Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Very ambitious suggestion from Labour regarding wind farms, though the nationalisation side scares me, especially if we have now reached a stage were we can actually charge off-shore wind farms (via leases) but still see private deployment?

Labour unveils £83bn state windfarms plan before key climate vote

They clearly don't know what they are talking about
Already during some periods the UK is marginal green
Mass deployment of additional beyond what is committed to of offshore wind doesn't help much. There is a clear sustainable workable path to decarb the grid

In 2022 the UK will be about 65% non fossil in the grid some 8 years before the Germans
And this figure will rise more and more through 2022-2030

The next stage is solving heating
They could have a ambitious plan to insulate and upgrade social homes and convert them to a mix of smart heat pumps and resistance heaters.
Bring forward the gas boiler ban for new homes to 2021
Those would be reasonable proposals. Effectively converting about 4 million homes to electricity.
This also adds to electricity demand so more offshore wind can be deployed

Also some non BEV transport ideas would be welcome
From large electric scooters to more bike lines to some London back streets non car so they can be used by bikes and scooters to get around

And of course a cow/lamb tax :rotfl: £5/kg should see significant change in less beef and more chicken and non meat calories consumed. Perhaps as much as -50% beef consumption while also brining in some £2--3 billion a year in tax. UK would go from being a small importer of meat to a small exporter. Cow consumption would go from about 2 million cows per year towards 1 million

A quarter pounder fast food burger meal which costs maybe £5 now will become £5.50
Most likely the fast food joints will offer more chicken options and make their burgers smaller 110 grams going to maybe 90 grams

Farmers should be protected by this being a domestic tax so they can still export their beef production. Less UK consumption but without hurting UK farmers too much

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

I couldn’t manage without my daily dose of Mart:)

At least give it a try, if not for you or me, then for the benefit of all the other posters and readers who just want to chat about RE.

Martyn1981

Good news bad news?

RE deployments up to 200GW pa, but we need 300GW. :doh:

International Energy Agency forecasts 115 GW of new solar this year

After stagnating last year, renewable energy has hit back with a vengeance in 2019 with the International Energy Agency (IEA) expecting almost 200 GW of new clean energy generation capacity will have been added by year-end.

But the deployment seen this year will still fall well short of the 300 GW of new renewable energy capacity required annually from 2018 to 2030 to meet the IEA’s ‘sustainable development’ scenario.

Martyn1981

If you're bored of nuclear, then skip this post.

If you have any doubts about where money and time should go, then this article is simply chocked full of info, and the incredible thing is that it's about a report from the:

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report that explores the global challenges facing the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, an independent energy expert, and gives a detailed overview of the global nuclear industry and special analysis on key events and trends.

Logic supports renewables, not nuclear

The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report gives the energy source little hope in the race against fast, widespread, job-friendly, popular renewables. The report reiterates clean power is taking the lead in the world’s energy system and nuclear is not only too costly a remedy for carbon emissions but too slow to deploy. Nuclear output grew only 2.4% last year while solar and wind power volumes grew 18% and 29%, respectively.

Nuclear power has continued to decline and is becoming increasingly unable to compete on cost and deployment volume with clean energy sources such as solar and wind.

Those are the main conclusions of the 2019 edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), published each year by French nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider. In a gloomy outlook for the industry, the report adds the time needed to deploy new nuclear is further handicapping its ability to reduce carbon emissions.

The report’s authors are convinced the age of centralized, inflexible coal and nuclear power generation is coming to an end, hastening the demise of both energy sources.

Today’s study does point out, however, the 417 nuclear reactors in 31 countries still in operation have a record generation capacity of 370 GW, surpassing the 368 GW registered in 2006.

According to the latest survey, 272 reactors – two-thirds of the global fleet – have been operating for more than 30 years and in a decade or less most will have to be replaced by new generation capacity. “In the following decade to 2030, 188 units (165.5 GW) would have to be replaced – 3.2 times the number of start-ups achieved over the past decade, including 80 (19%) that have reached 41 years or more,” the report stated.

Many reactors are uncompetitive against renewables in day-to-day electricity markets, in particular in the United States, and will shut down a decade or more before their licenses expire unless bailed out by new subsidies. The report explains that of “the prohibitive capital cost of [latest type] Gen-III+ reactors – on the order of $5,000-8,000-plus per kilowatt – 78-87% is for non-nuclear costs”. The authors add: “Thus, if the other 13-22% – the ‘nuclear island’ (nuclear steam supply system) – were free, the rest of the plant would still be grossly uncompetitive with renewables or efficiency. That is, even free steam from any kind of fuel, fission or fusion is not good enough because the rest of the plant costs too much.”

The advance of renewables, on the other hand, appears unstoppable, with solar and wind adding 96 GW and 49.2 GW of generation capacity, respectively, last year. Nuclear claimed an 8.8 GW share. Power output from solar and wind grew 13% and 29%, respectively, as nuclear saw meager growth of 2.4%. And while the estimated levelized cost of energy for utility scale solar has fallen by 88% in a decade – and wind 69% – the nuclear power price has surged 23%.

Even if a realistic carbon price were levied across the world, nuclear would trail renewables, according to today’s report.

“Nuclear new-build thus costs many times more per kilowatt-hour so it buys many times less climate solution per dollar, than these major low-carbon competitors,” states this year’s WNISR. Renewables have a lower carbon cost per dollar and per year, the report concludes.

Fighting climate change and global warming requires scalable, mass produced and quickly deployed solutions such as solar and wind to be installed by diverse actors with little institutional preparation. Nuclear power, according to the study, is unable to meet any technical or operational need its low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.

“Whatever the rationales for continuing and expanding nuclear power, for climate protection it has become counterproductive and the new subsidies and decision rules its owners demand would dramatically slow this decade’s encouraging progress toward cheaper, faster options – more climate-effective solutions,” the report states.

OUCH!

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

If you're bored of nuclear, then skip this post.

If you have any doubts about where money and time should go, then this article is simply chocked full of info, and the incredible thing is that it's about a report from the:

Logic supports renewables, not nuclear

OUCH!

Lies and propaganda, but what do you expect from a PV cheerleader websites?

4 years 1 month 3 weeks to build a reactor in China And they are not yet experts
And of course many can be and are built in parallel

You can start building one every week if you wish and when they come online over a period of 15 years you'd have 780 reactors and combined with her hydropower it would be enough to produce more than 100% of China electricity needs all sorted by ~2040

They have about 40-50 in operation but of many different designs
When/if they settle on 2-3 designs and build a few hundred they will be able to build even faster than this 4Years 1Month 3Weeks

Nuclear is very much a viable solution
Proven by the USA (most successful fleet) and France (deepest decarb non hydro grid)
France got down to net zero fossil in its grid (they use some fossil but offset more in other countries) at least 40-50 years before Germany will get there and arguably in a much cleaner way

michaels

Meanwhile in the UK....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Meanwhile in the UK....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305

This is a feature of all large one off infrastructure projects it's not s nuclear only aspects
From crossrail to HS2 to HNS IT systems
Arguably also early offshore wind which was £150/MWh+

Having said that, the last UK reactor built in 1995 was on time and on budget
I think that night have been because it was towards the end of the French large build out so some of their experience carried over to the UK. But for this new UK reactor one hasn't been completed in about 25 years the experience was lost not to mention the equipment and design is different for this reactor.

Anyway new nuclear in the UK should be abandoned
The old nukes should be extended where possible
Maybe even given a CFD
But no new nukes are necessary

Martyn1981

Timely! It seems the fight is far from over as the vested interests know that every day they can create delays and uncertainty, is another day of higher revenues.

'CO2 is plant food': Australian group signs international declaration denying climate science

A group of 75 Australian former and current business figures – including mining engineers and retired geologists – have signed on to an international declaration targeting the UN and the EU and claiming “there is no climate emergency” and that “CO2 is plant food”.

Several of the signatories to the group – which described itself as Clintel – have high-level links to conservative politics, industry and mining.

The letter repeats well-worn and long-debunked talking points on climate change that are contradicted by scientific institutions and academies around the world, as well as the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Martyn1981

And the pushback against Trump, and the vested interests who support him, continues:

Clean-air scientists fired by EPA to reconvene in snub to Trump

An advisory panel of air pollution scientists disbanded by the Trump administration plans to continue their work with or without the US government.

The researchers – from a group that reviewed the latest studies about how tiny particles of air pollution from fossil fuels make people sick – will assemble next month, a year from the day they were fired.

They’ll gather in the same hotel in Washington DC and even have the same former staffer running the public meeting.

Christopher Frey, a scientist from North Carolina State University who chaired the group, said 21 million Americans live with air that is dirtier than what the government deems acceptable. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting reviews to determine whether those current standards should be tightened or loosened.

Frey argued Trump’s EPA has significantly weakened its science review process.

“As a public service, we can still tap our expertise and develop advice which we will share with EPA,” he said.

The EPA has defended the changes it has made as a drive to encourage consideration of a wider range of viewpoints.

The 20-person panel with Frey will include experts in epidemiology and toxicology, as well as people experienced in clinical experiments with humans.

One of the dismissed members, Doug Dockery of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, was lead author of the landmark Six Cities study that linked the particle pollution from fossil fuels, called “particulate matter”, to early deaths.

Similar action now against the reduction in fuel efficiency for new cars, as multiple states pushback, so Trump is trying to hurt them. It might look bad, but the potential for big legal wins and precedents is growing.:

Auto Emissions Redux: 24 States Sue Trump Administration, EPA Threatens To Cut Off Highway Funding

California Governor Gavin Newsom excoriated Wheeler and the EPA for what he described as “a threat of pure retaliation. While the White House tries to bully us and concoct new ways to make our air dirtier, California is defending our state’s clean air laws from President Trump’s attacks. We won’t go back to the days when our air was the color of mud. We won’t relive entire summers when spending time outside amounted to a public health risk.”​​

21 states plus the District of Columbia have joined California in filing suit against the EPA over its revocation of the emissions waiver, according to NPR. “Two courts have already upheld California’s emissions standards, rejecting the argument the Trump Administration resurrects to justify its misguided Preemption Rule,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement released Friday. “Yet, the Administration insists on attacking the authority of California and other states to tackle air pollution and protect public health.”

Martyn1981

Another angle of attack against FF's is taking shape in Poland where coal makes up most of the generation.

Fight the power: why climate activists are suing Europe’s biggest coal plant

It is Europe’s biggest coal plant, with annual CO2 emissions roughly equivalent to those of the whole of New Zealand – but the future of the Bełchat!w power station in central Poland has been called into question after a global environmental charity announced a legal challenge designed to eliminate the facility’s carbon footprint by 2035.

ClientEarth, an international NGO that seeks to protect the environment through legal action, announced on Thursday that it was taking PGE GiEK, a subsidiary of Polish state-owned power giant Polska Grupa Energetyczna, to court over emissions at the Bełchat!w plant, which is notorious for its burning of highly polluting lignite, or brown coal.

Poland has the highest domestic coal production in Europe, with approximately 80% of its energy derived from the burning of coal. While an increasing proportion of the coal burned in Poland is imported from elsewhere, such as Russia, its rightwing leadership portrays the fossil fuel as a guarantor of the country’s energy security and future economic growth.

On the same day, Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party announced plans to pass legislation allowing the government to build coalmines without the need to secure the approval of local authorities.

The Polish government’s continuing enthusiasm for coal is widely seen as obstacle to EU-wide efforts drastically to drastically reduce the bloc’s carbon emissions.

Duda was embroiled in a diplomatic spat with Emanuel Macron this week, after the French president singled out the Polish government for blocking his attempts to make the EU commit to carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Marching every Friday to say that the planet is burning, that’s nice, but that is not the problem,” Macron said before the recent UN climate talks in New York. “Go protest in Poland! Help me move those I cannot push forward.”