New Nukes
Britain needs to build more nuclear reactors and cleaner coal plants while putting less emphasis on wind power if it wants a secure low-carbon future, business lobby group CBI said on Monday. The CBI said in a report that current British government policy, which favours wind power, is making energy security and climate change targets harder to achieve because it will lead to less investment in other forms of low-carbon electricity generation.
Reuters 13th July 2009 more >>
Press and Journal 13th July 2009 more >>
Bloomberg 13th July 2009 more >>
Business Green 13th July 2009 more >>
FT 13th July 2009 more >>
Herald 13th July 2009 more >>
BBC 13th July 2009 more >>
Independent 13th July 2009 more >>
CBI Press Release 13th July 2009 more >>
A new report by consultants McKinsey, commissioned by the CBI, says failure to act could result in electricity prices for both industry and consumers rising 30pc by 2030. It gives warning ahead of the Government’s renewable energy strategy and White Paper on low-carbon economy, due to be published this week, that the current plans do not go far enough to maintain energy security, stop price volatility or hit climate change targets.
Telegraph 13th July 2009 more >>
The CBI has thrown its weight behind the nuclear industry’s calls for government to scale back “overambitious” wind power targets and boost the role of atomic energy and coal. The “voice of business” believes energy prices will have to rise 30% in real terms by 2020 and some kind of financial incentives might be needed so that up to 15 new nuclear plants are constructed, capable of providing 34% of UK electricity by 2030. Greenpeace UK, said: “The CBI claims to represent the interests of British industry but it’s actually doing its members a great disservice. Investment in renewables would create much-needed British jobs in one of the few growth sectors in the global economy.”
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
Hundreds of thousands of new “green” jobs and a rise in household energy bills will be prefigured in the Government’s plans to turn Britain into a low-carbon economy. As many as 400,000 new employment opportunities are expected in a massive expansion of renewable energy; as Britain strives to meet two demanding climate change targets: cutting the UK’s carbon emissions by 34 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 (Britain’s own pledge), and deriving 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources by the same date (which may mean as much as 35 per cent of electricity, and is an EU commitment).
Independent 13th July 2009 more >>
Thorium Power
The uranium that makes conventional nuclear power possible has a number of significant disadvantages. For one thing, uranium reactors generate large quantities of waste. Much of this remains dangerous for thousands of years, and a proportion of it can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. A second issue is that uranium is a comparatively scarce material, which exists in significant quantities in only a small number of countries. The theoretical risk of giant explosions caused by uranium reactors is a further concern. For all of these reasons, a growing number of scientists and energy experts believe that the world should switch from uranium to thorium as its primary nuclear fuel. Compared to uranium, thorium is far more abundant as well as much more energy-dense. In addition, the waste products generated by thorium are virtually impossible to turn into plutonium – and they remain dangerous for hundred of years rather than thousands.
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
Twenty ideas that could save the world.
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
Trident
Letter: We have a choice. We can prepare ourselves for any emergency, including a rogue state with nuclear weapons and a delivery system controlled by religious fanatics. Or we can cower and hide and pray we are left alone.
Scotsman 13th July 2009 more >>
Renewables
Homeowners who install solar panels and wind turbines will be paid for any electricity that they feed back into the National Grid, the Government confirmed yesterday. The payments will be based on a fixed price per unit of electricity and will be set high enough to encourage hundreds of thousands of homes to invest in renewable sources of power. Local energy suppliers will adjust the bills that they issue according to the number of units fed back into the grid. Homeowners with low energy consumption and a solar panel could receive net payments from their energy company.
Times 13th July 2009 more >>
BBC 12th July 2009 more >>
Civil servants in Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) are trying to water down and delay the introduction of so-called feed-in tariffs designed to boost the deployment of renewable energies, according to one of Miliband’s advisers. Writing last month to the energy minister Mike O’Brien, who has since left DECC, Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, accuses civil servants of “delaying” and “frustrating” their introduction. In his letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, Simpson, appointed by Miliband this year to work on feed-in tariffs, wrote: “You asked me to play a role in ‘driving this through’. It is difficult to drive if I can’t even get in the car.” Philip Wolfe, head of the Renewable Energy Association, said the document would talk only about the electricity tariff for next year and not the heat tariff for 2011: “There is a lack of ambition. Delaying the heat tariff until a year later shows they are not pushing as hard as they need to.”
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
The world’s most ambitious green energy project is about to take shape. It is a plan for a chain of mammoth sun-powered energy plants in the deserts of North Africa to supply power to Europe’s homes and factories by the end of the next decade. In a few days’ time a consortium of 20 German firms will meet in Munich to hammer out plans for funding the giant 400bn (343bn) project, named Desertec. The scheme is being backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and several German industry household names including Siemens, Deutsche Bank, and the energy companies RWE and E.ON. The Munich meeting will also involve Italian and Spanish energy concerns, as well as representatives from the Arab League and the Club of Rome think-tank.
Independent on Sunday 12th July 2009 more >>
FT 13th July 2009 more >>
Centrica and RWE npower are close to signing off on two huge offshore wind farms costing an estimated £3bn to build in further signs that the logjam holding up offshore projects is easing. It follows a government announcement in April to increase subsidies available for offshore wind projects, which are crucial for the UK to have any hope of meeting its 2020 renewable targets. Energy companies had shelved projects, blaming the credit crunch, weak pound and high construction costs for making them unviable.
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
Any strategy to generate 15% of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2020 will create some dissent, but the lobbying in advance of this week’s white paper is dispiriting evidence of why Britain lags behind most of Europe in renewable energy. Fear that household energy bills will rise by more than 200 a year to pay for the cost, expected to be at least 100bn, of subsidies for electricity from renewables have brought warnings that more households will be pushed into fuel poverty, where more than 10% of household income goes on heating, lighting and cooking.
Herald 13th July 2009 more >>
Fuel Poverty
The government will soften the blow to hard-up families worried about rising bills to pay for greener power generation with promises of a compulsory “social tariff” as part of an energy white paper to be published on Wednesday.
Guardian 13th July 2009 more >>
MORE households will be pushed into fuel poverty without “radical action” by the government because of higher energy prices and growing unemployment, a report has warned. The government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group said a clear plan should be set out to meet the target of eradicating fuel poverty by 2016
Scotsman 13th July 2009 more >>
Herald 13th July 2009 more >>
Energy Efficiency
Letter from Andrew Warren: You made a great fuss of the US energy secretary (and Nobel laureate) Stephen Chu when he was here a month ago. You reported him as talking not just about gimmicky white roofs, but about the fact that the critical climate-change issue was far greater energy efficiency. In his Royal Society lecture, he referred to not merely low-hanging fruit, but fruit that was actually lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up. He made the point that more carbon had been saved from the adoption of boring old efficient refrigeration technology in the United States than via all manner of trendy renewable energy sources. Almost half the worlds fuel is burnt in buildings. Just ensuring that existing buildings are upgraded and new ones are super-efficient will achieve far more than anything else you cite (and create many more jobs too). I am sick of articles which ignore what every independent study shows to be the cheapest and most cost-effective even if least glamorous option for combating climate change.
Independent 13th July 2009 more >>
Climate Change
An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse”. This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing “invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society”.
Independent on Sunday 12th July 2009 more >>
North Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, South Korean TV news channel YTN says.
BBC 13th July 2009 more >>
