Around The Web

Solar power is expected to generate a fifth of global electricity across midday peaks on Friday's summer solstice and 8% across the month of June, making it the fastest-growing source of power in the world, according to new research.

Evergen’s Ben Hutt on optimising solar, batteries, and the race to electrification. Plus: News of the week and the nuclear fallout.

The post Energy Insiders Podcast: Homes, electric cars and the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A digital marketplace for physical commodities is launching voluntary carbon credit trading, it said this week.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices moved lower as market participants looked for direction from California regulator ARB, while Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) prices picked up on steady offers.

Offshore wind power can play a starring role in Australia’s future energy mix. It sure beats nuclear and coal, offering advantages in scale, availability and proximity to both users and the grid. Ty Christopher, Director Energy Futures Network, University of Wollongong Michelle Voyer, Principal Research Fellow, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Protecting the ozone layer has been a global priority for decades, but as the voluntary carbon market (VCM) continues to credit the destruction of ozone-depleting substances (ODS), and countries move to fill gaps in multilateral governance, the competing or complementary roles for public- and private-sector engagement on the matter are in flux.

Scientists say the disaster changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society as sharing shade became vital.

Rishi Sunak’s decision to side with climate deniers isn’t just wrongheaded: it’s costing our environment and our economy

In 2019, the UK became the first G7 country to legislate for net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. At the time, I was the cabinet minister who signed this into law. We did so knowing that taking action to tackle the climate crisis was supported by all the major political parties. We had no time to waste. It had been the Conservative party in opposition under David Cameron that had backed the Climate Change Act more than a decade earlier because we argued that climate action was more important than political divisions. As a result, the UK’s internationally renowned framework of carbon budgets has seen our emissions more than halve since 1990.

Britain has long been viewed as a clean energy leader across the world. We pioneered the first successful emissions trading scheme, followed by the contracts for difference model for funding renewable energy projects that made the North Sea into one of the largest windfarms in the world. A few weeks after delivering the net zero bill, I helped to secure the UK’s bid to host Cop26 in Glasgow. There, more than 80% of countries followed our lead and committed to a net zero target.

Climate and clean energy leadership has created jobs, growth and regeneration. The impact has been transformative. For the first time, wind power now makes up the largest source of our electricity. Coal, which used to make up more than 40% of our power when I was first elected as an MP in 2010, will from next year be consigned to the history books. Our economy has grown by 80% since 1990, and at the same time our emissions have halved. When I signed net zero into law, I always viewed our plan as a mainstream, even conservative, vision. One of the legacies of Cop26 is the growth in clean energy markets across the world. Elsewhere, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the green deal in Europe have committed to at least a decade of support for green industries.

Yet the UK now risks falling ever further behind in the net zero race. We have seen Rishi Sunak decide to prioritise new oil and gas expansion at a time when our fossil fuel industries are in rapid decline and will become stranded assets within decades. His decision to renege on net zero means the UK has scaled back on measures that would have saved households £8bn a year in lower energy costs. It has cost us the ability to lead in new technological markets and risks losing Britain the greatest economic opportunity in a generation.

Chris Skidmore is a former Conservative energy minister

Continue reading...

UK nuclear site pleads guilty to IT security breaches from 2019 to 2023

The UK’s most hazardous nuclear site, Sellafield, has pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to cybersecurity failings brought by the industry regulator.

Lawyers acting for Sellafield told Westminster magistrates’ court on Thursday that cybersecurity requirements were “not sufficiently adhered to for a period” at the vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria.

The charges relate to information technology security offences spanning a four-year period from 2019 to 2023. It emerged in March that the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) intended to prosecute Sellafield for technology security offences.

Continue reading...

Four countries let gas flaring increase last year, pushing global volumes to the highest level since 2019 and adding an extra 23 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere.

There were few signs of a global energy transition taking place in the Energy Institute’s 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, which was released on Thursday, as data revealed that global primary energy consumption hit new heights in 2023.

DNA analysis of old samples finds only five historical cases raising hopes for polar bears as a distinct species

A family of “grolars” in Canada’s Arctic remains the only confirmed example of hybrid offspring between polar and grizzly bears, according to a new study which may provide some optimism for conservationists worried about the future of polar bears as a distinct species.

A team of North American researchers examined old bear samples collected between 1975 and 2015 using a newly developed tool to look for previously unknown examples of hybrid bears.

Continue reading...

Britain’s landscape is under threat from developers and rapacious corporations. But I have a solution – if the next PM will listen

What do Britons most love about Britain? At the last count it was still the NHS. After that it was not the royal family, the army or democracy. Believe it or not, it is the countryside, according to polling commissioned last year by Future Countryside, an initiative of the Countryside Alliance. Today, the NHS may cram election manifestos, but of the countryside we hear not a word.

This will not last. An almighty clash is looming between the lucrative renewables industry and defenders of the rural landscape. Labour and the Tories are both eager to weaken local planning. Keir Starmer wants to curb the rights of citizens to object to new development in the countryside. The Tories recently announced a return to onshore wind, hence the proposal for a turbine cluster on the Yorkshire Moors above Charlotte Brontë’s Calderdale. Sixty-five turbines funded by the Saudis are to rise a staggering 200m each, higher than Blackpool Tower. It is hard to believe such an outrage is to be allowed for so trivial a contribution to the climate.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

The EU's carbon market is set for a fundamental deficit of as many as 300 million allowances in 2027, according to analysts speaking on a webinar Thursday, as industrials become more exposed to compliance buying and auction supply tightens after frontloaded REPowerEU sales end.

A voluntary carbon trading platform will auction 1.5 million Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) at a minimum of $10 per tonne generated by clean cooking projects in Malawi, it announced Thursday.

Germany and Italy are on course to miss their climate goals in sectors excluded from the EU ETS, by such a large gap that they would eat up the entire available surplus of annual emissions allocations (AEAs) left for other countries, according to a report released on Thursday.

A certifier has validated a new methodology for net CO2 removals (CDR) using bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), in what may provide a boost to the development of the nascent market.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) released Thursday joint guidelines to support companies in their nature-related disclosures, highlighting the alignment between the two frameworks.

Landmark judgment says planning bodies must account for burning of extracted fuel when considering site proposals

The climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects, the supreme court in London has ruled.

The landmark judgment, handed down on Thursday, sets an important precedent on whether the “inevitable” future greenhouse gas emissions of a fossil fuel project should be considered.

Continue reading...

European carbon prices resumed their close formation with natural gas prices on Thursday morning, with EU ETS levels tracking the ebb and flow of the TTF market as it reacted to news that Russian LNG transshipments through Europe will be banned, potentially adding to regional supply, while UK Allowances prices were "absolutely smashed" amid a surge of aggressive selling.