9 December 2015, Energy Post, German grid operator can handle 70% wind, solar before storage needed. The company responsible for more than one-third of Germany’s electricity grid says there is no issue absorbing high levels of variable renewable energy such as wind and solar, and grids could absorb up to 70 per cent penetration without the need for storage, writes Giles Parkinson of Reneweconomy.com. Boris Schucht, the CEO of 50 Hertz, which operates the main transmission lines in the north and east of Germany – and which is 40 per cent owned by Australia’s Industry Funds Management – says the industry’s views of renewable energy integration has evolved rapidly in the past decade. “It’s about the mind-set,” Schucht said at the Re-energising the Future conference in Paris, and later to RenewEconomy. “10 to 15 years ago when I was young engineer, nobody believed that integrating more than 5 per cent variable renewable energy in an industrial state such as Germany was possible.” Yet, Schucht says, in the region he is operating in, 42 per cent of the power supply (in output, not capacity), came from wind and solar – about the same as South Australia. This year it will be 46 per cent, and next year it will be more than 50 per cent. “No other region in the world has a similar amount of volatile renewable energy ….. yet we have not had a customer outage. Not for 35 or 40 years.” Read More here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
8 December 2015, BBC News, UK ‘scores well’ on climate, for now. Denmark, the UK and Sweden have topped the international rankings in an index of countries combating climate change. The annual table is compiled by green groups Germanwatch and Climate Action Network. They analysed progress in the 58 countries producing more than 90% of energy-related CO2 missions. The organisers congratulated the UK for its performance to date, but say the government lacks a coherent vision for the future. The index takes into account emission levels, trends in emissions, energy efficiency, progress towards renewable energy and climate policy. It ranked the UK fifth in the world, after Denmark. The first three places were left empty because the organisers say no major nation is doing enough to cut emissions. Wendel Trio, one of the principal authors, told BBC News the UK had earned its slot because of overall low emissions, climate policy over several years, a fast-growing renewables sector from a low base, and a commitment to phase out coal. But he said the UK was in danger of losing its grade. …..Kit Vaughan from the charity Care International pointed out that the review had been done two months ago – before the government’s recent “reset” which downgraded renewable energy. He said: “It is clearly out of date. Both Denmark and the UK have recently gone backwards at high speed, slipping from climate champions to carbon culprits. “It shows how quickly this government is able to take a wrecking ball to previously progressive climate action and just how quickly enlightened climate policy can be ripped up and systematically dismantled.” Read More here
5 December 2015, Climate News Network, Saudis still hooked on oil habit. COP21: Despite making pledges to cut back on its large-scale fossil fuel emissions, Saudi Arabia’s oil production is continuing to run at record levels. PARIS, 5 December, 2015 − Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and one of the world’s top per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, has traditionally voiced little concern about climate. So there was some surprise when, in advance of the current UN climate change summit in Paris, the country announced that it was aiming to cut back on its C02emissions. The problem is that the pledge comes with some important caveats that seem to render the whole exercise meaningless. More than 180 countries have so far submitted pledges – referred to in UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) − to the summit to cut back on emissions of greenhouse gases. Export revenues Under the Saudi plan, there will be an annual cutback of up to 130 million tonnes of emissions by 2030. But they say that such cutbacks will only be made as long as there is “a robust contribution from oil export revenues to the national economy”. They also warn that should any agreement made at the Paris talks create what is termed an “abnormal burden” on the country’s economy, then the climate-related commitments would be weakened. Read More here
5 December 2015, The Spectator, An age of climate realism is upon us. At last, cooler heads are prevailing….The Paris meeting is not even attempting to achieve what the 2009 Copenhagen summit failed to do: reach a legally binding treaty on cutting CO2 emissions. Instead, the aim is to replace the legally binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol (which runs out in 2020) with voluntary pledges tailored to the national considerations of individual countries. In short, the Paris climate deal will mean abandoning the notion of making decarbonisation legally binding — at least for the time being. Even so, governments from around the world are keen to sign an agreement that will allow political leaders to declare a victory, and to move on. At the same time, officials readily accept that painful decisions will be kicked into the long grass. Thus, the Paris accord is likely to be a ‘wait and see’ arrangement which, for the next decade at least, suspends any attempt of reaching a binding decarbonisation treaty. Such an outcome will almost certainly trigger a fundamental reassessment of Europe’s go-it-alone-no-matter-what-the-costs decarbonisation policies. Why has it proven impossible for such summits to make the kind of progress that was, until recently, billed as a matter of saving the world? Firstly, policies that commit western governments to unilateral decarbonisation have turned out to be more costly and politically toxic than conventional wisdom proclaimed. Rather than running out of fossil fuels — and thereby making renewable energy more competitive — the US shale revolution and the prospect of its global proliferation has triggered a glut of cheap oil and gas. Fuel prices have fallen and look set to remain low for the foreseeable future. As a result, the bridge to a world powered by renewable energy has become longer rather than shorter. Read More here Note that “the pause” noted in the article is a red herring – read more here