Utility Week

4 | 30TH AUGUST - 5TH SEPTEMBER 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Seven days... Fracking tremor could be UK's biggest yet A large tremor that caused houses to shake has been triggered by the UK's only active fracking site. The 2.9-magnitude quake, recorded near Cuadrilla's site near Blackpool on Monday morning, is believed to be the biggest fracking-related tremor seen in Britain. The Guardian, 26 August Lithium industry hit by oversupply The rise of the electric car was once a boon for the lithium industry, which produces the raw material for the vehicles' batteries. But this year prices for the industry's core prod- uct, lithium carbonate, have sunk 13 per cent, according to Bench- mark Mineral Intelligence, knocking profits and wiping out most of the leading producers' share price gains since the beginning of 2016. Chile's SQM, the world's sec- ond-largest producer, last week said its earnings for Q2 almost halved to $70.2 million, due to lower lithium prices. Tianqi Lithium, China's larg- est producer, said profits in the first half were down 85 per cent from a year earlier. Financial Times, 27 August Lord Browne: big firms must pay carbon tax The former head of BP has called for an immediate carbon tax because he says large companies are not properly incentivised to reduce pol- lution. Lord Browne of Madingley, who was also chairman of shale gas company Cuadrilla, said harmful hydrocarbons accounted for 86 per cent of the world's energy needs. He said a carbon tax would kick- start attempts to move economies away from hydrocarbons. He said technologies existed to "start reducing the CO2 going into the atmosphere" but were not being used because "incentives are all over the place". The Times, 27 August Around the world Government action failing to meet net-zero pledge N ational planning policy should facilitate the replacement of ageing onshore windfarms and the con- tract for difference (CfD) auction process could be tweaked to sup- port less established renewable technologies, MPs have urged. In its report, Clean Growth: Technologies for meeting the UK's emission reduction targets, the House of Commons science and technology committee identifies ten areas where the government is falling short on efforts to sup- port low-carbon technologies. These include the closure of the feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme for supporting low-carbon power generation and the cut to plug-in grants for low-emission cars. Other areas of concern include the absence of a consul- tation, promised for this year, on changes to building regulations to improve energy efficiency. The committee makes a string of recommendations to get the UK ready to achieve the govern- ment's target of net-zero emis- sions by 2050. These include set- ting a national planning policy framework in place by the end of 2020 to facilitate the "repow- ering" of sites that are already locations of onshore farms. This is to ensure such sites can be upgraded when the existing equipment wears out and must be decommissioned. The MPs also recommend the government examines the case for supporting power purchase agreements and setting mini- mum allocations in future CfD auctions to support renewable technologies that are less well established than offshore wind. The report urges the govern- ment to review by the end of 2020 how the Smart Export Guarantee, which was designed to succeed the recently closed FiT, is functioning and if there is sufficient uptake of the new tariffs through the scheme. DB "Governments need to ensure AI-friendly policy frameworks and funding are designed for the public good, taking into account any social implications of the adoption of AI" Letter from leading industry figures to Andrea Leadsom STORY BY NUMBERS Renewables obligation Ofgem issued 129 million renewables obligation certificates from April 2018 to March 2019, which require suppliers to buy a percentage of the power they sell from renewable sources. 0.468 Number of ROCs issued per MWh of electricity supplied to customers in England, Wales and Scotland – 127,561,443 in total 0.185 Number of ROCs per MWh supplied to NI customers, a total of 1,433,328 34 Number of suppliers that missed the 1 September deadline for buyout payments for 2017/18, collectively owing £103 million

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