Renew On Line (UK) 29a

Extracts from the Jan-Feb 2001 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

Renew On-Line 29a

'Since we started producing Renew On-Line from issue 100 of RENEW, the numbering system for Renew On Line is awkward- e.g ROL 29 covered RENEW 128. To straighten that out we have labelled the current ROL as ROL29a rather than ROL 30. Thereafter, things will look a bit neater- ROL 30 will cover Renew 130 and so on. It's a bit like the problem of the millennium- which really starts this January! But at least this fix will sort it!'

The full 32 page journal can be obtained on subscription.
The extracts here only represent about 25% of it.

1. Renewables Obligated

Tony Blairs ‘Richer and Greener’ speech to the CBI -Green Alliance environmental policy conference last Oct promised a new deal on the environment. "it is time to re-awaken the environmental challenge as part of the core of British and international politics". And he backed this up with some extra spending on, amongst other things, renewables - including £50m for offshore wind and energy crops and £13m for the DTI’s renewable programme: see details later. It’s welcome news...MORE

2. Labours Green Revolution

Prefiguring Tony Blairs epic ‘Richer and Greener’ speech, DTI Minister Stephen Byers launched some new elements of what he called the UK’s ‘green revolution’ in a keynote speech to the Greenpeace annual business conference. He announced a series of new measures to help businesses to take advantage of the ‘green revolution’. These included the DTI’s new Sustainable Development Strategy, the refinement of the details of Renewables Obligation (see earlier) and the expansion of the DTI's Small Business Service and network of Business Links, which will provide extra to help companies with new green technologies...MORE

3. Will DTI plans come unstuck?

Despite the very welcome new funding allocations for offshore wind and energy crops, the attainment of the Governments target of obtaining 10% of UK electricity from renewable sources by around 2010 still seems uncertain. Currently, insiders are talking of, at best, only getting around 6.5% by 2010. That's only just over double the present level, which includes the existing hydro plants. It seems likely that we’ll need other renewables as well to reach the target...MORE

4. Scrabble for Green Power

For the moment the easiest way for consumers to help push the process of renewable capacity building on seems to be for them to contract with one of the green power retail companies - the Regional Electricity Companies (REC's) and independent suppliers like Unit(e) and the Renewable Energy Company. As we've noted before (see Renew 128), the problem there is that although demand is rising, with perhaps 20,000 consumers having already signed up, at the moment there is a shortage of sufficient cheap renewable capacity to meet further expansion...MORE

5. Micropower enthusiasm spreads

The last few months have seen the idea of switching over to small scale domestic electricity production catching the imagination of the media, just as the parallel idea of small scale generation by and for companies has been attracting interest from the business community. The launch last June of ABB’s new micropower programme (see Renew 127) and its radical new Windformer wind turbine (see our Technology section), coupled with several other initiatives in this field, set the scene for a flurry of reports and press commentary...MORE

6. Welsh Tidal Power

Tidal Electric, the US tidal power development company, has proposed two offshore tidal schemes for Wales - involving the construction of bounded tidal reservoirs to trap high tides. The largest would be at Rhyl off the N Wales coast and would have a generating capacity of 400MW. A smaller 30MW project is also being considered for off the coast near Swansea. ...MORE

7. Renewables Summit

The Renewable Summit 2000 conference on the ‘Commercial Opportunities in the Generation of Renewable’ held in London last Oct. provided a venue for a comparison of the state of play for a wide range of renewables and renewable related policies around the world- including various systems for trading green power. The latter included a novel internet based trading system, the California based Automated Power Exchange: see http://www.apx.com. ..MORE

8. UK Funding for New Renewables

As we noted in the Stop Press sent out with Renew 128, last Oct., in his ‘Richer and Greener’ policy speech, the Prime Minister announced that £150 million of New Opportunities Funding (NOF) will be available to help the environment, with £50m allocated to offshore wind and wood-fired and other energy crop power generation. In addition, £13m of the £50m allocated for energy efficiency measures from the Climate Change Levy will go to the DTI for work on renewbles, and £4m for MAFF and energy crops. ..MORE

9. Greenpeace Bans the Burn

Last October, Greenpeace activists invaded the Edmonton waste combustion plant in North London - the UK’s biggest rubbish incinerator plant, and one of the flagships of the energy from waste concept. 50 of them blocked the main entrance to stop rubbish trucks delivering their loads, and a team of climbers occupied key areas of the plant, including the 100 metre chimney. They were protesting against plans to expand it, and claimed that it emitted a cocktail of chemicals that can cause cancers and asthma attacks...MORE

10. Hydro Damned

The World Commission on Dams, an organisation of scientists, engineers and environmentalists, supported by the World Bank, recently warned that hydro projects could be a larger contributor to climate change than coal fired plants. It told the UN Climate Change Secretariat that greenhouse gasses were produced from ‘all 30 reservoirs for which measurements have been made’ and concluded that ‘there is no justification for claiming that hydroelectricity does not contribute significantly to global warming...MORE

11. Climate Change : COP 6

The sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (COP 6) ran from 13-24 November 2000, in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Hague conference was expected to be the most important session since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997- resolving the various issues that had emerged in subsequent rounds of negotiation. However, in the run up to the meeting, it became clear that some key issues would not be easy to resolve, not least the issue of carbon sinks. Forests absorb carbon dioxide gas, so forestry projects could be ...MORE

12. Nuclear Exit Costs grow

All of the UK nuclear plants, apart from Sizewell, should have been closed down by 2025, with the MAGNOX reactors dropping off well before then.

But as each closes they will then have to start a lengthy decomissioning process - with the outer buildings and non radioactive equipment first being removed and then the core being dismantled. It’s an expensive process. BNFL has calculated that dealing with its old MAGNOX plants could cost £6.2 bn and that ...MORE

13. Forum

As a special extra for this issue of Renew On- Line, we’ve included part of the Forum section, in which wider views on current issues are expressed..

What really happened at COP-6?

As someone who used to work for the UN Climate Change secretariat, before joining EERU, Stephen Peake, who was at COP-6, sees it rather differently from the media...MORE