Renew Extra Weekly

The new Labour government has been quite active in its first phase of office, amongst other things with its flagship Great British Energy programme, formally launched in July . It will be given £8.3bn of public money over the course of the next parliament to invest in green energy technologies and projects- and jobs.  Crucially it will partner with The Crown Estate, which has a £16 bn portfolio of land & seabed assets. With its help, GBE aims to develop 20-30GW of new offshore wind farms by 2030, and will potentially bring in up to £60 bn in private investment to this end. The Crown Estate owns the majority of the seabed out to 12 nautical miles from the mainland and will lease the land on which wind farms can be built. The new agreement is only for projects around England & Wales, but Labour is also in discussions with the Scottish government & Crown Estate Scotland on support for local projects. That’s pretty vital since GBE is to be based in Scotland.   GBE will focus

 Much of China’s best wind resource and some of its largest solar capacity is in the wrong place, the North and West - far from most large industrial and population centres. It’s taking time to deal with the resultant regional power imbalances when using these locally variable sources, which can lead to local renewable curtailment- the wasteful dumping of power that can’t be got to users. The context is very different in the UK, but curtailment is also an issue, and the solutions being developed seem similar, although with some different planning issues emerging. In China, oddly given its centralised state, there does not seem to be enough regulatory planning, in the UK arguably there is too much, slowing down progress.   In an interesting review of the situation in China, relayed by OilPrice.com,  Zero Hedge says ‘ the government aims to reduce curtailment through increased long-distance transmission links and better coordination of generation plans across provinces’,  with, in addit

‘Solar will very shortly overtake every other type of electricity generation and together with batteries, will electrify everything, everywhere’ says the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)  in a new report on the cleantech revolution. Certainly renewables generation is now very cheap and solar PV deployment is doubling every 2-3 years, while battery storage, for backup, is doubling every year.  Wind is also doing well around the world, with offshore wind leading in some locations, as I reported in an earlier post , and some new major projects going ahead.    Overall, RMI say that ‘clean technologies will continue to follow S-curves, cascading across sectors and geographies,’ with China, the world’s largest energy consumer, in the lead.  It explains that ‘China, lacks oil and gas, and cleantech is a path to leadership, clean air, and zero emissions’. And so it will ‘continue to deploy cleantech rapidly’. So it sees China as ‘the pivot nation in the transition away from foss

Labour won a stunning election victory, even if radical changes do not seem likely, with Starmer talking about ‘stability and moderation’ on the steps of No 10.  Reactions from green power interests were mostly very favourable , some even euphoric , with for example  Octopus Energy founder Greg Jackson saying ‘The results look clear – voters have rejected anti net zero rhetoric and chosen cheaper, cleaner, more secure energy. This looks like a landslide for a green economy’,  while Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director Areeba Hamid said: ‘This landslide victory has buried Sunak’s divisive anti-green agenda once ...Voters have resoundingly rejected his climate rollbacks and elected a party with a proper plan to turbocharge cheap, clean, renewable energy – promising to slash emissions, lower bills and deliver hundreds of thousands of new green jobs.’ So what does it mean now in terms of green energy? In it’s Election Manifesto Labour said that ‘to deliver our clean power mission’, it wo