The UK Energy and Climate Secretary has announced that, from 18 August 2010, local councils will be allowed to sell renewable electricity. This is fast and impressive work.
read more »The Conservative Party is planning new subsidies for coal power stations. This is a striking historic reversal, because the Tories have traditionally been anti-coal.
read more »The French government has called for tenders for 3Gw of offshore wind off France, and has given a grant to GDF Suez for a district heating network in Paris, which will use renewable heat.
read more »This is a commentary on the UK government’s new microgeneration strategy. It is good that it recognises the need to address non-financial barriers, but lack of strong regulatory framework will not deliver microgeneration or climate protection.
read more »Corbyn’s Labour is taking a sensible line on climate change, and Corbyn himself is right on nuclear weapons, But until he drops his pacifism he will not be fit to be prime minister.
read more »
This is a summary of a longer paper by Prashant Vaze and Ed Mayo on how a new, low-carbon energy infrastructure can be financed at reasonable cost.
read more »
Last night (Thursday, 21 July 2011), Prashant Vaze and I held a launch event for our book.
read more »
Three months after the Fukashima nuclear reactor caught fire, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power. The decision stunned Europe’s energy policy community. Nuclear presently provides a quarter of Germany’s electricity – how would it plug the gap?
read more »
How Babylon, New York used money raised from waste collection charges to overcome barriers to getting homeowners to make their properties more energy efficient.
read more »
This article summarises what Berlin has done on energy efficiency. The material will be used in the Repowering Communities book. Comments very welcome.
read more »
Community-owned renewables are quite rare in the UK, but extremely common – mainly wind farms – in Germany and Denmark. The UK is at least now moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.
read more »
UK district heating schemes is an idea whose time has come. Those in Sheffield and Aberdeen are discussed in this article.
read more »
Freiburg has a well-deserved reputation as Germany’s green capital. It uses on about half of the energy that other European cities of 200,000 people do, and has become a world leader in solar. This article looks at what the city council has done to achieve this.
read more »
This is a case study of the Gigha community-owned wind farm in Scotland, carried out by Simon Dresner. Comments are welcome.
read more »
Rotterdam is now Europe’s largest port. It has a concentration of heavy industry, including oil refineries and power stations. So its contribution to climate emissions is substantial.
read more »
Austrian regions (Länder) play a significant role in energy, particularly regarding building efficiency and heating, including district heating. Upper Austria is one of nine regions, covering 12,000km2, with 1.4 million inhabitants. It is highly industrialised, with significant heavy industry (manufacture of steel and machinery).
This article is about how Upper Austria manages to get a third of its total energy use, and almost half its heat, from renewables.
read more »
Tiny Vermont is the second smallest state in the US by population and the fifth smallest by area. Its economic reconstruction efforts are understated. So too are its efforts to provide its homes and businesses with sustainable heat and power.
read more »
This is a paper that the three authors of the Repowering Communities book discussed with UK government officials and other experts at a seminar on 1 November 2010. It covers examples of which local governments are doing best on energy efficiency and renewables, and makes some recommendations.
read more »
This is a summary and analysis of UK’s white paper on Electricity Market Reform and Renewables Roadmap, published this week.
read more »
40% of heat in Denmark is delivered through district heating networks and 82% of this heat comes from Combined Heat and Power plants. How has Denmark done so well?
read more »
