Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Yet another bad day for energy companies and those who invest in them. Perhaps the science deniers and FF apologists will thin now as the spreading of lies, and the political toleration of said lies, reduces?
If you remove the FF industry's power over politicians and governments, then we would certainly see faster action to combat AGW, which the FF industry's identified and confirmed as far back as the 1970's.

First we have yet another investment fund moving away from FF's, but this one has a slight twist:

Major investment firm dumps Exxon, Chevron and Rio Tinto stock

A Nordic hedge fund worth more than $90bn (£68.6bn) has dumped its stocks in some of the world’s biggest oil companies and miners responsible for lobbying against climate action.

Storebrand, a Norwegian asset manager, divested from miner Rio Tinto as well as US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron as part of a new climate policy targeting companies that use their political clout to block green policies.

The investor is one of many major financial institutions divesting from polluting industries, but is understood to be the first to dump shares in companies which use their influence to slow the pace of climate action.

Jan Erik Saugestad, the chief executive of Storebrand, said corporate lobbying activity designed to undermine solutions to “the greatest risks facing humanity” is “simply unacceptable”.

And on the same basic issue (FF industry buying influence in the US):

Democrats’ climate plan takes aim at the fossil fuel industry’s political power

Senate Democrats are set to release a 200-page plan arguing that significant US climate action will require stripping the fossil fuel industry of its influence over the government and the public’s understanding of the crisis.

“It’s important for the public to understand that this is not a failure of American democracy that’s causing this,”* said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Senate Democrat from Rhode Island. “It is a very specific and successful attack on American democracy by an industry with truly massive financial motivation to corrupt democratic institutions.”

A 16-page chapter of the report titled Dark Money lays out how “giant fossil fuel corporations have spent billions – much of it anonymized through scores of front groups – during a decades-long campaign to attack climate science and obstruct climate action”.

The focus on limiting the industry’s political power could be the opening punch in what is likely to become a dirty fight over climate policy if Democrats take control of the Senate and the White House.

*My bold - I call BS. It is a failure of American democracy, as the Democratic Party has been more than happy to take corporate monies to fund their campaigning too.

ABrass

Martyn1981 said:

ASavvyBuyer said:

I think this partly explains why CCGT generation has been a lot higher than usual lately:

https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses

Only 6 of EDF's nuclear plants are actually generating currently and one of those is at reduced power.

The others are also consuming 150MW between them!

Just a silly thought but I wonder if you take the total capacity of nuclear and its current output, if the maths work out at a capacity factor of 24/7 ...... 24hrs per week, 7 months a year? 

Our nuclear fleet have a terrible CF. They've improved in recent years to 75% or so, but that's hardly world beating.

ed110220

ABrass said:

Martyn1981 said:

ASavvyBuyer said:

I think this partly explains why CCGT generation has been a lot higher than usual lately:

https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses

Only 6 of EDF's nuclear plants are actually generating currently and one of those is at reduced power.

The others are also consuming 150MW between them!

Just a silly thought but I wonder if you take the total capacity of nuclear and its current output, if the maths work out at a capacity factor of 24/7 ...... 24hrs per week, 7 months a year? 

Our nuclear fleet have a terrible CF. They've improved in recent years to 75% or so, but that's hardly world beating.

Mygrid GB gives nuclear generation for the last 12 months as 50.6 TWh and the UK's eight operable reactors have a nominal net output of 8.7 GW, which by my maths gives a capacity factor of 66.4%. It's a bit complicated by the fact that some reactors have been downrated due to age/wear/deterioration, eg the reactors at Hinkley Point were originally rated as about 625 MW each but have been downrated to 420 - 500 MW. If you use the current downrated capacity rather than the original capacity obviously it makes the CF look better.

Martyn1981

I think the plan regarding emission targets was always to try to increase them, and it's nice to see that technology and economics allow for this. The faster we act, the greater our chance of preventing runaway warming.

55% EU emissions cut ‘achievable by 2030’

The EU can achieve 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990, according to a new study by Agora Energiewende in Germany.

How to Raise Europe’s Climate Ambitions for 2030 presents recommendations for the German Presidency of the EU Council and makes proposals for the further development of the EU’s climate policy.

The present target is a 40% reduction by 2030.

The study was prepared against the backdrop of current debate surrounding a higher climate protection target for 2030, Agora said.

A new target is to be adopted under the German EU Council Presidency by the end of the year, and subsequently presented to the international community at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021.

ASavvyBuyer

UK firm's solar power breakthrough could make world's most efficient panels by 2021

Oxford PV says tech based on perovskite crystal can generate almost a third more electricity

Pile_o_stone

It's good to see how quickly the environment can recover when we make the necessary changes...

https://www.treehugger.com/coal-fired-plants-study-local-pollution-4860700

"You might expect shutting down coal-fired plants would net a few benefits. After all, there are good reasons why nation after nation have made it their mission to wean themselves off fossil fuels. Clearly, burning coal results in emissions that play a crucial role in climate change. But a new study from the University of California San Diego reveals just how dramatically the elimination of coal-burning plants in the U.S. can change the environment for the better.

The paper, published this week in Nature Sustainability, focused on the results of a steady transition from coal to natural gas for electricity production between 2005 and 2016. Over that 10-year span, carbon dioxide emissions declined along with pollution levels in hundreds of regions across the U.S. And with fewer airborne pollutants, like aerosols, ozone and other compounds, human and plant health boomed. In fact, according to the paper, decommissioning coal plants saved an estimated 26,610 lives. By burning less of it, the lower atmosphere was burdened with less particulate matter and ozone — factors known to compromise human health. Without those pesky pollutants hanging in the air, crops prospered as well. The research suggests areas around decommissioned plants saw additional yields of some 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat.

'The unique contribution of this study is its scope and the ability to connect discrete technology changes — like an electric power unit being shut down — to local health, agriculture and regional climate impacts,' study author Jennifer Burney of the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy notes in a press release."

Martyn1981

Green, blue or grey, that's the choice, and we thought Hydrogen was colourless.
If green H2 can match FF H2 in cost by 2040 (2030 in Germany) then large scale storage for RE generation gets a lot closer and more economical.

Green hydrogen costs ‘set to fall 64% by 2040’

The cost of producing hydrogen using electricity supplied by renewable sources is forecast to fall up to 64% by 2040, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie.

“Given the degree of explicit policy, corporate and social support that has blossomed in 2020, green hydrogen will successfully scale and realise huge production cost declines.

“Moreover, if additional explicit policy support comes to fruition in the coming months, we could see costs fall even faster, and more universally, than outlined in our report.

“The energy transition is dynamic. If 2020 is any indication, so too will be the low-carbon hydrogen landscape.”

Martyn1981

Finally BEIS get it, they've openly (rather than just in their internal updates) admitted that RE cost predictions are much cheaper than previously stated. Years ago the HoL's when reviewing the cost figures for HPC suggested that the Gov RE cost estimates were too high which made the HPC costs look a bit less excessive.
TBH whilst the change in costs in this report are quite impressive, I don't think any of us will be surprised at all, at the revised estimations given for on-shore wind and PV in the low £40's, though the off-shore wind figure of £57 does look a tad high v's the latest CfD auction results of £45 (£40 in 2012 monies, the baseline that's used for CfD's).

Wind and solar are 30-50% cheaper than thought, admits UK government

The new estimates of the “levelised cost” of electricity, published this week by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), show that renewables are much cheaper than expected in the previous iteration of the report, published in 2016.

The previously published version had, in turn, already trimmed the cost of wind and solar by up to 30%. As a result, electricity from onshore wind or solar could be supplied in 2025 at half the cost of gas-fired power, the new estimates suggest.

The new report is the government’s first public admission of the dramatic reductions in renewable costs in recent years. It had previously carried out internal updates to its cost estimates, in both 2018 and 2019, but these were never published despite repeated questions in parliament.

The BEIS report also presents new estimates of the “enhanced levelised cost” of different technologies, which reflects any wider system benefits and their “system integration costs”.

Martyn1981

I feel a bit sorry for India, they have an extremely low CO2(e) per capita compared to the Western World, but get a lot of the blame for growing emissions, simply because they 'want' what we have. But the great news is that all of the schemes and subsidies that we rolled out a decade or so back have now reduced the cost of RE to the point that it is starting to undermine existing coal generation (having already beaten new/proposed generation).
I hope that India, and many, many other similar countries leapfrog the FF (per capita) rollout that we experienced, and help lead the way forward with low carbon technology.

UN secretary general urges India to swiftly turn away from coal

India must swiftly and permanently turn away from coal despite its need for cheap energy, the UN secretary general has urged, aiming to revive global action on the climate crisis as the world begins to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.

António Guterres told a virtual audience on Friday morning that coal use must be phased out in India, with no new coal-fired power stations after this year, and that fossil fuel subsidies must be ended.
“[Coal] spells stranded assets and makes no commercial sense – the coal business is going up in smoke,” he said. “India can become a true global superpower in the fight against climate change if it speeds up its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” he said.

Wind and solar electricity costs have fallen so much that building new renewable generation is now cheaper than operating 39% of the world’s existing coal capacity, and this will increase to 60% of existing capacity in the next two years, according to the UN. Half of India’s current coal capacity will be uncompetitive against renewables in 2022.

“That is why the world’s largest investors are increasingly abandoning coal – they see the writing on the wall,” said Guterres in the 19th Darbari Seth memorial lecture, held in honour of the founder of the Energy and Resource Institute, a renowned Indian centre of research.

Martyn1981

Bad news, we lose some (existing) low carbon generation. But good news, this again helps with the debate, particularly the economic debate, on where best to target future investments ...... RE (and storage) of course. 

Scottish nuclear power station to shut down early after reactor problems

Hunterston nuclear power station, one of the UK’s oldest remaining nuclear plants, is to close down next year, earlier than expected, after encountering a series of safety-critical problems in its reactors.

Industry sources told the Guardian that EDF Energy, the state-owned French operator of Hunterston, decided at a board meeting on Thursday afternoon that the plant would stop generating electricity in late 2021, at least two years earlier than planned.

The energy company had hoped to keep generating electricity from the 44-year-old nuclear plant on the Firth of Clyde until 2023, after ploughing more than £200m into repairing the reactor.

Hunterston, which first began generating electricity in 1976, has been offline since 2018 after inspectors discovered 350 microscopic cracks in the reactor’s graphite core.