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Scotland: It’s time to give us the power to decide on energy
Duncan McLaren, The Herald UK
Claims that the lights will go out if Scotland does not build new nuclear power stations is ill-informed scaremongering and ignores the reality of our energy systems and markets. Such claims also downplay the success of the Scottish renewables industry, which has, so far, delivered its generation targets ahead of schedule.
As it stands, Scotland has no shortage of electricity. Each year we even manage to export almost one-fifth of our output to England and Wales. Using official and industry data, Friends of the Earth Scotland has looked at various scenarios for the future of Scotland’s electricity generation up to 2025 – two years after the scheduled closure of Scotland’s last nuclear station, at Torness.
Even making conservative assumptions about future renewables capacity and assuming no change in the poor performance of energy-saving policies, there will be no year in which demand comes even close to exceeding supply. In all the most likely scenarios, in no foreseeable year will the margin fall below the current level of exports. ..
The scheduled closure of Torness and Hunterston will not put the lights out. But the nuclear obsession gripping Whitehall puts at risk the development of sustainable low-carbon electricity to meet our climate change targets. An infatuation with nuclear is already threatening to dominate and distort investment, grid capacity, training, political attention and public will, leaving energy saving, renewables and carbon capture without the support they need. Scotland has already lost one important low carbon investment (Peterhead – in part as a result of Whitehall’s nuclear obsession); it’s now time to complete the devolution of energy policy so we don’t lose any more.
(30 May 2007)
Duncan McLaren is chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
Extensive comments at link.
Australia: Huge power price rises loom
Lachlan Heywood, Brisbane Courier Mail Australia
HOUSEHOLDS face electricity price rises of up to 75 per cent as drought and global warming tighten their grip.
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Modelling to be released today shows domestic electricity bills will rise regardless of whether a carbon tax is slapped on power companies to force them to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Climate Institute report said if carbon trading were established immediately, price hikes could be contained to 20 per cent in the next 13 years. But if the Federal Government adopted a wait-and-see approach to carbon trading, home power bills would increase by 75 per cent.
The report comes only days before the Federal Government’s long-awaited report on possible international emissions trading, which is expected to guide the Coalition’s policy ahead of the federal election. It prompted Prime Minister John Howard to warn last night that a panic response to climate change would result in severe economic consequences. ..
Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said failure to adopt carbon trading straight away would lead to higher electricity prices in the long run. “This research highlights that it would be reckless to delay action, or only take half measures,” Mr Connor said.
The warning came after national electricity market regulator Nemmco said on Friday that southeast Queenslanders faced blackouts if the drought continued.
State and territory leaders yesterday urged Mr Howard to launch an emissions trading scheme by 2010, and set an environmentally credible target to cut greenhouse gases. In an open letter, all eight Labor leaders reminded Mr Howard their governments had committed to a national emissions trading scheme by 2010. ..
(28 May 2007)
Sen. Bingaman to introduce new emissions bill in June, talks biofuels, RPS, CTL
OnPoint, E&E TV
With the Senate likely taking up the energy debate after the Memorial Day recess, questions still remain about how the full Senate will act on key issues like implementing a new federal RPS and agreeing to a new federal mandate for the use of coal-based transportation fuels.
During today’s OnPoint, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, discusses what his committee has done in these areas plus he talks about the competing biofuels proposals that have emerged in the Senate. Bingaman also previews his new climate legislation saying the new bill will be introduced in June and will still include the controversial “safety valve” provision.
(15 May 2007)
Nuclear greenwashing
Amanda Witherell, SF Bay Guardian
Global warming has suddenly put nukes back on the agenda – but there’s a lot the industry isn’t telling you
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Patrick Moore’s presentation isn’t as slick as Al Gore’s. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don’t compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Moore himself seems a little frumpy, particularly as he peers out across the audience recently gathered in the Warnors Theatre in Fresno.
But attendees paid $20 to hear the former Greenpeace leader extol the benefits of nuclear energy as a clean, safe, reliable, economic, and – perhaps most important to the current political and media focus on global warming – emissions-free source of power.
It’s hard to imagine Moore at the helm of an inflatable boat steering into the line of a whaling ship’s fire, but that iconic Greenpeace image is exactly what he wants you to associate with him. The Vancouver, British Columbia, native is quick to tell you he’s a former leader of one of the most effective international activist organizations ever.
But he said he’s older now and wants to be for things instead of against them.
What’s Moore for? Warding off the warming of the world. What does he think will do it? More nuclear power plants.
If there’s any great and unifying issue thrumming through the national psyche, defying political party lines and flooding the media filters these days, it’s global warming. While leaders argue left and right about nearly every issue that comes before them, there is at least consensus that something must be done about climate change.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped on that bandwagon last September when he signed into law Assembly Bill 32, mandating a 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.
Thirty-one states recently agreed to join a voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry similar to California’s, 10 northeastern states are creating a cap-and-trade market, and already half the country has laws requiring that a certain percentage of local power portfolios come from renewable energy.
The alternative-energy troops who’ve long been waiting in the trenches have stepped up to fight, armed with the tools they’ve been honing for years: solar panels, wind turbines, tidal power, and biofuels. They say new options and innovations abound for weaning the country off its fossil fuel habit.
But there are already critics who say those approaches aren’t going to be enough – and that we need to go nuclear against this planetary threat. And now they have some unlikely new allies.
(30 May 2007)
