First Update of September 2019 – An overview of last week’s Energy news

Below is this week’s summary. It should be a one minute read relevant to UK energy with links to documents for those who wish to read more.

(Click a bullet point to open the relevant article)

The chart below was kindly provided by Alan Foum. It seemed worth including showing Carbon Dioxide emissions from countries around the globe: per head of population in 4 bars across 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018 with blue line showing total percentage by country based on BP and World Bank data. If the text is a little small you can use it to test your ‘flags of the world’ knowledge.

Monday – 2nd September

• Work started in south-west Scotland to build the first onshore wind farm not requiring government subsidies.

Tuesday – 3rd September

• PoliticsHome describes research in NW England to create hydrogen from water using nuclear power at local Heysham power station. Typically, hydrogen from water (electrolysis) requires very high levels of energy compared to generating hydrogen from methane.

• UK Oil and Gas Technology Centre announced the opening of a “Net-zero Solution Centre” aiming to develop technology to make offshore UK the first oil and gas province with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, in-line with the UK Government legal commitment.

Wednesday – 4th September

• Calder Hall, nuclear power station most recently running as Sellafield in NW England has now been cleared of fuel, the first of its kind to do so in the world. Power station generated power from 1956 to 2003 and, upon start-up, nearby steel town Workington, became the first town in the world to be powered by nuclear energy.

Thursday – 5th September

• United Nations warning of the threat to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some Asian countries’ growing use of coal.

• Beatrice offshore wind turbines, with 0.6 GW capacity, put UK on top of offshore wind capacity global league table.

Friday – 6th September

• Sixth UK small energy supplier this year to go out of business: 29000 customers passed to surviving companies.

• UK Government minister joins opposition party in questioning National Grid management of power supply following a major power cut recently.