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UTILITY WEEK | 26TH JUNE - 2ND JULY 2015 | 31 Community Editor, Utility Week, and content director, Utilities: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellen. bennett@fav-house.com; News editor: Jillian Ambrose, t: 01342 332061, e: jillian.ambrose@ fav-house.com; Associate news editor: Mathew Beech, t: 01342 332082, e: mathew.beech@ fav-house.com; Assistant editor (insights): Jane Gray, t: 01342 332087, e: jane.gray@fav-house. com; Research analyst: Vidhu Dutt, t: 01342 332026, e: vidhu.dutt@fav-house.com; Reporters: Lois Vallely, t: 01342 332080; e: lois.vallely@fav-house.com and Lucinda Dann, t: 01342 332083; e: lucinda.dann@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ed Roberts, t: 01342 332067, e: ed.roberts@fav-house.com; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, t: 01342 332077, e: sarah.wood@fav-house.com; Publisher: Amanda Barnes, e: amanda.barnes@fav-house.com. General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year, overseas £689 per year, t: 020 8955 7045 or email membership sales manager Paul Tweedale: paultweedale@fav-house.com. ISSN: 1356-5532. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Printed by: Buxton Press, Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AE. Published by: Faversham House Ltd, Windsor Court, Wood Street, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 1UZ 3,580 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2014 Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year. Overseas £689 per year. Email: paultweedale@fav-house.com Caroline Flint @CarolineFlintMP Govt is on course to miss its renewables target. Today's knee-jerk cut to onshore wind can only undermine confidence across the sector. jessica lennard @JessicaLennard Closing #onshorewind RO early may not be that impactful on deployment in reality. More harmful is political risk destroying investor confidence. William Marchant @richonlyinname Onshore ban inadvertently improves prospects for rest of established tech allocation pot. Onshore won 82 per cent of new capacity in first auction. Oliver Hayes @olliehayes Stephen Phillips MP says constituency "car- peted" with windfarms. There is one turbine in his entire constituency. Jon Ferris @JonFerris2 Steve Holliday: A new energy market is com- ing. If demand side doesn't define it, someone else will. #powerresponsive Barry Gardiner @BarryGardiner Minister claims "climate change is baked into every aspect" of Defra's work. I think he left out the word "half-". Claire Pearsall @claire_pearsall @BarryGardiner Whistling opera outside Com- mittee Room 16 has been outstanding today. #SelectCommittee Pope Francis @Pontifex Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility. #LaudatoSi Damian Kahya @damiankahya Am I the only person who finds the Pope's claims that climate change is evidence of human sin a bit disturbing? #encyclical Jamie Peters @jamie_pedro_ "If the earth was my patient I would be sending it direct to hospital…" Says Dr David McCoy. No to #fracking Top Tweets Disconnector Donald Trump for president Anything we can do, the yanks can do better, and that includes fielding no-hopers at national elections. If you thought Ed Miliband cut a laughable figure as the prospective leader of these sceptred isles (as the electorate clearly did), then the Americans have gone one better. Oh yes. It emerged last week that Donald Trump has thrown his hat into the ring and will be bidding to become leader of the most pow- erful nation on earth. The Trumpster is no stranger to these pages with his visceral – though so far unsuccessful – opposition to offshore wind- farms in Scotland, or at least the particular windfarm that he claims will spoil the view from his swanky golf course. The Scottish Government has so far ignored Donald's broad- sides, though he may be harder to ignore once his hand is hover- ing over the nuclear button. Mr Trump is selling himself to the American public very much as the sort of man "to get things done". For instance, in his first stump speech he promised to sort out illegal immigration from South America by building a wall between the US and Mexico. That would stop the flow of Mexicans, who he condemned as thieves, drug smugglers and rapists. It appears Trump is trying to win the Whitehouse without recourse to the Hispanic vote… Disconnector A sunny day in China Environmentalists have long held China up as the epitome of rapacious industrialism when it comes to pollution and emis- sions, and with good reason. The country's breakneck dash for growth has seen a mushrooming in the building of fossil-fuelled power plants to try to keep up with demand, and the toxic pol- lution of great rivers has turned stretches of them into death zones worthy of a dystopian sci- ence fiction landscape. So it's nice to be able to report that it's not all doom and gloom on the save-the-planet front. China is also installing photovoltaic solar panels at a prodigious rate and a report by Global Data estimates that by the end of the year the coun- try will have installed 17.6GW of new solar power. That's an increase of 7GW on 2014 and must be seen in the context of a global market reckoned at 44GW. What strange times we live in when it's the Chinese leading the world in championing solar power while US presidential hopefuls are attacking renewa- ble wind power on the basis that it puts you off your shot when you're having a round of golf. The dry truth Climate change deniers seem to have little trouble dismissing theories on the harm caused by greenhouse gas as alarmist conjecture dreamt up by a con- spiracy of self-serving environ- mentalists, regardless of the amount of scientific evidence to the contrary. So Discon- nector wonders how they'll deal with growing evidence of another, equally catastrophic disaster fast approaching humankind: the world is run- ning out of drinking water. Scientists have speculated for some time that we are sucking up groundwater at an unsustainable rate, but now no less august a body than Nasa has come up with the data to prove it. Satellite data from the US space organisation has charted the world's 37 major aquifers – in locations from India and China to the US and France — and has established that 21 of them have passed their sustainability tipping points – more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period. Thirty-five per cent of the world's population gets its water from aquifers, including many Americans. California is currently struggling through a drought of unprecedented severity, so the issue has a pub- lic profile there that climate change struggled to achieve. Air pollution seems to lack traction with many Americans – maybe the country just has too much sky for it to seem threatening. But treks across barren landscapes with little or no water are engrained in the nation's founding myths, so running out of water is alto- gether easier to imagine.