The Government is not doing enough to protect people from the increasing risk of heatwaves and flooding due to climate change, it has been warned. Despite efforts to prepare the UK for the impacts of a warming world, government advisers the Committee on Climate Change warn more needs to be done to conserve scarce water supplies and fertile soils and protect against floods and high temperatures.
Nearly 150 Scottish windfarms may not go ahead because of the UK Government’s decision to stop subsidising new schemes from next April, it was claimed yesterday.
The UK Government is under growing pressure to scrap a controversial decision to end new on-shore wind farm subsidies. Cross-party MSPs have signed a motion laid at the Scottish Parliament which “condemns” the announcement to close the renewables obligation from April next year. It claims the move was taken without consulting the renewables industry or the Scottish Government and would put an estimated 5,400 jobs and £3billion in investment in danger.
County councillors have turned down plans to frack for shale gas in Lancashire. Councillors refused the application because they considered the development would cause an unacceptable impact on the landscape and visual amenities, in contrary to the Fylde Local Plan. Following the outcome, Friends of the Earth North West campaigner Furqan Naeem said: “People in Lancashire and across the UK who have been tirelessly campaigning against fracking will breathe a sigh of relief today - safe in the knowledge that this dirty industry that risks health, quality of life and the climate has been stopped in its tracks once again.
Senvion SE is discussing a proposed A$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) wind farm in Australia with potential investors after parliament passed a new clean energy target. Senvion expects to start construction of the Ceres wind farm in the second half of 2016, the local unit of the German company wrote in an e-mail response to questions. The project will have 600 megawatts of capacity, making it the largest in the state of South Australia, its website shows.
Emirates Insolaire has installed the first ever coloured solar panels.
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg began an attempt to fly five days and nights in a single-man solar-powered plane after weather delays reduced the chances of achieving a multileg round-the-world flight this year.
State Oil, an importer and saupplier of automotive and industrial fuels, has today announced that it has successfully completed the acquisition of Harvest Energy and Harvest Energy Aviation.
Miles Per Acre Per Year
A record 22.3% of electricity was generated by renewables such as wind, biomass and solar in the first three months of this year, figures show. The share of UK power coming from renewables was 2.6 percentage points up on the first quarter of last year, and slightly higher than in the previous three months, the data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) revealed.
General Electric Co. agreed to help develop a A$450 million ($348 million) wind farm in Australia, spurred by parliament’s approval of a new renewable energy target. GE will supply turbines to the 240-megawatt Ararat wind farm in the state of Victoria that’s being developed with partners including Renewable Energy Systems Ltd., according to a statement from the companies. The development is expected to become the nation’s third-largest wind farm.
Ed Miliband has asked ministers to act urgently to ensure one of Britain’s last remaining deep pit coal mines does not close earlier than originally planned. The former energy secretary warned that Hatfield Colliery in his Doncaster North constituency is under “very serious pressures”, adding action is needed to keep it open until summer 2016. The South Yorkshire mine has received Government loans to support its managed closure. In January, it was announced a short-term commercial loan of £8 million had been made available to support Hatfield Colliery Partnership Ltd’s closure plan.
Onshore wind farms could be built without any need for Government subsidies “in the near future”, energy minister Andrea Leadsom has said.
A record 22.3% of UK electricity was generated by renewables such as wind, biomass and solar in the first three months of this year, figures show.
Long-frustrated wind and solar developers in Australia can now get to work on more than A$14 billion ($11 billion) in projects after a new renewable energy target passed parliament. Acciona SA, the Spanish clean-energy company, will start talks with banks and retailers as it progresses with A$750 million in new wind farms. SunEdison Inc., the U.S. solar company, said it will look at developing large projects in Australia.
The Government is to begin the process of moving the Green Investment Bank into private ownership. Business Secretary Sajid Javid will announce plans to bring private capital into the Edinburgh-based bank, which was launched in 2012 as the first of its kind in the world. The move was attacked as “reckless” by opponents.
Councillors have been under “intolerable pressure” to decide whether fracking for shale gas can go ahead in Lancashire, a public meeting has heard. The 15 members of Lancashire County Council’s development control committee are debating the proposals by energy firm Cuadrilla ahead of making an expected final decision today. Cuadrilla wants to develop two new sites between Preston and Blackpool to explore for shale gas by drilling, fracking and testing the flow of gas.
UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has been urged to meet green energy developers in Scotland after the Westminster Government scrapped a subsidies scheme for onshore wind farms. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has already branded the move “wrong-headed, perverse and downright outrageous“, while Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing claims it is “irrational“ and “deeply regrettable“.
A Dutch court ordered the government to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020. Activists hope that the groundbreaking ruling will now set a worldwide precedent. The Hague District Court made the ruling in a case brought by a sustainability organisation on behalf of some 900 citizens, claiming that the government has a duty of care to protect its people against looming dangers - including the effects of climate change on this low-lying country.
Confidence in the UK’s onshore wind sector has been further hit by hints that Westminster may remove the technology from the Government’s new competitive auction process, a renewables body has warned. Niall Stuart, chief executive of trade body Scottish Renewables, said wind being blocked from the Contracts for Difference (CFD) scheme “would result in a massive and dramatic decline in development”. Scottish Renewables revealed that, when asked whether onshore wind projects could access the new CFD auction, UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd had told the House of Commons: “In respect of contracts for difference, we would be implementing the terms of our manifesto”. This announcement came less than a week after Ms Rudd announced the early closure of the Renewables Obligation scheme, imperilling 250 onshore wind projects. Speaking at his organisation’s Onshore Wind Conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Mr Stuart said: “Yesterday’s announcement serves to further undermine the confidence of Scotland’s onshore wind industry.
Renewable energy will draw almost two-thirds of the spending on new power plants over the next 25 years, dwarfing spending on fossil fuels, as plunging costs make solar the first choice for consumers and the poorest nations. Solar power will draw $3.7 trillion in investment through 2040, with a total of $8 trillion going toward clean energy. That’s almost double the $4.1 trillion that will be spent on coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, according to a forecast from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Climate change could have “potentially catastrophic effects” for human health, undermining all the health gains in the last half century, experts have warned. But tackling climate change by cutting emissions from energy, transport and agriculture could provide a great global health opportunity, with benefits ranging from improved diets to fewer deaths and disease caused by air pollution. Experts who contributed to The Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change said funding to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C, seen as a threshold above which the worst impacts are expected, was a good investment. They called on governments to phase out coal-fired power plants and improve cities to promote healthy, greener lifestyles, making them better places to walk and cycle to cut pollution and obesity, and boosting insulation to cut energy use and cold-related deaths and disease. Politicians should also bring in carbon pricing to push up the price of high carbon goods and services to make people change their behaviour, while reducing the cost of other taxes such as VAT, boosting investment or cutting the price of low-carbon technology.
Around 250 onshore wind projects already in development are likely to be cancelled because the Government is ending subsidies which would aid their completion, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has announced. The cancellation of subsidies for onshore wind offered under the Renewables Obligation (RO) is likely to mean that 2,500 turbines which were due to be built are scrapped, Ms Rudd said. She said consumer bills will not rise and insisted the move would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies that would otherwise have been paid out to energy projects.
A new material that could make wind turbines and even aircraft quieter by mimicking the design of owls’ wings that allows them to silently hunt their prey has been developed by scientists. The Cambridge University-led Anglo-American team studied the feathers of the stealthy nocturnal airborne predators to produce the coating, due to be unveiled at a US conference today. Because of the noise they make, wind turbines are often braked to make them turn more slowly and quietly, but the team behind the new material say that it could enable the machines to turn faster and boost their output without increasing noise as a side-effect.
Scotland's first minister has urged the UK Government to reconsider its decision to end subsidy payments for onshore windfarms a year early.