A good week for offshore renewables It’s been quite a week for offshore renewable energy. The government has removed restrictions on offshore wind farms, greatly increasing opportunities for construction and giving a thumbs up to the industry.
On Wednesday Lord Hunt, the Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), announced ambitious plans to allow 25GW of additional off-shore wind power. That’s almost a third of our total electricity needs, and enough to power 19 million homes.
The DECC have decided not to implement a “buffer zone” along the UK coastline that would force wind farms 12 miles out to sea, increasing construction costs. The further out to sea, the deeper the water and the higher the price. The decision now allows the Crown Estate to begin leasing sea bed to energy companies wishing to invest.
Not only this, but the government have also opened up the tendering process to allow cabling and an offshore network to be built, which could cost up to £15 billion.
Lord Hunt has claimed this will offer huge opportunities for British businesses and create 70,000 new jobs, as well as being an important step to achieving the pledged 15% renewable energy by 2020.
Eight areas have been earmarked as zones open to offshore wind projects that Lord Hunt hopes will generate £8 billion a year when complete.
To fit in nicely with this announcement a new Harvard study has been published stating that wind energy could provide the world’s energy demand several times over. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/5603178/Wind-farms-could-supply-planets-power.html
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A dampener on the story above
Regular readers may have noticed that it’s rare that one week features only good news! As Jonathon Porrit steps down as Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDS) a report shows Britain remaining as Europe’s second worst carbon emitter.
The report argues that for every carbon emission battle the UK wins, our government undermines with “stasis or even reversion.” Its review of progress on targets set by Tony Blair in 2005 draws some stark conclusions, namely that we’re way off our 20% emission reduction target, and that “it's a startling indictment of this Government that more people will be living in fuel poverty at the time of next election than were living in fuel poverty in 1997."
More on this story here: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/britains-green-shame-1722451.html
The Government was dodging fire again last week with leading climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson openly criticising policies and providing the media with some great sound bites. The director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research was outspoken in claiming the UK’s climate focused DECC and Defra are like "small dogs yapping at the heels" of other departments, and that climate change is certainly not being given the attention it warrants, to a “dangerous” degree.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/23/anderson-climate-change-uk-emissions
Annual increase in CO2 emissions halved in 2008
The Netherlands Environment Agency has released a report claiming that due to an increase in fossil fuel prices, the global financial downturn, and an increase in renewable energy capacity, global CO2 emissions rose significantly less than predicted last year.
Emissions increased by 1.7% in 2008 against 3.3% in 2007. The report cites increased use of biofuels as playing a part in this smaller increase, alongside wind energy. “Excluding large-scale hydropower, renewables contributed 4.4% to global power generation, a half per cent more than in 2007, thereby averting about 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2008.”
The same report goes on to note that for the first time in history, the emissions of developing countries have overtaken those of developed. In 2008 the carbon emissions of developing countries counted for just over 50% of the total. This raises some serious questions about sustainable development in the build up to Copenhagen this year. The current Kyoto protocol merely requires developing countries to monitor their emissions, but there are no policies on reducing them. This report shows that addressing climate issues will involve serious efforts by developing countries to make cuts whilst continuing to develop – no mean feat.
Some form of aid will surely have to come from developed countries in order to achieve this. It has been recognised by the UN that emissions increases from the likes of China and India are largely due to increased demand for their products by industrialised nations. By shifting our production to Asia, we cannot wipe our hands clean of the emissions. One of the vital steps at Copenhagen will be agreeing on how developing countries can de-carbonise their industries without hindering their economies.
It will be interesting to see the reaction to Gordon Brown’s proposal of a $60 billion fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
Chinese Algae Plants And here’s one potential way forward! A Chinese firm is investigating the use of Algae as an affordable and effective carbon capture technique.
Fast growing algae is getting a lot of buzz at the moment as a potential climate solution. Basically, microalgae are the fastest growing organisms in the world. They can also absorb carbon dioxide faster than trees. Sounds pretty good eh? You ain’t heard nothing yet! The algae then feed on carbon dioxide and can produce high octane biofuel, or animal feed, or even sustainable plastics!
If only that were the whole story? Whilst algae still has plenty of promise, the process of managing it effectively is a very costly and energy intensive one, requiring a lot of space to work on large scales.
But a Chinese company called ENN is confident it can find solutions and use algae to capture carbon from coal mines and power stations in a cost effective way. It’s pioneering research at a 100 hectare trial project outside Beijing that is bearing fruitful results.
The Guardian does the story much better justice here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/28/china-algae-carbon-capture-plan
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