06
foreign news
@green | July-August, 2020
Britain goes coalfree
as renewables
edge out fossil fuels
Britain is about to pass a significant
landmark - at midnight on June 10, it
will have gone two full months without
burning coal to generate power.
A decade ago, about 40 per cent of
the country’s electricity came from coal;
coronavirus is part of the story, but far
from all.
When Britain went into lockdown,
electricity demand plummeted; the
National Grid responded by taking power
plants off the network.
The four remaining coal-fired plants
were among the first to be shut down.
The last coal generator came off the
system at midnight on April 9. No coal
has been burnt for electricity since.
The current coal-free period smashes
the previous record of 18 days, 6 hours
and 10 minutes which was set in June
last year.
The country does not need to use the
fuel that used to be the backbone of the
grid is thanks to a massive investment in
renewable energy over the last decade.
Renewable power out-generated fossil
fuels in December, 2016. Before this
year, there had been a total of 154 days
when the combined power created from
renewable sources exceeded those from
fossil fuels.
Carbon Brief says that 91 of those
days occurred in 2019.
The decline in the role of fossil fuels in
general and coal in particular looks set to
continue. The remaining three coal plants
in the UK will be shut down within five
years.
Then the fuel that sparked the
industrial revolution here in Britain almost
two centuries ago will be a thing of the
past. – BBC News
Maersk heads
zero-carbon drivein
shipping sector
The world’s largest container shipper,
A.P. Moller-Maersk (Maersk), will team up
with industry majors to set up a research
centre in Denmark to reduce carbon
emissions in the shipping industry.
According to Reuters, Denmark’s
Maersk, which aims to be carbon-neutral
by 2050, recently said the research
centre would combine knowledge from
industry, academia and regulators towards
“decarbonising” the industry by developing
carbon-neutral fuel and technologies.
The shipping industry, which carries
around 80 per cent of global trade and
accounts for about three per cent of global
carbon emissions, pledged last year to
have ships and marine fuels with zero
carbon emissions ready by 2030.
The move would be funded by Maersk’s
majority owner, the A.P. Moller Foundation,
which has donated 400 million Danish
crowns ($60.36 million) towards building
the Copenhagen-based research hub set
to employ 100 people initially, Maersk said.
Denmark, which has one of the world’s
most ambitious climate goals of cutting
emissions by 70 per cent by 2030, is home
to renewable energy majors like wind
farm developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO) and
turbine maker Vestas (VWS.CO).
New Green
Power growth
commitments lag
climate goals
Deep in one of Sweden’s many
fir forests, a 150-metre crane juts
out between the treetops. Built
especially for the job, one by one
it hoists three 68-metre blades to
complete a wind turbine as tall as
the London Eye. The yellow crane
is then slowly dismantled, moved
piece by piece, and rebuilt to repeat
the manoeuvre.
It’s painstaking work for an
industry in a hurry.
The US$8 billion Markbygden
site, set to be Europe’s largest
onshore wind farm, kept construction
going through lockdown,
helped by Sweden’s laissez-faire
approach to the virus. But it’s
Promises for new renewable power
capacity are off to a slow start this decade,
just as more investment is needed in clean
technology to slow down the worst effects
of climate change.
Targets set by governments and companies
for installations of technologies
like wind turbines and solar panels this
decade are far below what was built in
the previous 10 years. This is according
to research from Bloomberg NEF for the
United Nations Environment Programme,
and Frankfurt School’s UNEP Center published
Wednesday.
The pledges by governments and companies
for new renewable sources are still
set to add up to $1 trillion in investment by
2030, but that pales in comparison with
The massive wind park
the virus couldn’t stop
indicative of an industry that — globally
— has weathered the pandemic
better than its peers in conventional
energy.
As nations plan to invest almost
$10 trillion in the wind and solar
energy by 2050 to hit climate targets,
the pressure to keep installing
turbines as tall as skyscrapers and
put more solar panels ever in fields
has never been higher.
“Over this period we’ve managed
to demonstrate just how resilient
and robust our business model is,”
said Jonathan Cole, the managing
director for offshore wind at Iberdrola
SA, which completed a U.K.
wind project and a Spanish solar
the $2.7 trillion of green power investment
made in the last decade. However,
the amount invested could quickly end up
being much more as not all renewables
installations follow government or corporate
targets.
“Clean energy finds itself at a crossroads
in 2020,” said Jon Moore, chief executive
officer of BNEF. “The last decade produced
huge progress, but official targets for 2030
are far short of what is required to address
climate change.”
A landmark 2018 UN report said the
world must invest $2.4 trillion in clean
energy every year through 2035 and cut
the use of coal-fired power to almost nothing
by 2050 to avoid catastrophic damage
from climate change. - Bloomberg
plant at the height of the crisis. “We
barely missed a step.”
For Markbygden in Sweden,
it means 1,101 turbines will be
spinning by 2026, enough to meet
8 per cent of the nation’s electricity
demand. Lawmakers want the technology
to help replace the output
of the country’s ageing nuclear
reactors that are gradually closing.
Delays and complications at the
wind farm have also been limited
by the fact that the Swedish government
took a different route to
combat the virus than other nations.
It refused to shut down its economy,
relying instead on citizens to respect
social distancing. - Bloomberg