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Exposing myths about building French nuclear power – How French nuclear construction times and costs have been getting longer and longer – for a long time

It has been standard in the UK to talk about the wonders of the French nuclear programme and how if only we copied them nuclear power would get cheaper and cheaper. The story has gone ‘If only we built a series of nuclear power plant like they did’. But it turns out that the idea that the French nuclear programme was ever getting any cheaper was a myth.

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How the Government is gaslighting us about offshore wind costs

The offshore wind schemes that will be given contracts by the Government this year will cost the public a great deal less than the budget implies and might even save consumers’ money

On March 6th the Chancellor announced what amounts to one the greatest pieces of energy gaslighting that I can ever remember (and that is saying something!). Jeremy Hunt claims that the Government is set to subsidise offshore wind to the tune of £800 million. In reality, the offshore wind schemes that will be awarded contracts (that will pay guaranteed prices for electricity output) will cost the consumer very little, and might even save them money. It is monumentally ridiculous to claim that the Government will spend anything approaching £800 million of its published budget supporting offshore wind. That is, given the electricity price projections for the future.

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Why the UK’s claim to be effective in cutting greenhouse emissions should be doubted

It is now very well known that the UK has achieved big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in recent decades. But the notion that the UK is in the lead in action on climate change need to be taken with a bucket load of salt. Britain’s apparent big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions reductions since 1990 are heavily based on British de-industrialisation and domestic impoverishment and less on deliberate policies to reduce emissions than may be claimed.

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SMRs are useless says the UK’s leading SMR analyst! – 100 per cent renewable energy is much more feasible!

Professor Stephen Thomas, the UK’s leading analyst of ‘small modular (nuclear) reactors’, has concluded that the idea faces a dead end, with no future. Yet the UK continues to give large grants to hopeful companies to develop these white elephants. The Government has proclaimed the need for ‘billions of pounds‘ of investment in SMRs. Meanwhile badly needed district heating networks to be supplied by large-scale heat pumps and a range of other realistic clean energy initiatives go unfunded!

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Rise of the Britsh solar farm that doesn’t have government support

Increasing numbers of solar farms are going ahead without any contractual support from the Government and some of them are based on cooperative or community support

Voltalia is among the latest to signal the start of construction of a solar farm which has no financial support organised by the UK Government. The project is being backed by the Co-op. I want to avoid the term ‘subsidy-free’. That is because the UK Government only gives out contracts for difference (CfDs) to renewable energy generators to pay them guaranteed prices that are well below the UK wholesale power prices.

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100 per cent renewables rather than Small Modular (nuclear) Reactors Come to the webinar on Wednesday February 21st!

Leading experts will support the petition calling on the UK Parliaments’s Environmental Audit Committee to conduct an enquiry into the practicalities of a 100 percent or near 100 percent renewable energy system for the UK. That is rather than the one-sided hearing held in December for small modular reactors (SMRs).

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Environmental Audit Committee chases SMR fantasies. Support our campaign to change its priorities!

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) of the House of Commons are busy chasing nuclear corporate fantasies for small modular reactors.

We want to complain about this set of priorities and insist on an enquiry into the practicalities of a 100 per cent renewable energy system for the UK.

However we need more funds to mount this campaign. Please donate to our Go Fund Me! website (see below)

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Why the UN Report is right to say we’re heading for at least 3 degrees of warming

Despite a flurry of headline-jerking agreements at Dubai’s COP28 a UN Report suggests that global warming will reach 3 degrees. This conclusion, issued by the UN Environment Programme’s ‘Emissions Gap Report’, is based on the continuation of current policies. This assumes, for instance that in the UK and the USA, the targets for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 not achieved. This, by the way, is by no means an unreasonable assumption. In fact, as things stand at the moment, it’s dead right!

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Offshore wind prices will soon fall because we’ve been here before…..

The news that around the world offshore wind prices have gone up after several years of decline is disconcerting. But don’t worry too much folks, because history says the prices will come down again.

Here below is a chart from a paper of mine published in 2015 which shows how offshore wind prices (set by the Danish Energy Agency) rose and then fell in the earlier years of offshore wind. There are some good stats on this simply because the Danes were ( to a large extent still are) streets ahead of everyone else in the green energy, especially wind power, stakes.

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Why consumers are very likely to pay a lot more for power from Sizewell C than from Hinkley C

The Government are deceiving us about the effectiveness of their new funding mechanism for nuclear power

Consumers face a double whammy of bills to pay for the planned nuclear power plant, Sizewell C, due to be given a go-ahead soon. According to a ‘worst case scenario,’ consumers are likely to (collectively) pay around £34 billion in today’s prices before any electricity is generated from Sizewell C at all. But, in addition, according to my calculations, under this (quite likely) worst-case scenario consumers will then also pay around £160 per MWh in today’s prices for electricity produced by Sizewell C. This works out as £117 per MWh in 2012 prices (ie the base year for setting the cost of Hinkley C). The Government appears to be doing little or nothing to prevent this scenario from occurring.

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Today Hinkley C contract would cost £180 per MWh

There’s been a lot of talk about how offshore wind has ‘increased’ its costs since the last Government contract auction – but that’s not a patch on nuclear power a la Hinkley C, courtesy of EDF. Capital costs for the project have increased in real (not just inflation) terms by around 50 percent since 2012, and there’s probably a lot worse to come.

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How great is my Polestar Electric Vehicle? – Herbert Eppel give a thumbs up!

Electric car revolution: Polestar experience to date

08/09/2023/in Translation / taken from website; go to hetranslations

With 230,000 miles on the clock my 20-year-old Volvo V70 was still going strong, but in early 2022 the time had come to think of a replacement. My mind was made up that the next car had to be electric, and preferably one that was designed from scratch for the purpose, rather than based on an existing internal combustion model.

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The ban on onshore wind has NOT been lifted

There’s unlikely to be any extra windfarms approved in England as a result of the recent changes announced by the Government.

Despite headlines to the contrary, the ban on onshore wind turbines has not been removed. All that has happened is that a few words have been changed in the planning guidance that mean much the same as before.

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One month’s worth of storage needed for 100 per cent RE system in UK says study

Modeling work led by an academic at the University of Central Lancashire (Fragaki et al)  suggests that a 100 percent renewable energy system could be delivered indefinitely in the UK with just 30 days’ worth of storage. However, the trick is that there would need to be a significant overbuild – about 115 percent – of renewable energy capacity in order to achieve this. Lower levels of overbuilding would necessitate much larger amounts of storage.

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Revolutionary community energy project launched in UK

A revolutionary project aiming to fund a portfolio of community solar initiatives has been launched. Community Energy Together (CET) has launched a series of share offers involving five community solar projects around England and Wales. The share offers will allow the community to own solar farms.

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