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World's biggest wind farm to be built off UK coast & world leaders to attend Paris climate summit

29.10.15

News

Dong Energy to build world’s biggest wind farm off UK coast

The Telegraph

Danish utility Dong Energy is to build a 660MW wind farm in the Irish Sea. The final investment decision for Walney Extension has been made after securing all necessary consents from authorities and signing most of the supply and installation contracts for the project. The wind farm is due to be fully commissioned in 2018. Dong Energy did not say how much the project will cost.

World leaders to attend Paris climate summit

AFP via the Guardian

At least 80 world leaders, including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron and Narendra Modi, will attend a summit tasked with agreeing a global climate pact in Paris in December, reports AFP. For the opening day on 30 November, “we have already received 80 confirmations, including from the presidents of the United States and China, and the Indian prime minister,” French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told journalists in Paris on Tuesday. The leaders of Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Canada have also accepted, he said.

Tight controls, strict penalties, and a stability reserve: draft of China’s national carbon market rules emerges

Carbon Pulse

China’s national carbon market, to be launched in 2017, will be tightly controlled by Beijing and include strict penalties for non-compliance and cheating, while efforts are being made to avoid the design flaws that have plagued other emissions trading schemes worldwide, draft regulations seen by Carbon Pulse showed. The draft law, penned by Chinese planning agency the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), will be submitted to a legislative council before being passed on to the State Council, China’s cabinet. Approval there will lead to a public consultation. Reuters, which has also seen the draft regulations, says the “draft rules, which have been circulated among market players, will be submitted to lawmakers next year for final approval. If passed, they will raise the cost of noncompliance and give emitters bigger incentives to cut their emissions and improve their reporting standards.”

Oil majors rush cuts to hit $60 break-even

Financial Times

The FT’s energy editor says that for evidence of just how savage the oil industry downturn has become, consider Royal Dutch Shell’s decision to axe a Canadian oil sands project this week: “It may have made the biggest U-turn on a new project since the market rout, but this week’s third-quarter results show the speed at which the industry is reacting to the market collapse. As cash flow dwindles, the oil majors are scrambling to cut costs in order to maintain their dividends. As a result, any new project requiring an oil price of more than $60 a barrel — almost 50% below last year’s peak — is now either being scrapped or deferred until industry costs have come down sufficiently.”

Could UK homes be powered by Icelandic volcanoes? 750-mile long cable could deliver clean energy from the country to Britain reducing bills for decades

Tamara Cohen

Plans are being drawn up to bring in electricity from Iceland’s volcanoes to UK homes, David Cameron has revealed. The prime minister, who is visiting Iceland for a summit, held discussions about the ambitious multi-billion pound plan to link the UK and Iceland with 750 miles (1,200km) of sub-sea cables, reports the Mail: “It would be the longest under-sea electricity cable in the world, and would bring in clean energy from hydro and geothermal sources, which are plentiful on the Nordic island, to the UK grid. The electricity link, which is expected to take seven to ten years to construct, could reduce prices for bill-payers for decades to come…Two years ago Iceland’s state-owned electricity firm Landsvirkjun, presented a £4bn plan for an under-sea cable link which would meet 1.5pc of the UK’s electricity needs – and be cheaper than offshore wind.”

Cameron backs plan to beef up protection for steel industry from energy policy costs

BusinessGreen

David Cameron used Prime Ministers Questions yesterday to commit to compensating energy intensive industries for the full energy policy costs they face throughout the duration of the parliament. The move, which comes in response to a wave of job losses across the steel industry that has been blamed on competition from cheap Chinese imports and relatively high energy costs, was flagged last week by Business Secretary Sajid Javid, who said he would seek to pull forward a promised £220m compensation package that had been slated to start in April next year. Cameron today confirmed that subject to EU State Aid approval the early launch of the compensation scheme would go ahead. Carbon Brief has produced a factcheck on the steel crisis and UK electricity prices.

NOAA won’t give GOP climate documents

The Hill

The US government’s chief climate research agency is refusing to give House Republicans the detailed information they want about a study that concluded there has not been a 15-year “pause” in global warming. Citing confidentiality concerns and the integrity of the scientific process, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it won’t give Lamar Smith (R-Texas) the research documents he has demanded. He issued a subpoena for communications among the scientists and some data, leading to charges from Democrats that he was trying to intimidate the researchers. A NOAA spokeswoman said: ““We have provided data, all of which is publicly available online, supporting scientific research, and multiple in-person briefings…We stand behind our scientists who conduct their work in an objective manner. It is the end product of exchanges between scientists — the detailed publication of scientific work and the data that underpins the authors’ findings — that are key to understanding the conclusions reached.”

Puffins and turtle doves at risk of being wiped out, say experts

The Guardian

Puffin and turtle dove numbers across the globe have plummeted so rapidly the birds now face the same extinction threat as the African elephant and lion, say conservationists. Atlantic puffins and European turtle doves have been added for the first time to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of species at risk of being wiped out. The Guardian says: “The crash in Atlantic puffin numbers in Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which together hold 80% of the European population, has been linked to climate change and fishing practices.” The Times and Telegraph also carry the story.

Comment

Dilemma of Renewable Energy

The Telegraph

An editorial in the Times argues that the SNP in Scotland must set out how it intends for its drive for renewables to be funded: “There is a genuine dilemma here, which respects no borders. If this country is committed to pursuing renewable targets, then it needs to explain where the money to do so is to come from. Nuclear power, it seems, must rely on Chinese investment. Fracking has been given the green light in England but is still resisted in Scotland. Alternative energy needs government support if it is to be introduced, and that, in turn, must be funded by taxpayers. The SNP government may criticise Westminster for pulling back on its renewable commitments. But it also needs to explain how it would maintain those commitments itself in the event of independence; and to be honest enough to admit that the burden would be very likely to fall on hard-pressed householders.”

Renewable energy and the politics of subsidies

The Guardian

The Guardian devotes a section of its letters page to readers writing in to comment on a series of recent articles about renewables and nuclear power.

The upside of addressing climate change

Financial Times

Wolf looks ahead to the Paris climate summit – and beyond: “The decision has now been made to sidestep the obstacles to reaching a binding agreement that delivers a global price of carbon. This makes sense. Reaching agreement on the allocation of tradeable pollution rights across border is impossible. Agreeing on a common tax rate is almost as difficult. Furthermore, if countries are asked to make binding commitments, they will limit their promises to what they know they can deliver…The good news is that in the longer term the relatively pragmatic approach now being adopted [with the INDCs], combined with the likelihood of accelerating technological change, makes movement on to a path away from disaster more likely.”

Imagine if Exxon had told the truth on climate change

The Guardian

The veteran climate campaigner uses the latest revelations about Exxon’s history of anti-climate action lobbying to play a game of “what if?”: “Let’s take a moment and just think about the past. About what might have happened differently if, in August of 1988, the “Exxon position” had been “tell the truth”. One example, he cites: “Rapid development of renewables might well have kept half of Delhi’s children — 2.5m children — from developing irreversible lung damage.”

Science

Impact of the Volkswagen emissions control defeat device on US public health

Environmental Research Letters

A presumable hastily-written article on Volkswagen’s violation of the Clean Air Act with devices designed to “defeat” emissions control tests estimate that 59 people will die prematurely in the US as a result of the emissions, equivalent to a social cost of around $450m. A return to compliance by the end of 2016 will avoid 130 dearly deaths and a further bill of $840m, the paper says.