Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

thevilla

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-emissions-fall-2-4-in-2025-as-coal-hits-400-year-low/

The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.4% in 2025 to their lowest level in more than 150 years, according to new Carbon Brief analysis.

Martyn1981

Thank you so much, fascinating reading. Great to see the progress made, and somewhat sobering to see how much further we have to go.

I thought this bit was eye-opening:

Transport remains the single-largest sector, accounting for around 30% of UK emissions, followed, in order, by buildings, agriculture, industry and electricity generation.

Leccy now in 5th place for emissions, with transport 'leading' the charge for FF's followed by buildings. At least we now have the solutions for transport and space heating, and at far lower energy consumption too, so no need to match the current primary energy input.

I appreciate that whilst leccy is now low(er), it's still crucial to keep pushing, as it is on what all the other changes will lean on going forward into the low carbon, electric future.

Martyn1981

Just me harping on again about the Aussie support scheme for home batts. It's already resulted in 6.3GWh of batts being deployed, across 250k properties, since last July. That's a staggering amount of distributed storage. I would suggest, that even if subsidies are slowly reduced, that figure could increase 10x as 40% of households in Aus already have PV (not all have batts yet), and growing. And storage costs still tumbling.

Totally appreciate that for the UK, we aren't anywhere near as well suited for PV, and it's the PV side (I suspect?) that drives this. But imagine if Scotland/The North had those sorts of storage levels deployed, gobbling up wind energy that is often, currently, being curtailed. A win maybe for households, leccy suppliers, distribution grid, transmission grid, RE generation, and Gov carbon targets.

Australia’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program surpasses 6.3GWh installations

Australia’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program has officially surpassed 250,000 installations, delivering 6.3GWh of distributed energy storage capacity across households, small businesses and community organisations nationwide.

Coastalwatch

Totally agree Mart as if we all had PV and batteries utilised in the peak hours then it wouldn't so much as shaving off of the crests as truncating them. I accept we should still have problems during periods of dunkleflaute but it would certainly ease Grid conjestion on normal day to day operations. It all makes sense to me. But what do we know!

NedS

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81914663#Comment_81914663

With enough batteries and enough control (think VPPs), the demand curve would flat line once enough of that peak demand can be moved to lower demand periods, even during periods of dunkelflaute due to grid charging at periods of low(er) demand. Of course it doesn't help the overall supply and demand situation, but it at least flattens it from it's current 'peaky' state.

People think about VPPs mostly in terms of meeting periods of peak demand by discharging to the grid but there's also the flip side of recharging the battery during periods of excess supply/low demand.

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81914766#Comment_81914766

Hence the more people who have home batteries the more they will 'eat their lunch' - flattening demand and the price differential that having a battery was hoping to exploit….

It is probably not a coincidence that the EV type tariffs have been getting less and less generous on their cheap rate and cheap periods.

NedS

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81916379#Comment_81916379

Those on VPP tariffs are being rewarded for their balancing role, not just buying cheap electricity. Look at the rates Octopus were paying for IOF (before this crisis) versus wider market import and export rates. Look at Axle paying £1/kWh for export during a balancing event.

View it like this - if 20% of people having batteries is enough to flatten the demand curve, those 20% get paid more for providing that service with the cost spread between the other 80%. The moment you stop rewarding people for providing that balancing service, they will stop providing it and you're back to a peaky demand curve as everyone's just looking after themselves.

Netexporter

There would need to be a fundamental change in society for the evening peak to disappear, so that source of arbitrage will be around for the foreseeable. Add some grid services as the icing on the cake.

Martyn1981

Here's another of those news items that I think is really important/interesting, but probably boring to most. 🤔

I knew that the falling cost of conventional battery storage meant it was successfully bidding into MDES (medium duration energy storage), typically described as 4-10hr, but didn't know it was reaching economical viability for LDES (long duration at 10hr+).

Only some of the article can be viewed, but gives the basics:-

VIDEO: ‘11.5-hour LDES win moves us into new space for batteries’, says BW ESS

We caught up with the CEO of owner-operator BW ESS, Erik Strømsø, about the firm’s next deployment plans, tolling trends, procurement and LDES, with its 11.5-hour Bannaby BESS in Australia further proof of lithium-ion’s long-duration potential.

Article here, mentioning the 11.5hr Bannaby scheme, and several other Li-ion projects around the 10hr mark:

Australian state awards 12 GWh of long-duration storage contracts

The New South Wales Roadmap Tender Round 6 for long-duration energy storage (LDES) has awarded long-term energy service agreements (LTESAs) to six new battery energy storage projects representing 1.17 GW/11.98 GWh of capacity.

Bumping the state’s storage under contract to 30 GWh, the latest tender round meets the NSW Roadmap’s legislated Minimum Objective of delivering 2 GW of LDS by 2030 and 28 GWh by 2034.

Martyn1981

I thought this was a nice, and timely article on the cost of meeting (or failing) net zero. Thoughts on energy security are also raised, again, as we 'enjoy' our second FF cost crisis in just 4yrs.

Reaching net zero by 2050 ‘cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis’

Achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050 will cost less than a single oil shock and bring health and economic benefits while insulating the country against future costs, the government’s climate advisers have forecast.

Eliminating the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy and green technologies, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, would be the best and most cost-effective option for the future economy, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) found.

Doing so would prevent the kind of shock that consumers are experiencing from the Iran war, which has sent the cost of oil and gas soaring to levels not seen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Reaching net zero would cost about £4bn a year, the CCC found, or close to £100bn by 2050, which was roughly equivalent to the energy-related costs of the fossil fuel shocks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The findings contradict widespread claims made by rightwing thinktanks and populist politicians including the Reform party that net zero would represent a crippling cost of £9tn to the UK’s economy. As well as exaggerating costs, these estimates failed to take into account the cost of paying for the fossil fuels needed for energy if we do not reach net zero.