Hinkley
A Conservative former energy secretary has insisted the “elephantine” Hinkley C nuclear project in Somerset is “one of the worst deals ever” for British consumers and industry. Lord Howell of Guildford told peers he would “shed no tears” if the multi-billion pound development by French giant EDF Energy was abandoned in favour of smaller nuclear plants at a later date. He warned no reactor of the kind planned for Hinkley C has “ever been completed successfully”. Speaking during the second reading of the Energy Bill, Lord Howell told peers: “Far the biggest obligation or future burden on consumers and households is the Hinkley Point C nuclear project.
Western Morning News 22nd July 2015 read more »
Energy Voice 22nd July 2015 read more »
Stop Hinkley Press Release 22nd July 2015 read more »
U.K. Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said it’s likely Electricite de France SA will finish a deal this year with Chinese companies to build a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in southwest England. Britain reached a deal with the French utility in October 2013 to build the nation’s first reactor since 1995, agreeing on loan guarantees to cover construction costs and a fixed power price for 35 years. Since then, EDF has been working out the details of the project with partners Areva SA, which will provide the reactors, and China General Nuclear Power Corp. and China National Nuclear Corp.
Bloomberg 21st July 2015 read more »
Torness
More than 500 extra workers will join the existing workforce during the next two months. They will carry out more than 12,000 separate pieces of work – each carefully planned during the last two years of preparation. Paul Winkle, station director, said: “This inspection, maintenance and investment programme has been carefully planned over the last two years and will enable us to continue safely generating low carbon electricity at Torness for many years to come. “It’s good news for the local economy, which will see local shops, taxi firms, restaurants, bed and breakfasts and hotels benefit from the large number of extra people who will be staying in and around East Lothian.” The extensive programme of work will see inspections inside the reactor, as well as the installation of new equipment.
East Lothian Courier 22nd July 2015 read more »
Dounreay
A nuclear submarine test reactor in Scotland that triggered a political row over radiation has been shut down as planned, it was announced yesterday. The facility at the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment, at Dounreay in Caithness, stopped work on Tuesday night. It will be cleared up and the whole site fully decommissioned over the next seven years. Most of the 300 people who work on the site, run by Rolls-Royce, will not lose their jobs as they will work on the clean-up, the Ministry of Defence said. The reactor was the focus of a political row after the government revealed last year that low levels of radioactivity had been found in its cooling waters. Ministers said no leak had occurred and there were no safety implications for staff or risks to the environment. As a result, HMS Vanguard, a Trident submarine, had to be refuelled with a new core at a cost of £120 million. The problem was found in 2012 but not made public until 2014. The SNP demanded an apology from the government for not making Holyrood aware of the problem. The decision to close the reactor, announced in 2011, was not connected with the matter
Times 23rd July 2015 read more »
Sellafield
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili will present Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield and aim to tell the story of the country’s often controversial nuclear industry. “Little is known about Britain’s nuclear industry so it’s no wonder that the general public have tended to be so suspicious of it, sometimes with good reason. “So telling the story of Britain’s nuclear history, both the past failures and the recent successes, is vital.” The show, part of the BBC Four Goes Nuclear season, promises “unprecedented access to some of the country’s most secret buildings” and examination of incidents including the 1957 fire at the site and subsequent controversy over radioactive leaks. Other programmes include a Storyville documentary about the atomic age using archive footage and complete with a score by Mogwai and a film about the men and women who built the first atomic bomb in the dying days of World War Two.
Mirror 23rd July 2015 read more »
Moorside
More details are needed to show that west Cumbria’s roads will not be overwhelmed during the building of a £10bn nuclear power plant near Sellafield. Cumbria County Council has drawn up its draft response to the first round of a public consultation into the planned Moorside site, earmarked to house the three-reactor complex that could create up to 21,000 jobs. And the authority says there needs to be early investment in the local infrastructure to ensure it is ready for works starting in 2019.
Carlisle News & Star 22nd July 2015 read more »
Nuclear Decommissioning
Nuclear decommissioning & waste management is and will continue to be an area of particular uncertainty and risk given the long term nature of the UK’s decommissioning and waste management programmes and the complexities and significant costs involved: the Annual Accounts include a discounted provision of £70 billion for the estimated future costs of the nuclear decommissioning programme which is not due to be completed for 125 years. This provision is the best current estimate of costs within a possible range of £61-£109.4 billion.
DECC 21st July 2015 read more »
Radwaste
Reclassify, dilute, disperse and pass the responsibility on to local councils landfill services and to the public unaware they are buying products that may be made from “recycled” radioactive scrap metal. This is happening here in the UK as well as America. This blog post is a Good analysis of what is happening in America, which mirrors here in the UK . For some years we tried to get The Environment Agency and Lillyhall landfill to admit that they were recieving radioactive wastes….they repeatedly denied this saying there was NO radioactive waste entering the landfill.. Hiding behind the new classification of “exempt” The truth of course is that the pathway to landfill was opened and even higher activity waste was dumped “accidently”
Radiation Free Lakeland 22nd July 2015 read more »
This is about the nuclear waste dump fought off with the help of the late Willie McRae, who is widely believed to have been assassinated. The plan was to use Scotland for an EU wide nuclear waste dump, according to the parliamentary record below. It has also been stated that it was for Japanese nuclear waste, as well, and even mostly for Japanese nuclear waste. Currently, Sellafield, just over the border, has 20 tonnes of Japan’s plutonium. But, Japan wants to continue on with its nuclear reactors and have others take its (unlabeled) radiative food (via TPP) and nuclear waste, and import food with less radiation from Scotland and elsewhere. Japan’s Toshiba wants to build a huge nuclear power station beside Sellafield, which even if nothing goes wrong will dump radionuclides into the air and Irish Sea, because that’s what the nuclear industry is allowed to do, insanely enough!
Mining Awareness 2nd July 2015 read more »
Energy Subsidies
Dr Gordon Edge asks how can we know if the government has overspent its clean energy subsidy budget if it won’t show its workings?Since the election of our first majority Conservative government for nearly 20 years, there has been increasing speculation in the press and elsewhere that the budget for supporting renewable energy, the Levy Control Framework (LCF) is ‘bust’. This has been fed by shadowy briefings to the right-wing press and analysis by the likes of Policy Exchange. The culmination of this briefing frenzy was the publication by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) of a table alongside the Summer Budget which appeared to indicate that the LCF will indeed be all used up, and also the 20 per cent ‘headroom’ that Treasury allows DECC.
Business Green 22nd July 2015 read more »
Ministers could start by recognising constant criticism of green businesses needs to be leavened by an appreciation of the crucial role they play in meeting the UK’s carbon targets. And they could also acknowledge that while £9.1bn of green policy ‘costs’ seems excessive, a well-managed £9.1bn investment programme carefully tailored for those cost-effective clean energy technologies that are genuinely close to standing on their own two feet is not just good value, it is essential to the UK’s long term health and prosperity in a decarbonising world. There is no doubt subsidies could be cut in a way that allows a reasonable pace of deployment to continue, just as there is no doubt the necessary cash could be found to bail out the LCF if only Ministers backed up their rhetoric on climate action with a recognition low carbon investment is justified by significant, wide-ranging, and long term environmental and economic benefits. Is £9.1bn a lot of money? It depends how you look at it and what you get in return.
Business Green 22nd July 2015 read more »
The UK government has unveiled a package of measures to reduce subsidies to renewable energy in what it says is an effort to keep down household bills. The announcement was widely expected, and comes off the back of recent projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that subsidies for renewable energy will exceed the levels expected at the point when the spending cap, known as the Levy Control Framework (LCF), was established. Carbon Brief looks at the reforms and collects reaction, including from Ed Davey, the former secretary of state for energy and climate change, who says the changes are “based on ideology, not on evidence”. Tom Burke, chairman of E3G, told Carbon Brief: “The idea you’re going to get nuclear costs down is a fantasy – nobody believes that. Everybody thinks renewables costs are coming down, that we’re not quite there yet, so where’s the coherence in a policy that says we’re going to subsidise nuclear but not renewables? And why would an investor think that a department that takes that position was making sound, properly analytical, evidence-based judgments?
Carbon Brief 22nd July 2015 read more »
The UK’s carbon reduction targets are a bigger priority than renewables, according to energy and climate secretary Amber Rudd. The comments were made during Rudd’s first appearance before the House of Commons Energy and Climate Committee (ECC) on 21 July. Although she reaffirmed the government’s commitment to tackling climate change, Rudd said that “no one can see” what the exact route to reducing emissions will be. She also refused to confirm whether a second contracts for difference (CfD) auction would take place – though did confirm that onshore wind would not be part of them – and defended the high strike price offered to the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. “I personally concentrate much more on the carbon reduction targets, which I think are more essential, than the renewable energy targets,” she said. “The point is to make sure that we reduce our carbon emissions, and how we do it should largely be left up to us.”
ENDS 21st July 2015 read more »
Biomass and small scale solar projects will pay the price for a £1.5 billion overspend on green subsidies, Decc announced today. A total of £500m of support for biomass and an unconfirmed amount for small scale solar has been withdrawn, following the revelation that Decc overspent its £7.6 billion budget for the Levy Control Framework by £1.5 billion. Customers will have to meet the extra cost of the LCF through levies on their bills. To compensate, Decc has withdrawn grandfathering support for biomass projects removed. This support gave a guaranteed level of support for the duration of the Renewable Obligation (RO) to conversion and co-firing projects.
Utility Week 22nd July 2015 read more »
The UK government has announced massive cuts in support for solar roofs and farms that appear designed to undermine investor confidence just as the technology is on track to be subsidy-free by 2020. The UK’s energy department, DECC, has today published proposals to reduce support for solar on both roofs and in solar farms. The proposals cover both the Renewables Obligation for bigger projects, and changes to rules on the Feed-in Tariff for smaller projects. The Renewables Obligation, which supports rooftop and solar farm projects between 1MW and 5MW would be closed from 1st April 2016, alongside a planned reduction in levels of support for projects currently in the pipeline.
Ecologist 22nd July 2015 read more »
FT 22nd July 2015 read more »
Perplexed by today’s sharp cuts in solar power and other attacks on renewable energy in the UK? Don’t be, writes Oliver Tickell. Really, it all makes perfect sense. You just have to understand their real purpose: to keep your energy bills high, along with power company profits. And never mind the ‘green crap’! The Government’s ‘war on renewables’ makes no sense. That’s what plenty of people are telling you, and on the face of they are completely right. Take onshore wind power. Onshore wind is by far the UK’s lowest cost source of renewable power capable of delivering on a large scale. But more than that – it’s actually lowering our electricity bills, in spite of the subsidies we pay. When the wind turbines are turning most strongly it has the effect – most would say the desirable effect – of pushing down the wholesale electricity price. Chris Goodall has set out the scale of this effect in this fascinating article: “On the typical day when wind is producing about 7% of the UK’s electricity, the market price of power is about £7 per MWh less than when the air is completely still.”
Ecologist 22nd July 2015 read more »
Subsidies for many new solar farms are to end under plans being published by the government. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is consulting on plans that would see subsidies for some new solar farms close by 2016. The government says the move is necessary to protect consumers. The solar industry said subsidies were one of the cheapest ways that the government could meet its climate change targets. Under the government’s plans, so called “small scale” solar farms will no longer qualify for support under a key subsidy mechanism – the renewables obligation – from April next year.
BBC 22nd July 2015 read more »
MPs have accused the government of denying them a say over planned cuts to solar subsidies. Ministers are risking the future of low-carbon energy with a series of abrupt cuts to industry support, the Commons Energy Committee’s chair said. The solar and wind industries say they can compete without subsidy in a few years if support is tapered off slowly. But the MPs say the whole sector is jeopardised by changes announced after MPs had left for their summer recess. The committee, which is chaired by SNP MP Angus MacNeil, says it will not have time to discuss the changes before the consultation period concludes on 1 September.
BBC 22nd July 2015 read more »
Measures to deal with a projected over-allocation of renewable energy subsidies have been announced today. Reducing energy bills for hard working British families and businesses and meeting climate goals in the most cost effective way are Government priorities. The measures set out today will provide better control over spending and ensure bill payers get the best possible deal as we continue to move to a low-carbon economy.“Our support has driven down the cost of renewable energy significantly. As costs continue to fall it becomes easier for parts of the renewables industry to survive without subsidies. We’re taking action to protect consumers, whilst protecting existing investment”.
DECC 22nd July 2015 read more »
Ministers are preparing to slash the subsidies paid to households which install solar panels on their roofs in an attempt to rein in runaway spending on renewable energy schemes. Under the current rules households can make between £610 to £740 a year by “selling” the electricity they generate back to the national grid. Thousands of people have taken advantage of the scheme but the high uptake has contributed to a £1.5bn projected overspend in renewable subsidies which has to be funded through levies which result in higher energy bills for other consumers. The Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd called time on the subsidies and announced that the Government would review the sch eme for new adopters later this year in a move that is expected to slash the support available. The decision comes less than a week after The Independent revealed the scale of the “black hole” in renewable funding which is expected to add £110 to average household electricity bills by 2020.
Independent 22nd July 2015 read more »
Households face cuts in “feed-in tariffs” for new solar panels on roofs under government plans to prevent subsidies for renewable energy spiralling out of control. More than 250 proposed solar farms are also likely to be abandoned after the early closure of a subsidy scheme. Coal-fired power stations, such as Drax in North Yorkshire, also face a reduction in the subsidy available to convert more of their boilers to burning wood pellets from North America.
Times 23rd July 2015 read more »
The government has unveiled plans to slash subsidies to solar power projects in an attempt to drive down annual household electricity bills, but later admitted it might save customers just 50p a year. Industry executives warned the latest attack on renewables would take Britain “back to the dark ages”, hitting jobs and investment while damaging David Cameron’s credibility on tackling climate change.
Guardian 22nd July 2015 read more »
The UK solar industry is reeling after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) hit it with a one-two punch of subsidy cuts that could make the industry more reliant on government help, not less. As she announced the cuts today, energy secretary Amber Rudd said: “We need to keep bills as low as possible for hardworking families and businesses while reducing our emissions in the most cost-effective way.” But director of the UK Energy Research Centre Jim Watson said the cuts could stall solar’s march towards parity with fossil fuels. “This decision ris ks affecting progress with deployment and cost reductions, delaying the point at which solar could be cost competitive, and damaging broader investor confidence,” he said. The current price of solar is roughly £80/MWhr (megawatt hour) and falling fast, but fossil fuels still sell to the grid cheaper at £50/MWhr. Tory rhetoric on the burden of renewable energy to bill payers has been relentless ever since David Cameron infamously referred to the levies as “green crap”. This has lead to a perception that renewable energy subsidies amount to a significant proportion of household energy costs. In fact, subsidies for solar energy cost the average bill payer about £10 per year. That is just 0.7% of their annual bill of £1,338.
Guardian 22nd July 2015 read more »
Households planning to install solar panels on their roofs are likely to see subsidy payments on offer cut significantly, as ministers attempt to prevent a forecast £1.5 billion overspend on renewable energy. A Government review is to be launched later this summer into the lucrative “feed-in-tariff” subsidies – which have so far seen almost 700,000 homes get panels installed – with the intention of making “significant” savings, ministers said. The move came after Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, announced plans to cut off subsidies for solar farms of up to 25 acres in size, vowing to end the “blank cheque” for green en ergy funded by families on their electricity bills. The change proposed on Wednesday could see hundreds of proposed projects scrapped – preventing an area 100 times the size of St James’s Park being covered with panels – but will only save a typical household up to £1.20 a year, DECC officials admitted.
Telegraph 22nd July 2015 read more »
GOVERNMENT plans to end subsidies within the solar power industry have been described as “sabotage” by Friends of the Earth Scotland (FoES). Under the plans, so called “small scale” solar farms will no longer qualify for support under the UK government’s Renewables Obligation – from April next year. New projects that receive the subsidy may also see the level cut.
The National 23rd July 2015 read more »
The new Conservative government is letting slip its commitments to renewable energy and climate change mitigation. The bad decisions keep coming, and don’t add up to a policy strategy consistent with the UK’s emissions and efficiency targets, and more generally with fighting climate change.
The Conversation 23rd July 2015 read more »
EDF
The European Commission has decided that Électricité de France (EDF), the main electricity provider in France, has been granted tax breaks incompatible with EU rules on State aid. In 1997 France did not levy all the corporation tax payable by EDF when certain accounting provisions were reclassified as capital. This tax exemption conferred on EDF an undue economic advantage compared with other operators on the market and so distorted competition. In order to remedy this distortion, EDF must now repay that aid. The Commission reopened its investigation in 2013 following annulment of an earlier decision by the EU Court of Justice.
European Commission 22nd July 2015 read more »
The European Commission on Wednesday ordered France to recover €1.37 billion of state aid given to EDF, the country’s state-owned electricity provider. The move revives a long-running state aid probe into one of France’s largest companies over a tax break it was granted in 1997.
Politico 22nd July 2015 read more »
FT 22nd July 2015 read more »
Times 23rd July 2015 read more »
Plutonium
The UK Government has announced that it has struck an agreement with German and Swedish governments to take title to plutonium arising from the reprocessing at Sellafield and management at Dounreay respectively of spent nuclear fuel from the two nations. In a written statement to the UK Parliament on 3 July 2014 by then energy minister Michael Fallon–who has since been promoted to become Defense Secretary–it was revealed that the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has agreed to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) taking ownership of about 800 kg of material previously owned by a Swedish utility, and about 140 kg of material previously owned by a German research organization. It was reported earlier this year that Sweden was seeking to transfer to the United Kingdom of 834 kg of plutonium.
International Panel on Fissile Material 19th July 2015 read more »
Poltics
Energy secretary Amber Rudd has come under fire for failing to reveal close links to a top lobbyist in official parliamentary records. Under new rules brought in for this parliament, MPs must disclose all family members engaged in lobbying the public sector. Ten MPs have declared such links in the new Register of Members’ Interests. But the energy secretary does not state that her brother is the boss of the powerful financial lobbying firm Finsbury, Total Politics can reveal. Campaigners for greater transparency in lobbying seized on the senior Tory’s failure to declare the relationship. Tamasin Cave, director of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency said: “By breaking the rules, Amber Rudd gives the impression she’d rather we didn’t know about her brother’s lobbying business, or his many clients in the energy business.” A source close to the energy secretary acknowledged that a mistake had been made, telling us it was an “oversight” that would be corrected. The news comes as the Department of Energy and Climate Change has this week granted consent to a controversial planning application by a gas storage company represented by Finsbury. The Halite Energy Group has been given permission to go ahead with a vast underground gas storage facility in Lancashire, which has been subject to a 12-year planning dispute.
Total Politics 22nd July 2015 read more »
Japan – Fukushima
The worst nuclear disaster in a generation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant – which began in March 2011 – is still very much an ongoing crisis that will not be solved for the foreseeable future. Most of the massive radioactive releases were carried out to the Pacific Ocean by the prevailing winds at that time of year. But, on the nights of March 15th and 16th, the winds turned carrying an enormous amount of radiation inland. Land, especially to the northwest of the crippled reactor site, was heavily contaminated. Greenpeace investigations into areas where the Japanese government is intensively decontaminating with the intention of lifting evacuation orders by March 2017 have made a shocking discovery: in Iitate – one of the priority targets of the Abe Government’s plan – radiation dose levels are comparable to those in the 30km exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Even more surprising, this was true even around homes that had already been supposedly “decontaminated.” What on earth would motivate the Japanese Government to do such a thing to the tens of thousands of nuclear victims and decontamination workers?
Greenpeace 22nd July 2015 read more »
Rather deformed looking daisies are popping up around Fukushima – four years after the nuclear disaster.
IB Times 22nd July 2015 read more »
India
The ink had yet to dry on two separate agreements signed by France’s Areva with Larsen & Toubro and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited for the French-designed 1650 MWe EPR reactor in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, when the French nuclear giant went into meltdown. The agreements were signed with great fanfare during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France on 10th April 2015 despite the fact that question marks on Areva’s future as a viable nuclear player had been piling up thick and fast. In May, mere weeks after Modi’s visit, Areva announced colossal losses amounting to 4.8 billion euros (well above its capital base) and in June the French government, which owns 87% of the company, announced that Areva would be broken up, with its nuclear power arm, Areva NP, (including engineering, construction and design) being sold to another French energy giant, EDF. The French state has an 84.5% stake in EDF.
The Wire 20th July 2015 read more »
Switzerland
Operator Axpo has detected “flaw indications” in the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) of the Beznau-1 nuclear power reactor while carrying out ultrasonic measurements as a result of recommendations in connection with flaw indications found in Belgian reactors, the Western European Nuclear Regulators’ Association (Wenra) has said.
NucNet 22nd July 2015 read more »
France
French lawmakers adopted a new law on Wednesday that will halve the country’s energy consumption by 2050 and slash its reliance on nuclear energy. Under the new law approved by the National Assembly, nuclear energy will provide only 50 percent of France’s electricity by 2025, down from 75 percent currently. Six months ahead of the global climate conference in Paris, the legislation also calls for a 30-percent drop in the use of fossil fuels by 2030 (compared with 2012 levels), and 40-percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 1990. Renewable energy will increasingly take up the slack — accounting for 32 percent of France’s energy mix by 2030, compared with 13.7 percent three years ago.
The Local 23rd July 2015 read more »
Nuclear Submarines
The Royal Navy is offering a one-off bonus of up to £24,000 to retain nuclear engineers, fearing it will lose skilled staff to civil power station projects such as Hinkley Point. The so-called bounty payment is just one example of countermeasures taken by the Ministry of Defence to prevent the loss of vital staff who work on the UK’s fleet of nuclear submarines.
FT 22nd July 2015 read more »
Two men have been accidentally sealed inside a submarine ballast tank in Plymouth, it has been reported. The BBC reports that the electricians were sealed inside by mistake and only saved when one of the men managed to get faint mobile phone signal. They had to climb the inside of the tank to reach a height where their phones received one bar of signal and they were able to message for help.
Independent 22nd July 2015 read more »
Telegraph 22nd July 2015 read more »
Weapons Convoy
The Paisley and Renfrewshire North MP hit out at the MoD for allowing convoys loaded with nuclear warheads to travel across the Erskine Bridge during high winds. The 35-year-old SNP MP, who was previously a member of Renfrew Community Council, talked about the issue during the speech, last week in the House of Commons. The father-of-two said: “On the 11 January this year, 50-mph gales were battering the west coast of Scotland. “As a result, high-sided vehicles were warned not to cross the Erskine Bridge over the Clyde. “I am not sure about anyone else, but the very last thing I want driving over a 150-foot bridge during such high winds is a convoy loaded with nuclear warheads. “Unbelievably, that is exactly what the Ministry of Defence chose to do. “
The Gazette (Clydebank) 22nd July 2015 read more »
Renewables – CfD
On the same day as announcing that solar power subsidies will be cut, DECC has confirmed it will postpone the next Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction for large renewables projects. The CfD scheme, which awards subsidy contracts for green energy developers, will not be undertaken in October as planned. Rather than making an official announcement, the Department is informing renewable energy developers when asked, with an emailed statement that reads: “There will be no CfD round this October. In the autumn, the Government will set out its plans in respect of the next CfD allocation round.”
Edie 22nd July 2015 read more »
Renewables – Tidal
Five British firms have received grant funding from Innovate UK to develop tidal energy with Canadian businesses and universities. Funding worth £700,000 will be split across two projects to help improve understanding of tidal power’s impact on marine environments and the impact of the environment on the tidal technology. The projects are being supported by Innovate UK, private capital and Nova Scotia’s Offshore Energy Research Association.
Edie 22nd July 2015 read more »
Renewables – onshore wind
The UK government should relax its clampdown on onshore wind subsidies, the SNP has demanded. Ministers scrapped subsidies following complaints, mainly from England, about the impact of wind farms on the countryside. But SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said that with 70% of planned wind farms set for Scotland, the ban would disproportionately hit its economy.
BBC 23rd July 2015 read more »
Fusion
THE world’s largest nuclear fusion machine, currently being built in France, is unlikely to produce more energy than it consumes until the early 2030s, warned the UK’s head of fusion research this week. That is five years later than planned – by which time China could be ahead of everyone.
New Scientist 22nd July 2015 read more »
Fossil Fuels
New research suggests that the impact of shale gas on curbing US carbon emissions has been overstated. Politicians have argued that the US was able to significantly reduce CO2 between 2007 and 2013 because of fracking. But scientists now believe an 11% cut in emissions in that period was chiefly due to economic recession. The study suggests that the future impacts of shale as a way of curbing carbon may be limited.
BBC 22nd July 2015 read more »
Scottish Power reported a 24% drop in its coal-powered electricity generation in the first half of this year. The Spanish-owned energy giant, which is based in Glasgow, is preparing for the likely shut-down of the massive Longannet station in Fife next year. Renewable energy generation was up 27%, to reach half of the coal-powered figure of more than 4GWh (Gigawatt hours). Gas generation was up 12%, while total production fell 5%.
BBC 22nd July 2015 read more »
