Recently I wrote a letter to the Financial Times (published 16 May) on the costs of nuclear power compared to renewable technologies. My purpose in writing was to correct a statement which Steve Radley, Director of Policy at EEF (a UK manufacturers organisation), made in a letter published in the Financial Times 11 May.
In it Radley claimed that “most renewable energy technologies are likely to remain considerably more expensive than alternative forms of low-carbon generation such as nuclear”. This is misleading because – although nuclear may or may not be cheaper than some less developed renewable energy sources – wind accounts for over 70% of renewable energy capacity installed in Europe in the last decade.
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Sarah Azau, EWEA’s very own Senior Communication Officer, is putting herself to the test on 29 May when she’ll take on the challenge of the Brussels 20km half-marathon to raise money for Renewable World.
Renewable World – EWEA’s chosen charity – works to bring renewable energy to small, energy-poor communities in developing countries that may never have had electricity before. Pumping clean water, powering homes, schools and health centres and running small businesses in a sustainable way are the main achievements of the charity’s projects.
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UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne told Parliament on Tuesday that the Government has agreed greenhouse gas emissions in Britain will fall at least 50% over 1990 levels by 2027.
Huhne’s dramatic announcement that the agreement will become law puts Britain in place to become a world leader in the fight against climate change caused by burning fossil fuels.
It also sets in motion the likelihood that increasingly larger amounts of emissions-free electricity generated by wind power and other renewables will be used in the UK to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide currently being pumped into the atmosphere.
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I am just returning from Abu Dhabi where negotiations on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on renewable energy – the most comprehensive review of the sector written by the world’s leading experts on energy and climate science – have drawn to a close.
While the negotiations were long and arduous, the message I take home is clear: With renewables, the world will never run out of energy. In fact the total potential for renewables is “substantially higher than both the current and projected future global energy demand,” according to the report.
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Significant news for the renewable energy industry in Europe emerged yesterday after Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Change, again stated that we should “be discussing a renewable energy target for 2030”, in an interview with the Guardian. In April, Hedegaard made a similar statement in a Danish magazine, but again without making a concrete proposal.
This is not the first time a Commissioner has broached the subject of a 2030 target for renewable energy. Günther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for Energy, recently said ”We will have….a proposal from the Commission side for a long-term [renewable energy] target for 2030 and 2040 and 2050”.
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