Politics
Chris Huhne: Did the prime minister really dismiss all that “green crap”, as the Sun claimed? Downing Street denies it, and I suspect that David Cameron has been the victim either of the Sun’s inaccuracy or of overenthusiastic team members assuming they know what he thinks. Either way, someone is running real risks with his image, one of the most valuable Tory polling assets. Cameron was certainly sincere when, that fresh spring day, I walked with him from Downing Street to the Department of Energy and Climate Change and he promised the “greenest government ever”. He is not just a Notting Hill metrosexual: he also hails from that home counties green Tory tradition that first gave us an Environment Department under the Heath government. Cameron’s next big test is the government’s political response to Ed Miliband’s promise to freeze energy bills. The debate in the “cabinet quad”, which is preparing next week’s autumn statement, will be around shifting some of the consumer levies – the “green crap” amounting to £112 a year – off energy bills. The chancellor is too embarrassed to reopen his own green tax grab, the carbon price floor. Nick Clegg has put renewables off limits, and has also insisted that there is no cut in the efforts to help the fuel poor (though it may be paid instead from general taxation). The most controversial of the “crap” is the Energy Company Obligation – the ECO – whose energy-saving element costs £760m a year. Which way will Cameron jump? He is horribly torn, judging by what happened to his February speech on energy efficiency at the Royal Society. Oddly, the transcript can now be found only on the website of the Association for the Conservation of Energy. If the prime minister flunks this energy-saving test, he will confirm the Sun’s story, and look like the weak victim of the short-term pressures he once promised to fight.
Guardian 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Radwaste
Radiation Free Lakeland will be going to London on 3rd Dec to protest our opposition to the CONsultation and to the continued push for geological dumping under Cumbria or anywhere else for that matter. We will be delivering hundreds of letters to DECC (see below if you would like to add your name). We have asked government under the Freedom of Information Act for the content of the papers disclosed to Greenpeace. If as Greenpeace have claimed it is “highly unlikely” the dump will be built and that the “implementation of geological disposal” needs to be seen to continue in order to enable new build then why drop the legal challenge? Either way Cumbrians are being subjected to huge emotional trauma while radioactive wastes stack up at Sellafield from continued reprocessing and the dodgy ducks are lined up for insane new build.
Radiation Free Lakeland 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Hinkley
Nearly £8m was spent on Government advisers to broker the deal for the UK’s first nuclear power station in 20 years, an amount critics claim “stinks like a rotting fish’s head”.
Belfast Telegraph 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Medical Isotopes
A worldwide shortage of radioactive material vital for the operation of medical scanners could jeopardise patients’ health in the UK, say senior doctors. They are calling on the Government to prevent a shortage of a radioactive isotope used to diagnose cancers and heart defects. Britain’s supply of molybdenum-99m is sourced from six nuclear facilities – in France, the Netherlands, Belgium South Africa, Australia and Canada. However, the situation reached a critical level when it was announced that the reactor which supplies 40 per cent of the world’s molybdenum will close in 2016. Decades of service have made many nuclear reactors unreliable, and by 2016 when Canada’s Chalk River reactor halts its manufacture of molybdenum-99m, patients may be exposed to delays unless alternativ es sources are found. Current vulnerabilities were highlighted this month after a leak at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation plant and the unexpected temporary closure of the Mallinckrodt plant in Holland caused global shortages that are expected to be felt in hospitals in the coming weeks.
Independent 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Europe – Decommissioning
EU financial aid to help Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia to complete the decommissioning of the Kozloduy, Ignalina and Bohunice nuclear power plants in the next EU budget period (2014-2020) was approved by MEPs on Tuesday.
Energy Business Review 21st Nov 2013 read more »
France – Energy Costs
Energy news service Enerdata reports that French retail power consumers face hefty price hikes by 2017, but we have heard these predictions before. Without providing a link any external documents, Enerdata states in one of its single-paragraph reports that the French government and power sector believe retail rates will rise by 30% over the next four years, mainly due to renewables – which the country is hardly building. Nonetheless, a recent article at Platts says that 67% of the price hike for 2014 would be devoted to covering renewables. Little seems to have been written about the matter in English, but a recent report at Le Monde shows that 5.7% of the rate increase is the result of “social rates”, i.e. subsidized power for low-income households, with 60.2% devoted to renewables (it seems that accurate figures are hard to come by, but the estimates roughly overlap). France also faces heavy expenses for upgrades to its fleet of 58 nuclear plants (the third largest in the world after China and the US), but a report from January 2012 explains that revenue from the sale of nuclear power is “sufficient… to pay for work to improve safety at nuclear reactors.”
Renewables Internaional 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Iran
Saudi Arabia maintained a discreet silence on Sunday about the Iranian nuclear deal in Geneva but is thought likely to issue a guarded welcome despite its strong and clearly signalled reservations about what it fears is the rehabilitation of its longstanding regional rival. Analysts in Riyadh said it would be diplomatically impossible for the Saudi government to publicly condemn an agreement designed to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions however deep its concerns about the direction of evolving US policy.
Guardian 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Israeli leader Netanyahu condemns Iran nuclear deal as a historic mistake and threatens to use military action if needed.
Daily Mail 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Express 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Iran has struck a historic deal with the United States and five other world powers agreeing to a temporary freeze of its nuclear programme, in the most significant agreement between Washington and Tehran in more than three decades of estrangement.
Herald 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Telegraph 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Oil prices fell sharply today after world powers struck a landmark deal with Iran to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.
ITV 25th Nov 2013 read more »
BBC 25th Nov 2013 read more »
The nuclear deal with Iran is a victory for peace over war. We can celebrate diplomacy trouncing militarism, agreement reached around a table in Geneva instead of down a missile silo. Defusing a potential apocalypse is a golden opportunity to recast ¬relations in the Middle East. The wings of hawks, including ¬Israel’s nuclear-armed leader Benjamin Netanyahu, are clipped.
Mirror 25th Nov 2013 read more »
After three decades as a foreign policy specialist in the US Senate, secretary of state John Kerry could not be happier in his newfound role as President Barack Obama’s bridge-builder in the Middle East. Since taking over from Hillary Clinton in February, Kerry has spent only a few days in Washington. In that time, the conclusion of deals to contain weapons of mass destruction in Syria and Iran, without resorting to force, will have given this life-long liberal and Vietnam veteran the most satisfaction.
Guardian 24th Nov 2013 read more »
A historic agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme was made possible by months of unprecedented secret meetings between US and Iranian officials, in further signs of the accelerating detente between two of the world’s most adversarial powers, it emerged on Sunday.
Guardian 24th Nov 2013 read more »
While the agreement limits Iran to enriching uranium by a maximum of 5 per cent, it casts aside Israel’s demand that enrichment be eliminated entirely, something seen in the West as unrealistic. Israel, believed to be the only nuclear power in the region, says allowing any enrichment is dangerous since Iranian centrifuges could quickly convert even low-grade uranium to weapons grade.
Independent 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Climate Talks
Governments around the world have just over a year in which to set out their targets on curbing greenhouse gas emissions from 2020, after marathon overnight climate change talks in Warsaw produced a partial deal. Under the agreement, settled in the early hours of Sunday morning after more than 36 hours of non-stop negotiations, countries have until the first quarter of 2015 to publish their plans. This process is seen as essential to achieving a new global deal on emissions at a crunch conference in Paris in late 2015, for which the fortnight-long Warsaw conference was supposed to lay the groundwork.
Guardian 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Loopholes in a UN agreement on climate change will allow China, India and other emerging economies to delay setting ¬targets to cut their overall emissions. Britain and other European Union member states must now decide whether to continue with plans to make ambitious pledges next year to cut emissions by 2030 without any guarantee that countries with far larger carbon footprints will follow suit.
Times 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Climate Talks – Renewables
The biggest frustrations of the UN sponsored climate change talks are the endless blockages that are seemingly caused because the potential solutions to rising greenhouse gases appear insurmountable: Yet the solutions are staring the negotiators in the face. Energy efficiency could provide half the abatement required to meet the “emissions gap” between where the world is heading and what it needs to do to meet the global target to cap emissions at 450 parts per million, or a better than even chance at capping global warming at 2C. It can do this at little or no extra cost. And a new study to be released in the new year will say that renewable energy alone could provide the other half of the abatement needed from now to 2030, again for little or no extra cost. The findings by the International Renewable Energy Agency – to be included in a document called ReMap 2030 and released in January – suggests that this can be done by doubling the penetration of renewables in the global electricity market to 36 per cent by 2030.
Renew Economy 24th Nov 2013 read more »
Renewables – costs
Researchers at Europe’s largest solar research center have updated their cost curves for wind, solar, power from biogas, and different types of coal power. The findings may surprise some readers, but they are in line with other recent assessments. The writing is on the wall for conventional power… economically. New nuclear power in the UK will already be more expensive than practically all solar and wind power by the time the plant goes online.
Renewables International 15th Nov 2013 read more »
Renewables – offshore wind
Europe’s largest floating wind farm will be located off the Scottish coast after the Crown Estate granted an agreement for lease to Norwegian multinational Statoil. The Hywind project will see five turbines operate in waters around 18- 12 miles (20 to 30km) off the coast of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. With a total capacity of 30 MW, the scheme is set to be the largest floating wind project announced in Europe. The Crown Estate said the agreement follows Stavanger-based Statoil’s successful demonstration of the world’s first full-scale floating turbine, in operation off the coast of Norway since 2009.
Herald 25th Nov 2013 read more »
Fossil Fuels
A global deal to lift sanctions against Iran could unleash a flood of oil onto world markets by next year just as crude output pick ups in Libya, Iraq, and North America, triggering a slide in prices and a major shake-up of the energy landscape.
Telegraph 24th Nov 2013 read more »
