Renew Extra Weekly

An overview by Dave Elliott As I am just about to hit my 80th birthday, I felt that I could indulge in a little retrospective commentary on what I’ve been covering, in various formats, in the Renew news service over the years, since I started it as an OU-based Newsletter back in 1979 . You may recall that was when Margaret Thatcher took over as UK Prime Minister. In terms of power supply, the issues in the UK at the time were coal and nuclear, with the renewables only slowly getting recognised, and then only marginally.  43 years on and it’s mostly a different  story-  renewables have won pretty much across the board , coal is out, and gas maybe too soon, but nuclear is still with us, just about.  My focus as Renew’s editor has always been to support the progressive outsider options. So in terms of renewables, early on that meant pushing wind and solar at a time when both were seen as beyond the pale. For example, as I noted in my history of UK renewables book , a 1978 government Whit

Wind, solar and storage now look like the cheapest power mix for the UK, with a new report from the Royal Society looking to ‘200 GW of wind & solar capacity & 100 TWh of storage capacity’, by 2050, assuming 570 TWh/yr of national power demand. Their report sees renewables as well able to supply all UK power needs, but needing significant storage capacity to balance long lulls in renewable availability. For that, it backs Hydrogen, which it says ‘can be stored at scale in solution- mined salt caverns, for which GB has a much more than adequate potential, albeit not widely distributed’. In addition to large-scale storage, it notes that ‘some fast response storage is needed to regulate grid voltage and frequency’, with advanced batteries being an option, but it says ‘this function, which is costed assuming that it is provided by Li-ion batteries, takes little energy and has a negligible impact on other storage needs’. It says that Compressed air energy storage can help a bit, bu

The Conservative government has been cutting back on some green policies, with, for example, the date after which the sale of new petrol and diesel cars are banned being shifted from 2030 to 2035,  the energy efficiency task force being shut down and the Hydrogen levy being abandoned. These and other green policy changes will have impacts and they have attracted some strong reactions . Although the conservatives have nevertheless still maintained support for renewables, they have had problems with the deployment of heat pumps, and also planning issues with on shore wind and large solar farm, and even the much vaunted off-shore wind programme has gone a bit amiss .  So it is not surprising that Labour thinks it can take a lead in pushing green energy policies. Ed Miliband, shadow secretary of state of climate change and net zero, announced plans to double onshore wind, treble solar and quadruple offshore wind as part of his speech at the recent Labour Party conference- although these