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Daily Briefing |

TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 23.06.2017
Hinkley Point deal ‘risky and expensive’, Blast from air guns used in hunt for oil killing plankton and threatening marine ecosystems, scientists warn, & more

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News.

Hinkley Point deal 'risky and expensive'
BBC News Read Article

The government had not sufficiently considered the costs and risks for consumers ahead of deciding on plans to built a new £18bn nuclear power station, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said. The case for the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset was “marginal” and the deal was “not value for money”, the spending watchdog said. The NAO also said UK electricity consumers face paying the state-owned French and Chinese companies £30bn above market prices for a “risky and expensive” deal, according to the Financial Times, which the Times points out is the equivalent of £15 on the average annual bill. The NAO said the contract would provide “uncertain strategic and economic benefits”, the Guardian reports, while Brexit and Theresa May’s decision to quit an EU nuclear treaty could make the situation even worse. The Telegraph the Independent and ITV News also cover the NAO report.

Blast from air guns used in hunt for oil killing plankton and threatening marine ecosystems, scientists warn
The Independent Read Article

Air guns used to explore for oil below the seabed could be kill off vast amounts of plankton and krill up to 1,200m from the site of the blast, according to a new study. The Southern Environmental Law Centre warned the air guns – compared to “dynamite-like blasts going off every 10 seconds for weeks or months on end” – would do “significant harm” to the fishing industry and endangered whales in the region. These lethal effects travel much farther than ecologists had previously assumed, reports Nature News, with researchers fearing damage to these animals, collectively known as zooplankton, could harm top predators and commercially important species of fish further up the food chain. The Trump administration is moving to allow these seismic surveys from Delaware to Florida ahead of anticipated oil drilling, reports Climate Central.

UK wants to revive gas extraction in oldest part of North Sea oil basin
Reuters Read Article

Britain’s oil regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), has published an eight-step programme it wants oil companies to follow to tap the southern North Sea tight gas deposits. The area is one of the world’s oldest offshore gas extraction areas, but the deposits were traditionally unpopular among explorers because they were difficult to access and therefore more expensive to develop. But the OGA said some 3.8 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of tight gas remain, with the OGA’s area manager for the southern North Sea saying maximising recovery of tight gas represents “a real opportunity to extend the life of the southern North Sea’s existing infrastructure”. The OGA’s plan comes as a new report from Climate Action Tracker reported on by Climate Home warns natural gas will have to be phased out faster than in most official forecasts in order to prevent dangerous climate change.

Deregulation taskforce targeted building standards before Grenfell Tower blaze
EnergyDesk Read Article

A government-backed initiative to cut ‘red tape’ after Brexit was looking to reduce the ‘burden’ of EU building regulations just weeks before the disaster at Grenfell Tower, according to leaked documents obtained by Energydesk. The list includes the EU’s Construction Products Regulation, which sets standards for construction materials traded across the EU such as cladding, while the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive also feature in the document as potentially ‘burdensome’ laws. Meanwhile the BBC reports eleven residential high-rise buildings have so far been found to be covered in the combustible cladding thought to have contributed to the rapid spread of fire at Grenfell Tower, as safety tests are carried out on about 600 high rises across England. Camden Council has already announced it will immediately start preparing to remove the external cladding panels on one of its high rises, reports Energy Live News. Last week Carbon Brief wrote a detailed factcheck on the misleading reporting by the Daily Mail that green targets could be to blame for the fire tragedy.

Queen's Speech sparks fresh doubts over Heathrow expansion
BusinessGreen Read Article

Controversial plans to expand Heathrow Airport face a fresh challenge after the project was left out of yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, BusinessGreen reports. Following the speech on Wednesday, the Daily Mail quotes Government sources as saying it was unclear if they could now push it through following the loss of the Conservative majority. “Heathrow, like some of the counter-terrorism agenda, is one of those issues where we may struggle for numbers,” a government source was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying. “It doesn’t need primary legislation, but we are committed to giving parliament a vote.” However a government spokesman told the Daily Mail: “We are fully committed to the construction of a new runway at Heathrow.” Meanwhile, the Times reports that a state-backed Chinese operator is among the companies shortlisted to run the new HS2 railway, making it the first bidder for a rail franchise from mainland China.

Comment.

Xi Jinping Is Set for a Big Gamble With China’s Carbon Trading Market
Chris Buckley, New York Times Read Article

President Xi Jinping is pushing ahead with an ambitious plan to build the world’s largest market for carbon emissions permits, but this is a “high-visibility, high-stakes gamble” for Mr. Xi writes Chris Buckley. “Europe and California already use this cap-and-trade approach…but no one has tried this on the scale the government envisions for China, the world’s leading source of carbon emissions. Making the trade run smoothly could take years and test Mr. Xi’s vows to let markets expand and to curtail polluting industries.”

Hinkley Point C: watchdog confirms fears of political vanity project
Nils Pratley, The Guardian Read Article

“The National Audit Office does not use excitable phrases like ‘utter shambles,’ writes the Guardian’s financial editor Nils Pratley. “But the spending watchdog’s verdict on Hinkley Point C, the nuclear power plant in Somerset that is supposedly inevitable, amounts to the same thing. The government ‘has locked consumers into a risky and expensive project with uncertain strategic and economic benefits’.” He goes on to say the 80-page report “confirms one’s worst fears” about how ministers fell in love with Hinkley. “First, they wedded themselves to an inflexible financial model. Then they agreed commercial terms with developer EDF in 2013, when energy prices were sky-high, and ploughed on regardless when the economic case for Hinkley started to crumble.”

Brexit, one year On: Green tape, fossil fuels, and climate science deniers
Mat Hope, DeSmogUK Read Article

A year on since voters took to the polls to vote on whether or not the UK should leave the European Union, things have progressed – a bit. DeSmog UK looks back a tumultuous 12 months where Brexit has dominated the political agenda, and tries to untangle what it means for the UK’s prospects of tackling climate change. The UK’s environmental regulations are still under threat, fracking and fossil fuels remain stubbornly on the government’s agenda, and a group of fringe climate science deniers have seen their influence grow as the prime minister’s hand has been weakened, the piece concludes. Elsewhere, BusinessGreen reports on a new Greener UK report from a coalition of 13 major environmental groups, which gives the government a green rating following the reiteration of its commitment to the UK Climate Change Act and Paris Agreement and signals that the UK could remain in the EU’s internal energy market post-Brexit. Politico has a guide to what is at stake in the UK’s Brexit negotiations in 16 different policy areas, including aviation, climate, energy and the environment.

95-Degree Days: How Extreme Heat Could Spread Across the World
Brad Plumer & Nadja Popovich, New York Times Read Article

The New York Times has published an interactive feature showing how extreme heat will affect different parts of the world even under “moderate” climate action: “The map above, based on a new analysis from the Climate Impact Lab, shows how 95-degree days (35 degrees Celsius) are expected to multiply this century if countries take moderate climate action. In this scenario, countries would take some measures, but not drastic ones, to curb emissions — roughly the trajectory of the current pledges under the Paris climate agreement.” Earlier this week, Carbon Brief published an article about a new paper showing that up to three quarters of the world’s population could be at risk from deadly heat extremes by the end of the century if emissions are not tackled.

Science.

Could geoengineering research help answer one of the biggest questions in climate science?
Earth's Future Read Article

Experiments to inject aerosol particles into patches of marine low clouds in a systematic manner could help resolve in the biggest uncertainty in determining how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases, scientists have suggested. A new paper argues that such experiments would constitute a fresh approach to climate science, potentially providing unprecedented data to untangle the effects of aerosol particles on cloud microphysics.

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