Renew Extra Weekly

 In a key new report entitled ‘24 / 7 Renewables: the economics of firm solar and wind’, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says that hybrid renewables plus battery systems can deliver firm power at lower costs than fossil fuels when combined to provide ‘round-the-clock’ electricity supply. For example, it says the costs of ‘firm levelised supply’ for solar projects combined with storage now range from $54-82 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in most regions, compared to $70–85 per MWh for new coal in China and $100 per MWh for new gas globally. The IRENA report comes at a time when the conventional metric for comparing power cost, the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE), has come under attack for ignoring the full cost of using variable renewables. For example, the LSE Grantham Institute says LCOE doesn’t measure the full system costs of balancing variable renewable and some see this as undermining the case for renewables. IRENA accepts that ‘plant level metrics such as LCOE mu...

Lots of UK oil and gas jobs are disappearing. Will enough green jobs emerged to replace them? It is a big local issue in Scotland in particular. The UK government’s view is that moving from oil and gas to green energy will cut emissions and make the economy, and energy prices, more stable. But not everyone agrees. For example, Reform UK plans to gut existing climate & green policies and expand gas and oil drilling. Though it’s been claimed that this would cause 500,000 job losses, rising to more than 1.4 million people put out of work by 2040, according to new research for Transition Economics. However, it not at all clear if the drive to clean energy as currently planned will be sufficient to avoid net job losses. So some people could face real problems . Certainly, there will be a massive need for retraining- not least to avoid skill gaps opening up in the short term, as Terry Cook and I argued in a recent paper .  There are some good plans. Last year, the government announc...

 ‘At the moment, when gas prices are high, we end up paying more for our electricity, even though the cost of producing it doesn’t change. And so myself and Ed Miliband are now working to come up with a practical way that we can delink those prices’. So said Chancellor  Rachel Reeves . And a few days later,  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband doubled down on net zero with a new plan to face up to fuel prices rises and energy uncertainty, saying that in ‘the era of clean energy, security must come of age’.  In his new plan , the older ‘legacy’ renewables with Renewable Obligation (RO) contracts will have to move to fixed price Contract for a Difference (CfD) arrangements, to escape paying the Energy Generation Levy (EGL), the already existing  ‘windfall tax’ on excess  power market profits, which will be increased from 45% to 55% at peak gas price times. The extra funds raised by this will be used to cut household power bills. About 30% of renewable projects are ...