Renew Extra Weekly

 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...

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 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...

 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...

 The annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report as usual looks in great detail at the state of play for nuclear, mostly still not doing too well, compared with renewables, mostly doing better, with the report looking extensively at that as well as the ups and downs of nuclear. The renewable challenge is after all very striking: for example, global solar electricity generation has increased by about 28%, with costs continuing to fall. And crucially, in April 2025, renewables exceeded nuclear power generation globally for the first time.  However, although construction costs and delays remain a big problem, the nuclear story is not entirely negative. Given reactor start-ups and closures in 2024, nuclear added 5.3 GW net, while operating capacity increased by 2% and electricity output by 2.9%. But given the overall growth of electricity use, the nuclear share of global power has fallen to 9%. Whereas renewables are expanding overall. And that is despite some recent financial pr...

 In a new report, the Britain Remade lobby group pushes nuclear strongly, as part of its ecomodernist growth-based future . It models different nuclear build costs and renewable price scenarios to assess long-term impacts on household energy bills.  But although it accepts that ‘renewables may have seen large price-falls over the last 15 years’ it says that ‘ at high penetrations costs linked to managing intermittency are high: Britain has added 40 GW since 2010 and 120 GW is forecast by 2030, yet balancing, curtailment, backup, and overbuild still add cost and leave gaps that require firm power’.  It is also not very happy about the local environmental impact of renewables, given their high land use compared with nuclear plants. Well yes, but the land on which renewable techs sit is not all lost to other uses and offshore wind farms use no land.  And the nuclear fuel cycle (from uranium mining through to eventual waste disposal) also involves land use.  The new...