Renew Extra Weekly

‘The human species should as far as possible retreat from the natural world and live in high density urban settings’, enabled by high technology such as nuclear power, nuclear being well suited since it is a high density energy source. So says Prof Bill Nuttall in the conclusions to the second edition of his book on the supposed  ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ - see my last post . Backing the ‘ ecomodernist ’ agenda, he says ‘Humanity should learn to resist the temptation to live in harmony with nature, but should give all the other species with which we share this planet, space to do their own thing free from the risks of environmental collapse that the last ten generations of human beings have brought to the planet’.  Many greens are batting on a very different wicket- one in which people and their technologies are diffused across the planet, this being enabled by low-impact decentralised renewable energy technologies like PV solar and wind. Some large wild areas would be retain...

Open University Professor Bill Nuttall’s updated version of  his 2005 ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ book makes a case for nuclear power as low carbon and reliable, although, as the promotional blurb says, it accepts that ‘in recent years it has struggled to play a strong role in global plans for electricity generation in the 21st century’.  The new book also accepts that the much-hyped renaissance didn’t in the event happen- with Fukushima blowing it off course.  However, the blurb says that now ‘many of those involved with nuclear power and environmental agencies see controlled expansion of nuclear plants as the most environmentally friendly way of meeting growing energy demands’. This is a book for them. It's certainly optimistic: ‘Various countries are starting to announce plans for new nuclear plants, either to replace those being decommissioned, to provide additional power or to contribute to the decarbonisation of especially challenging industrial activities. In the 2020s m...

In ‘Europe’s Green Experiment: A costly failure in unilateral climate policy’,  Dr John Constable, the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Director of Energy, offers a contrarian view of EU energy and climate policy. It’s almost like a mirror image, inverting many accepted views. For example it claims that renewables are getting more costly and that renewable energy equipment manufacturing ‘has no future in the EU’.  It says that ‘up until 2005 the EU’s energy consumption was on a rising trend, but it has now fallen by over 10% on the 2006 peak, and is now back at levels last seen in the 1990s’. That evidently is a Bad Thing. Worse still, the UK is ‘even more severely affected, with consumption falling by about 30% on its peak in the early 2000s and is now at levels last seen in the 1950s’. It’s Bad since it is claimed that all this is ‘the direct result of the extremely high climate policy costs of adopting thermodynamically inferior renewable generation’. The programme has ce...

As the new annual REN21 global review illustrates, renewables are booming most places, supplying 28% of global electricity, with PV solar especially lifting off fast, including, at last, in Australia and, crucially, Africa, north and south .  In all, there’s over 1TW of PV in place globally. The scale and reach of some of the new projects planned is very dramatic. For example, there is a proposal for a 20GW PV array in north Australia which would  send power to Singapore . Meanwhile, wind also continues to boom, offshore especially, with ever larger, taller devices, as well as floating units . There are some huge projects planned. For example, up to 20GW of offshore wind has been proposed by Denmark for islands off NE Europe , including 10GW linked to an artificial ‘hydrogen island’ in the North Sea, on its part of the Dogger Bank. Denmark also plans two other offshore wind-based energy islands for the North Sea and Baltic Sea with the potential for some hydrogen production...