Miller and the lights

David Miller covers the environment beat for BBC Scotland and today his big story was the closure of the Cockenzie coal fired power station under EU legislation. His [update: his unnamed colleague's] article on the BBC website was pretty awful stuff, with the first half of the article reporting the fact of the closure (while making no mention of the EU's involvement) and the second half being handed over to WWF to allow them to celebrate it.

Reading this before my first cup of coffee, I was somewhat grumpy in the tweet I sent Miller:

@BBCDavidMiller 50% of article given over to environmentalists. No questioning of whether the lights will stay on. #normalservice

However, Miller seemed to take notice and tweeted back that he would ask the question in an interview he was about to do with someone from Scottish Power, the operators of Cockenzie. The interview is below for those that are interested. It wasn't encouraging.

GMS

Wind farms gone in 25 years

This is the unmistakeable conclusion of remarks from Richard Dixon, the head of Friends of the Earth Scotland in an interview on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday. The debate concerned Loch Fitty, not far from where I live, which is to be drained, the coal bed beneath mined. Discussion turned to the ongoing effects on the landscape, with a view put forward that a temporary opencast mine replaced with a relandscaped loch was infinitely preferable to a landscape permanently scarred with wind turbines.

Of course wind turbines do not have to be there permanently. Most of them will be there for 25 years. But if we decide to remove them then they are removed.

This strikes me as rather misleading.

The whole discussion is quite fun. Link below.

GMS 2 Feb 2013

All that is Goldenberg does not glitter

Suzanne Goldenberg enjoys (if that's the right word) a certain reputation among BH readers and her latest offering will do nothing but enhance (if that's the right word) her position in our estimation.

America's carbon dioxide emissions last year fell to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a new report.

Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy, the report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said.

The reduction in climate pollution – even as Congress failed to act on climate change – brings America more than halfway towards Barack Obama's target of cutting emissions by 17% from 2005 levels over the next decade, the Bloomberg analysts said.

The Bloomberg report is here.  It actually says little about emissions, but as far as I can see it says nothing like what Ms Goldenberg suggests it does on the subject of renewables. try this for example:

The reductions in coal generation, ascendancy of gas, influx of renewables, expansion of CHP and other distributed power forms, adoption of demand-side efficiency technologies, rise of dispatchable demand response, and deployment of advanced vehicles are all contributing to the decline in carbon emissions from the energy sector (including transport), which peaked in 2007 at 6.02Gt and have dropped by an estimated 13% since.

And as the report also makes clear, the big change in the energy mix has been the rise of gas:

Total US installed capacity of natural gas (442GW) plus renewables (187GW) is now at 629GW (58% of the total power generating mix) – up from 605GW (56%) in 2011 and 548GW (54%) in 2007. Between 2008 and 2012, the US nearly doubled its renewables capacity from 44GW to 86GW (excluding hydropower, which itself is the single largest source of renewable power, at 101GW as of 2012).

Obama BAU

Having got the hopes of the faithful up with an AGW-bashing speech at his inauguration, President Obama seems to be resiling from the climate crusader position he persuaded everyone he was going to adopt. Here are his spokesman's remarks at the first White House press conference of the second term:

Q    And then just quickly on climate change.  The President was pretty extensive in his remarks on climate change in his inaugural address yesterday.  What was he trying to signal about where climate change would fall on his priority list in a second term, and is there any upcoming action that you can point to that he's going to take on that topic?

Click to read more ...

Germany goes for coal

As most readers will know, Germany has decided to phase out its nuclear power programme, a move welcomed by most environmentalists.

There's a sting in the tail for them though:

The German government wants to encourage the construction of new coal and gas power plants with millions of euros from a fund for promoting clean energy and combating climate change.