Three American banks –JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – top the list of coal financiers, having between them provided at least €42bn to the coal sector since 2005. Barclays took fifth place, having lent more than €11.5bn to big coal companies in the same period.
Solarcentury
The company I founded in 1998 to design and supply solar energy solutions for the built environment. Solarcentury
Solar Aid
The charity I founded in 2006, with a 5% contribution of Solarcentury profits, to help deliver solar lighting to Africa. Solar Aid
Archive for November, 2011
Largest UK CCS plant opens in Yorkshire.
November 30, 2011 Climate, CoalThe plant at Ferrybridge, an SSE coal station, will capture only some of the fumes: 5 MW worth from 2,000.
“29/11/11: a turning point in British history”.
November 30, 2011 FinanceSo writes Newsnight’s economics editor. “Yesterday’s Autumn Statement will set the political tone of the decade: it will tie the hands of future governments; and it has already brought a philosophical debate on the British right to an abrupt end. Within six hours of their tight-lipped ordeal on the government benches, Lib Dem MPs heard Danny Alexander pledge them to go into the 2015 election fully committed to £30bn more austerity than they signed up for in the Coalition Agreement. ….Plan A, in short, failed. It failed because the eurozone did begin to slow, and confidence was hit, and so exports – having surged – will not surge much more. But also because the very survival mechanism adopted by the Bank of England – near-zero interest rates, QE and talking down the pound, which has produced and maintained a 20% fall of sterling against world currencies – led to imported inflation. This has hammered the spending power of a workforce whose wages have been pinned to the floor, even in the weak recovery phase.”
Central Banks step in to try and head off next credit crunch.
November 30, 2011 FinanceStock markets surge after central bankers say they will cut the interest rate on emergency dollar loans to cash-strapped banks by 0.5 percentage points and extend the scheme until February 2013. In the dollar swap scheme to date, though, banks have been reluctant to borrow from central banks, for prestige reasons.
Select Committees hear both sides on UK solar feed-in tariff cuts.
November 29, 2011 Clean Energy, CommentariesGreg Barker to a combined meeting of the Environmental Audit and Energy & Climate Change Committees: delaying UK the cuts to April would be “bonkers”. Jeremy Leggett: “they have launched a lethal attack on the underpinnings of a vital industry.” A fairly full ventilation of the issues.
Chancellor is wrong to blame Europe for lost decade now inevitable.
November 29, 2011 FinanceSo argues Martin Wolf in the FT: “The big facts are that the UK is set for a lost decade and a longer period of stringency than expected. The government’s position is that there is no alternative. That has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So blame foreigners: that always works.”
“The eurozone has only days to avoid collapse”.
November 27, 2011 FinanceWolfgang Munchau in the FT: “Last week, the crisis reached a new qualitative stage. With the spectacular flop of the German bond auction and the alarming rise in short-term rates in Spain and Italy, the government bond market across the eurozone has ceased to function.The banking sector, too, is broken. Important parts of the eurozone economy are cut off from credit. The eurozone is now subject to a run by global investors, and a quiet bank run among its citizens.”
Carbon trading “not working” UBS says, as carbon price hits record low.
November 25, 2011 Change for GoodThe price of carbon permits has fallen to an all-time low. Bankers and traders now question the future of the EU and UN cap-and-trade scheme. “The carbon scheme isn’t working,” Per Lekander, analyst at Swiss bank UBS writes.
US blocks flagship climate fund.
November 24, 2011 ClimateAhead of the Durban climate summit next week, the US, backed by Saudi Arabia, has still not agreed to adopt a blueprint for the Green Climate Fund. Proposed at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, the fund channels “a significant portion” of the $100bn a year developed countries have promised to mobilise by 2020 to help developing countries fight climate change.
Saudi fuel demand for power plants to rise 53% by 2017.
November 23, 2011 OilAs demand surges, the Kingdom will need 53% more fuel to fire its power and desalination plants by 2017, the head of Water & Electricity Co. says: 2.3 million barrels a day of oil equivalent, compared with 1.5 million barrels last year. Saudi Arabia is using ever more of its 12.5 million barrel-a-day oil capacity at home as it builds new houses and industries that require electricity. The amount of crude burned for power generation has doubled since 2008 and the IEA says this may reach 600,000 barrels a day this year. Khalil al-Shafie, interim president of King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, says the country may use 8 million barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2035.
Shale gas exploitation would take UK way over carbon allowance.
November 23, 2011 GasScientists from the Tyndall Centre warn in a report commissioned by the Cooperative Group that exploiting even a minor proportion of the UK’s reported shale gas resource would generate so much carbon dioxide that the government’s greenhouse gas emissions targets would be rendered unreachable. Paul Monaghan, head of social goals at the Cooperative: “The calls from ‘big gas’ for the abandonment of renewables targets must be rebuffed, and here is the science to do just that.” The report also found that the amount of investment needed to exploit gas reserves – about £32bn – would be enough to build 2,300 offshore wind turbines, which would produce enough renewable energy to meet government targets.
UK government’s “green deal” ignores microgeneration.
November 23, 2011 Clean EnergyGovernment estimates, of Green Deal measures announced today show the average household should pay £94 a year less for energy than they would without the policies. In Chris Huhne’s flagship energy and climate policy, due for a start in late 2012, 14m homes could be fitted with insulation and other energy-saving measures, creating 65,000 new jobs and helping millions of people out of fuel poverty. Households will be offered loans of up to £10,000 to install the energy-saving measures, which will be paid off over years by small additions to their bills, easily countervailed by savings. Energy companies must contribute £1.3bn a year to ensure as many households as possible benefit. There will also be safeguards against “cowboy” builders, in the form of government-set standards for the work. Microgeneration doesn’t figure.
UK solar mass lobby of Parliament: passions running high as job losses loom.
November 22, 2011 Clean Energy, CommentariesBusiness Green: “Around 25 companies, organisations, and entrepreneurs protested throughout the day, including Jeremy Leggett, founder and Chairman of Solarcentury, Homesun chief executive Daniel Green, and representatives from Keep Britain Tidy and the London Occupation at St Paul’s Cathedral.” 500 take part, with the rest of the solar industry busy rushing to get projects done by 12 December. In a video interview, I speak my mind about the malign role of the Big 6.
Solar trade way grows more likely.
November 21, 2011 Clean EnergyAs Chinese manufacturers prepare to move some production offshore, to Korea etc, Beijing says it would respond to any US surcharges on Chinese importsto the US by itself targeting US polysilicon exports.
“Rich nations ‘give up’ on climate treaty until 2020″.
November 20, 2011 ClimateThe Guardian: “Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world’s leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.”
Michelle Bachman: Solyndra “makes Watergate look like child’s play”.
November 20, 2011 Clean EnergyThis is the kind of hyperbole Steven Chu had to face during a 5 hour grilling on the Solyndra bankruptcy. The FT takes a dim view in an editorial. “Solyndra is one of many to benefit from the $18.4bn in clean energy loans from Mr Obama’s $787bn stimulus package in 2009. Some are thriving. … the bigger question – how to frame an effective incentive for the growth of clean energy – may well be a casualty of the Solyndra scandal. At a time when China and others are building a dominant share of the global clean energy market, this could impose a far higher eventual cost on the US taxpayer.”
“India should claim full nuclear liability from suppliers”.
November 20, 2011 Clean Energy, Commentaries, NuclearSo I say in the Times of India. This way, no investor will back nuclear, and India can “catch up and shine” in clean energy, which is preferable, and the imperative if India wants to avoid the economic devastation of climate change.
Kashagan, “biggest oil discovery in 40 years”, may become a $39bn white elephant.
November 19, 2011 OilBloomberg: “After 11 years and $39 billion of investment, Exxon Mobil, Shell and their partners have yet to sell a drop of oil from what was touted as the world’s biggest discovery in four decades.” The project is $15 billion over budget and 8 years behind schedule. There are now concerns as to whether it can ever be profitable. Peter Voser: “We will finish phase one and then we will look at phase two afterwards.” Kashagan has proved potentially lethal as well as complicated. The oil, 4,2 km deep (2.6 miles), is in a highly pressurized reservoir, and has a high concentration of poisonous “sour gas.”
IPCC’s first special report on extreme weather: much worse to come.
November 18, 2011 ClimateChris Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced the report: the message is clear – extreme weather events were more likely. “Some important extremes have changed and will change more in the future. There is clear and solid evidence [of this]. We also know much more about the causes of disaster losses.” Damian Carrington in the Guardian: “the new (report) highlights that 95% of deaths from such disasters occur in the developing world, while most of the economic losses occur in the developed world. We lose stuff, they lose their lives.”
World Bank agrees to lend to Moroccan CSP plant.
November 17, 2011 Clean EnergyThe Ouarzazate solar complex, south-east of Marrakesh, will have a capacity of 500 MW when completed, enough to power around 90,000 homes. The FT reports that its first phase, a 160MW plant, will cost around $1bn, financed with a $200m loan, and another $97m via a clean technology fund it oversees.
EDF searches for partners beyond Areva.
November 15, 2011 NuclearHenri Proglio, CEO of EDF, tells the FT: “For sure, Areva; but [also] Rolls Royce in Great Britain, Rosatom, in Russia or the Russian area, Chinese companies. We need international industrial partnerships that fit with the future of nuclear, and not just a French flag proposal.” Ed Crooks observes that “EDF’s huge commitments at home and in the UK may curb its international ambitions. If Mr Proglio gets his way, though, the Areva relationship may become strained once more.”
Nuclear power, at a crossroads, cannot afford another accident.
November 15, 2011 NuclearSo writes Sylvia Pfeifer in the FT. More than 500 reactors planned or proposed, a market worth thousands of billions of dollars, are at risk from the Fukushima fallout, the dire progress in Finland, and the collapse in public trust.
“A focus on renewables would allow the Government to deliver on some of its cornerstone mantras”.
November 30, 2011 Clean Energy, CommentariesMy latest column in Sublime magazine: “The current government in Britain appears to be playing fast and loose with some fantastic renewable energy opportunities – and ones that could provide much-needed jobs. what is that about? If the British Prime Minister were being authentic, he could be leading on an impressive story right now. Those of his core mantras that involve energy, taken together in strategic harness, make for an inspiring vision. Picture the scene. His Big Society concept sees communities taking power for themselves, providing for themselves. In short, Britain could be less centralised, more community-centric, more resilient to economic shocks.”
Tags: Renewables, UK