Renew Extra Weekly

 US President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs on imports looks likely to have major impacts on the world economy and also therefore on energy and climate issues - although it’s too soon to say exactly what they will be. However, some immediate judgements were made on energy by consultants Wood Mackenzie , who told The New York Times that a 25% tariff on imports could raise the cost of building onshore wind turbines by 10% and renewable energy overall by 7% and many of the tariffs exceed 25%. And MIT said that it was all bad news for climate transition tech.  That would seem doubly so  since, although evidently not widely appreciated,  the US levies  don’t  apply to fossil fuel products, coal, liquefied natural gas imports, crude oil (e.g. from Canada), and materials for making petrochemicals. And, also, interestingly, uranium and some nuclear materials imports. These energy exemptions are a big concession, but they are bad for renewables, although...

 Last year, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) asked the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to provide independent, expert advice on delivering clean power by 2030 . NESO’s pragmatic advice was that security of power supply could be provided if we maintain Britain’s fleet of gas power stations but reduce their use to no more than 5% of total generation. That’s quite impressive, given that it supplies around 30% now: renewables will have to ramp up dramatically- new nuclear can’t add much, if anything, by then. Writing in the new Departmental ‘Clean Energy Action Plan’ Chris Stark, Head of Clean Power 2030, says that target ‘clarifies the task: build the grid that Britain needs, overturning decades of delay; install clean sources of power at a pace never previously achieved; identify the energy mix needed for the 2030 power system and reorder the connection queue to achieve it; develop a flexible system that can accommodate and store Britain’s renewable reso...

Sizewell C will cost much too much and there are much better alternatives. So says a new plan by Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C and Colin Hines of the Green New Deal Group. They argue that ‘there is a clear political advantage from halting Sizewell C and redirecting the billions saved into making millions of homes more energy efficient, thus reducing fuel poverty’. They say this approach ‘will benefit every city, town, village and hamlet in Britain. It will generate long term, secure jobs, particularly for young people. It will be quick to implement, so by the next election new jobs and cheaper, warmer, healthier homes will have appeared in every constituency’ By contrast, they say ‘should Sizewell C go ahead, it is expected to cost around £40bn between now and when it opens, potentially around 2040: an average of £2.7bn per year for the next 15 years’. But, ‘deducting money already spent, if Sizewell is cancelled now, the public money saved by 2030 is £7.1bn, assuming (as seems lik...

 The International Energy Agency (IEA) is mostly pretty gloomy about energy trends in its new global energy review - although with some exceptions. It says that global energy demand grew by 2.2% in 2024 - faster than the average rate over the past decade. ‘The increase was led by the power sector as electricity demand surged by 4.3%, well above the 3.2% growth in global GDP, driven by record temperatures, electrification & digitalisation’. It says global electricity consumption ‘rose by nearly 1,100 TWh in 2024, more than twice the annual average increase over the past led by China, with more than half of the global increase in electricity demand’.  Globally ‘electricity use in buildings accounted for nearly 60% of overall growth in 2024’, while ‘the installed capacity of data centres globally increased by an estimated 20%, or around 15 GW, mostly in the United States and China’. And it says that ‘energy intensity improvements continued to slow in 2024. After improving at ...

Net Zero Carbon by 2050 is the UK target, but the Tory and Reform party views on it now seem similar.  It’s ‘impossible’ says Tory Leader Badenoch: ‘Net-zero cannot be achieved without a significant drop in our living standards, or worse, by bankrupting us.’ And whole thing must be scrapped, says Reform’s Rice - to save money.  But Labour says its ‘imperative’. And, like the REA , it says it is vital - for green growth.   So, what will happen now? Carbon Brief  suggest getting to net zero will cut costs and improve security, but not everyone is convinced that it makes sense. For example, Badenoch said that, even if the UK were to reach net-zero, global emissions would not be guaranteed to reach net-zero overall. That’s obvious enough, the UK is only one country, but as Carbon Brief noted, 142 countries, representing more than 80% of the world’s population, are now covered by net-zero targets. However, let’s assume for the moment that the UK decides to back ou...

With the future looking a bit grim of late, what with Trump and Farage’s hostility to most things green , coupled with BP’s retreat to fossil fuel, I thought I would look at some possible better energy futures. There is no shortage of well-developed technical scenarios, offering quantitative data on practical options, but that can be a bit dull, and rather than go back over them, I thought that I would try a different, possibly more subjective, approach, looking at some normative imaginative scenarios. Maybe they would be more convincing/motivating? For what it’s worth, here is what, a bit idiosyncratically, I found via a web search.  Being positive and perhaps whimsical, might we hope for some form of solar punk utopia? Solar punk is a newish movement that has followed on from the earlier ‘retro-futuristic’ steam punk movement, which, as an AI definition on the web has it, involved futures ‘based on the technology and aesthetic of the past, specifically the Victorian era with its...

 The Labour government has produced a Planning and Infrastructure Bill  which aims to streamline approvals for major energy projects, including offshore wind, solar, hydrogen, and carbon capture- and also nuclear. A new ‘first ready, first connected’ system will replace the ‘first come, first served’ approach, which meant  speculative projects could block the queue while viable project might be forced to wait. In addition, residents living within 500 meters of new electricity pylons will get up to £2,500 off their energy bills over ten years. And developers will also be required to provide local benefits , such as funding for local sports clubs, educational programmes and leisure facilities, with communities getting £200,000/km  overhead electricity cable & £530,000 per substation. These ideas seemed to be welcomed . However there has been no decision yet on what some might see as a linked issue- locational pricing, the idea that power prices should reflect loca...