We have a new energy crisis, and EFFICIENCY is the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest and fastest way to address it.
| Energy efficiency’s time may have come. Amory Lovins is arguing for the mass insulation of buildings alongside a vast acceleration of renewables. “We should crank [them] up with wartime urgency. There should be far more emphasis on efficiency,” he says. He sees Vladimir Putin’s war inUkraine as an outrage, but possibly also a step towards solving the climatecrisis and a way to save trillions of dollars. “He has managed to bring about all the outcomes that he most feared, but he may inadvertently have put the energy transition and climate solutions into a higher gear. He demolishes the technology with statistics. “In 2020 the world added 0.4 gigawatts more nuclear capacity than it retired, whilst the world added 278 gigawatts of renewables – that’s a 782-fold greater capacity. Renewables swelled supply and displaced carbon as much every 38 hours as nuclear did all year. Where nuclear is cheap, renewables are cheaper still and efficiency is cheaper than that. There is no new type or size or fuel cycle of reactor that will change this. Do the maths. It is game over.” “Putin’s war is being financed by those who buy Russian fossil fuels. In the first two weeks the west has paid €8bn to Russia. We have a new energy crisis, and efficiency is the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest and fastest way to address it,” he says. Guardian 26th March 2022https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/26/amory-lovins-energy-efficiency-interview-cheapest-safest-cleanest-crisis |
UK does NOT need more nuclear power. Electricity demand has fallen
| Andrew Warren: In seeking justification for “rigging” the UK electricity market in favour of more nuclear power, It is beingcategorically argued that electricity demand is expected to rise over the next decade (“Johnson in ‘gung ho’ push for more nuclear power as energy crisis bites”, Report, March 21). Strangely enough, that was precisely the reason given back in 2006, when the then Labour government first committed to a “family” of further nuclear power stations. Based on the official forecasts issued in 2006, we should by now be consuming at least 15 per cent more electricity than we were then. But we are not. Right now, UK electricity consumption has in fact gone down by over 15 per cent since 2006. In other words, all that expectation of demand growth which was used to justify new nuclear power stations was grossly exaggerated, in practice by over 30 per cent. In the interim, no new nuclear power stations have been added to the system. The system hasn’t collapsed, and it’s also far less carbon intensive. Surely, we aren’t getting fooled again by the same spurious rhetoric about endless consumption growth? In that immortal phrase of the 1970s: “Save it. You know it makes sense”. FT 24th March 2022https://www.ft.com/content/41942796-1da4-469a-af7c-a331673ae494 |
In UK, some welcome news, in Government support for energy saving
Welcome green tax cuts struggled to counter the sense of a Chancellor that
does not fully understand the scale of the interlocking environmental, cost
of living, and security crises the UK is facing. First, the good news,
because we could certainly do with some. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s decision
to make the scrapping of VAT on energy-saving materials one of the central
planks of his Spring Statement is hugely welcome news. The fact
energy-saving materials has been defined to include clean technologies such
as solar panels and heat pumps, as well as insulation is similarly welcome.
And the decision to extend this tax cut for at least five years, giving
installers and manufacturers a clear signal that demand is likely to soar
and they should rapidly scale up capacity accordingly, is arguably most
welcome news of all. In addition, the doubling of the support fund for
Local Authorities to £1bn to help households in fuel poverty is also
undoubtedly welcome, even if it smacks a little of providing two buckets,
rather than one, to help tackle a forest fire. There was no grand vision
for driving sustainable growth, insulating the UK from surging global
fossil fuel prices, or helping people manage the transition to a net zero
emission economy. There was little sense of the UK’s place in an
increasingly dangerous world and how it could become a trailblazer for the
shift away from hydrocarbons that can help defang petrostate autocracies.
Most surprisingly of all, there was far too little to help the millions of
households that through no fault of their own are facing the looming shadow
of genuine poverty. It was, just like Sunak’s eve of COP26 Budget, a
significant opportunity missed.
Business Green 23rd March 2022
https://www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/4047134/spring-statement-bad-deeply-worrying
 | ReplyForward |
Welcome green tax cuts struggled to counter the sense of a Chancellor that
does not fully understand the scale of the interlocking environmental, cost
of living, and security crises the UK is facing.
First, the good news,
because we could certainly do with some. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s decision
to make the scrapping of VAT on energy-saving materials one of the central
planks of his Spring Statement is hugely welcome news.
The fact energy-saving materials has been defined to include clean technologies such
as solar panels and heat pumps, as well as insulation is similarly welcome.
And the decision to extend this tax cut for at least five years, giving
installers and manufacturers a clear signal that demand is likely to soar
and they should rapidly scale up capacity accordingly, is arguably most
welcome news of all.
In addition, the doubling of the support fund for
Local Authorities to £1bn to help households in fuel poverty is also
undoubtedly welcome, even if it smacks a little of providing two buckets,
rather than one, to help tackle a forest fire.
There was no grand vision
for driving sustainable growth, insulating the UK from surging global
fossil fuel prices, or helping people manage the transition to a net zero
emission economy. There was little sense of the UK’s place in an
increasingly dangerous world and how it could become a trailblazer for the
shift away from hydrocarbons that can help defang petrostate autocracies.
Most surprisingly of all, there was far too little to help the millions of
households that through no fault of their own are facing the looming shadow
of genuine poverty. It was, just like Sunak’s eve of COP26 Budget, a
significant opportunity missed.
Business Green 23rd March 2022
https://www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/4047134/spring-statement-bad-deeply-worrying
Energy efficiency and renewables – faster, safer, than nuclear power, to move away from Russian fuel, and combat climate change.
A recent paper by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change says reducing
our oil and gas consumption could be an important tool to help Europe
through the medium-term challenge of moving away from Russian energy.
There is a need to address energy demand now, according to Prof Nick Eyre,
director of the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions at Oxford
University, both as a result of the Ukraine crisis and to tackle climate
change.
Reducing demand and decarbonising our energy systems is something
we should be doing anyway for climate reasons, said Eyre, in order to meet
our targets for net zero. “This energy security and price crisis is
another prompt to do this,” he said. “It will be expensive – but a
windfall tax on companies who, at best, have had a pretty dubious
relationship with Russia, would help pay for it.”
Eyre said collective
action was needed, driven by government, who should bring forward immediate
detailed policies on decarbonising domestic heating in the UK. Domestic
heating produces about 14% of UK emissions, and decarbonising the way homes
are heated – meaning more efficient homes and the electrification of most
heating systems – would cost an estimated £200bn over the next 30 years,
according to the Institute for Government. Between now and 2050, emissions
from residential buildings need to fall to zero at a rate of 3.4% a year
based on current emission levels, according to the Department for Business,
Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Eyre believes any new energy supply policy
– expected to be announced by Boris Johnson in the coming days – will
make no sense if it does not include energy reduction measures and the
bringing forward of detailed plans to decarbonise our homes.
“If it’s
all about building nuclear power stations, this would take 10 years, so
it’s not a very sensible strategy,” said Eyre. “Energy efficiency and
renewable energy can provide what we need more quickly and less
dangerously.” Molly Scott Cato, former Green MEP and professor of
economics at the University of Roehampton, says the UK government should
launch a massive, nationwide, and publicly funded home insulation programme
backed up by information campaigns about how to use energy efficiently,
including reducing the thermostat settings on central heating systems and
introducing a 55mph speed limit on the national road network to cut energy
demand.
Guardian 23rd March 2022
The energy crisis is now, new nuclear will be (at least) twenty years too late – UK’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA)
The energy crisis is now, new nuclear will be (at least) twenty years too late
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities were dismayed to hear that the door of Number 10 will today once more be held open for guests from the nuclear power industry as Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosts a roundtable with prospective commercial partners, ahead of a new energy statement later this week.
Following Johnson’s proclamation that he will look to ‘place big new bets on nuclear’ and with one cabinet member allegedly describing the Prime Minister as ‘really gung ho for nuclear’, the participants are likely to meet with a firm ally. Government resolve will also be bolstered by the publication last week by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy of a ‘roadmap’ to make sites, money and a pared-down regulatory environment available to the nuclear industry to enable the development of a further 15 Gigawatts of new nuclear generating capacity by 2035 and 30 GW by 2050.
The NFLA believes that this hyperbole ignores the reality that any new nuclear projects will take too long, cost too much and have too many uncertainties to provide a meaningful solution to the energy and climate crisis that Britain faces now.
“Despite the need to generate ‘more electricity more greenly’ now, the Prime Minister seems determined to ignore the obvious solution that would result from a far greater and more urgent investment in renewable technologies and is instead taking us once more along the increasingly well-trodden and costly road to no-where that is new nuclear”, said Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLA, in response to the news.
“Every pound spent on nuclear is a pound denied to renewables. New nuclear has a lamentable history of being delivered at far greater cost and far more slowly than was at first predicted. New nuclear plants take decades to deliver with Hinkley Point C currently estimated to cost at least £23 billion. Renewables have been proven to deliver electricity far more cheaply, far more quickly and far more safely than new nuclear ever can – and renewable energy comes without the additional eye-watering cost of decommissioning nuclear plants and managing the legacy of radioactive waste for millennia that comes with it.”
The NFLA would like the government to change tack and look to harness natural energy sources to generate power to meet our needs, whilst saving our environment.
“The irony is that we already have the solutions to our energy and climate crisis to hand. When you live in a country that is surrounded by seas and has unpredictable weather it is surely a far safer bet to invest in tidal energy, hydro power, solar panels and wind turbines to draw energy from Mother Nature. The NFLA believes this, combined with investment in innovative energy storage solutions and in retrofitting our cold and draughty homes to a far higher standard to reduce energy use, could meet Britain’s energy needs, reduce fuel bills, and safeguard our planet in the here-and-now, not the never-never.”
Ends//…For more information please contact Richard Outram, Secretary, NFLA Email Richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk / Mobile 07583 097793
No end in sight as the French nuclear industry reduces its output
There may be no end in sight for the European power crunch this year, even
after the winter season ends. Low nuclear power generation in France, a
major producer and exporter of nuclear-powered electricity in Europe, could
send power prices on the continent higher in the spring.
France gets more
than 70 percent of its total electricity from nuclear power generation and
is a major exporter of electricity, including to the UK. France’s EDF
stopped two nuclear power plants at the end of last year after finding a
fault at one during routine maintenance.
This brought the total number of
nuclear plants out of operation in December to four, which accounted for 13
percent of the current power availability in France.
Last week, EDF revised down both its 2022 and 2023 nuclear output estimates. As part of its
control program on the French nuclear fleet, EDF revised its 2022 nuclear
output estimate from 300 – 330 TWh to 295 – 315 TWh, the company said
on February 7.
Days later, EDF revised down its 2023 French nuclear output
estimate from 340 – 370 TWh to 300-330 TWh, to reflect a heavy industrial
program with 44 reactor outages for maintenance and inspection, including 6
ten-year inspections, plus 2 scheduled outages starting in 2022 that will
continue into 2023.
Another reason for the nuclear output downgrade is “the
continuation of the control and repair programme on the pipes potentially
affected by the stress corrosion phenomenon, which is still ongoing,” EDF
said.
Oil Price 17th Feb 2022
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) of the UK and Ireland call for truly green energy on old nuclear sites
NFLA endorses call for real green energy on former nuclear sites
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) of the UK and Ireland has called for renewable technologies to be used to produce ‘real green energy’ on land formerly occupied by now decommissioned nuclear power plants.
The NFLA was pleased to see the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the agency charged with making safe and clearing closed civil nuclear plants, committing itself in its latest draft Business Plan to being a ‘net (carbon) zero’ business, but disheartened by the lack of detail.
In its response to the consultation on the plan concluded today by the NDA, the NFLA hopes that ‘active consideration can be given to generating onsite power and heat to support decommissioning operations using renewable technologies.
Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, said:
“We are surprised that the NDA has not picked up on the obvious. The land formerly occupied by nuclear power plants, whilst not being so attractive for residential, leisure or office developments, has great potential to be the location for solar farms, wind turbines and ‘green’ hydrogen. Or, where these plants are located by the sea, even to support offshore generation through being a support base for wind farms and tidal schemes. By their nature, nuclear plants are also linked to the electricity grid. Why not use their geographical situation and infrastructure for ‘real green’ energy generation?”
In its draft Business Plan, the NDA has indicated that the following land on each of these redundant power plant sites has now been ‘de-designated’ from nuclear use: Berkeley – 11 hectares; Harwell – 23 hectares; Oldbury – 32 hectares; Winfrith – 10 hectares; and Capenhurst – 17 hectares, but over the next decade all of the UK’s remaining outdated Advanced Gas Cooled reactors will be closed and decommissioning will begin, a process that will take over 100 years.
Councillor Blackburn added: “Clearly NDA operatives will be on-site for a long-time so an investment in micro-generation schemes, such as roof-mounted solar, a solar farm or wind turbines, would pay for itself many fold. Not only would the NDA reap the dividend of generating renewable power to support decommissioning operations, but it would also reduce the agency’s carbon footprint. And as 1,043 hectares is expected to be eventually freed up, there is no reason that the agency could not become a net exporter of renewable energy to the National Grid.”
In its response, the NFLA references a community-owned renewable energy provider which has a 915 KW solar farm on a 1.6 hectare site, and points out that the Oldbury ‘de-designated land’ is 32 hectares, enough to theoretically host twenty such schemes. For more information please contact: Richard Outram, Secretary, NFLA email Richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk / mobile 07583 097793
Europe must get serious about energy conservation
Europe must get serious about renovating homes to ease energy crisis. Over
40% of EU gas Import Is used to heat buildings, and one-third of European
homes use gas to heat. Reducing energy demand and accelerating the use of
renewable energy through more insulated homes will help put Europe’s
energy dependence on a new foundation.
Brussels has already promised a “wave of innovation” as part of the EU Green Deal. Now is the time for
member states to start this in earnest. Shortly before the end of last
year, the European Commission proposed a new law to renovate the most
energy-hungry buildings prior to yet another EU summit discussing the
energy price crisis.
Approximately €18 trillion is available, including
€670 billion from the Recovery Fund, one-third of which is allocated to
climate change measures. Research Showing that people want to live in
energy-efficient homes, they expect the government to accelerate the
transition to more environmentally friendly buildings. We need to align
this political will and the desires of the people with the vision of
reliable financing of the warm and affordable homes we want to live in and
the laws and policies to make it happen.
FT 25th Jan 2022
https://www.ft.com/content/a0dab19e-1b76-49fa-90aa-4973c7ba7341
Local MP has vision for a non-nuclear future for Hunterston
LOCAL MP Patricia Gibson has spoken of her vision for a non-nuclear future
for Hunterston. The Westminster politician has thrown her weight behind a
call to develop a green energy plan for the site. She said: “The closure of
Hunterston B is the end of an era for North Ayrshire, regardless of
anyone’s views on nuclear power. “Jobs have been lost, with many more to
follow over the next eight years as the plant defuels and is then
decommissioned. “A plan to transition to new green energy generation at
this prime location must now be taken forward with a renewed sense of
urgency.
Largs & Millport News 24th Jan 2022
Transistion to genuinely clean energy has succeeded in many cases, including economically
Michael Grubb: Limiting climate change will require an unprecedented
global movement to make low-carbon technologies the norm. COP26 – the UN
climate conference held last November in Glasgow – showed that
unfortunately, the world is far from ready for such a movement.
Many leaders still assume that reducing emissions and growing their countries’
economies aren’t compatible goals. Yet in many places, transitions to
clean energy technologies have succeeded far beyond expectations.
Since 2010, wind power has grown from providing under 1% to providing 10% of
electricity in Brazil, and provided 15% of the EU’s electricity demand in
2019. Solar power – described as “the most expensive way to reduce
carbon emissions” as recently as 2014 – now costs 85% less than it did
a decade ago, increasingly making it the cheapest electricity in history.
And in India, affordable energy access programmes drove sales of
high-efficiency LED bulbs from just 3 million in 2012 to 670 million in
2018, with prices also falling by 85%.
These three technologies now offer
some of the cheapest ways to produce electricity or light across much of
the world. What’s crucial is that these transitions all involved
significant government action. Plus, most went ahead despite the fact that
in many cases, early economic calculations suggested that developing
renewables would be an especially expensive way to cut emissions.
Rather than relying on research and development to bring down costs through coming
up with new inventions – or leaving the market to do so on its own
through competition – governments used subsidies and public procurement
programmes (government commitments to buy a certain volume of a new
product) to keep costs down and boost uptake.
Historically, it’s been widely assumed that reducing emissions would mean damaging countries’
economies. And low-carbon transitions do, of course, involve social and
economic challenges. But well-designed policies – such as those used to
drive the revolutions in wind, solar and LEDs – have the potential to
create huge benefits for participating countries, not just for our climate.
If we want to solve climate change, we first need to transform our economic
thinking.
Renew Economy 20th Jan 2022
Australia continues to lead the world for solar installations.
Rooftop solar took a hit in 2021 with the industry growing a third less than expected thanks to lockdowns and supply chain disruptions, despite still showing strong growth overall. More than 3m households and small businesses across the country now have solar panel systems installed, with the milestone reached in November. According to registration data provided by solar consultancy company SunWiz, 3.24GW of new solar capacity was added across the country last year, representing 10% growth on the previous year.
These figures include small rooftop systems of less than 100MW registered by homeowners and small businesses, and do not include large, industrial-scale solar installations. Queensland now has the most installed capacity, with 4,483MW, closely followed by New South Wales (4,256MW) and Victoria (3,839MW). Australia continues to lead the world for solar installations with a total installed capacity of just under 17GW.
nationwide.
Guardian 19th Jan 2022
Germany’s admirable record in promoting renewable energy, as it leaves nuclear behind.
The nuclear shenanigans aren’t enough to take away Germany’s crown as a climate-forward country. The politics that sped up the nuclear phaseout also created room for a renewables boom. Starting with the Renewable Energy Sources Act in 2000, Germany’s energy policy, known as energiewende, created some of the most generous subsidies for solar power. ………..
Germany moved ahead with a plan to shut off nearly 50 per cent of its nuclear power plants, with the rest scheduled to close by the end of 2022. Some asked how a climate-forward country could lay waste to a source of zero-carbon power, [zero carbon? not so] especially when there’s a shortage of it. Others
pointed out that Germany’s renewables investments are for naught if it has to fill up the nuclear quota using dirty coal. Outrageous, right?
Not so fast, says Nikos Tsafos, an energy and climate analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s very easy to solve climate change if I’m not politically constrained.” Any sensible climate plan
requires that clean energy replaces dirty sources quickly, while at the same time efficiency measures cut the demand for energy overall.
That, in theory, would result in a smooth decline in emissions as laid out in scientific models. Reality, however, is anything but smooth. The transition will inevitably be shaped by human particularities.
The nuclear shenanigans aren’t enough to take away Germany’s crown as a climate-forward country. The politics that sped up the nuclear phaseout also created room for a renewables boom. Starting with the Renewable Energy Sources Act in 2000, Germany’s energy policy, known as energiewende, created some of the most generous subsidies for solar power. These came in the form of guaranteed prices (or feed-in tariffs) for generating solar power. German taxpayers paid billions of euros to support a new technology. The demand created giant solar companies, including many in China, that progressively made the technology cheaper (with additional support in the form of Chinese subsidies) and thus more accessible to the rest of the world.
Financial Post 11th Jan 2022
The desperate nuclear industry now looks to get its claws into electric cars.
US Nuclear January 2022 Shareholder Letter, US Nuclear Corp.Thu, January 13, 2022”……………………..Looking forward to electric cars and trucks: As a group Solar System Resources, Grapheton, and Four Point, with the encouragement of US Nuclear, were one of 20 EV innovators, judged and selected by ‘Charge On Innovation Challenge’ out of 350 of the best engineering companies in this global competition under the patronage of BHP, RioTinto, and Vale mining companies. Competing to electrify huge fleets of ultra-class mining trucks, our group proposed to develop a novel super-capacitor technology that would be used for powering and rapidly charging electric cars and trucks………’https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-nuclear-january-2022-shareholder-133000864.html
The European Association for Renewable Energie Eurosolar rejects inclusion of nuclear and natural in the EU taxonomy
The European Association for Renewable Energie Eurosolar rejects »any
elements of nuclear and natural gas supply in the EU taxonomy for
environmentally sustainable activities«. The taxonomy is a classification
system for sustainable economic activities which are due to receive
advantageous financing conditions under EU regulations.
The European
Commision has proposed to include nuclear and natural gas into the
taxonomy. Member states like Germany strongly protested or, like Luxembourg
and Austria, even announced to bring action against the Commission, while
others are decisively supporting the proposal.
Photon 10th Jan 2022
Hunterston nuclear power workers need a just transition to sustainable work. No more subsidies to the nuclear industry.
Workers are key to a just transition at the Hunterston nuclear plant,
which retires today, according to the Scottish Greens.
The nuclear sectorbhas used the occasion to call for more subsidies, despite the UK Government
already subsidising the sector and proposing to charge bill payers upfront
to pay for nuclear power stations that haven’t even been built yet, like
at Hinkley Point.
Commenting, Scottish Greens energy spokesperson Mark
Ruskell said: “Respect and thanks must go to the workers at Hunterston
who have kept our lights on over the decades and those who will continue
the important work of de-commissioning. “These communities deserve a just
transition away from an energy source that is expensive and neither clean
nor sustainable. The vast subsidies involved would be better spent
investing in modern renewable energy solutions that provide a long-term
future for workers and our planet.”
Scottish Greens 7th Jan 2021
https://greens.scot/news/greens-workers-key-to-hunterston-transition
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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