Fifth 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 – 27th January

• Belgium has announced plans to use excess offshore wind power to generate supplies of hydrogen from water (hydrolysis). In seas offshore from Ostende, a 50 MW pilot is expected to be on-stream by 2022 with a commercial-scaled plant expected by 2025.

• A study led by University College London has concluded that a Carbon tax, called the Carbon Price Support, in place since 2013, has led to the dramatic decline in coal-fired electricity generation. The study says the tax adds £39 to the average household energy bill and has led to an increase in imports of power from the EU.

Tuesday – 28th January

• UK National Grid estimates 400,000 recruits will be needed/jobs will be available to meet net-zero 2050 target including (about half the number) to replace existing positions.

Thursday – 30th January

• This article by a Professor at the University of Nottingham, covers the issue of decarbonising the energy for heating and using the existing infrastructure, proposing delivering hot water to radiators in UK homes from a centralised heat pump system using run-off water from rivers.

• UK charity ClientEarth is suing the UK Government over its approval of plans to open a new coal-mine in north west England.

• A 16-year old boy has placed himself on hunger strike in protest against plans to open a new coal-mine in north west England.

• Charity and Think Tank Green Alliance places the focus on reducing personal energy demand for meeting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 including relatively small changes to use of personal vehicles.

Friday – 31st January

• UK Government department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has released statistics showing 233 MW of new solar power generating capacity was brought online in UK in 2019 bringing capacity to over 13 GW (for scale, average power demand for UK during the period of this update was a bit less than twice that volume and Committee on Climate Change report indicates UK will need about 40 GW of solar PV by 2030 to be on course for net-zero 2050).

• A new residential development of approximately 1500 homes in north east England can be heated by providing water from a treatment plant handling water from abandoned coal mines in the area according to the Head of Innovation at the government body regulating coal.

• UK electricity generator Drax, originally using coal, now using coal and biomass, is proposing using extracted carbon from the plant to create plastics.