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
Climate change investing is “a sunset industry”: FT Lex.
December 4, 2011 Clean Energy, Climate
So says the FT’s Lex column: “the appeal, and likely returns, of climate change investing are fading fast.”
UK economic outlook so bleak that business-as-usual capitalism cannot expect to muddle through now.
December 4, 2011 Finance
Will Hutton in the Observer: “The last time Britain endured such an extended period of depression and falling living standards – the 1870s and 1880s – saw the mushrooming of the co-operative movement and the emergence of the Labour party as the more moderate expressions of anger that wanted to challenge the very basis of capitalism. Be sure that British civil society will not accept its grim fate as if nothing is happening. There will be organised and angry responses – and rightly. We are about to experience economic, social and political tectonic plates on the move.”
UK renewables projects tumble as Big 6 dash for gas.
December 4, 2011 Clean Energy, Gas
Guardian: “The construction of new renewable energy generation capacity has fallen dramatically, as the big six energy suppliers pursue a “dash for gas” policy that could put the UK’s climate change targets out of reach and leave households with higher bills.” Wind projects are down by half on last year. Less than a GW of wind has been approved and 30 GW of gas is at planning stage.
UK new nuclear plans slip yet again: 2019 now, maybe.
December 2, 2011 Nuclear
As the Telegraph puts it: “The first of the new plants will not be built until 2019 because of extra safety checks following Japan’s atomic disaster. Ministers originally hoped to get the first nuclear power station built by 2017, before revising this to 2018. Now there has been a further slippage, after an updated timetable showed the first station in Somerset is not expected until nearer the end of the decade.”
Big Energy firms accused of profiteering, again.
New analysis for the Guardian by Manchester University shows a progressive widening between wholesale and retail prices.
Review article on solar FiTs: success in Germany versus threat from nuclear lobby in Japan.
December 1, 2011 Clean Energy, Nuclear
Japanfocus.org: “Last year, according to figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (link), investment in new generation capacity from renewable energy sources (excluding hydro) totaled USD 187 billion, outpacing the USD 157 billion new investment in natural gas, oil, and coal-fired generating capacity.
….The FIT cost the Germans EURO 3.2 billion in 2008, but the German Federal Ministry for the Environment calculates that the FIT saved Germany EURO 7.8 billion in fossil and nuclear fuels and the public health and other external costs from carbon emissions, air and water pollution, and the like by EURO 9.2 billion. …. it has worked far above expectations in Germany for the past 10 years. Germany set a 2010 target of 12.5 percent share of renewable energy in electric generation in 2000. They surpassed that goal in late 2007 with 15.1 percent share. …. since the German’s have launched their FIT program, approximately 35 to 40 counties have followed suit and implemented their own.
…. Japan introduced a FIT in November of 2009… This FIT is encouraging a rapidly expanding volume of renewables investment inside Japan from co-ops and farmers, households and local communities through to such heavyweights as Softbank, NTT, and Marubeni as well as overseas giants including Germany’s Siemens and China’s number 2 PV producer JA Solar. …. The real risk in Japan is that prices will be set too low so that little deployment is encouraged. This would blunt the incentives of the world’s third-largest economy to lead the energy transition, at the same time driving down its own power costs and externalities as well as those for billions elsewhere, especially in Asia and Africa. This risk is due to the nuclear village having managed to get its people named to the committee that is to set prices. As Japan’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) warns in a November 24 press release, these individuals include Shindo Kosei, Executive VP of Nippon Steel and head of Keidanren’s Global Environment Division. ….This ongoing fight over structuring the FIT is part of the larger fight between renewables and nuclear as the pillar of Japan’s power economy, a fight the November 18 New York Times understands to be a “contest over the future of Japan itself”.”
Governor of Bank of England warns of spiral into crisis.
December 1, 2011 Finance
Mervyn King: “The crisis in the euro area is one of solvency not liquidity. And the interconnectedness of major banks means the banking systems and economies around the world are all affected. Only the governments directly involved can find a way out of this crisis.” The Financial Policy Committee urges banks to continue building up their capital stock and urges them to limit bonuses and dividend payouts rather than cutting back on lending to businesses and households.
More than a quarter of UK households are in fuel poverty after Big 6 energy price rises.
With households spending 10% or more of income on home heat and electricity up from nearly one in five households last year to one in four now (4.1 million), the government looks set to miss its statutory obligation to eliminate fuel poverty by 2016. It now looks certain to fail to meet its legal duty. And these estimates were calculated before the huge prices rises announced last summer by the Big 6. New calculations, provided by Consumer Focus and seen by the Guardian, based on actual bills, show the figure for England alone is now over 5 million households. In the summer price hikes the biggest supplier, British Gas, put its gas and electricity prices up by 18% and 16%, meaning an average annual dual-fuel bill for its 9m customers has risen from £1,096 to £1,288. Price rises have averaged 21% since last year. Over the past five years, average prices have gone up 88%. Some 2.5m people are already in debt to their energy supplier. “Excess” winter deaths are already running at 27,000 a year.
Europe may launch an oil embrago at Iran in wake of embassy attack.
December 1, 2011 Oil
In the wake of the sacking of the british Embassy in Tehran, and oil embargo is under discussion in Europe. The FT reports that “diplomats said one of the key questions for European countries in the weeks ahead would be whether Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states could be persuaded to boost oil production to mitigate the effects.”
Enron-type speculation back in play in energy markets.
Enron was a high risk hedge fund disguised as a diversified energy company and some 500 companies had been approved by regulators to trade energy at the time it blew up 10 years ago. It took down Mirant, NRG, NEG and Calpine with it. Now, says Julian Dumoulin-Smith, director of equity research in the Electric Utilities & IPPs Group at UBS Securities, there is a growing queue of groups interested in trades beyond physical assets: Constellation Energy, Mercuria, Arcadia Petroleum, Glencore, RWE, EON, EDF. As one commentator says, its almost come full circle.
UK government announces it needs a new Mox plant at Sellafield.
December 1, 2011 Nuclear
As the Guardian puts it: “The government has astonished the anti-nuclear lobby by outlining plans to spend £3bn of public money building a new mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) plant – months after announcing the closure of a similar facility that lost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.”
UK Conservative right is thrilled as government backs off green agenda.
December 1, 2011 Clean Energy, Climate
A senior Conservative quoted in the FT: “(Osborne) has begun to sneer at the green lobby: it’s a clever strategy within the party.” Latest casulaties: the Green Investment Bank now looks to have fallen foul of Osborne’s lending proviso: that it would only be able to borrow once debt was falling against gross domestic product. So no borrowing now until 2016.
“Burning oil to keep cool: the hidden energy crisis in Saudi Arabia.”
December 1, 2011 Oil
A RIIA report: “Saudi Arabia’s place in the world oil market is threatened by unrestrained domestic fuel consumption ….on the current trajectory, Saudi Arabia’s domestic energy consumption could limit its exports of oil within a decade. This would have a severe effect on government spending, over 80% of which is dependent on oil revenues. Ultimately, it may reduce Saudi Arabia’s spare production capacity, causing greater volatility in the world oil markets. ….simulations show that adding renewable and nuclear power based on current estimates will only delay the onset of an intractable fiscal deficit by a couple of years. An ambitious effort to increase energy efficiency is also essential.”
Top 20 banks lending to coal listed by NGOs.
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.
Largest UK CCS plant opens in Yorkshire.
The plant at Ferrybridge, an SSE coal station, will capture only some of the fumes: 5 MW worth from 2,000.
“A focus on renewables would allow the Government to deliver on some of its cornerstone mantras”.
November 30, 2011 Clean Energy, Commentaries
My 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.”
“29/11/11: a turning point in British history”.
November 30, 2011 Finance
So 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 Finance
Stock 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, Commentaries
Greg 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 Finance
So 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 Finance
Wolfgang 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 Good
The 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 Climate
Ahead 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.