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Financing renewables in the UK

As new technologies trying to compete with well-established technologies, renewables needed some interim help. In a new book, Renewable Energy in the UK: Past, Present and Future, I look at how that has been done. What stands out is that, whereas some countries have gone for direct aid or guaranteed … [Continue Reading]

UK’s dream is now its nuclear nightmare

Nobody knows what to do with a vast uranium and plutonium stockpile built up in the UK by reprocessing spent fuel. It is now a nuclear nightmare. Thirty years ago it seemed like a dream: now it is a nuclear nightmare. A project presented to the world in the 1990s … [Continue Reading]

100% renewables? No problems

Australian academics Mark Diesendorf and Ben Elliston have challenged the views of fellow Australian academics Brook and Bradshaw and Heard et al., who criticized studies that claim it will be possible to supply 100% of global power (renewable electricity or “RElec”) or even all global energy needs from renewables. Instead, … [Continue Reading]

UK nuclear industry has a sinking feeling

Officially the UK nuclear industry is going ahead with building a new generation of power stations. But it can’t find anyone to pay for them. The future of the UK nuclear industry looks increasingly bleak, despite the Conservative government’s continued insistence that it wants to build up to 10 new … [Continue Reading]

Winners, losers and the low-cost energy future

Some technologies win, others lose, at least in the short term. The UK tidal power industry has been taking stock after the UK government decision not to proceed with the 320 MW Swansea lagoon as it saw it as too costly. “We saw no appetite from government to think differently, … [Continue Reading]

Nuclear power Weatherwatch: nuclear power plants feel the heat

During this summer’s heatwave, nuclear reactors in five European countries had to be shut down or put on reduced power, writes Paul Brown. An argument of the nuclear lobby is that renewables, particularly wind and solar, are unreliable because of changing weather. Only nuclear power can guarantee to keep the … [Continue Reading]