Renew Extra Weekly

The UK has been setting new renewable generation records, while also pushing its share of imported energy, particularly gas, to the lowest level since 2004.  The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has used new government data to show that 46% of primary energy used to supply electricity to the UK was imported in 2025, down from 48% in 2024, and well down on the peak of 67% in 2013. ‘The expansion of renewables is more than making up for the ongoing decline in North Sea gas output which has happened even under decades of policy to maximise extraction.’                         However, not everyone is so sure that all is going well. Electricity is too expensive- and renewables aren’t helping. So says Justin Rowlatt in a recent BBC news report , under the heading ‘Why cheap power could matter more than clean power in the push to net zero.’  He says that, on the supply side ‘solar power has seen dramatic co...

 We are producing too much climate changing carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. The obvious answer is to stop using them. But if it is too hard, then perhaps we can capture and store the carbon dioxide, or find other ways to offset the impacts of climate change. Various geo-engineering ideas are getting attention these days, so it is interesting to see how they are being received by the general public.   Engaging 323 lay-people across the world, a new technology foresight study explores imagined futures where climate interventions, such as solar radiation modification and large-scale carbon removal, are widely implemented in 2030. The participants generated 299 distinct ‘futures’, each characterized by an imagined newspaper headline. Some were positive, some negative, some neutral. For example, in terms of Solar Radiation Management, the study says ‘futures were on balance more positive for Marine Cloud Brightening, evenly split for space-based approaches, and more n...

 The UK is doing quite well with renewables, with over 65GW now installed and much more planned, helping it reduce carbon emissions . It should also mean that it is better able to cope with global fossil energy price rise shocks - it can provide a buffer.  ‘Let's get control of our own energy so that whatever is happening in the world, we control what's happening in this country’, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says, adding ‘what gives us control is renewables, our own homegrown energy, which is then more secure & more independent, which is why I think that we should go further & faster in relation to renewables’. That’s good news, with more new jobs also being created as a result.  Employment  in ‘green’ jobs has expanded by nearly 28% over the last year, with  much of that being in renewable energy and related areas, and many more are expected.  However, there are issues. For example, Max Lacey-Barnacle, a researcher at Sussex University Centre f...

The UK needs to green its heat supplies - it can’t continue to use fossil gas. But there is a lot of debate over how. Electric heat pumps are the option favoured by many since they can use green power to upgrade ambient heat with very high efficiencies.  One unit of power in can produce up to 4 units of heat out. However, there are opponents, and not just from those like Reform UK with anti-green tech views. For example, although the Ecotricity-backed Green Britain Foundation accepts that, ‘well-designed and installed heat pumps can deliver substantial savings in CO2 emissions’ it says  ‘there are significant risks in terms of running costs’ and that ‘capital costs are much higher than gas boilers.’ Specifically, ‘to deliver the same amount of heat via a heat pump would cost 24% more than a gas boiler,’ while ‘the capital cost of installing an ASHP, including alterations to the distribution system, is more than 4 times the capital cost of replacing a gas boiler'. And it also ...

The pace of global warming has nearly doubled since 2015, while global energy issues are becoming much more fraught, with wars and market chaos adding to the worsening climate problem.  But the UN says countries should not delay climate action in an era of geopolitical instability.  Instead they should recognise decarbonisation & adaptation as the foundation for security and crisis management.  However, while some are trying, the US notably apart, in this context, some recent policy shifts in Europe seem to be perverse. For example, as I noted in my last post, France has cut its renewable energy targets back. In addition, Germany  is to scrap parts of a contentious heating law mandating the use of renewables in favour of a draft law allowing homeowners to rely on fossil fuels.  The previous energy law in Germany, produced in 2023 when the Greens were in the governing coalition, required most new heating systems to use at least 65% renewable energy, with h...

 It’s all change for new energy technology in France, although in France, dominated for so long by nuclear, what ‘change’ means is slightly different from what it means in most other countries. However, although it still supplies around 67% of French electricity, nuclear did fall from grace when, in the early 2020s, generic faults were discovered in many of its increasingly elderly reactors. Dealing with that has been expensive (many of France's 56 nuclear reactors had to be shut down for tests/repairs), but, although financial problems continue, that did not lead to major policy changes- or too much of a lift-off for renewables, despite political pressure from the left for change.  Energy and climate policy has clearly been a contentious political issue in France for decades, with the socialist government in the 2010s planning to cut nuclear back to a 50% contribution, but the right calling for more nuclear plants, to replace the old, soon to be obsolete ones. At one time 6 ...