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Renewables benefit from a £250m Pre-Election
Spending Boom
£100m more for New Renewables
In March Tony Blair told a WWF conference at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs that new renewables, like offshore wind and energy
crops, would be given a further £100m in capital grants, with solar
PV and wave power now also benefitting. Reactions were positive. Greenpeace
called it a‘very welcome first step’. Soon after came
the news of 18 new offshore wind projects ...MORE
Offshore
Wind
British Energy and RES linkup
British Energy, the UK nuclear
plant operator, have formed a joint venture company with Renewable
Energy Systems Ltd to develop offshore wind power around the
UK. The new 50:50 joint venture company, Offshore Wind Power Limited,
has now obtained a go ahead for its first project from the Crown Estate,
which owns the seabed...MORE
Wave
and Tidal review
The House of Commons Select Committee on
Science and Technology is carrying out a review of the prospects
for wave power and tidal stream energy.
The aim is "to inquire into, and examine, wave and non-barrier
tidal energy in the UK ," with particular reference to issues
such as - will they become technologically and commercially viable in
the near future? It also asks what role should wave and tidal energy
have in the Government's renewable energy strategy - should they get
a higher priority? ...MORE
Renewable
Planning
Last Dec., Nick Raynsford MP gave
a presentation to PRASEG, the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Group, on ‘how the new regional planning targets will
help us achieve the Government’s targets of 5% electricity generation
from renewables by 2003 and 10% by 2010’. He argued that,
‘the planning system is not about stopping things happening, but
about making them happen in a sustainable way’. In particular,
‘it provides a framework for balancing economic, social and environmental
considerations and resolving competing demands’. This was,
he said, crucial for renewables....MORE
Green
Fuels Challenge
Last Nov., the Chancellor announced a Green
Fuels Challenge, which aimed to stimulate industry to propose
practical alternative transport fuel options - the most promising ‘alternative
fuel’ should then qualify for major cuts in duty rates in the next
Budget statement. Environment Minister Michael Meacher and Transport
Minister Gus Macdonald subsequently invited fuel producers, motor manufacturers,
environmental groups and others to provide information on a range of
environmental, health and safety and vehicle performance issues...MORE
Wake
up call on
Embedded Generation
The Embedded Generation Working Group,
which was set up by Government to look at ways to improve access to
regional electricity distribution networks for smaller generators, has
produced an interim report which points to major problems with the existing
arrangements for allowing small local generation projects to feed power
to the grid. This is particularly important for renewable energy. Embedded
generators are those connected to the distribution networks of public
electricity suppliers (such as London Electricity or Northern Electric)
rather than directly to the National Grid. Most CHP and renewable generating
stations are ‘embedded’...MORE
SRC
still delayed..
Progress on Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) still seems
to be very slow. The British Biogen conference in Cambridge in Feb.
provided an opportunity to take stock. Of the three NFFO 3 projects
still live, only the flagship ARBRE project is looking at all hopeful
in the near future - and even that had still yet to be fully commissioned.
...MORE
Foresight
Saga Continues
A new round of the Office of Science and Technolgy’s
Technology Foresight (TF) exercise is underway. The
first such exercise, with 15 panels of experts looking twenty years
ahead to see what technologies might be relevant, was completed, following
major consultation exercise, in 1995. In the energy sector, it was concluded
that PV solar and nuclear decommissioning could be the big things...MORE
Future
Energy - More Changes ahead
As noted in Renew 130, the Energy Saving Trust has
decided (as of April 1st and the start of the Climate Change Levy) not
continue to accredit non-domestic green power supply schemes. This followed
a consultation exercise run by EST on the future of its Future Energy
accreditation scheme. Around 300 companies and other organisations have
signed up to these schemes- in part hoping no doubt that they would
therefore be eligible for exemption from the Climate Change levy. However
it’s not clear that this is so- and EST will in any case no longer
provide accreditation since that will be done by Customs and Excise.
But EST is happy to support domestic eco- fund schemes...MORE
Wind
Gets Bigger
Wind power continues to romp ahead
around the world- with 50,000 machines now installed and some big projects
emerging. For example, American Electric Power and TXU Electric and
Gas have a 130 megawatt 87 turbine windpower project in West Texas,
which you can watch being built at www.trentmesa.com...MORE
Deregulation
crisis in California
As we noted in Renew 130, California’s electricity
market deregulation experiment has led to some wild swings in prices,
and blackouts and brown outs. During his ‘State of the State’
Address back in Jan, Democrat Govenor Gray Davis said that the Republican
initiated deregulation has been a "colossal and dangerous failure.
It has neither lowered consumer prices nor strengthened utilities. In
fact, it has resulted in unconscionable price gouging and an unreliable
supply of electricity"....MORE
Climate
Change
IPCC confirm it
In its latest major report, the first since 1995,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggested that temperature
might rise by as much as 5.8 degrees C, by the end of the century, unless
major steps were taken to curb emissions. They were now much more confident
that these Climate Change effects were mostly due to human activities
rather than natural causes. These conclusions had already been relayed
to COP-6, but now the full report is available: see http://www.ipcc.ch/
www.usgcrp.gov/ipcc/SRs/
Going one step further, the US Union of Concerned...MORE
Bush’s
Energy Policy
"I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts
80 % of the world, including major population centers such as China and
India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy....there
is a clear consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective
means of addressing global climate change concerns....I do not believe
that the (US) government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions
reductions for carbon dioxide, which is ...MORE
EU
renewables directive backed
EU energy ministers have backed the European Commission’s
draft directive on renewable energy. The law will now go to the European
Parliament for a second reading.
As proposed by the Commission, the directive is
intended to increase the share of EU energy supply generated renewably
to 12% by 2010 ...MORE
Nuclear
End Game
The UK nuclear industry has been continuing what
some see as a last ditch push for survival- by offering nuclear power
as a way of responding to climate change. Both BNFL and British Energy
are pushing for a "rational debate" on new construction in
the UK....MORE
In
the Rest of Renew 131
The main Feature in Renew 131 looks at the latest
developments in the UK green power retail market . In addition, in a specially
extended AT Driver section, Renew 131 looks at the case for biofuels for
transport use. The Groups section goes further and looks at attempts by
campaigners and inventors to actually get on with using biodiesel, while
our Forum section reports on one persons actual experience. The reviews
section includes a report on a recent parliamentary debate on renewables,
where ministers and others tried to get to grips with the issues.
There is also coverage of the Eurosolar awards
and the DETR’s latest Climate Change report, as produced for COP-6.
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