Category Archives: Renewable energy

EU plans ‘massive’ increase in green energy to help end reliance on Russia

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European Commission says extra €210bn needed over next five years to pay for phasing out of Russian fossil fuels

The EU plans a “massive” increase in solar and wind power, and a short-term boost for coal, to end its reliance on Russian oil and gas as fast as possible.

In a plan outlined on Wednesday, the European Commission said the EU needed to find an extra €210bn (£178bn) over the next five years to pay for phasing out Russian fossil fuels and speeding up the switch to green energy.

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Living costs in outer suburbs would be slashed under plan to ‘electrify everything’, analysis finds

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Fitting every home with solar panels and batteries and replacing gas devices and petrol cars could save households more than $5,000 a year

A plan to “electrify everything” with rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles would save households across the country more than $5,000 a year and particularly benefit those living in outer Melbourne suburbs, according to a new analysis.

Electrification would involve fitting every home with solar panels and batteries and replacing gas devices – cooktops, hot water and heating systems – and petrol cars with electric models.

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Australia’s wholesale power prices double in a year as coal-fired power plants falter

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The jolt in costs is being blamed mostly on more expensive fossil fuels and falling reliability of coal-fired power plants

Wholesale power prices in Australia’s main electricity market continued to rise in the first three months of 2022, more than doubling the cost a year earlier, with the increase blamed mostly on more costly fossil fuels and the falling reliability of coal-fired power plants.

Renewable energy, meanwhile, grew its share of the market to more than one-third, pushing carbon emissions from the largest polluting sector to new lows, according to the quarterly energy dynamics report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo).

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Greens unveil climate policy including coal export levy, renewable energy and net zero by 2035

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Adam Bandt to unveil minor party’s climate policy including making Australia a ‘renewable energy superpower’ and net zero by 2035

The Greens will push for a new levy on coal exports to fund climate disaster recovery and clean export industries if they hold the balance of power after the election.

In a climate policy to be launched in Sydney on Thursday, the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, will announce measures that the party says will improve the budget bottom line by $51.9bn over a decade and create 805,000 new jobs.

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Replacing NSW coal plant with renewables would create thousands more jobs than gas, report says

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Solar and wind could bring ‘jobs boom’ to regions that have previously depended on coal, Australian Conservation Foundation says

Replacing Australia’s largest coal-fired power station with renewable energy would create tens of thousands more construction jobs than replacing it with gas, a new analysis has found.

The Eraring coal-fired power station in the Lake Macquarie region of New South Wales is scheduled to close in 2025.

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Could Anglesey’s tidal energy project drive a new energy revolution?

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Experts say Wales has huge potential for generating renewable marine power, yet, so far, ambitious schemes have been ignored

On the stunning and craggy coastline of Holy Island in north Wales, work has started on a construction project to generate energy from one of the world’s greatest untapped energy resources: tidal power.

The Morlais project, on the small island off the west of Anglesey has benefited from £31m in what is likely to be the last large grant for Wales from the European Union’s regional funding programme. It will install turbines at what will be one of the largest tidal stream energy sites in the world, covering 13 square miles of the seabed.

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Barnaby Joyce refuses to use term energy ‘transition’ because it ‘equals unemployment’

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Deputy prime minister made comments in coal community of Gladstone in Queensland as Scott Morrison makes $300m NT energy and jobs announcement

Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce believes a “transition” from coal to cleaner energy “equals unemployment” in the regions, declaring the Coalition would not use the term during the election.

The Nationals leader has also backed the government’s clean energy fund to support coal, and for other government infrastructure funds to finance the construction of coal-fired power stations, but not for the building of cleaner hydrogen plants.

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Use England’s plentiful brownfield sites for windfarms, urge scientists

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Experts site Scottish example, with turbines along roads and rail lines, as a way to make better use of ‘cheap, clean’ energy source

Onshore windfarms need not blight the most beautiful parts of England because there is plenty of room for them next to rail lines and on brownfield land, leading scientists have said.

The government decided to keep the curbs on onshore wind, introduced by David Cameron, in the recent energy strategy. This means that it will be difficult to expand onshore wind in England.

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PM to put nuclear power at heart of UK’s energy strategy

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Plan will not please environmental campaigners, who say it fails to meet government’s net-zero targets

Boris Johnson is to put nuclear energy at the heart of the UK’s new energy strategy, but ministers have refused to set targets for onshore wind and vowed to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas.

Amid deep divisions among senior Conservatives, the strategy will enrage environmentalists, who say the government’s plans are in defiance of its own net-zero targets and neglect alternative measures that experts say would provide much quicker relief from high energy bills.

Increasing nuclear capacity from 7 gigawatts to 24GW

Offshore wind target raised from 40GW to 50GW (from 11GW today)

Solar could grow five times from 14GW to 70GW by 2035

An “impartial” review into whether fracking is safe

Up to 10GW of hydrogen power by 2030

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Coalition tries for third time to let renewable energy agency fund technologies using fossil fuels

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New rules could allow Arena to back developments that use CCS, such as that of ‘blue’ hydrogen made with gas, Senate hears

The Morrison government has launched a third attempt to change the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to allow it to fund a broader range of technologies, including some using fossil fuels.

The Senate has twice in the past year used a disallowance motion to block new regulations introduced by the energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, to expand Arena’s remit to include backing technologies such as hydrogen made with gas and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

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Minister rules out energy rationing in UK despite Ukraine crisis

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Grant Shapps says invasion is ‘wake-up call’ but onshore wind plan seems to have been scaled down

A cabinet minister has rejected calls for the UK to consider rationing energy, as a plan to drastically increase onshore wind power also appeared to be significantly scaled back.

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had been a “massive wake-up call” for western nations about their dependence on imported oil and gas, which European countries are now trying to wean themselves off.

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‘We feel safer’: how green energy is brightening refugee lives in Rwanda

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Solar panels and cleaner-burning stoves have reduced dangers faced by residents of three camps

“The camp has come from the dark into the light,” says Edson Sebutozi Munyakarambi, a refugee living in the Kigeme camp in southern Rwanda.

“Before the solar-powered street lamps, the camp was dark. Some people would come and steal things from the houses,” says Munyakarambi, who chairs the committee that represents the 16,000 people in the camp. “But now no one can rob people on the street corners and the children can study or play outside while they wait for their dinner.”

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Johnson to defy cabinet fears and push for onshore wind expansion

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PM ‘passionate’ about potential in light of fresh push for self-sufficiency after Russia invasion of Ukraine

Boris Johnson is expected to open the door to more onshore wind at next week’s energy strategy, despite some cabinet ministers lobbying against relaxing planning laws to allow more turbines.

The cabinet is split over whether to aim for more onshore wind projects, which can often get into lengthy planning battles, after officials drew up plans for a target of 30GW by 2030.

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PM to chair roundtable on boosting UK’s nuclear power output

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Meeting comes as Boris Johnson prepares to publish his energy security strategy amid soaring prices and Ukraine war

Boris Johnson will chair a meeting on how to increase the UK’s nuclear power output on Monday, as he prepares to publish his energy security strategy this month amid soaring prices.

The prime minister will discuss domestic nuclear projects with leaders from the nuclear industry at a roundtable meeting at Downing Street, No 10 said.

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Kenya to use solar panels to boost crops by ‘harvesting the sun twice’

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Successful trials found growing crops beneath panels – known as agrivoltaics – reduced water loss and resulted in larger plants

Solar panels are not a new way of providing cheap power across much of the African continent, where there is rarely a shortage of sunshine. But growing crops underneath the panels is, and the process has had such promising trials in Kenya that it will be deployed this week in open-field farms.

Known as agrivoltaics, the technique harvests solar energy twice: where panels have traditionally been used to harness the sun’s rays to generate energy, they are also utilised to provide shade for growing crops, helping to retain moisture in the soil and boosting growth.

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West accused of ‘climate hypocrisy’ as emissions dwarf those of poor countries

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Average Briton produces more carbon in two days than Congolese person does in entire year, study finds

In the first two days of January, the average Briton was already responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than someone from the Democratic Republic of the Congo would produce in an entire year, according to analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD).

The study, which highlights the “vast energy inequality” between rich and poor countries, found that each Briton produces 200 times the climate emissions of the average Congolese person, with people in the US producing 585 times as much. By the end of January, the carbon emitted by someone living in the UK will surpass the annual emissions of citizens of 30 low- and middle-income countries, it found.

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Wanted: 100,000 pioneers for a green jobs Klondike in the Arctic

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Europe’s newest industrial megaprojects are relocating to the far north of Sweden. But are curling, wild reindeer and the northern lights enough to convince workers to follow?

One by one, the 20 engineers and technicians step up to receive their equipment before the briefing. They have come to the far north of Sweden from as far away as Mexico, the US, Saudi Arabia, China, Germany and Russia.

“Welcome!” bellows Håkan Pålsson, their instructor. “We’re here to show you how to do curling, and then you’re going to go out on the ice and show us.”

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French couple wins legal fight over wind ‘turbine syndrome’

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Christel and Luc Fockaert awarded €110,000 after experiencing windfarm-related health problems

A French court has recognised “turbine syndrome” after a couple complained their health was damaged by living near a windfarm.

In what is believed to be the first judgment of its kind in France, Belgians Christel and Luc Fockaert were awarded more than €100,000 in compensation by the judge in Toulouse.

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Cop26: the time for prevarication is over | Katharine Viner

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Glasgow 2021 must be the moment when the promise of Paris 2015 becomes real – history will not forgive us otherwise

Summits do not always live up to the name. They can get bogged down in detail and disagreement, never really reaching altitude.

That is often the case with the annual UN climate summits known simply as the Cop, which have earned a reputation since the first was held 26 years ago for being bewildering marathons that overrun and underdeliver.

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Crown gives go ahead to rival ‘net zero carbon’ North Sea schemes

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Exclusive: crown estates accused of greed in selling rights to ‘incompatible’ carbon capture and windfarm projects

A clash between two multibillion pound “net zero carbon” schemes is brewing in the North Sea after the Queen’s property manager granted development rights for one patch of seabed to two different projects at the same time.

The crown estate will earn millions of pounds after agreeing to lease an area off the Yorkshire coast to the latest phase of the giant Hornsea offshore windfarm, as well as to a scheme led by BP which plans to begin storing carbon dioxide under the seabed. This has prompted concern that the giant wind turbines could interfere with seabed sensors for the carbon storage project.

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