Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

QrizB

michaels said:

Out of interest will this have direct impact on energy bills - for example possibly shifting the landscape towards renewably generated electricity from gas?

That's the general idea. In order for the UK to meet its greenhouse gas targets, the Gov is expected to reduce the number of carbon credits issued over time. Users will either have to buy permits on the market or switch to lower-carbon energy.

Example: the current day-ahead price of electricity at https://www.apolloenergy.co.uk/news/current-uk-energy-prices is £73.70/MWh. Imagine that a CCGT can generate that for £50, made up of £20 for carbon and £30 for everything else. The CCGT operator will make a tidy profit. If however the market price of carbon credits rises to £250/tonne (because of increased demand, or reduced supply) it would add another £80 onto that MWh of electricity and all of a sudden it would cost £110. The CCGT operator would now be making a nasty loss.

(Yes, I know the real world isn't that simple but it's a convenient illustration.)

Martyn1981

Step by step the wealthier nations are not only reducing coal consumption, but also their support for it in other countries:

Richest nations agree to end support for coal production overseas

The world’s richest nations have agreed to end their financial support for coal development overseas, in a major step towards phasing out the dirtiest fossil fuel.

After nearly two days of wrangling at a meeting of the G7 environment and energy ministers, hosted virtually by the UK on Thursday and Friday, all reaffirmed their commitment to limiting global heating to 1.5C, and committed to phasing out coal and fully decarbonising their energy sectors in the 2030s.

Japan, one of the world’s biggest sources of finance for coal power, along with China, held out on agreeing to stop helping to build until the final stages of the two-day virtual meeting. Japan’s government raised concerns that if it halted the financing, China would step in and build coal-fired power plants overseas that were less efficient than Japanese designs.

The other G7 members – the UK, the US, the EU, France, Italy, Germany, and Canada – were all united in calling for an end to such financing. The rich countries that make up the G7, along with other major non-G7 economies such as China and South Korea, have played a major role in the past in financing fossil fuel development in poorer countries. Japan, China and South Korea in particular have offered to help build coal-fired power plants in cash-strapped developing countries.

However, the International Energy Agency said earlier this week that all new developments of fossil fuels must end this year to give the world a good chance of keeping within the 1.5C limit. A recent increase in the use of coal, after last year’s lockdowns around the world, is largely responsible for what is forecast by the global energy watchdog to be the second biggest rise in emissions on record this year.

And as coal goes, we'll need more RE, so cue another record:

May gales help Britain set record for wind power generation

Powerful gusts of wind sweeping across Britain have helped the country reach a new all-time high for electricity generated from wind turbines.

A new record was set in the early hours of Friday for the share of wind power in the generation mix, with wind providing nearly two-thirds of Britain’s electricity, according to provisional data from National Grid.

Between 2am and 3am, wind was contributing 62.5% to Britain’s electricity mix, beating the previous record of 59.9% from August last year, when gale-force winds brought by storms Ellen and Francis hit the country.

As the blustery weather buffeted the UK, there were several periods between 10pm on Thursday night and early Friday morning when wind was contributing more than 60% for the first time.

Martyn1981

A tale of two nations.

So we have China setting out some big aims for its latest 5yr plan, including a 2030 target to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity ...... that's quite a lot.

Another Key Solar PV Period In China Starts This Year

And elsewhere - it turns out that the Texas Republicans where already well aware that the failure of their grid was due to FF's, before they went public blaming RE.

Texas Blackout Reveal: Texas Republicans Knew Gas Was The Problem, Then Blamed Renewables

The chair of the Texas PUC and other top officials were already worried about gas shortages days before the widespread blackouts that led to the deaths of at least 151 people, E&E News reports.

During the blackouts, many leaders in the state blamed renewables and pushed climate denial talking points. The phone records and documents obtained by E&E show state legislators were already concerned the state’s gas system was not sufficiently weatherized to withstand the winter storm, despite warnings after a similar event a decade earlier. They also show then-PUC chair DeAnn Walker warned Gov. Greg Abbott’s office about failures at gas facilities forcing the shutdown of gas-fired power plants on February 15, the day before Abbott told Fox News the outages showed the dangers of the not-enacted Green New Deal.

EVandPV

Cement battery could turn buildings and bridges into gigantic energy-storage devices

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2021/05/74784/

Researchers in Switzerland have come up with a clever way to store energy in cement that could turn entire buildings into batteries. The advance, reported in the journal Buildings, could be a way to reduce the carbon footprint of future infrastructure.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

A tale of two nations.

Actually, let's make it three as Vietnam goes from nowhere to 7th place in the World for PV deployment in less than a year, in fact, mostly in Dec 2020 when ~6.5GW was deployed. For comparison the UK deployed 0.175GW in the whole of Q1 2021, taking our total to just over 14GW.

Vietnam Shines As Stunning Solar Champion As Banks Shun Coal

Vietnam has seen a 100-fold increase in solar power over the last two years and now ranks seventh in the world in terms of total installed capacity, BloombergNEF noted. In 2020, the only countries that installed more solar than Vietnam were the U.S. and China!

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

So we have China setting out some big aims for its latest 5yr plan, including a 2030 target to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity ...... that's quite a lot.

That's what, around 1kW per person?

China's currently got 282GW of wind and 205GW of solar which is ~40% of their target. The equivalent number for the UK would be ~60GW and we've currently got 24GW of wind and 14GW of PV, so 38GW, or ~60% of it.

QrizB

Not entirely sure it's "news"  - it may have been going on for months, for all I know - but I just took a peek at https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ and North Scotland has a carbon intensity of 0 g/kWh. Yes, zero. All their electricity is being generated from RE sources, mostly wind with a bit of hydro thrown into the mix.

SW England is also doing well, 20 g/kWh, with 67% nuclear and 25% wind/solar/biomass. Gas is under 5%.

EVandPV

QrizB said:

Not entirely sure it's "news"  - it may have been going on for months, for all I know - but I just took a peek at https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ and North Scotland has a carbon intensity of 0 g/kWh. Yes, zero. All their electricity is being generated from RE sources, mostly wind with a bit of hydro thrown into the mix.

SW England is also doing well, 20 g/kWh, with 67% nuclear and 25% wind/solar/biomass. Gas is under 5%.

Yup, been zero for quite some time in the north.
Southern Scotland and the north of England are usually not far behind.

Solarchaser

EVandPV said:

QrizB said:

Not entirely sure it's "news"  - it may have been going on for months, for all I know - but I just took a peek at https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ and North Scotland has a carbon intensity of 0 g/kWh. Yes, zero. All their electricity is being generated from RE sources, mostly wind with a bit of hydro thrown into the mix.

SW England is also doing well, 20 g/kWh, with 67% nuclear and 25% wind/solar/biomass. Gas is under 5%.

Yup, been zero for quite some time in the north.
Southern Scotland and the north of England are usually not far behind.

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a bit of pride attached to looking at the ESO app and noting Scotland running 0 or darn near to it pretty much every time I look, and usually on the grid watch, exporting to north england, and then I tend to look at East Midlands and slowly shake my head.

Martyn1981

Speaking of China, I just watched a vid setting out their 2060 aim of being carbon neutral, and addressing / explaining why they are still rolling out more coal generation, with the result that coal capacity factors are falling fast, and most/all coal plants will therefore probably become stranded assets in 20yrs time.

China Carbon Neutral by 2060? Will their coal addiction kill the plan?

China's President Xi Jinping recently announced that his country will be reach net zero carbon by 2060. China is installing more renewable energy than any other country in the world, but they also added the equivalent of one large coal power plant to their electricity grid every single week in 2020. So how can these apparently contradictory policies possibly square up?