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UTILITY WEEK | 10TH - 16TH JUNE 2016 | 5 Nissan has switched on a new solar farm consisting of 19,000 panels to join ten existing wind turbines at its largest manufacturing site in Europe. The Sunderland plant is fully operational, supplying a total of 4.75MW of power. The site is the European centre of production for the all-electric Nissan Leaf and its batteries. "This new solar farm will further reduce the environmental impact of Nissan vehicles during their entire lifecycle," said Nissan's senior vice president Colin Lawther. €80/MWh Major players in the offshore wind sector, including Eon, Iberdrola and Vattenfall, have pledged to bring down costs to below €80/MWh (£63/MWh) by 2025. £14m The cost of the new limewater plant opened by Severn Trent near Birmingham. £1.8m The UK's first council solar bonds have sold out a month early, after Swindon Community Solar Farm reached its £1.8 million target. UK shale 'viable' if it can match US flow rates Shale gas produced in the UK using hydraulic fracturing should be commercially viable if wells can match the typical flow rates achieved in the US, a senior figure at IGas told Utility Week. Asked whether shale gas could make a significant contribution to the UK's energy mix, IGas chief operating officer John Blaymires said: "The short answer is yes." "We know there's shale there. There's plenty evidence of that. We know that shale contains gas. The key issue is can you flow at rates that can be considered commercial and that's the question that has to be addressed." He conceded that development costs would be higher in the UK because the supply chain is more expensive and there is much more legislation to negotiate. But he said the US lacked the same level of existing gas infrastructure which the UK has in and around its shale fields. "We failed to anticipate how attractive our low prices would be" Independent supplier Extra Energy was rated by Citizens Advice as the worst of the UK's 20 largest suppliers for dealing with customer complaints. GAS The graphic shows a map of carbon taxes around the world, sourced from Thomson Reuters' report Powering the Planet. Senior manager for tax research at the company, Anil Kuruvilla, said: "Right now, although everyone is talking about them, true carbon taxes are only active in some pockets of the world and there are as many different approaches to implementing them as there are taxes themselves." According to the report, the landmark climate change deal agreed in Paris last year has "thrust the idea of a carbon tax back into the global spotlight". Carbon taxes around the world 22 Carbon Taxes: Their Role in the Clean Coal Movement #PoweringThePlanet CARBON TAX DIFFERENCES What makes the carbon tax concept work in some places and not others? Anil Kuruvilla, senior manager for tax research and content at Thomson Reuters, explains that the issue has as much to do with base politics as it does with the complexity of the tax itself and different ways of implementing it. "Right now, although everyone is talking about them, true carbon taxes are only active in some pockets of the world and there are as many different approaches to implementing them as there are taxes themselves. In Ireland, for example, the carbon tax is applied to the use of all fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity and propulsion of automobiles. Just a few miles east, the UK has implemented a 'climate change levy' which applies to the use of all fossil-fuel-derived energy and its use to support energy efficiency initiatives." The lack of consistency of implementation from one region to the next makes it challenging to truly evaluate the success of each program on an apples-to-apples basis. It also makes it hard to establish a set of best practices. But the real issue is politics. As Kuruvilla points out: "The situation in Australia was a simple case of partisan politics. [Former] Prime Minister Abbott's coalition government was elected largely based on campaign promises to repeal ETS implemented or scheduled for implementation Carbon tax implemented or scheduled for implementation ETS or carbon tax under consideration ETS and carbon tax implemented or scheduled ETS implemented or scheduled, tax under consideration Carbon tax implemented or scheduled, ETS under consideration British Columbia Washington Oregon California Mexico Chile Brazil Alberta Manitoba Ontario Quebec Iceland Ukraine Turkey China Republic of Korea Japan New Zealand Thailand South Africa Kazakhstan EU RGGI Norway UK Denmark Ireland Portugal France Switzerland Slovenia Finland Poland Beijing Republic of Korea Kyoto Taiwan Saitama Tokyo Tianjin Chong- Chin Estonia Latvia Sweden Shenzhen Guangdong Figure 9. Map of Carbon Taxes Source: The World Bank Group