Renew Extra Weekly

The UK government has decided that the huge new 3.2 GW Sizewell C nuclear plant proposed by EDF for the Suffolk coast should go ahead . It will be costly- the estimated construction cost is now put at £38 billion, up from an earlier estimate of £20bn.  The UK government will be the largest shareholder, with a 44.9% stake, while EDF’s share has fallen to 12.5%. Centrica will take a 15% share, while La Caisse, a Canadian investment group, will hold 20% and investment manager Amber will take an initial 7.6% stake. UK power consumers will start paying a share of the construction costs under the ‘RAB’ Regulated Asset Base funding system as soon as building starts- presumably later this year. They and taxpayers may also end up facing any cost overruns due to delays.  As the BBC noted ‘The project will be funded with a mixture of equity and debt - £8.8bn in equity from the government and the other investors, and £36.6bn in debt that will be provided by the National Wealth Fund (NWF)...

 The latest Public Attitudes Tracker from the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero says UK public support for renewables is down from 87% in 2021 to 80% now, with opposition rising from 1 to 4%, with solar and wind loosing some support. Solar is at 86%, down from 88% last year, offshore wind is 80%, down from 83%, on shore wind is 73%, down from 77%. Only 37% say they’d be happy with an onshore wind farm nearby, down from 43%, while just 47% support local solar farms, down from 53%, with local opposition at 14%, up from 9%. Crucially, only 69% believe the renewables industry delivers economic benefits to the UK, down from 74%.  You might see that as a Farage effect, given that his Reform party is strongly anti-renewables and very critical of the Labour governments Net Zero policy -  a  political view now it seems shared by the Conservative party .  There does seem to have been more media coverage of views like this, with local opposition to solar farm...

A new study from the LUT University energy team in Finland assesses offshore wind power's techno-economic potential through hourly simulations & cost calculations, considering three different turbine spacings.  The results indicate ‘increasing economic potential at various cost thresholds, driven by declining floating turbine cost’, with regional variations depending on ‘water depth and distance to high-wind resources’.  However, turbine spacing in arrays is all important: ‘sparse installation density yields higher economic potential under 30 €/MWh due to reduced wake losses’. Wake interactions have recently become an important concern, since they reduce the amount of energy that can be captured by large wind arrays and tall turbines, with research  under way on this in the UK, and elsewhere.  For example, a Belgian study claims that one in five offshore wind farms in the North Sea could suffer from energy losses of 10% or more, in some cases up to 18%, over t...

 Nuclear energy provides reliable, baseload, low-carbon electricity that complements the variability of wind and solar’. That, boiled down, is the UK governments view, as relayed in a response by the Department of Energy Security and New Zero to a critique by Prof Steve Thomas and Paul Dorfman. Well, none if it holds up to examination. Low carbon? Not if you include uranium mining, waste handling and plant decommissioning. Baseload? A dodgy idea!  A Department of Energy minister had previously admitted that ‘although some power plants are referred to as baseload generators, there is no formal definition of this term’ and the Department ‘does not place requirements on generation from particular technologies’.  A key point is that nuclear plants are not that reliable- if nothing else, they have to be shut down occasionally for maintenance and refuelling. Add to that unplanned outages, and nuclear plants are not very sensible as backup - especially given their high capital ...