Renew Extra Weekly

Renewable’s generation share reached 50.8% of UK electricity in the period Dec-Feb., a 12% rise, mostly due to wind, with offshore wind plants, now at 15GW, supplying 47TWh , the equivalent of half the power used by UK households last year. It is also creating a lot jobs, with, it is claimed, 70,000 new offshore-wind jobs needing to be filled by 2030, according to the Offshore Wind Industry Council.  However, a green skills gap is said to be opening up for green energy generally, with the industry suggesting that there was a gap of around 200,000 workers, challenging its ability to meet net zero targets. Energy Live News said that the problem was that, as well as competing with each other for talent, the various renewables industry projects were competing with other sectors for the same highly sought-after skills. Clearly something has to be done: ‘Without an upskilled workforce, there will be no energy transition. The increasing ambitions mean that demand for workers is rising f...

Renew started up in 1979 as the bimonthly renewable energy newsletter of NATTA, the OU-based Network for Alternative Technology & Technology Assessment which I had set up in 1976.  It was backed by the OU Alternative Technology Group (ATG), which Godfrey Boyle had then just set up, and which, in 1986, became the Energy and Environment Research Unit (EERU), still under his leadership.  I was a member of both. In this extended  post I look back at what happened next.  EERU prospered, producing some innovative courses and info packs and carrying out pioneering research. Indeed Godfrey Bevan, at one stage the civil servant head of the government’s renewable energy team, commented ‘I think the country owes a great debt to the ATG/EERU as pioneers in the field, which it will never even know about.’ Renew also thrived, with up 500 NATTA subscribers, until it went electronic (and free), as Renew on line, in 2008. I have continued with it independently, after I retired f...

In this uncompromisingly radical Pluto book entitled Energy Revolutions , with the graphic subtitle Profiteering versus democracy , Dr David Toke argues that the energy crisis is an inevitable result of an industry run by and for corporate profit. He says ‘energy policy was never meant to favour sustainability or energy security – for decades, it has been shaped by corporate interests while hampering renewable alternatives. Now we suffer the cascading consequences’. He says there is an urgent need to radically increase state intervention, including public ownership, and deploy ‘energy democracy’ for the public interest.              However, he is not against market competition as such- it can speed change and help reduce costs. Thus, in his account of the early days of renewables, he says that, as a result of the adoption of Feed In Tariffs in the late 2000’s in Germany and elsewhere, markets were created that ‘meant that the wind and solar industri...

 In a Paris Agreement Compatible (PAC) scenario for Europe, initially developed in 2020 and now being upgraded , the Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe and the European Environmental Bureau outline a pathway to 1 00% renewables in all sectors , which results in the phase-out of coal by 2030, fossil gas by 2035 and oil products by 2040. And the PAC scenario also has no remaining nuclear output in any EU country by 2040, except France, the worst case although, even there, its role ends soon after 2040.             As EEB’s new updated report on the nuclear phase out notes, in the PAC scenario, ‘105 GW of renewable electricity generation are added in the EU on an annual basis from 2023 onwards, assuming constant deployment rates. The additions come mainly from new and re-powered wind and solar PV capacity, with a supporting role for hydro, solar thermal, geothermal and bioenergy. Flexibility options, such as demand side response, storage technologie...

The new Energy System Catapult study of Net Zero energy technology options sees electrification as a critical part of UK energy system decarbonisation. It has final energy consumption across its scenarios ranging from 525TWh/yr to 619TWh/yr by 2050- double the size of UK power today. But it says low carbon technologies can meet demand by 2050- with their contribution being a significant increase on earlier iterations of its analysis, reflecting they say ‘greater confidence in clean power technologies’ . And it’s also seen as being affordable: the report puts the cost of the transition within 1% of GDP by 2050’.  However, it says that big changes have to be made, with it now being clearer which options to focus on. It says it will be essential to accelerate the deployment of key mature technologies such as offshore wind and solar, large-scale nuclear, heat nets and the electrification of home heating via heat pumps. In parallel it says the UK needs an accelerated programme of innov...

Wind and solar are doing very well around the world as costs fall , and look like doing even better, with, for example, a recent study suggesting that, even in the relatively highly populated UK, there are environmentally appropriate sites available for a very significant expansion of on shore wind and solar.   The study by Exeter University for Friends of the Earth says that 130 TWh could come from PV solar and 96 TWh from onshore wind, compared with 17 TWh at present- a 13 times increase. And it would only need 3% of UK land area.  Of course that’s in addition to large inputs from offshore wind, and also wave and tidal projects. So the overall potential is very large and siting constraints need not be a major issue. And as green energy technology economics continues to improve , the UK, along with most other countries, looks likely to continue to move in rapidly in that direction.    However, with technology advance and success there can also be problems, especial...

Until recently, the UK government has always said that civil and military nuclear technologies were separate things, for example in response to claims that expansion of civil nuclear power capacity could lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons making capacity. But, as researchers at the University of Sussex have relentlessly catalogued , there seems to have been a change of view underway, culminating formally in March in a new policy document from No. 10 Downing Street. Entitled ‘Building the Nuclear Workforce of Tomorrow’ it claims that ‘domestic [civil] nuclear capability is vital to our national defence and energy security, underpinning our nuclear deterrent and securing cheaper, more reliable energy for UK consumers’.  So they are intertwined and mutually beneficial- we need both! UK Prime Minister Sunak says that ‘in a more dangerous and contested world, the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever’ and that civil nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidot...