Renew Extra Weekly

Renewables provided a record 37.1% of the UK’s electricity last year, and prospects for continued growth look good, with renewables taking over in many sectors, but there will also be a need to push carbon based energy out of even more markets. An independent ‘Zero Carbon Commission’ was set up in February 2020 to review the UK emissions pricing landscape, and explore how it might be re-designed to be consistent with the UK's 'net zero' carbon target. Members include Lord Adair Turner, UCL Prof. Paul Ekins and Baroness Bryony Worthington.                            In an interim report , based on an initial review and public opinion survey , the Commission propose ‘a phased, sectoral approach to carbon charging to help fund a fair, green transition towards net zero’. It says that, under this plan, ‘by 2025, there would be a simple carbon charge of £55/tCOe (carbon dioxide and equivalents) on greenhouse gas emissions ...

Renewable energy sources are not always located conveniently where we want them, so it is fortunate that efficient high-voltage direct current ‘supergrid’ power transmission has emerged. HVDC can cut energy transmission losses to 2%/1,000 km, compared to maybe 10% for conventional HVAC transmission and distribution.  HVDC supergrid links can be used to enhance power trading between those countries with excess renewable supply at any particular point in time and those with shortfalls.  In particular, they can help deal with the local variability of some renewables. Linking up sources over a wider geographical area increases the probability that there will be surplus power available for trading: the wider the geographical spread, the better the balancing potential .  However, there may be issues with supergrid power trading, depending on the location. For example, in the context of using solar arrays in North Africa to provide power for Europe, there is the risk of ‘land g...

The last couple of years has seen some old certainties disappear. Renewable energy has moved from being a marginal, expensive possibility to becoming a cheap wide-scale winner. Offshore wind was once see as the most expensive of the main renewable options, but it is now booming and may soon be one of the cheapest, probably only beaten by solar, with talk of some offshore wind projects leading to  negative prices . That has already happened with some onshore wind and also now PV solar projects - which are set to continue to boom globally . With low marginal running costs, and falling capital costs, these renewables can undercut anything else on the grid at times, in generation cost terms.   Of course they can’t do that all the time, so there is an extra cost for balancing these variable renewables, especially for meeting peak demand when renewable supply is low. But the daily demand peaks only last a few hours and can be flattened/delayed by smart grid/variable power pricing ...

A UK Nuclear role– and on to 50GW?   In its new report , ‘Nuclear for net Zero’, the Energy System Catapult (ESC) claims that ‘nuclear is potentially an important part of the future Net Zero energy system in the UK’, and although it warns that ‘nuclear cost reduction is a necessary pre-requisite’, it seems confident that costs can be cut. It says ‘Nuclear power plant construction projects do not need to be risky or expensive’, one of the key enablers to nuclear cost reduction being ‘the intentional commitment to programmes of capacity rather than individual unconnected projects’.  Additionally, it says, Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and advanced Generation IV reactor deployment costs may fall ‘even lower than those potentially achievable with large contemporary reactor designs to be deployed in countries with developed economies where wage rates for construction labour and project related professional services are relatively high’.   That may be optimistic. What i...