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Daily Briefing |

TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 21.06.2017
Centrica to close UK’s largest gas storage site, Human race is doomed if we do not colonise the Moon and Mars, says Stephen Hawking, & more

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News.

Centrica to close UK’s largest gas storage site
Financial Times Read Article

Britain’s largest storage site for natural gas is to close permanently. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, said its Rough storage facility off the Yorkshire coast could no longer be operated safely because of failures in its ageing wells. The 32-year-old North Sea site accounts for 70% of UK gas storage capacity and it can meet a tenth of the country’s daily peak gas demand in winter. Centrica said that it had applied to end Rough’s status as a storage facility and instead to produce all the recoverable gas from the field over the next four or five years, says the Times. Without Rough, the UK will be more reliant on imports of gas via pipelines from Europe or on liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped in from the Middle East, Africa or the United States, notes the Times. Analysts at Barclays and other industry-watchers said the closure would increase the volatility of winter gas prices, reports the Guardian. A risk manager at energy consultancy Inenco, said: “We anticipate that the decision to close Rough will create uncertainty in terms of energy pricing.” Speaking to Bloomberg, Pierluigi Frison, a gas trader at Green Network UK Plc in London, said the shutdown will leave the UK competing for winter cargoes of LNG with Asia: “It is clear that the U.K.’s dependency on LNG will increase.” The story is also picked up by the Telegraph, Energy Live News, and another Bloomberg piece. At the same time, Centrica has also announced it is selling off two large gas power plants for £318m, says the FT. The sale of the Langage and South Humber Bank combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations is part of a wider strategy towards generation of power at a smaller local and community level.

Human race is doomed if we do not colonise the Moon and Mars, says Stephen Hawking
Telegraph Read Article

The human race must start leaving Earth to avoid being wiped out by over-population and climate change, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned. In a speech at the Starmus science festival in Trondheim, Hawking said it was only a matter of time before the Earth as we know it is destroyed by an asteroid strike, soaring temperatures or over-population. “I am convinced that humans need to leave earth,” he said. “We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change, rising temperatures, the reducing of polar ice caps , deforestation and decimation of animal species.” Prof Hawking said the Moon and Mars were the best sites to begin the first colonies: “Wherever we go we will need to build a civilisation, we will need to take the practical means of establishing a whole new ecosystem the will survive in an environment that know very little about and we will need to consider transporting several thousands of people, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and insects.” Hawking’s time frame for this Earth-exit is reported differently across media outlets, with the BBC saying leading nations should aim to build a lunar base in 30 years’ time and send people to Mars by 2025, the Telegraph saying the human race must start leaving within 30 years, while Vox says 50 years, the Sun puts it at 200 years, and the Mirror and MailOnline say it’s 200-500. The Express also covers the speech.

Small power plants clobbered by Ofgem subsidy change
Telegraph Read Article

The energy watchdog Ofgem has decided to cut subsidies paid to small power plants that provide back-up power for peak winter demand. Payments for small plants producing electricity at peak times from £47 per kilowatt to between just £3 and £7 per kilowatt. The change will be phased in from next year, and fully implemented by 2021. The cuts in “embedded benefits”, or subsidies paid to operators of diesel, biomass and wind generators of under 100 megawatts, come after complaints from large producers that they were too generous and distorting the market, says the Times. Ofgem chief executive Dermot Nolan said the move was to “protect customers and make sure costs are kept low.” However, Mark Draper, chairman of The Flexible Generation Group, said that he was considering seeking a judicial review. Speaking to the Telegraph, Draper said the decision “will inevitably push up prices for consumers, stifle innovation and investment in the energy sector and put existing Capacity Market agreements at risk, threatening security of supply.” BusinessGreen and Energy Live News also cover the story.

Heating the home with hydrogen could be in the pipeline
Times Read Article

Hydrogen gas could be piped to millions of homes to be used for heating and cooking under government plans to meet climate change targets by phasing out natural gas. A new £25m government-funded research programme will investigate whether hydrogen can be safely and reliably distributed to homes using the existing gas supply network. Leeds is being lined up as the first city to convert its gas grid to hydrogen. The announcement by Claire Perry was one of her first acts as Minister at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, says BusinessGreen. Energy Live News also have the story.

EPA plans to buy out more than 1,200 employees this summer
Washington Post Read Article

The Environmental Protection Agency plans on shedding more than 1,200 employees by early September through buyouts and early retirements. In an email to EPA union leaders this week, an agency attorney said the EPA plans to make offers to as many as 1,228 employees. The departures would amount to about 8% of the current 15,000-person workforce of the EPA, where a hiring freeze also remains in effect. The EPA has also given notice to dozens of scientists that they will not be renewed in their advisory roles, says another Washington Post article. Members of the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) whose terms end in August will not see them renewed, according to an email seen by The Washington Post. The BOSC advises the agency’s Office of Research and Development, which is undergoing deep budget cuts. “It effectively wipes out the BOSC and leaves it free for a complete reappointment,” said Deborah Swackhamer, the current chair of the board’s executive committee and an emeritus professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota. “EPA is grateful for the service of all BOSC members, past and present, and has encouraged those with expiring terms to reapply,” said an agency spokeswoman, reports Buzzfeed.

Dormice could soon be ENDANGERED because of climate change - as wetter weather makes it harder to find food
Mirror Read Article

The dormouse could be classified as endangered after numbers plummeted by 72% in just two decades, new research warns. The hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius) is a European Protected Species and is monitored by volunteers at sites in England and Wales as part of a national programme. But a recent analysis from 400 UK sites between 1993 and 2014 found a 72% fall in numbers, amounting to a 6% annual rate of decline. Dormice are very vulnerable to climatic changes, in particular wetter springs and summers, when foraging for food becomes harder and when warmer winter temperatures prevent them from successfully hibernating. Study senior author Prof Robbie McDonald said: “Dormice face a range of problems: climate change and habitat loss are likely to be important, but we think that appropriate woodland management could make a big difference.”

Eni signs deal to carry out feasibility study in Iran
Financial Times Read Article

Eni has signed a provisional agreement with Iran to carry out feasibility studies on the development of oil and gas fields in the country. Italy’s largest oil and gas group signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), the state-owned energy group, to explore a potential investment. Iran had signed provisional agreements at the end of last year on the two fields with Royal Dutch Shell, Russia’s Gazprom, Philippines’ PNOC and an Iran’s Ghadir Investment Company. Government officials say this shows that global companies are not being deterred from investing in the country despite tensions between the country and regional rival Saudi Arabia. The news comes as a report from Carbon Tracker and the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) network finds that some of world’s largest oil and gas companies are at risk of wasting a total of $2.3tn of investment on projects that are incompatible with keeping average global temperature increases within 2C. The report, covered by BusinessGreen, concludes five of the six largest listed oil companies currently risk more than a third of their prospective spending on oil and gas development projects that are high-cost and would be surplus to the world’s needs under a 2C scenario. At the same time, the FT also reports that oil prices have fallen to their lowest level for this year. Renewed concerns about growing production from within the Opec cartel and a reinvigorated US shale industry took global crude trading on Tuesday to the lowest since mid-November with Brent crude sinking towards $45 a barrel. And elsewhere, the Telegraph reports that Rio Tinto has rejected a rival bid from Glencore to buy its coal mines in Australia, opting to stick with its initial buyer, Chinese-backed Yancoal.

Global warming brews big trouble in coffee birthplace Ethiopia
Guardian Read Article

Global warming is likely to wipe out half of the coffee growing area in Ethiopia, a new study finds. The research combined model simulations with detailed measurements of current ground conditions, gathered in fieldwork that covered a total distance of 30,000km within Ethiopia. It found that 40-60% of today’s coffee growing areas in Ethiopia would be unsuitable by the end of the century under a range of likely warming scenarios. Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest coffee producer and the world’s fifth largest coffee exporter, notes The Verge. However, the new research also reveals that if a massive programme of moving plantations up hillsides to cooler altitudes were feasible, coffee production could actually increase. The BBC explores what warming could mean for coffee around the world in a feature article with interviews and infographics.

Comment.

Heatwaves are national emergencies and the public need to know
Bob Ward, Guardian Read Article

“Hundreds of people across the UK are likely to be killed by a natural disaster this week, but their deaths will not be the subject of ministerial statements or newspaper reports,” writes Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “The heatwave conditions are causing preventable deaths partly because large swaths of the population wrongly believe that extremely hot days are becoming less common,” he argues. The lethalness of heatwaves is often hidden because the deaths they cause is not reported until many months later, he says, and there is a “worrying lack of understanding of heatwave risks”. The last few environment secretaries have largely ignored the importance of climate change adaptation, Ward notes: “Will Michael Gove break with the dismal record of his predecessors and try to save lives by raising public awareness about the growing risks of heatwaves and other impacts of climate change?”

Science.

Climate change and marine fisheries: Least developed countries top global index of vulnerability
PLOS ONE Read Article

Human-caused climate change is likely to have a negative impact on marine fisheries in many parts of the world, but vulnerability to food insecurity, livelihoods and public health – to name a few issues – vary significantly. New research develops a ‘vulnerability index’ to assess the risk in 147 countries. Seven out of the ten most vulnerable countries on the resulting index are Small Island Developing States, while the bottom half includes all but one of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states. This is primarily due to tremendous variation in countries’ adaptive capacity, say the authors.

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