Utility Week

4 | 16TH - 22ND FEBRUARY 2018 | UTILITY WEEK STORY BY NUMBERS Seven days... National media Iceland will use more energy mining bitcoin than powering homes Iceland is expected to use more energy "mining" bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes. With massive amounts of electricity needed to run the com- puters that create bitcoins, large virtual currency companies have established a base in the North Atlantic island nation blessed with an abundance of renewable energy, alarming some MPs. The Telegraph, 12 February The 11 cities facing water shortages Cape Town is in the unenviable situ- ation of being the first major city in the modern era to face the threat of running out of drinking water. However, the plight of the drought-hit South African city is just one extreme example of a problem that experts have long been warn- ing about – water scarcity. The 11 other cities most likely to run out of water: São Paulo, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Miami. BBC News, 11 February Australia's solar power set to double in a year A record-breaking month of rooop installations and a flood of large- scale solar farms could almost double Australia's solar power capacity in a single year, industry analysts say. A massive solar energy boom is being predicted for 2018, aer an unprecedented number of industrial solar farms were approved by the New South Wales and Queensland governments last year. Last month also became the big- gest January on record for rooop installations, according to the renewables website RenewEconomy and industry analysts SunWiz. The Guardian, 11 February Corbyn: renationalisation is key to a green agenda T ackling climate change will be at the heart of the energy system once Labour brings National Grid back into public ownership, Jeremy Cor- byn has pledged. In a speech at a conference on alternative models of owner- ship, held in London last week, the Labour leader made an environmental case for public ownership of the UK's energy system. In its general election manifesto last year, Labour pledged to renationalise water and energy network companies, including National Grid. Corbyn said: "A green energy system will look radically dif- ferent to the one we have today. The past is a centralised system with a few large plants. The future is decentralised, flexible and diverse, with new sources of energy large and small, from tidal to solar. "The greenest energy is usu- ally the most local. But people have been queuing up for years to connect renewable energy to the national grid. With National Grid in public hands, we can put tackling climate change at the heart of our energy system. To go green, we must take control of our energy." Corbyn also pledged a pro- gramme to retrain workers who are made redundant because of the transition to a greener economy. He said "never again" would workers have to pay the price of energy transformation, like the coal miners hit by the mass pit closures of the 1980s and 1990s. "Our energy system needs to change, but it cannot be workers who pay the price," he said. Quoting the US GI Bill aer the Second World War, he said displaced energy workers would get guarantees in "education, housing and income support… and offered a new job on equiva- lent terms and conditions, cov- ered by collective agreements". The Centre for Policy Studies recently calculated Labour's manifesto policies to renation- alise water and energy network companies could cost up to £141.65 billion. DB Half of Europe's new offshore wind in 2017 was built in the UK The UK was home to more than half of new offshore wind capacity in Europe in 2017, statistics published by the trade body Wind Europe reveal. 1.7GW Amount of new capacity in the UK, out of a European total of 3.1GW. 23% Average increase in capacity of new turbines installed in 2017, at 5.9MW. 13 Number of new offshore windfarms completed in the UK, including the world's first floating offshore windfarm, Hywind Scotland. 19% Orsted built nearly one-fifth of all new offshore wind capacity in Europe in 2017, the largest share for any developer. "I am open to being convinced but the government is probably right to question whether it wants to put its money here" Lord Deben, chair of parliament's climate change watchdog, questions the proposed Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.

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