Renew Extra Weekly

Offshore wind power generation has been doing very well in the UK, with around 14 Gigawatts (GW) of capacity now installed, and progress should continue, with Hornsea 4 getting the go ahead and Crown estate releasing 6 more offshore sites for development. There is the issue of how much of the profits from these projects King Charles should retain, but maybe more importantly, there are signs that the profitability of new projects may be falling due inflation.  Vattenfall had won a contract for its Boreas project off Norfolk last year at a record low price of £37.35/MWh. But with gas and supply chain costs rising, the market has now changed, making it economically unviable at that price.  The Swedish state-owned company said costs had climbed by 40% due to a rise in global gas prices which have fed through to the cost manufacturing, putting ‘significant pressure on all new offshore wind projects’. Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the thinktank the Energy and Climate Intel...

A bit delayed, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Grant Shapps, has officially launched Great British Nuclear (GBN), the new ‘arm’s-length’ government agency that is meant drive the delivery of new nuclear energy projects- especially small modular reactors (SMRs). The press release was very up tempo, with the headline: ‘British nuclear revival to move towards energy independence’. It said that GBN will ‘drive rapid expansion of nuclear power at an unprecedented scale’, all apparently for just an extra £157 million, with most of that being for SMRs, including advanced High Temperature Reactors, and some new fuel production plants, the later ‘supporting the global move away from Russian fuel’.  Well, while it would be good not to use Russian fuel in future (e.g. for new SMR/HTR designs), talk of a ‘massive revival’ of UK nuclear may be a bit premature. In all about £233m has been allocated to new SMR work so far, plus £700m for the big Sizewell C., and it’s far...

It has been claimed by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) that the net-zero energy transition in the UK can deliver net-growth for jobs in key sectors. However, it also been claimed that the Government’s current ‘hands off’ approach risks stifling economic opportunities and clean technology market growth. So a big strategic issue is emerging. So far around 250,000 jobs have been created in the transition, but there are fears that the Government remains off-track to deliver its flagship goal of creating two million green jobs by 2030. Crucially, the CCC notes that the net-zero transition could offer new green employment opportunities to current economically deprived areas, although it says the majority of the UK will see ‘no major impacts’ from the net-zero transition, with only 20% of the current workforce operating in sectors that have a ‘core role’ on the delivery of net-zero. However, that still means a lot of changes. The CCC calculates that the net-zero transition can deliver be...

In this radical new book Prof. Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor, who are based in Australia, say that major changes have to be made in order the move to a sustainable future. They claim that we have allowed large corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture governments and influence public opinion and markets excessively. The result will be social, economic and environmental disaster. They argue that the way forward is to build social movements to apply overwhelming pressure on government and big business, weaken the power of vested interests and strengthen democratic decision-making. This, they say, must be done simultaneously with action on the specific issues of climate, energy, natural resources & social justice, so as to transition to a truly sustainable civilisation.  That may sound Utopian, but the book takes us through the practical technology options and explores how the transition to their use might come about globally. However it goes well  bey...

The UK has an enviable wind resource, but much of it has not yet been developed  – with on shore wind blocked by planning rules, and planning delays holding overall progress back. In response, the Labour Party has said it will overturn the Tory ban on new onshore wind projects in England and introduce ‘tough new targets’ to reduce the time clean energy projects like this take in planning ‘from years to months’. Labour leader Keir Starmer said it can take up to 13 years to develop a new offshore wind farm. Moreover, he said, the backlog in power projects trying to connect to the National Grid has now got so bad that projects from the leasing round last year have been told they will not get a grid connection until 2033 – over a decade later. It is certainly a bit of a mess- and it’s not just about planning. A Carbon Tracker report says that ‘the electricity grid is not fit for purpose because investments are not increasing in step with the rapid growth of wind power’. The report sa...