Renew Extra Weekly

The Renewable Energy for the 21st Century group (REN21) produce invaluable annual overviews.  Their annual renewables review for 2021 reports that renewables generating capacity is still growing globally, with hydro still leading at 1,170GW, PV solar coming next at 760GW, while wind is at 743GW. In terms of output, renewables now supply around 27% of global electricity and about 11.2% of total global energy.  Renewable capacity is likely to continue to expand, given that costs are still falling. IRENA has noted that costs for electricity from utility-scale solar PV fell 85% in 2010-20 and, on the basis of its learning curve projections, it looks to continuing price falls for solar and to a lesser extent wind.  However, that may not translate into significantly increased renewable shares in the overall mix. REN21 says that ‘despite tremendous growth in some renewable energy sectors, the share of renewables has increased only moderately each year’, which is it says is ‘du...

A new green transition plan has emerged after a two-year consultation with citizens’ juries, business leaders and trade unions, by the IPPR-led cross-party Environmental Justice Commission, co-chaired by Green MP Caroline Lucas, former Tory MP Laura Sandys, and Labour MP/former environment secretary Hilary Benn. It says efforts to drive down carbon emissions should deliver an equitable ‘people’s dividend’ of improvements to lives, homes, jobs and transport.  It reviews the issues and options in detail, looking in particular at employment and location implications and it wants quite radical changes, with some headline catching budgetary demands. It calls for an extra £30 bn of public investment in a low-carbon economy each year until 2030; a £7.5bn green subsidy scheme promoting zero-carbon tech for home heating & insulation; redistribution of carbon tax revenues to the less well-off; free bus travel by 2025; and a right to retrain for workers in carbon-intensive industries....

National Grid ESO’s latest round in their Future Energy Scenarios (FES) series sees the UK reaching net zero carbon by 2050, with one scenario (‘Leading the Way’) achieving that by 2047. The UK can also achieve its legally-binding target of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035. But all this will only be possible if consumers embrace new ways of using energy, and it will require urgent policy decisions to drive immediate energy efficiency measures. In terms of the energy supply mix, the NG- Energy Systems Operator study says, depending on the scenario ‘between 34 GW and 77 GW of new wind and solar generation could be required to meet demand in 2030.  This could require as much as 13 GW of new electricity storage in 2030 to help balance periods of high and low renewable output.  6 GW of new flexible residential demand reduction is available in Leading the Way by 2030.’ In addition ‘by 2035, at least 2 TWh of hydrogen storage is required in net zero scenarios to prov...

In a white paper ‘Net-zero GB electricity: cost-optimal generation and storage mix’, published in June,  a team from Imperial College London projects a need for 108 GW of offshore wind by 2035, to achieve net-zero carbon electricity. That’s two and a half times the UK government’s target for 2030.  The report says that this finding ‘is robust to changes in the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) of offshore wind of ±£5/MWh on the Central case of £35/MWh’. As an alternative, the Imperial team looked at the option of building 10 GW more nuclear power and 18.5 GW more solar generation than is optimal in their Central case. That, it said, would ‘reduce the required build of offshore wind for 2035 by 24 GW, but increases the total cost of the system by about 3.3%.’  That’s a slightly odd way to look at it, but the Imperial College team seem convinced that offshore wind is the way ahead since everything else will be more expensive. Since it has a lower load factor than offshore wi...

‘There are many pathways to a zero carbon Britain, but speaking as someone who has seen first-hand how vested interests can divert or hamper progress, there are more than a few among the solutions being touted today. We wanted to see what a route to zero carbon would look like if you stripped all of that away.’ So says Juliet Davenport at the front of Good Energy’s new  Zero Carbon Britain study.  She says she wanted to develop ‘a pathway built on what we know works today - renewables. Leading to an energy system designed to work for the customers of the future, move away from a centralised system, installed by the historic government and big business approach. By asking questions seldom asked, we set out to challenge the energy industry.’  Quite a challenge then. Good Energy says that, in addition to ‘limits in modelling technique or computing power’ they believe that ‘current energy modelling has two main biases which we wanted to correct for in our work. These are: 1....

Nuclear power may not be very competitive as an electricity generation option, but a new UK National Nuclear Laboratory study looks at possible future roles for nuclear in providing not only electricity but also heat, hydrogen and synthetic fuels. On this basis, it says, the prospects look better. It has one net-zero carbon scenario with around 66GW of nuclear capacity installed by 2050, supplying a mix of heat, power and hydrogen. 13 GW of (light) water-cooled Small Modular Reactors (LWSMRs), run as co-gen/Combined Heat and Power units, supplies power and heat, for example feeding into local district heating (DH) networks, and 49 GW of Generation IV reactors supply power and hydrogen.  'Gen IV' is a catch-all category for all new large-scale nuclear designs, following on the from the various Gen III upgrades of standard large Pressurised Water /Boiling Water Reactors- the later all using conventional 'light' water, as opposed to the 'heavy' water isotropic vari...

As noted in an article in Regional Life , a local conservation e-magazine linked to a local anti nuclear group, the flat landscape of the Dengie peninsula in Essex is punctuated by a line of tall wind turbines, slowly turning and the massive grey-blue hulk of the former Bradwell ‘A’ nuclear power station. These two features it says graphically express the contrast between rise of renewable energy and the demise of nuclear power, the past and the future of electricity generation.   Renewable energy, mainly wind and solar, is rising on the back of rapidly falling costs. So much so that the International Energy Agency, which has in the past been rather guarded about their potential, has switched over to seeing them as the main way ahead, supplying 90% of global electric power by 2050.  That is actually quite conservative compared to some projections for the UK: renewables are supplying over 43% of UK power at present and the Renewable Energy Association says that reaching 10...