Renew On Line (UK) 32

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

   Welcome   Archives   Bulletin         
 

Contents

Wave and tidal stream get support

Windpower on-land and offshore

70,000 PV roof plan

Bio oil boost

£50m Community Heating Plan

CCL and NETA begin to bite

£250m for Renewable

UK Climate warning

After the Election- UK roundup

EU News

COP 6 rematch stalled

US Power Crisis –EV’s Get Green Light

World round up: Australia N Korea, Netherlands

Hydropower and Greenhouse Gasses

World Overviews by GEF, UN, WEC

UN Commission on Sustainable Development

Nuclear Wastrels?

Wave &Tide OK

The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee came out firmly in favour of wave and tidal stream energy in its report, after a 3 month investigation chaired by Tory MP Dr. Michael Clark. It said:"The current level of public spending is insufficient to give the technology the impetus it needs to develop fully…We recommend that the Government increase the amount of funding available for full-scale wave and tidal energy prototypes to prove the concept at a realistic scale."

It added: "We recommend that a significant proportion of the extra £100 million of funding for renewables, recently announced by the Prime Minister, be made available for wave and tidal energy demonstration models."...MORE


UK Wind - 2GW by 2005?

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has predicted that the UK will have 2005 megawatts of wind energy operating by the end of 2005, producing almost 1.6% of the total electricity supply of the UK. According to the BWEA, there is already 409MW of wind energy capacity installed, including 3.8MW from the UK’s first offshore wind farm. A further 119MW is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2001. This leaves around 1500MW of new capacity to be installed in four years...MORE.

 

PV Lifts off

70,000 PV roof plan

As we noted in Renew 131, the UK Government has allocated £10 million for solar photovoltaics (PV) over the next three years as part of the drive to catch up with Germany and Japan. This strategy was outlined in a report produced by the Government-Industry Photovoltaics Group which had been set up in the summer of 2000.

The report says that the most effective way of deploying PV in the UK is a major grant programme to support the installation of solar PV arrays on some 70,000 domestic properties...MORE


£1.16m for Bio Oil

The DTI has given Border Biofuels and its consortium partners DynaMotive Europe Limited and Orenda Aerospace Corporation £1.16m towards the £4.5m cost of an ambitious new biomass combustion project, to be funded equally by the partners - the largest the DTI has supported so far in the UK. The DTI grant is to aid in the development of an integrated feedstock preparation system. Border Biofuels will construct a 25-tonne/day facility utilising DynaMotive Europe’s patented ‘fast pyrolysis’ technology, which they developed in Canada. This converts biomass into a liquid fuel. The plant will have a capacity to produce 12,000 litres of BioOil per day – enough to power a sawmill. BioOil is a clean burning liquid fuel made from renewable and non-depleting biomass such as timber, sawdust and sugar cane bagasse...MORE


£50m Community Heating Programme

In yet another pre-election allocation, the DETR announced a £50m boost for community heating and for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) which will, it says, ‘help 100,000 people on low incomes heat their homes’ and will also benefit hospitals, schools and universities. In addition it would help meet the target of installing at least 10,000 Megawatts of CHP capacity by 2010, thereby also helping to cut green house gas emissions. And it would contribute to work on local Agenda 21 and Neighbourhood Renewal...MORE


CCL and NETA begin to bite

With NETA, the New Electricity Trading Arrangements, now in place, the Climate Change Levy (CCL) in operation, and the Renewables Obligation (RO) soon to be imposed on them, the regional electricity companies (REC’s) are beginning to think about how to restructure their green power tariff schemes. Most REC’s are offering power contracts direct to companies, thus enabling the latter to gain exemption for the Climate Change levy. But most of the REC’s are still also retaining their ‘voluntary’ domestic green power supply schemes, at least for a while, although almost all seem likely to switch over to eco- fund schemes, outside the RO when it comes into force...MORE


£250 m for Renewables

The UK election run up saw the government doubling its funding for new renewables, by offering a further £100m for offshore wind and energy crops, and also now for PV solar, which, as we noted in Renew 130, has been included in the support package for the first time, along with wave power and possibly even tidal current technology. There was also some extra money for research and development- £55.5 million...MORE

 

Climate Change

Government Heath Warning

According to the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Liam Donaldson "If global climate changes continue unchecked there will be an impact on the health of the population of this country. Heat related deaths will increase, particularly in urban areas. Cases of food poisoning will rise. Skin cancer and cataracts would also increase. Other diseases currently found in sub-tropical countries could also increase - such as malaria and some other insect borne diseases"...MORE

 

After the Election- UK Roundup

UK Election Positions ( from the Groups section of Renew 132)

Perhaps as unsurprising as the outcome, sustainable energy policies did not figure much in the General Election, although most parties and many of the campaign groups did their best to put it on the agenda. It was after all one of Labours strongest cards- since they had allocated so much money to green energy projects of various sorts in the run up to the election (see News). The Liberal Democrats countered this as best they could, with Don Foster MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow DETR Secretary, commenting "Labour has had four years to give a real boost to renewable energy, and has done very little". By contrast the Liberals said that they wanted at least 10% of UK energy (not just electricity as in Labours plan) to come from renewables by 2010, increasing by 1% p.a. thereafter. Looking even further ahead, the Conservatives talked of obtaining 30% of UK electricity from renewables by 2030..MORE


EU News

Europe could be at the heart of a global boom in green technology, which could see its annual turnover double to more than US$660 bn, with EU companies being well placed to outstrip US and Japanese rivals, according to the European Committee of Environmental Technology Suppliers Associations. However, it says that the sector needs strong and consistently enforced environmental regulation if it is to achieve its full potential. It also wants the EU to introduce tax incentives for decommissioning dirty technologies, and a fast-track system for approving new innovations, with research and priority given to "environmentally critical" areas, such as energy...MORE


COP 6 rematch stalled

The restart of suspended COP-6 UN Climate Change negotiations was rescheduled from May to July in Bonn, at the request of the USA, who said that the new administration needed more time to prepare, and was then thrown into disarray by President Bush more or less dismissing the whole Kyoto exercise as ‘unfair and ineffective’.

In the interim there had been a lot of tactical and strategic discussion. Should the whole process be slowed a bit, to allow the USA to get on board- and to avoid precipitating an outright rejection of ratification by Senate, if that issue was put to them prematurely? In principle, final ratification could be left until 2005 without undermining the successful lift off of the various emission reduction schemes in the first commitment period, which starts in 2008 and runs to 2012. But that would let the USA off the hook....MORE


US Power Crisis

Bush backs Nukes - Consumers switch to PV

President Bush launched his new energy plan in May. It followed the line taken in the pre-election plan described in Renew 130, with nuclear power, oil, gas and coal figuring strongly. Renewables and conservation do get mentioned, but, meanwhile Bush has proposed halving the Federal research allocation for renewables (down from $376m to $186m), and also cutting funds for energy conservation...MORE

 

World round up

Australia tries to do it right

New South Wales is where it’s happening most down under. After a slow start wind power is moving ahead, with an $18 million 10MW windfarm opening recently - the biggest so far in NSW. The Blayney Wind Farm consists of 15 of the 660 kW turbines producing enough power to supply the electricity needs of 3,500 average Australian homes. SEDA, the Sustainable Energy Development Authority, helped get the project off the ground with funding from its Renewable Investment Program. It’s part of a diverse range of projects they have supported, including hydro, solar and wind generators...MORE

 

Hydropower and Greenhouse Gasses

As we noted in Renew 129, the World Commission on Dams has published a major report on the impacts and performance of large dams, ‘Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-making’. It looks at the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHS’s) from dam reservoirs, due to the rotting of biomass trapped when the reservoir is filled and then brought down stream subsequently, and compares these emissions with those from other energy sources...MORE


World Overview

The Future is Green says the GEF

Renewables have a bright future around the world as markets for green power expand, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international agency backed by, amongst others, the UN, World Bank, the African and Asian Development Banks and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In their latest report, the GEF, which funds renewable projects, predicts that developing nations will need as much as 5000 GW of new generating capacity in the next 40 years and are ideally suited to renewable energy applications...MORE


UN Commission on Sustainable Development and Nuclear Power

With the USA having just adopted a new pro-nuclear stance, unsurprisingly, the nuclear issue surfaced at the ninth session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 9) when it met in New York in April.

The CSD was established to monitor the implementation of the outcome of the Rio Earth Summit (1992). Countries report to the Commission on the progress made, and the Commission advises the UN and its Member States on how to achieve sustainable development. You wouldn’t think a sustainable future included nuclear power, given the problems of safety, security, proliferation and cost. However, the CSD has apparently been tempted to see nuclear power as an inevitable part of the energy-mix of various countries. And in a draft paper produced in the run up to CSD 9, the CSD Energy Expert group evidently took a rather pro-nuclear stance....MORE


Nuclear Wastrels?

"It would be morally wrong to commit future generations to the consequences of fission power on a massive scale unless it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that at least one method exists for the safe isolation of these wastes for the indefinite future". So said the 6th report from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 1976- the Flowers report.

25 years on, we are still no closer to finding a solution to the nuclear waste problem. The collapse, in 1997, of the Nirex proposal to build an underground store for waste at Sellafield, has left UK nuclear waste policy in disarray. The proposal was the subject of a five month public inquiry which ended in February 1996. ...MORE

 

In the Rest of Renew 132

In a special bumper 36page issue, the Feature, by Tam Dougan, looks at the Future of Agriculture and rural renewal, with diversification into renewables being one option. We also look at Technology and Risk with review s of TRUSNET’s analysis and of the work of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. There is also a review of nuclear waste storage options. Our Technology section also looks at plans for a novel wind powered hydrogen gas grid in NE Asia ( the subject of a new NATTA report – see below) and at the Vortec shrouded wind turbine. Our review report of Greenpeace’s study of offshore wind impacts. And our Groups section includes a report on the work of the Cabinet Offices Performance and Innovation Unit.

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