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1. Energy White Paper: a long time coming
The Governments White Paper on Energy finally emerged
in late May. Basically it called for more renewables, more energy saving
and consideration of nuclear; see Box below for a summary, and then
further below for details...
2. LCBP Woes
The Household ‘micropower’ scheme within
the Low Carbon Building Programme has certainly got off to a bad start.
The temporary suspension of the scheme while it was re-vamped, certainly
didn’t help. But some progress has been made...
3. Wave & tidal projects
Slow Ahead Both
Secretary of State for Trade & Industry Alistair
Darling was pressed in the Commons recently on progress with the DTIs
£50m marine renewables deployment fund, which was established
last year to assist the continued development of wave/tidal stream energy
technologies...
4. Budget and Climate Bill Reactions
The 2007 Budget was not received with unalloyed enthusiasm.
The announcement that Ofgem, the regulator, would ‘examine how
green homes can benefit more from the prices paid when they become not
just sources of clean energy for themselves, but sell it back...
5. Biofuel progress
There should be a 5 year freeze on biofuels for vehicles
until new more efficient second generation fuel crops are ready, according
to George Monbiot writing in the Guardian March 26th: he claims that
biodiesel from imported palm oil causes ‘10 times as much climate
6. The Greening of Brown?
In his speech to the Green Alliance conference last
March, which co-incided with the launch of the governments Climate Bill
(see Renew 167), and prefigured his 2007 budget, Gordon Brown spelt
out his ideas for cutting emissions: ‘In the last Pre-Budget...
7. BG goes green
British Gas has moved seriously into the green power
field at various levels. Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of its parent
Centrica, told Reuters ‘we see rising demand for energy efficiency
and green power as a real ...
8. World developments
Climate IPCC latest
The second part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s fourth report, on ‘Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation
and Vulnerability' emerged in April. There were claims that the final
version, as agreed by political representatives, had been watered down,
but IPCC denied this...
9. Around the EU
New Danish plan- 30% by 2025
The Danish government plans to double the use of renewables
within 18 years, while reducing the use of fossil fuels by 15%. ‘We
must reduce Denmark’s dependency on fossil fuels like oil, natural
gas and coal, in the long term’, said prime minister Rasmussen.
..
10. US news
New US plan
Over 150 organizations and businesses from 38 states
have endorsed the ‘Sustainable Energy Blueprint’ for the
USA, a policy document developed by member groups of the Sustainable
Energy Coalition as ‘a plausible strategy and timeframe for rapidly
expanding the use of energy efficient and renewable....
11. Nuclear Developments
Australian Objections
The Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy
has criticised the claim in the Australian Federal governments Nuclear
Review (see Renew 167) that the cost of nuclear in 2020 is comparable
with other energy technologies,...
12. In the rest of Renew 168
Our Feature looks at wave and tidal power, and there is more on that
expanding area in our Technology section. .The Technology section also
includes a lot of material on ways to balance intermittency - e.g via
energy storage and the use of CHP. The Reviews section includes coverage
of the IPCC latest Climate studies , a new book on Energy Futures, and
developments in central and eastern Europe . The Groups section includes
an update on the Woking energy programme and details of the Londons
plans , as well as other green town and village plans. Not forgetting
Milton Keynes- now 40 years old! There's also a bitter editorial ( 'Ban
Everything') and a lively Forum section - including a plea to 'Save
the Sun'!
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Renew is the bi-monthly 30
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Technology and Technology Assessment. NATTA members gets Renew
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Open University', NOT to 'NATTA')
Details from NATTA , c/o EERU,
The Open University,
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