Category Archives: Energy

All in a day’s work: incoherent Coalition simultaneously publishes #CommunityEnergy Strategy and rips up standards for renewable energy in new builds

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David Cameron has announced that his government is ripping up more than 3,000 environmental protection regulations, including building standards relating to demands for renewable energy sources.

Environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot tweeted that weakening building regulations in a cold country is a recipe for “either misery or spending a fortune on fuel bills”.

On the same day, Monday 27th January, the Coalition government published its Community Energy Strategy (CES). This requires local authorities to support community renewable energy schemes, provides some increased funding for such schemes, and aims to reduce people’s fuel bills.
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Cabinet to discuss Council investment in new #Calderdale Community Energy co-op

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On Monday 27th January, Calderdale Council Cabinet will decide on a proposal to invest £10K of Calderdale Council money in obtaining the legal and financial advice needed to set up an Industrial and Provident Society (aka a Community Benefit Society) that will develop community renewable energy projects across Calderdale.
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Residents’ final chance in court to block Trafford waste incinerator construction

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Trafford Council’s legal challenge against the construction of Barton Renewable Energy Plant (Davyhulme Incinerator) is to take place in a High Court hearing in February.

Trafford Council is taking on Eric Pickles, the Conservative Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who overruled the Trafford Council Planning Committee’s unanimous refusal of planning permission for the Incinerator and gave permission for Peel Energy to go ahead and build it.
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#Calderdale Council invests in fracking companies, via West Yorkshire Pension Fund

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As fracking creeps closer to Calderdale – with Fracking company IGas Energy trying to drill a Shale/CBM exploration well at Barton Moss in Salford, Greater Manchester – Frack Free Greater Manchester has found that Salford and Trafford Councils are investing in fracking company IGas via Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

The Investments Valuation pdf on the West Yorkshire Pension Fund website shows that Calderdale Council, via West Yorkshire Pension Fund, is also investing in fracking companies.
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Conference calls for radical, rapid action to reduce emissions – starting now

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Notes on the Radical Emission Reduction Conference in London on 10-11 Dec 2013, by David Flint, a member of Enfield Green Party.

“The conference has to be a catalyst for very rapid action” – Prof. Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre

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Drax converts to biomass – wetland forests & £hundreds of millions of public subsidies go up in smoke

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Here is Ed Davey MP in a government propaganda video about the opening of facilities to handle the biomass Drax now imports, as it’s converting three of the six units at the power station from burning coal to burning biomass.

Plain Speaker has reported on various occasions about how large scale biomass burning is not green or renewable – here and here, for example – and has also pointed out that corporate biomass developers are swallowing massive subsidies paid for by the public.
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“Blue green battery” to even out windpower supply and demand across Northern Europe

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Climate News Network reports that SINTEF, the largest independent Scandinavian research organization, has a plan to use Norwegian hydropower schemes as a giant “blue-green battery” that will act as a backup when wind power fails to deliver enough energy.

Norwegian hydropower schemes linked to Europe’s large wind farm projects could successfully use energy from surplus wind power to pump water uphill and provide “battery” power to even out energy supply and demand.
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Energy Bill Revolution

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The Energy Bill Revolution is a campaign to make energy bills affordable to all, through the UK government recycling carbon taxes into insulating people’s homes. This will make homes warmer so people have to use less energy to heat them. It would bring nine out of ten fuel-poor households out of fuel poverty, cut carbon emissions and create jobs.
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Ofgem reinstates wind energy coop’s Feed In Tariff payments

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After difficult negotiations with the energy regulator Ofgem about the suspension of their Feed In Tariff (FIT) payments, Pennine Community Power (PCP) has now had their FIT payments reinstated and backdated to when the suspension took place, in January 2013.

PCP has just been paid £5,432 for the period January to September 2013.
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