OFFSHORE WIND FARMS TO MEET 25% OF UK ELECTRICITY NEEDS

Offshore wind could power every home in the UK and provide 70,000 jobs according to the government's strategic environmental assessment (SEA). It finds that an extra 25GW of electricity generation capacity could be accommodated in UK waters as well as the 8GW already built or planned offshore. The total electricity capacity of offshore wind would be 33GW – enough to power every household in the UK and generate a yearly income stream of £8 billion.

The Crown Estate has earmarked 11 further viable areas, based on wind, water depth, connection to the grid, shipping lanes and environmental impacts. The Department of Energy and Climate Change and energy regulator Ofgem are tendering for companies to provide the £15bn of cabling needed to connect new wind farms. Energy and climate change minister Lord Hunt stated:
"Offshore wind is fundamental to delivering our target of 15% renewable energy by 2020, and looking ahead to reducing our carbon emissions by 80%... wind power presents a huge opportunity. We're already the world's number one offshore wind power. With the right support, we can grow the industry even further, supporting tens of thousands of high-value, green manufacturing jobs.”

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) suggests that 9GW of wind power capacity will be built by 2015, with wind overtaking nuclear in terms of installed capacity in the next four to five years. BWEA insists the government still needs to create a policy framework for wind, facilitate grid connections and ease supply chain pressures – some of the hurdles offshore wind farms face. If annual deployment of wind capacity hits 4GW a year all across Europe, prices for installing wind farms would fall by 20%.

BRITISH MINISTER : 2020 IS YEAR OF NO RETURN FOR EMISSIONS

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Milliband has given a clear warning in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit that greenhouse gas emissions must peak in 2020 and then start to decline. Emissions from developed nations should reach their highest point by 2015, said Milliband in the first move to make the crucial issue of a "carbon peak" an official target at Copenhagen. Research published by the UK Met Office has demonstrated that the point at which emissions begin to decline as a whole is absolutely vital in bringing rising temperatures under control. Computer simulations by the Met Office Hadley Centre indicate that for every ten years the peak is postponed, another critical half degree of temperature increase will become unavoidable.

Miliband said the issue of a global peak in emissions has been significantly under-emphasised; –
“It would irreversibly break the trend towards rising emissions…It would show that something had changed. The UK is arguing very strongly for a 2020 global emissions peak."

Miliband and British officials have put the ‘global emissions peak’ on the table at a Major Economies Forum on Climate and Energy (MEF), a high-level discussion group convened by President Barack Obama. MEF meetings will culminate in a world leaders' summit on climate change, which will take place alongside the G8 meeting in Italy in July. Dr Vicky Pope, the Hadley Centre's head of climate change advice, stated:
"Even if emissions peak in the next ten years and then decline rapidly, temperatures are still likely to rise to around two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Every 10-year delay in starting reductions will result in a further 0.5 degree increase in the most likely temperature rise, so the need for action is urgent."

The Hadley Centre's simulations last year indicated a most likely two degree rise with a 2015 peak (and world carbon emissions subsequently declining at three per cent a year to 2050), a 2.5 degree rise with a 2025 peak and a similar decline, and a three degree rise with a 2030 peak. In each case, temperature rise is a best guess - a 50/50 chance - and there are possibilities that it could be significantly higher.

All countries must be more ambitious in commitments to cut greenhouse gases reiterated Miliband ahead of the launch of the UK Government's own manifesto on what needs to be achieved in Copenhagen. Greater public pressure would help ensure the politics of negotiation catches up with the science of what needs to be done; http://www.actoncopenhagen.gov.uk/

Adapted from an article in Guardian Environment by Mike McCarthy

HOPENHAGEN

The United Nations and an international coalition of advertising agencies have launched a global marketing campaign for the climate treaty to be ratified in Copenhagen in December 2009. The campaign was launched under the umbrella tag "Hopenhagen" and aims to raise awareness of the importance of December’s UN meeting to secure a new global climate change treaty replacing the Kyoto protocol.

UN representatives unveiled the campaign, in conjunction with the International Advertising Association, at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival today. Its aim is to try and get the public to move from "coping" with climate change to one of "hope" that action can be taken to tackle the issue. The initiative is supported by a host of the world's advertising agency groups including Dentsu, Omnicom, IPG and Publicis Groupe."

Hopenhagan" aims to be an open-source campaign using a central website, hopenhagen.org, to drive the debate and awareness and allow users to send messages to the 192 UN delegates attending the meeting. A full-on launch of the "Hopenhagen" initiative is planned for September, while the first ads will be displayed this week at Heathrow, Los Angeles and JFK international airports.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon stated:
"The fate of our global environment and economy will be debated at the Copenhagen climate change conference and every citizen of the world has a stake in the outcome…Too much is at stake for this conversation to take place among a few. The Hopenhagen campaign will ensure that all citizens have a voice to express their desire for an effective global climate treaty."

LARGEST U.S. SOLAR-THERMAL PLANT FOR NEW MEXICO

“I’d put my money on the sun & solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil & coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had more years left.”
-Thomas Edison, 1931

A giant 92 MW solar-thermal electricity plant, sufficient to power 75,000 homes, will be built in the New Mexico desert by NRG Energy and eSolar, The “Suntower” plant, the largest solar power plant in America so far, will be built on 450 acres of private land in the far south of New Mexico; a 20-year agreement has been made to sell electricity to the nearby El Paso Electric Company. Suntower will use the sun rather than fossil fuel to generate steam and produce electricity. A giant field of heliostat-mirrors relatively low to the ground will be interspersed by 180-foot thermal receiver towers topped by boilers—motors on these heliostat-mirrors keep them aligned with the sun. Suntower consists of two 46 MW power units. Each unit contains 16 towers (each tower with its own north-south heliostat sub-field), a turbine generator set, and a steam condenser. Multiple 46 MW units could be scaled to any size. It will take only 16 months to build the 92 MW plant, which will be in full operation by summer 2011.

New Mexico’s law now requires utilities to get 6% of energy sales from renewable energy, rising to 20% by 2020. In February, NRG and eSolar announced plans to develop and build modular, scalable solar thermal-power plants, and as a first step to develop 500 MW of solar-thermal power in California and the Southwest. Their expectation is that these technologies can only get better, more efficient and cheaper. Solar-thermal has the greatest potential of all solar technologies because the electricity so produced is already grid-competetive in price with fossil-fuel plants. The capacity, capital outlay, build-time, electricity price and safety factors for the Suntower plant are noticeably more favourable than nuclear power. Indeed, solar-thermal would need only an area of 8 square miles to meet the total electricity needs for the state of New Mexico. In such locales, sunshine could become a “cash crop”, with solar-thermal electricity becoming a thriving export industry.

A SMART ENERGY METER IN EVERY HOME

Smart meters provide real-time displays of energy use around the home

Under the UK’s new compulsory nationwide scheme, every home must be fitted with a "smart meter" by 2020—to reduce energy use and initiate a low-carbon "smart grid". The new department of Energy and Climate Change claims its scheme will be the biggest such project in the world. Minister Ed Milliband states: "The meters most of us have in our homes were designed for an age before climate change. Now we need to get smarter with our energy.”

Smart meters send information on real-time electricity and gas use in households and small businesses direct to utility companies, eliminating the need for meter readings. Placing them in the country's 26m homes could save customers and energy companies up to £3.6bn over the next 20 years, while costing perhaps twice this to buy and install. Energy companies welcome the switch, which will reduce their running costs by making meter readers obsolete and eliminating customer service time spent estimating bills. They state that smart meters will be "cost-neutral" to customers because savings to companies will part-fund the roll out.

Previous studies indicate smart meters encourage homeowners to cut energy use by 15%. They will play a key role in helping the government meet emissions reduction targets of 34% by 2020. They allow suppliers to provide cheaper electricity at times of low demand and reduce peak demand so that fewer power stations need to be on standby, thereby cutting carbon emissions.

Smart meters allow electricity use by domestic appliances to be "dynamically managed”– switching off refrigerators for a few minutes at times of high demand, or using plug-in electric vehicles to store power. The latter is essential for large-scale use of clean energy from wind etc. Environmentalists and opposition politicians in the UK have warned the government’s timetable underestimes the urgency of climate change, by taking ten years to roll-out this key mitigation technology—one that is already available.

SUPPORT THE AMERICAN CLEAN ENERGY BILL RIGHT NOW!

GREEN ENERGY OVERTAKES FOSSIL FUEL

In the crucial area of electricity generation, clean technologies last year attracted $140bn compared with $110bn for gas & coal.

Green energy overtook fossil fuels in attracting investment for power generation for the first time last year, according to figures released today by the United Nations. More than a third of the funds were destined for Europe, but the biggest growth for renewable investment came from China, India and other developing countries, which are fast catching up on the West in switching out of fossil fuels to improve energy security and tackle climate change.

"There have been many milestones reached in recent years, but this report suggests renewable energy has now reached a tipping point where it is as important – if not more important – in the global energy mix than fossil fuels."
-Achim Steiner, executive director, UN Environment Programme

The UN believes $750bn needs to be spent worldwide between 2009 and 2011 and the current year has started ominously with a 53% slump in first quarter renewables investment. Counting energy efficiency and other measures, more than $155bn of new money was invested in clean energy companies and projects, even though capital raised on public stock markets fell 51% and green firms saw share prices slump more than 60% over 2008. Wind, where the US is now global leader, attracted the highest new worldwide investment, $51.8bn, followed by solar at $33.5bn. The former showed annual growth of 1%, and the latter nearly 50% year-on-year.

Europe is still the main centre for investment in green power with $50bn being pumped into projects across the continent, an increase of 2% on last year, while the figure for America was $30bn. There was a 27% rise to $36.6bn in developing countries led by China, which pumped in $15.6bn, mostly in wind and biomass plants. China more than doubled its installed wind turbine capacity to 11GW, while Indian wind investment was up 17% to $2.6bn, as its overall clean tech spending rose 12% on 2007 levels.

A number of ‘Green New Deals’ – government reflationary packages designed to kickstart economies and boost action to counter climate change – but Steiner is anxious that politicians do more to stimulate growth:

“There is a strong case for further measures, such as requiring state-supported banks to raise lending to the ­sector, providing capital gains tax exemptions on investments in clean technology, creating a framework for Green Bonds and so on, all targeted at getting investment flowing.

It is important that stimulus funds start flowing immediately, not in a year or so…Many of the policies to achieve growth over the medium-term are already in place, including feed-in tariff regimes, mandatory renewable energy targets and tax incentives. There is too much emphasis amongst some policy-makers on support mechanisms, and not enough on the urgent needs of investors right now."

Adapted from the article by Terry Macalister (Guardian, 4^th June 2009)