Fourth 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)

Tuesday – 24th September

• BBC coverage of UK Labour Party Conference where the official opposition party voted to include a commitment in a general election manifesto that will target net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This involves investment of public funds into 37 publicly-owned wind farms, billions of pounds of investment into production of electric cars, electric car batteries and charging infrastructure.

• Prime Minister of Republic of Ireland, Leo Varadkar has announced an end to exploration for oil in offshore Ireland but a continuation of award of licences for natural gas.

Wednesday – 25th September

• New Scientist reports cost of building the Hinkley C nuclear plant as increasing by £3 billion on approximately £20 billion original estimates but makes the point that guaranteed cost of power protects consumers from the over-run. The article is worth a quick look if only for the scale of the construction in the opening aerial image.

Thursday – 26th September

• UK Government quarterly report shows total energy demand was down a couple of percent compared with 2nd Quarter 2018. Electricity supply saw a new record low for coal at 0.6%. Gas supplied 44% of electricity and nuclear provided 17%. Renewables including biomass contributed 32% of electricity generation during the second quarter of 2019. Remaining supply was from imported power.

Friday – 27th September

• Article in Independent describes a report from Which? organisation (owned by The Consumers Association) challenging claims by some suppliers that electricity provided is only from renewable sources of generation.

Saturday – 28th September

• On the eve of the opening of the UK governing Conservative Party annual conference, a list of measures has been announced as part of the policy for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Measures include no gas boilers to be fitted in new homes within a year; £1 billion to increase rate of electric vehicles on the road and tree-planting (note: UK Government Fuel Poverty Committee has set targets for energy suppliers to increase connections to mains gas supplies to reduce fuel poverty).