The Energy Review

Hain- renewables better

In SERA’s journal New Ground, Peter Hain MP said that renewable energy ‘is significantly preferable to the widely advocated ‘nuclear option’. While everything must be on the table during the review, serious concerns must remain about nuclear:

Climate Policy arrives

The long awaited Climate Programme Review emerged on March 28th, with the Budgets commitment to £50m more to the Low Carbon Building Programme, and its modification of the Climate Change Levy to include inflation, as key elements...

Tidal and wave power

SW Wave Hub - the first three projects

The South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA) has named three companies it has chosen as development partners for the proposed £15 million Wave Hub project off the SW coast from...

Micro CHP doubts

The Carbon Trust has been carrying out assessment trials of micro and small Combined Heat and Power units, and its preliminary results, especially for domestic scale micro CHP, do not look very good...

Policy overview

Decentral Tories

In Feb., with the Tories in ‘green’ mode, the Conservative Environment team, led by Shadow Environment Secretary Peter Ainsworth, with Shadow Environment Minister Greg Barker, made a submission...

Where the money goes..

In a series of responses to Parliamentary Question last Dec, Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks reported on funding allocations to various DTI programmes.

Clear Skies Programme

UK round up

£2m for Westmill coop

Westmill wind farm co-op in Oxfordshire raised £1m in the first seven weeks after it launched its public share offer in Nov. and then reached £2m by Feb...

Climate change threats

Climate to get worse

An apocalyptic vision of life 1,000 years from now has been painted by the Tyndall Centre in a report for the Environment Agency looking at what the global effect of climate change might...

Global News

Climate Change

“The question is no longer whether we will need to address this problem, but when...

EU News

WWF: EU can do more

Given a strong emissions trading scheme the European Union can cut a third of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 through energy efficiency and renewable energies, even with a moratorium on nuclear energy, according to a new report by WWF. The report claims that by 2020 the EU’s energy demand could be reduced by 20% without...

News around the world

US must get off oil addiction

The USA is ‘addicted to oil’ said President Bush in his State of the Union address. He wants to reduce imports from the middle east by 75% and expand US ethanol production, clean coal, nuclear and renewables, with a 22% energy R&D funding increase...

Nuclear News

UK keeps options open

A new £6.1m Keeping the Nuclear Option Open programme supported by the UK Research Councils will investigate how nuclear power can become a more appealing option for future energy production, with safety being one of the key issues...

In the rest of Renew 161

In the Feature Stephen Peake from OU-EERU looks at climate change and what can be done about it. The Technology section looks at a novel floating offshore wind system, geothermal in the UK and elsewhere, the Microgen system delay, and the UK's new 5% RTFO biofuels policy. The Reviews section looks at the somewhat conflicting EST and Carbon Trusts reports on microgeneration and at the new REN21 Global renewables review, plus the COP11 Kyoto 2 climate meeting in Canada . The Groups section looks at UKERC, UKERP, Samsoe, and Community energy development. There is also an editorial on the nuclear issue and a lively Forum section, on biofuels, shopping and intermittency.