Renew Extra Weekly

 The Social Market Foundation, a cross-party think-tank, says that 48% of UK  survey respondents felt the ‘green transition’ was ‘happening to them, not with them’.  And 63% thought it wouldn’t work anyway. Certainly there has been some opposition to some green polices, and there have been claims that Starmer’s plan to remove ‘infrastructure blockers’, for example local objectors to green energy projects like wind and solar farms, and the extra grid links needed for them, could backfire .  Although Labours plans for ‘pushing past nimbyism’ and putting many new small nuclear plants around the country could also attract fierce local opposition. In this case, small isn’t green- indeed, as well as potentially costing more, SMRs may actually increase security, safety and waste management problem. Lots of issues there too then. So, one way or another there may be battles ahead. For example, the government wants to bring large onshore wind projects back into the National...

In recent months, the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has been pushed as a key way forward for economic growth, for example by Kier Starmer in the UK and Trump in the USA. See my earlier post .  It’s certainly been seen as a big deal, by the USA especially, not least in terms of its likely impact on power demand . Globally, by 2035, IDTechEx forecasts that the continued growth of artificial intelligence will result in over 2000 TWh of energy being consumed by data centres.  So with a vast and increasing  amount of energy being used to churn through ever larger data bases, emission targets may be hard to achieve. Some US big data companies seemed to think that green sources would not be enough to deal with this and that a big expansion of nuclear would be necessary- either new Small Modular Reactors or revamped large plants.  In one of its scenarios, Goodman Sachs Research claimed that ‘85-90 GW of new nuclear capacity would be needed to meet a...

 The green energy transition  ‘is often presented as the latest in a series of transitions that have shaped modern history. The first was from organic energy – muscle, wind and water power – to coal. The second was from coal to hydrocarbons (oil and gas). The third transition will be the replacement of fossil fuels by forms of renewable energy.’ So says Adam Tooze in a useful extended LRB review of French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book ‘Moore and more: an all- consuming history of energy,’ which, as Tooze says, is very challenging, to current energy and climate policies, given that Fressoz doesn’t agree with this model of change.  Instead Fressoz argues that, far from the industrial era passing through a series of transformations, each new phase has in practice remained almost wholly entangled with the previous one. So he adopts what Tooze calls an ‘accumulation’ view, ‘based not on progressive shifts from one source of energy to the next, but on their interdepe...

France is having problems with nuclear power.  It was once the poster child for nuclear energy, which, after a rapid government funded build-up in the1980s based on standard Westinghouse Pressurised-water Reactor (PWR) designs, at one point supplied around 75% of its power, with over 50 reactors running around the country. Mass deployment of similar designs meant that there were economies of scale and given that it was a state-run programme, the government could supply low-cost funding and power could be supplied to consumers relatively cheaply. But the plants are now getting old, and there has been a long running debate over what to do to replace them: it will be expensive given the changed energy market, with cheaper alternatives emerging. At one stage, after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, it was proposed by the socialist government to limit nuclear to supplying just 50% of French power by 2025, with renewables to be ramped up.  That began to look quite sensible wh...

Time was when Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson talked about the ‘White Heat of Technology’ which was going to revolutionise UK Industrial growth in the 1960s.  Now Labour leader Keir Starmer is at it again, and this time it’s going to be Artificial Intelligence that will work its productivity enhancing magic on the UK economy.   AI, along with digitization, smart technology and automation, may indeed lead to higher efficiencies in many sectors, but that will also mean job losses. Some hope that the money saved will be invested new production so creating more jobs to compensate for the lost jobs and that the new jobs will be better paid and higher skilled. But it’s also possible that it will be (costly) skilled jobs that go and lower grade jobs that are left over. Plenty to debate there- some of it very grim . Add to that, AI could enhance the political risks associated with the centralised power of the newly emergent high technology-based billionaire elite, what, in h...

US President elect Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform that ‘the UK is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of the windmills.’ He was, it seems, objecting to the UK windfall tax on excess oil and gas profits, newly expanded to 38% and extended to 2030, and to Labours plans to build many more offshore wind projects while cutting back on new oil and gas well projects. Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, Dr Doug Parr, said: ‘ The US president-elect is speaking not on behalf of people in the UK, but his own ‘drill baby drill’ agenda and the Big Oil bosses who poured millions into his campaign.’ A UK government spokesperson said: ‘Our priority is a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, and we will work with the sector to protect current and future generations of good jobs. We need to replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain – which ...