Renew Extra Weekly

 The end of the year is seeing some arguably gloomy prognosis emerge about the future- along with claims that we can go back to some of old tech for a better future! Thus the Times ran an editorial (24/11/25) complaining about ‘Ed Miliband's myopic focus on wind & solar power’, and calling instead for a ‘fleet of traditional gas-fired stations, allowing nuclear to catch up’ and backing more large Sizewell-type standard nuclear plants. Although also (to be modern!) up to ‘as many as 100 small modular reactors.’ Sounds like what Reform has in mind. But also the Tories. And indeed Labour, although with lots of renewables as well.  Though perhaps it’s only gloomy if you are a green and want even more renewables and energy saving- and also no nuclear. Certainly the Green’s new leader is keen of renewables and says the proposed Centrica/X-energy project at Hartlepool is based ‘technology from long ago’! Checking back, yes, the UK did try building something similar at Winfrith D...

Demand-side energy reduction has so far received less policy support than supply-side net-zero technologies, despite the fact that, as this interesting new Nature paper claims, ‘energy demand reductions of ~50% by 2050 compared with today are possible while maintaining essential services and improving quality of life’.  That would involve more than just improved technical efficiency of energy use and production, something that is already thankfully underway-  although still rather too slowly . It would also mean fundamental changes in how energy is used, with radical reductions in consumption due to new social/behavioural patterns.                          The paper notes that ‘policies explicitly targeting large energy demand reductions remain scarce, suggesting that they have so far been disregarded by policymakers owing to real or perceived lack of political feasibility. Instead, national energy strategies fra...

 The world is not on track to triple global installed renewables by 2030 as hoped. That’s according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency and the COP30 Brazilian Presidency, along with the Global Renewables Alliance. An unprecedented 582 GW of renewables was installed last year, but deployment still falls short of what is needed to achieve the COP28 UAE Consensus goal of tripling renewables to 11.2 TW by 2030. To stay on track, the report says the world would need to add around 1,122 GW of renewable capacity each year from 2025 onward—about 20 times what was achieved last year. The report also highlights slow progress on energy efficiency. Global energy intensity improved by just 1% in 2024, far below the 4% p.a. needed to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C temperature target within reach.  In its annual Energy Transition Outlook   DNV says the roughly same. The energy transition it forecasts ‘remains too slow to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement ...

Oxford academic Prof. Sir Dieter Helm has attacked  Ed Milband’s new energy policy as flawed, in a prominent  article in the Times Comment section  (8th Nov p.34-35).  Far from being ‘nine times cheaper than gas’ as he says Miliband has claimed, Helm says that renewables are ‘intermittent, low-energy-density, small scale and geographically dispersed’, which means ‘lots of new transmission and distribution infrastructure, batteries and other long duration storage. And lots of back-up gas’.  For example, he says, ‘we now need roughly 120GW of installed generation capacity to meet the same demand that 60GW met pre-renewables- twice the transmission lines and pylons and all the back-up batteries and storage too. All of these are additional costs’. He also says that, by contrast, far from being costly and volatile, as Miliband claims, fossil gas in now getting cheaper- including LNG from the USA. It’s certainly true that fossil gas is not as expensive as it was at o...

There may be political support problems ahead for UK green energy, as I noted in my last post. Reform UK and the Tories want to do away with the green subsides and the Net Zero policy.  The Tony Blair Institute also seems to have some similar ideas – and has been pushing nuclear and fossil gas CCS instead. So does the new ‘ Britain Remade ’ report. And Net Zero Watch has called for the expansion of renewables to be halted.  This is perhaps not surprising given that, over the past few years, the government has introduced quite a range of taxes, subsidies and surcharges aiming to promote renewables, most notably of late Feed in Tariffs, the Renewable Obligation and the CfD system. Some policies are more indirect, and are designed to increase the cost of using fossil fuels by setting a price for carbon emissions.  But not everyone is keen on carbon trading, or on some of the mechanisms that have been introduced to support it. For example, the Centre for British Progress r...

 It’s the energy policy issue of the decade. Power bills have risen and renewables have expanded, so the link is obvious to the likes of Reform UK. But Energy Secretary Edward  Miliband says the only way to cut bills is to push green technology. Well they do cost, but he says less overall than fossil fuel.   As he noted, generation costs have already fallen ‘Strike prices for solar and onshore wind in our last auction, AR6, were nearly 50% cheaper than the levelised cost estimate to build and operate a new gas plant. Offshore wind, despite global cost pressures, was also cheaper than new gas.’  He admitted that there were other options but said ‘we won’t buy at any price and if specific technologies aren’t competitive, we will look elsewhere’.   Well that’s not what seems to have happened with nuclear, judging by the rising cost of Hinkley and the total nuclear spend, with Jonathon Porritt claiming that the Energy Department spent 60% its £8.6bn 2024-2...