Energy Supplies
Radical reforms of Britain’s energy market are likely after the election, the government and opposition both signalled yesterday, as regulator Ofgem gave warning of threats to electricity and gas supplies before the end of the decade. An Ofgem report said there was a “window of opportunity” until about 2012-13 to put a new market framework in place to deliver up to 200bn of investment needed to secure energy supplies and cut carbon emissions.
FT 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Guardian 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Telegraph 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Times 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Britain’s offshore wind revolution, launched with great fanfare by Gordon Brown last month, may struggle to get halfway to its ambitious goals and should be scaled down in favour of a new dash for gas to keep the lights on over the next 10 years, BP warned last night.
Guardian 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Britain faces power cuts over the next decade unless ministers take greater control of the privatised gas and electricity network, the energy regulator warned yesterday. In a gloomy assessment of the UK’s crumbling power stations, Ofgem said there were serious doubts that the current system deriving from liberalisation 20 years ago would generate enough power by 2020.
Independent 4th Feb 2010 more >>
The signals are clear from the Government, its special energy adviser Malcolm Wicks, the influential Committee on Climate Change and even the companies themselves that there will have to be more intervention in the industry if the country is to avoid power shortages. However, a new suggestion from Ofgem, the industry regulator, that there should be a single, state-controlled energy buyer has shocked the markets.
Telegraph 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Britain’s energy regulator today urged the Government to tear up the existing rules governing the privatised energy market and take greater control to ensure future supply. Ofgem said the country could face power and gas shortages after 2015 because ageing power stations are not being replaced quickly enough.
Times 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Dungeness
Shepway DC has protested to the government against the exclusion of Dungeness from the list of possible sites for new nuclear power stations. It argued that ministers had misinterpreted both environmental restrictions and evidence on the impact on the local economy.
Local Government Chronicle 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Hinkley
A Stop Hinkley campaigner was arrested in Parliament after disrupting the Energy and Climate Change Committee.
Western Daily Press 28th Jan 2010 more >>
Sizewell
Councillors have reiterated their calls on the Government to ensure that Suffolk Coastal’s communities have a chance to make their local voice heard on the possible building of a new nuclear power station at Sizewell. Last night’s (Tuesday) Cabinet meeting debated the Council’s official response to the Government’s National Policy Statements for Energy Infrastructure, which include the assessment that Sizewell may be suitable for a new nuclear power station. “The Government is still not recognising the importance of ensuring that local knowledge and concerns are taken fully on board if plans for Sizewell are ever submitted. We remain committed to demanding that the communities of Suffolk Coastal must have the right to reject any proposal which has an unreasonable local impact,” said Cllr Andrew Nunn, Cabinet Member for the Green Environment.
Suffolk Coastal District Council 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
It is hard to believe that Suffolk County Council Conservatives are backing another row of pylons through the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Whilst making noises about undergrounding and undersea options they are failing to stand up for the Suffolk countryside. Surely the landscapes captured by Constable and Gainsborough deserve better protection than this?
Kathy Pollard (Lib Dem Councillor) 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Oldbury
Campaigners opposed to a new nuclear power station near Bristol will stage a silent protest before Government officials hold a public debate on the proposal. Demonstrators with placards will meet outside the event venue in Thornbury to show their anger and frustration at the consultation and planning process involved in the controversial expansion of atomic energy. They said they were concerned the public were being heard but not listened to by those who will decide if a new nuclear plant should be built next to the existing Oldbury nuclear station at Shepperdine, just outside Thornbury.
Bristol Evening Post 2nd Feb 2010 more >>
Residents of South Gloucestershire will have their chance to find out more about the consultation and how the site has been assessed at the exhibitions on Thursday, 4th, Friday 5th and Saturday 6th February held at Turnberrie’s Community Centre.
DECC Press Release 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Cumbria
THE Green Party candidate for Barrow and Furness in the next general election last night told a webchat he is opposed to a nuclear power station at Kirksanton.
NW Evening Mail 2nd Feb 2010 more >>
ENERGY giants RWE npower have been accused of causing property blight in the two areas it had earmarked for potential nuclear new-build. It follows the company’s declaration this week that it had no specific plans and was scrapping its current agreements to supply power to the national grid from the “potentially suitable” Braystones and Kirksanton sites. Letters dropped through residents’ letter boxes in the two areas on Tuesday telling them of the twist in development. But RWE’s announcement has been criticised for being ambiguous and confusing. The company has already bought farm land at both Braystones and Kirksanton. Local councillors Yvonne and Norman Clarkson and David Moore have all accused RWE of causing blight. They are calling on the company to drop its plans altogether.
Whitehaven News 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Low Level Waste
ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners want plans to dispose of radioactive waste from the Sellafield nuclear plant in the New Forest to be scrapped. They have called for the low-level radioactive waste oil, which is stored in sealed UN-approved drums, to remain at the Cumbrian plant. The risk to the Hampshire public is considered negligible as the level of radiation is thousands of times lower than that which arises from everyday natural radiation exposure. But there are fears transporting it 350 miles could be an environmental disaster if a truck was involved in an accident.
Get Noticed Online 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
COUNCILLORS are likely to visit the site of a former opencast mine before making a decision on controversial plans to turn it into a waste repository.
Whitehaven News 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Nuclear Constabulary
COMMUNITY leaders have reacted angrily to news that the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) is moving its police training school from Whitehaven’s Summergrove to Oxfordshire. Seventeen staff are employed at Summergrove apart from the officers who are trained there. But the Constabulary stressed yesterday it was hoped none of the jobs would be lost. Re-deployment options are being discussed.
Whitehaven News 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Calder Hall
ANOTHER 16 Hertel construction workers have been made redundant at Sellafield, added to the 17 announced last week. Eleven of the latest lay-offs are asbestos specialists working on the decommissioning of Calder Hall power station. A Sellafield spokesman said yesterday: “The asbestos removal project was one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Its success means that the asbestos which had to be removed has now gone and so the project is coming to a natural end.
Whitehaven News 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Aldermaston
Radiation Free Lakeland have sent a message of support to peace activist Dan Viesnik at Pentonville Prison. Viesnik has been imprisoned for 14 days for not paying a £500 fine after a sit-down protest outside Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory.
Get Noticed Online 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Disarmament
Twenty years after the end of the cold war, nuclear weapons have been supplanted as an engine of public anxiety by worries over global warming, virus pandemics and terrorist attacks. Yet the threat of nuclear weapons – about 23,000 of them with a combined blast capacity equal to 150,000 Hiroshimas – is a threat to humanity at least equal to climate change. The good news is that the nuclear stars may be moving into benign alignment, bringing the three goals of non-proliferation, security and disarmament at least into the right orbit. The US and Russia – owners of 22,000 of the world’s atomic weapons – are close to agreeing big cuts in deployed warheads and launch systems, under a renewed strategic arms reduction treaty (Start).
FT 4th Feb 2010 more >>
‘Peaceniks” is not the word that immediately comes to mind as you contemplate this array of smartly dressed present and former presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, generals and ambassadors, their neat if thinning coiffures reflected in the gilded mirrors of an ornate hall in one of Paris’s grand hotels. Yet they have come together to advance a goal as ambitious as any ponytailed peaceniks ever had: the total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons by 2030. Global zero.
Guardian 4th Feb 2010 more >>
Italy
Italy’s inter-regional body rejected the nuclear energy policy proposed by Silvio Berlusconi’s government during a late January session. Meanwhile, regional elections are approaching, giving rise to fears for Italy’s nuclear renaissance.
World Nuclear News 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Iran
If Iran is prepared to accept a deal aimed at ending the standoff over its nuclear programme then the news can only be welcomed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. “If Iran is ready to come back to the original agreement we can only welcome it,” he told reporters at a news conference.
Middle East Online 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
A tension-defusing deal to export most of Iran’s uranium in exchange for fuel rods has been brought back from the dead by Iran’s president. But is he serious?
Guardian 3rd Feb 2010 more >>
Daily Mail 4th Feb 2010 more >>
US
Nuclear power got a boost and big oil took a hit yesterday when US President Barack Obama submitted his 2011 federal budget proposal to Congress. The budget calls for an immediate $36 billion increase in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants and eliminates $36.5 billion in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies over a 10-year period. The proposed budget would also eliminate funding for a federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Obama recently assembled a panel to find other ways to dispose of spent fuel. Joseph Romm, a climate change expert at the Center for American Progress, a policy think tank based in Washington DC, says support for nuclear power will be ineffective without a comprehensive climate change policy that puts a price on carbon. “You aren’t going to stop building coal plants because you have new nuclear plants,” he says. “Coal plants are still cheaper to build.”
New Scientist 2nd Feb 2010 more >>
Energy Efficiency
Twelve communities from across the UK are today celebrating after winning up to £500,000 each to help install new green technologies such as solar panels, hydro turbines and energy saving insulation. The grant money, awarded through the Government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge, will be spent on a range of green measures which will cut carbon, save money on energy bills, and could even see some communities make cash from generating their own energy – thanks to the Government’s new clean energy scheme.
DECC 4th Feb 2010 more >>
