Renew Extra Weekly

 US President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs on imports looks likely to have major impacts on the world economy and also therefore on energy and climate issues - although it’s too soon to say exactly what they will be. However, some immediate judgements were made on energy by consultants Wood Mackenzie , who told The New York Times that a 25% tariff on imports could raise the cost of building onshore wind turbines by 10% and renewable energy overall by 7% and many of the tariffs exceed 25%. And MIT said that it was all bad news for climate transition tech.  That would seem doubly so  since, although evidently not widely appreciated,  the US levies  don’t  apply to fossil fuel products, coal, liquefied natural gas imports, crude oil (e.g. from Canada), and materials for making petrochemicals. And, also, interestingly, uranium and some nuclear materials imports. These energy exemptions are a big concession, but they are bad for renewables, although...

 Last year, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) asked the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to provide independent, expert advice on delivering clean power by 2030 . NESO’s pragmatic advice was that security of power supply could be provided if we maintain Britain’s fleet of gas power stations but reduce their use to no more than 5% of total generation. That’s quite impressive, given that it supplies around 30% now: renewables will have to ramp up dramatically- new nuclear can’t add much, if anything, by then. Writing in the new Departmental ‘Clean Energy Action Plan’ Chris Stark, Head of Clean Power 2030, says that target ‘clarifies the task: build the grid that Britain needs, overturning decades of delay; install clean sources of power at a pace never previously achieved; identify the energy mix needed for the 2030 power system and reorder the connection queue to achieve it; develop a flexible system that can accommodate and store Britain’s renewable reso...

Sizewell C will cost much too much and there are much better alternatives. So says a new plan by Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C and Colin Hines of the Green New Deal Group. They argue that ‘there is a clear political advantage from halting Sizewell C and redirecting the billions saved into making millions of homes more energy efficient, thus reducing fuel poverty’. They say this approach ‘will benefit every city, town, village and hamlet in Britain. It will generate long term, secure jobs, particularly for young people. It will be quick to implement, so by the next election new jobs and cheaper, warmer, healthier homes will have appeared in every constituency’ By contrast, they say ‘should Sizewell C go ahead, it is expected to cost around £40bn between now and when it opens, potentially around 2040: an average of £2.7bn per year for the next 15 years’. But, ‘deducting money already spent, if Sizewell is cancelled now, the public money saved by 2030 is £7.1bn, assuming (as seems lik...

 The International Energy Agency (IEA) is mostly pretty gloomy about energy trends in its new global energy review - although with some exceptions. It says that global energy demand grew by 2.2% in 2024 - faster than the average rate over the past decade. ‘The increase was led by the power sector as electricity demand surged by 4.3%, well above the 3.2% growth in global GDP, driven by record temperatures, electrification & digitalisation’. It says global electricity consumption ‘rose by nearly 1,100 TWh in 2024, more than twice the annual average increase over the past led by China, with more than half of the global increase in electricity demand’.  Globally ‘electricity use in buildings accounted for nearly 60% of overall growth in 2024’, while ‘the installed capacity of data centres globally increased by an estimated 20%, or around 15 GW, mostly in the United States and China’. And it says that ‘energy intensity improvements continued to slow in 2024. After improving at ...