Renew Extra Weekly

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Milband’s energy policies ‘flawed’

Oxford academic Prof. Sir Dieter Helm has attacked Ed Milband’s new energy policy as flawed, in a prominent article in the Times Comment section (8th Nov p.34-35). Far from being ‘nine times cheaper than gas’ as he says Miliband has claimed, Helm says that renewables are ‘intermittent, low-energy-density, small scale and geographically dispersed’, which means ‘lots of new transmission and distribution infrastructure, batteries and other long duration storage. And lots of back-up gas’. For example, he says, ‘we now need roughly 120GW of installed generation capacity to meet the same demand that 60GW met pre-renewables- twice the transmission lines and pylons and all the back-up batteries and storage too. All of these are additional costs’. He also says that, by contrast, far from being costly and volatile, as Miliband claims, fossil gas in now getting cheaper- including LNG from the USA. It’s certainly true that fossil gas is not as expensive as it was at o...

New UK energy plans is mostly good…

There may be political support problems ahead for UK green energy, as I noted in my last post. Reform UK and the Tories want to do away with the green subsides and the Net Zero policy. The Tony Blair Institute also seems to have some similar ideas – and has been pushing nuclear and fossil gas CCS instead. So does the new ‘ Britain Remade ’ report. And Net Zero Watch has called for the expansion of renewables to be halted. This is perhaps not surprising given that, over the past few years, the government has introduced quite a range of taxes, subsidies and surcharges aiming to promote renewables, most notably of late Feed in Tariffs, the Renewable Obligation and the CfD system. Some policies are more indirect, and are designed to increase the cost of using fossil fuels by setting a price for carbon emissions. But not everyone is keen on carbon trading, or on some of the mechanisms that have been introduced to support it. For example, the Centre for British Progress r...

Clean power, jobs & UK energy bills

It’s the energy policy issue of the decade. Power bills have risen and renewables have expanded, so the link is obvious to the likes of Reform UK. But Energy Secretary Edward Miliband says the only way to cut bills is to push green technology. Well they do cost, but he says less overall than fossil fuel. As he noted, generation costs have already fallen ‘Strike prices for solar and onshore wind in our last auction, AR6, were nearly 50% cheaper than the levelised cost estimate to build and operate a new gas plant. Offshore wind, despite global cost pressures, was also cheaper than new gas.’ He admitted that there were other options but said ‘we won’t buy at any price and if specific technologies aren’t competitive, we will look elsewhere’. Well that’s not what seems to have happened with nuclear, judging by the rising cost of Hinkley and the total nuclear spend, with Jonathon Porritt claiming that the Energy Department spent 60% its £8.6bn 2024-2...

Renewables – an unstoppable revolution?

More than half of the EU’s electricity in the second quarter of 2025 came from renewable energy, with solar being the main source of electricity in the European Union for the first time in history in June, then supplying 22% of the electricity generated . According to Eurostat, the largest EU green power contributor overall was Denmark, with 94.7% share of renewables in net electricity generated, followed by Latvia (93.4%) and Austria (91.8%). So, if the others can follow, as they seem likely to do, the EU is on the way to having a fully sustainable power supply, the UK too, with some of that power being increasingly used for heat and transport - in heat pumps and EVs. So one way or another, the Europe looks good for green energy . And overall, with some exceptions, the world isn’t doing too bad, in terms of power supply, with renewables overtaking coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year. That is despite electricity deman...

Solar farms - like them?

Solar farms are spreading across the UK- and elsewhere. One reason is that installing large solar arrays on land is cheaper/MW than installing a few cells on roof tops. But it means there is less room for food growing. And that has become a politically contentious issue. However, it’s possible to limit the problem by adjusting solar array layouts e.g. putting the cells on supports to allow plants to grow or animals to graze underneath- the so called agrisolar approach. It’s also possible to use waste land or warehouse roofs. But so far it seems that most large solar projects around the UK, supplying over 5% of UK power, are using prime agricultural land - with some farmers evidently finding it more profitable to rent fields out to solar developers than to grow food or fodder, or farm livestock. Some local people cynically say it’s a way to keep housing developers at bay. But some others object. It’s not all bad news though. Solar farms can enhance wild life flor...

A green future and green jobs - not war

The climate issue suggests that we need to expand renewable energy and energy saving as fast as possible, so as to cut carbon emissions. However, given how things are going internationally, the defence sector may be expanded instead- it is being presented increasingly as being urgent for national survival. For some that is very worrying- especially given that more money (£15bn in the UK) is also being allocated for nuclear weapons development. What sort of survival might that lead to, if the worst come to the worst and deterrence doesn’t work? While not necessarily wanting to dispense with defence or the military, not everyone is in agreement with the rush to build more weapons. Though there may be exceptions, given a choice, most people in industry would no doubt prefer to work on something that adds value to life rather than destroys it. So it is interesting to see that the UK Trades Union Congress this year decided to back a ‘Wages not Weapons’ motion. T...