Second Update of January 2020 – 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)

Monday – 6th January

• Welsh First Minister claims UK steel making faces higher energy costs than European competitors.

• Agreement has been reached to build a pipeline to supply natural gas to Europe from Israel (Leviathan Field, discovered in 2010), via Greece. The article predicts the pipeline will provide 10% of European gas by 2025.

• Demand in China, for natural gas to replace coal in domestic heating, continues to grow. Gas demand grew 10% in 2019 and is predicted to rise 8% per year to 2024.

Wednesday – 8th January

• A delegation from Poland’s coal mining regulator was hosted by representatives of UK Coal Authority to provide lessons on the transition from coal mining.

Thursday – 9th January

• This article suggests growth in renewables is not keeping pace with the drop in nuclear output as power stations are being decommissioned. Of seven existing nuclear generators, only one is expected to be on-line in 10 years time.

• The hydrogen fuel cell sector added over 1GW of capacity to UK in 2019 for the first time in order to meet rising demand.

Friday – 10th January

• Imports of electricity to UK from continental Europe reached a record high in 2019. This article claims this is due to carbon pricing being high in the UK compared with its neighbours.