Renew Extra Weekly

At present France gets around 109 TWh of its electrical power from around 53GW of renewables and it is aiming to treble that to 300TWh by 2030, while also reducing the share of nuclear in electricity generation, which currently supplies around 382TWh, so that its share falls from 70% to 50% by 2035. There are also debates as to whether to phase out nuclear power entirely in France. So it is good that in a timely new study t he International Energy Agency and French transmission system operator RTE have looked at whether it is technically possible to integrate very high shares of renewables in large power systems like that in France.  The report notes that ‘advocates for 100% renewables claim - with reason - that past alarmist predictions of operational problems from increasing renewables in the power sector have been proven wrong’. Indeed, it says that it’s technically viable, with renewables supplying 85-90% of power by 2050 or 100% by 2060, subject to some key system upgrade requ...

The expansion of renewable energy use continues globally, but there are some big issues. For example, the EU got 38% of its power from renewables in 2020. It has been led by Germany, whose renewable power output has now outpaced its fossil fuel power output.  But it still has to deal with left-over nuclear costs e.g. the German government has agreed to pay EOn, EnBW, RWE & Vattenfall almost €2.5bn in compensation for the forced ‘premature’ closure of their nuclear plants.  A big issue is whether it is fair for the nuclear companies to get compensation essentially for loss of nuclear earnings. Won’t that slow the growth of renewables?  They have certainly been slow to develop in France where, until recently, nuclear has ruled the roost. The UK has done a bit better, with offshore wind especially, but, obscurely, it is still pushing for more nuclear, while dragging its feet on providing proper support for PV solar and on-shore wind.   Meanwhile, China is get...

According to a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, we have been misled about climate change. In a press release, its author, Dr Indur Goklany, evidently a one-time IPCC contributor, claims that, in reality, ‘almost everywhere you look, climate change is having only small, and often benign, impacts. The impact of extreme weather events - hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts - are, if anything, declining. Economic damages have declined as a fraction of global GDP. Death rates from such events have declined by 99% since the 1920s. Climate-related disease has collapsed. And more people die from cold than warm temperatures’.  Even sea-level rise, which some predict to be the most damaging climate impact, is said to be much less of a problem than thought. According to Dr Goklany, reviews of historic maps and satellite imagery have shown that the places predicted to disappear are in fact still with us: ‘A recent study showed that the Earth has actually gained mo...

The 250th issue of Renew, the renewable energy info-journal, has just emerged.  I started Renew in 1979 as the newsletter of NATTA, the Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment that was set up based at the Open University in 1976. Renew has come out bimonthly ever since in various formats, with an e-version, Renew On Line , starting at Renew issue 100. Since I retired, I have continued with that as a free service, in parallel with the full subscription-based Renew, with Tam Dougan’s help. Over the years, Renew has promoted a wide range of renewable alternatives to fossil and nuclear, mainly wind and solar power, but also some, like tidal stream power, that have not yet taken off widely. It has also looked critically at others, for example large tidal barrages (in line with the ‘TA’ bit in the NATTA name) and has supported smaller scale community projects. Of late, it has backed ‘Power to Gas’ green hydrogen production using renewable power sources as a grid bala...