Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/288477
UtilitY WEEK | 4th - 10th April 2014 | 5 "We must take decisive action now on emissions" Mark Walport - government chief scientific adviser "Left unchecked, climate change will impact on many aspects of our society" Ed Davey – energy secretary There is likely to be a "significant reduction" in water river abstrac- tion and groundwater resources, as the impact of climate change affects European countries, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the IPCC's latest report, it also warned that "extreme heat events" and river and coastal flood- ing would have a greater economic and social impact. The scientists warned that climate change was already having an effect and that increased mag- nitudes of warming would increase WAtEr An Australian wave energy company has secured the final berth at Wave Hub, an offshore renewable energy test facility in Cornwall. Carnegie Wave Energy plans to deploy a 3MW array in 2016, with the option to expand it to 10MW. It said it expected its latest technology to be a "commercial breakthrough". The company is the third customer to commit to Wave Hub in the past four months and the testing facility has up to 30MW of installed capacity in the pipeline. The other developers are UK-based Seatricity, which plans to install a device this spring prior to building a 10MW array in the next two years, and Finnish multina- tional utilities firm Fortum, which has reserved a berth for an array of up to 10MW. Plugged in What technology will be the most important to help the UK hit its 2050 emission target? Mathew Beech Conor McGlone Renewables! Alan Bland Independent utilities professional Unfortunately, the doctrine of renewable energy is oen equated with the single route to a low-carbon economy. The EU even has renewables targets instead of low-carbon targets – mainly because, one suspects, of the prejudice against nuclear, which is zero carbon (almost). Further- more, renewable energy means solar and wind (both unre- liable) because tidal power (predictable by comparison) is insufficiently developed due to inadequate R&D funding. Onshore wind is expensive, and offshore wind doubly so. The UK ploughs on blindly with promoting renewables, just as other EU countries abandon green subsidies and the US cuts its carbon emissions by exploiting shale gas (simultaneously reducing its dependence on imported energy). There seems to be a peculiarly British assumption that what we do matters, whereas in fact the UK emits only 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Join the discussion with Utility Week's LinkedIn group, Utility Week networking and news Climate threat to abstraction Nuclear CCS Energy efficiency Energy storage Other 42% 28% 14% 0% 14% the likelihood of "severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts". The IPCC added that there needed to be "urgent action to reduce emissions to avoid danger- ous climate change".