2014 read more »
The rules governing fracking could safely be relaxed to permit stronger earthquakes caused by drilling for shale gas, a study suggests. The rules are so tight at present that even tiny earthquakes, which cause no more vibration at the surface than a door being slammed or a bus passing a house, could result in a fracking operation being shut down, its authors say. The scientists, from the University of Glasgow, recommend that earthquakes deep underground measuring up to 3.6 on the Richter scale should be tolerated, with a compensation scheme for any damage on the surface.
Times 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Telegraph 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Make it easier to frack, introduce a compensation scheme to make sure that, if a company does inflict genuine losses on people, it compensates them in full, and make sure revenues created by fracking are shared.
Telegraph 11th Nov 2014 read more »
Full control over underground drilling for shale gas should be devolved to Holyrood, a Labour frontbencher has suggested. Tom Greatrex, Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister and the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, said most of the powers around controversial “fracking” already lay north of the border. But he suggested that the move would make clear that responsibility on the issue lay with Scottish ministers and make the issue less confusing for the public. Scottish ministers protested earlier this year when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government at Westminster outlined plans to allow fracking under people’s homes without their permission. Labour argue that Scottish ministers already have powers that could allow them to block such moves, through the planning system. Mr Greatrex said: “While some seek to suggest that t he Scottish government are powerless on fracking, the reality is that nothing can happen at all in Scotland without permission from within Scotland, and a planning framework that is set by ministers in Edinburgh.”
Herald 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Herald 10th Nov 2014 read more »
Climate
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General. After declaring that ‘science has spoken: there is no ambiguity in the message’ he added a request to energy investors, to quite simply ‘ please reduce your investments in the coal and fossil fuel economy and move to renewable energy’. I’m not sure anyone in such a position has put it quite so straightforwardly before. Except perhaps for the hitherto not-known-to-be-very-green Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, who warned just a few weeks ago that industry was in grave danger of backing stranded assets. As he told a World Bank seminar, ‘the vast majority of [fossil fuel] reserves are unburnable’ if global temperature rises are to be limited to below 2 degrees.
Alan Whitehead MP 10th Nov 2014 read more »
