Opinion Archives - News and Events

UK power prices soar after key cable hit by blaze – BBC

16 September 2021 admin 0

A key electricity cable between Britain and France has been shut down, sending wholesale energy prices soaring. National Grid said a fire and planned maintenance at a site near Ashford in Kent means the cable will be totally offline until 25 September. Half of its capacity, or one gigawatt (GW) of power, is expected to remain unavailable until late March 2022. On Wednesday, British electricity prices for the following day jumped by 19% to £475 per megawatt hour (MWh). Earlier this month, energy regulator Ofgem warned that UK household energy bills would be affected by soaring prices of fossil fuels globally. The energy regulator told the [...]

$500m pledge at COP 21: A return to global carbon trading

30 November 2015 admin 0

We're not ones to say "We told you so..." at 350, but we're delighted to hear that the COP 21 Climate Change summit has already established that carbon trading from emissions reductions is firmly back at the heart of the global climate change agenda. Regular readers of this blog will know that re-energising the carbon market is the most practical way to address global emissions increases. And more to the point, it's also the fairest way to affect greener, clean development in the developing world. On the opening session in Paris (COP21), Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland announced an [...]

Renewable Projects: Round-up & 2016 Preview

5 November 2015 admin 0

"With so many renewable projects out there, you’ve got to apply some pretty strict criteria to separate out the best opportunities from the riskier ones. That’s our challenge..." This week I managed to pin down our busy Business Development Director, Bill Goldie to get a run down of the 350 projects we’re engaged with. In between trips to China, India and Mexico, he explained his number one priority for selecting a renewable energy projects: “Generally, the projects we work on are exceptionally high quality in terms of their development potential, and based in countries that are transitioning from developing to [...]

The UK Green Revolution is now over?

26 October 2015 admin 0

Thank heavens. The UK renewable boom was started by the pied piper of misguided climate economics (former energy secretary Ed Miliband) and it's now collapsed under its own weight. To misquote Winston Churchill, never in the field of reducing CO2 emissions has so much been wasted by so few. That's not to say the UK renewable sector hasn't had a good run, but from an environmental point of view it has been about as effective as paying people to run round in circles to reduce unemployment. Now there are going to be casualties. Potentially a lot of them, too. [...]

Why is climate change policy a leaky mess?

19 August 2015 admin 0

I’ve just read a carbon abatement report for a natural gas pipeline that runs across hundreds of miles of continental Eastern Europe. It’s leaking 2.4 millions of tons of methane (CH4) into the atmosphere every year. The equivalent of about 60 million tons of CO2 (going by the standard equivalency measure). And that’s just from one facility in one country. Multiply the issue across the natural gas systems of Europe alone, and the equivalent of billions of tons of CO2 is spewing out into the atmosphere for no reason other than faulty well valves and leaking low-medium pressure pipes. You [...]

An alternative explanation for the Chinese Stock Market crash

28 July 2015 admin 0

We have a theory about the Chinese stock market crash. And it’s just that, a theory because as anyone who studies the Chinese economy knows, there’s a certain lack of transparency in the data that makes it difficult to pinpoint the real reason why the market has been lurching downward in recent months. But one thing is pretty much certain, it's not a crash. In fact, it's doesn't look like a market correction either. China’s recent stock market slump has provoked a lot of speculation about the cause. Over the last few years, many commentators have suggested Chinese banks [...]

CMA energy market investigation: The UK needs a carbon tax?

10 July 2015 admin 0

On the surface, the latest CMA energy market investigation (Competition and Markets Authority) report appears to be criticising the big six consumer energy suppliers (CMA reports). Consumers have footed a bill between 2009-2013 (the report focus) that’s £1.2bn per year more than they should have paid in a competitive marketplace, the CMA concluded. It has led to rumours of a price cap whilst reforms are made to the energy market. The CMA chairman, Roger Whitcomb was quoted saying “There are millions of customers paying too much for their energy bills - but they don’t have to,” but [...]

“Is it raining?” and other strange election result predictors…

6 May 2015 admin 0

In a break from our usual focus on carbon reduction and renewable energy investment, this week I’ve hijacked Renewable Money with a prediction about the UK general election tomorrow. You might not know that old hands from the politics circuit often used some very strange (but often accurate) election result predictors, and in a too-close-to-call election, they might actually work... When the polls & data won’t cut it: These days the polls are pretty good (the closer you get to the election) but in a neck and neck tie, the poll margin of error means they’re no help at all in [...]

Living the good life: off-grid home tech… and pigs.

1 April 2015 admin 0

Last week we wrote about the emerging home battery scene, and how Nissan and Tesla have been developing interoperability between EVs and domestic home systems. A great way to go off-grid and devised (originally) by enterprising DIY energy geeks with a salvaged Nissan LEAF. But away from the big corporate spotlights on cutting edge tech, did you know some German energy companies are providing battery kits now? This started when the German Government reduced the Feed In Tariff it provides to domestic solar when dispatching electricity to Germany’s grid. And it tells us something about the chaos [...]

Disrupting the grid: Nissan and Tesla EVs for home energy

25 March 2015 admin 0

Clean renewable home energy has an arch nemesis. It’s not (as some green narratives might suggest) powerful oil lobbies holding it back for the sake of profits though, it’s much more boring than that. The supervillain of clean energy is infrastructure: The electricity grids of the modern world are based on old fashioned technologies and ideas of how to ship electricity from power stations to your plug sockets at home. But over the last couple of years a bit of lateral thinking to solve the grid problem has emerged from a surprising area. It’s not from city electrical engineers, or solar [...]

Tag: Opinion