UK govt sabotages energy efficiency program to ensure market for nuclear power (93%YOY drop)

[kristopher]

This was predicted by govt experts when the old policy was scrapped and replaced.

Number of households getting help with insulation plummets
1.61m lofts were fully insulated in 2012, but just 110,000 were treated in the year to October 2013 – a pro-rata fall of 93%

Damian Carrington
The Guardian, Monday 30 December 2013 15.01 EST

The number of homes becoming warmer and cheaper to heat under government-backed insulation schemes collapsed in 2013, according to the latest official statistics. The drop, of more than 90% in the case of loft insulation, was described as serious by the government's own fuel poverty adviser and terrible by Labour.

The only way for households to cut energy costs permanently is by improving energy efficiency, but the new figures show that the number of efficiency measures enabled by government schemes plummeted in 2013 as new policies replaced those of the previous government.

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change figures, 1.61m lofts were fully insulated in 2012, but in the year to the end of October 2013, the most recent data released, just 110,000 had been treated, a pro-rata fall of 93%. For cavity wall insulation, measures fell from 640,000 in 2012 to 125,000 in the year to October 2013, a pro-rata fall of 77%.

The big drops accompanying the start of the coalition's energy company obligation (ECO) and green deal schemes in 2013 were predicted by the government's own impact assessments. ECO schemes, which require energy companies to deliver energy saving measures, account for 98% of the measures installed in 2013, with the green deal delivering 2%.

"With a cold winter, rising energy bills and a worrying increase in winter deaths, the plight of the 2.4m households in England struggling with fuel poverty has never been more serious...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/30/number-households-insulation-lofts-plummets-green-deal

...under very conservative assumptions on renewables, we can reliably expect an extra 330TWh of electricity to be generated by 2020, leaving a shortfall of 16TWh to be made up by either energy efficiency or new nuclear.

There are currently 10GW of nuclear capacity under construction/development, including the UK proposed plants that should be on operation by 2020. If we assume that energy efficiency will not contribute, that would imply a load factor for the plants of 18%. Looking at the entire available nuclear fleet that would imply a load factor of just 76%. We do believe though that steps towards energy efficiency will also be taken, thus the impact on load factors could be larger.

Under a scenario of the renewables target being fully delivered then the load factor for nuclear would fall to 56%.

(Bold in original)

Citigroup Global Markets European Nuclear Generation 2 December 2008

No link, but PDF is available online.

[djean111]

1. Wow. Nuclear is really really determined to go out screaming and kicking,

belching radiation as it goes. This all about money.

[kristopher]

2. 2010: Subsidy for eight nuclear reactors rejected

2010

Subsidy for eight nuclear reactors rejected
By Sylvia Pfeifer

Ministers said they would not rule out taking on “financial risks” as the government paved the way for eight new nuclear reactors, but they insisted there would be “no subsidy” for new nuclear power.

“This means there will be no levy, direct payment or market support for electricity supplied or capacity provided by a private sector new nuclear operator, unless similar support is also made available more widely to other types of generation,” said Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy and climate change.

He made the remarks on Monday as he unveiled a revised draft national policy statement outlining a need for new reactors and gave the go-ahead for operators to use two new designs, Westinghouse’s AP1000 and Areva’s EPR.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05a43498-daeb-11df-a5bb-00144feabdc0.html

2013

Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidy plan queried by European commission
Officials promise to investigate, saying they doubt claims of market failure and fear UK will start a 'subsidy race'

Terry Macalister
The Guardian, Wednesday 18 December 2013

The European commission has started an investigation into UK plans to subsidise the construction and operation of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, in a challenge to the government's plans to overhaul Britain's creaking energy infrastructure.

On the day royal assent was finally given to the coalition's controversial Energy Act, the EU's executive arm expressed doubts that British ministers could justify state aid to nuclear which it estimated could reach £17bn.

The EC warned of the risk of a "subsidy race" between member states and Joaquín Almunia, vice-president for competition policy, described the aid package as a complex measure of an unprecedented nature and scale.

"The commission therefore needs to investigate thoroughly its impact on the UK and the EU internal energy markets, and is requesting all interested parties to submit their observations."...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/18/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-subsidy-european-commission

[bananas]

3. This is criminal. nt

[NNadir]

11. According to the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, nuclear energy saves lives.

Last edited Wed Jan 1, 2014, 03:19 PM - Edit history (2)

It's described quite clearly, with a number of references in the most widely read scientific paper in 2013 in the import scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society.

http://pubs.acs.org/action/showMostReadArticles?topArticlesType=recent&journalCode=esthag

According to the medical/scientific journal Lancet, putting together scientific and medical authors from around the world, examining all of the world's health records, and collating them, in the last 20 years, more than 120 million people died from air pollution.

The Lancet, Volume 380, Issue 9859, Pages 2224 - 2260, 15 December 2012

This bullshit article from a weak minded journalist from the vast circle jerk of anti-nukes does nothing to define what is and what is not criminal.

Criminality is often defined and nurtured by fear and ignorance.

So it is with the sickening rhetoric of the anti-nukes, who have spent that same 20 years burning oil, gas and coal to try to prove, among similar things, that among the 20,000 dead from the earthquake in Japan - about whom they mostly don't give a shit - there is one who died from leaked radiation from the destroyed reactors.

During the same 20 years, about 600 billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste were dumped into the planetary atmosphere while we waited, insipidly, for the "solartopia" of the stupid, poorly educated freak Harvey Wasserman, and his fellow anti-nukes.

By the way, the New York Times reported yesterday, that huge stretches of Chinese agricultural land are intractably polluted with cadmium, resulting, predictably in increased cancer and a range of other health problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/asia/good-earth-no-more-soil-pollution-plagues-chinese-countryside.html?pagewanted=all

There's plenty of more information about this tragedy in the primary scientific literature, regrettably which are not read by "solartopia" anti-nukes because they don't understand a single thing about science, and in fact, hate it with all their uselessness and ignorance.

In other news, in service to Wasserman's expensive fantasy about a "solartopia" the First Solar cadmium telluride solar cells are setting "new records" for efficiency, although after years of jawboning while 6 million people died each year from air pollution, and the cost of hundreds of billions of euros, dollars, trillions of yen and yuan - this on a planet where more than 2 billion people lack basic sanitation, the grand cadmium powered solar scheme doesn't produce even one of the 538 exajoules of energy humanity produces each year.

In prisons, I'm told, there are criminals who love to call other people criminals while excluding themselves, despite where they sit.

Given the massive number of unnecessary deaths from air pollution, and the role anti-nukes played in it, I am reminded here of this appalling, tragic fact.

[joshcryer]

4. Uh, they predicted a drop, it dropped, and they sabatoged it?

This is some seriously incoherent reasoning.

The fact is the Committee for Climate Change was behind it, because the government handed it over to the almighty markets. Why is the government giving the UK's majority fossil fuel energy companies a pass?

I mean, coal grew by 9% from 2011 to 2012:



Nuclear, typically, remains unchanged, because it is shit and can't be built out quicker than, yaknow, budgets can be cut or rearranged or gutted.

[kristopher]

5. That could have been more clear

"Experts" in a situation like this refers to people who specialize in the policies, not politics. That generally included lifetime bureaucrats and outside NGOs. The politicians who insisted on nuclear also insisted on changing the program that was designed to promote energy efficiency improvements in homes. They were warned by bureaucrats and outside groups that the new policy wouldn't work but the nuclear loving conservatives who had promised "no subsidies" for nuclear insisted on it anyway.

As for the increase in coal, why would that surprise you given the conservative government and its dedication to large centralized power plants as an end in and of themselves? They don't give a rats ass about CO2 reductions; their policies sabotaging efficiency and renewables make that perfectly clear.

[joshcryer]

6. They expected the cut. The cut was obvious.

Please prove the linkage between the nuclear lobby and the CCC (Committee on Climate Change). Their budget got cut. Can you show how the nuclear lobby got that budget cut?

Because the fossil fuel lobby, particularly coal, benefited the most. By cutting the mandatory electric company fee, which the fossil fuel companies would've had to pay, the fossil fuel companies befitted.

I think you place too much emphasis on a technology that takes forever to build out. Maybe you'd have a point if a few nuclear plants went on line or were even predicted to go on line but they won't, not in any reasonable future. All we see is the fossil fuel companies getting a break.

[kristopher]

7. So you are saying the government is using the excuse of nuclear to ensure funding for coal?

Your view is that they are cutting effective programs like renewables and energy efficiency to make it seem like they want nuclear, all the while they are really just using nuclear as a scapegoat to provide another decade or so of support for coal.

Is that a fair assessment of your view?

[joshcryer]

8. Uh, no, the cut benifitted coal.

That is how it happened.

Nuclear, by its nature, is impossible to adjust to arbitrary cuts like that therefore did not benefit one iota.

Are you suggesting that nuclear in the UK is on the rise???

[kristopher]

9. A little bit late for that isn't it?

You were trying to defend nuclear by laying the Conservatives actions off on coal but you forgot they are both part of a single coal/nuclear package.

[joshcryer]

10. I'm pretty sure none of my statements defend coal.

I am simply rebuffing the asinine idea that nuclear was the cause.

Sort of how you are annoyed by the insinuation that Japan's nuclear faults are causing the next fucking apocalypse.

The cause was budgetary and if it helped anyone it helped coal. I have no desire to try to make up some conspiracy as to how that is the case. But it's simply more logically probable than the nuclear industry doing it since there's no benefit to the nuclear industry by doing so.

[kristopher]

12. "...leaving a shortfall of 16TWh to be made up by either energy efficiency or new nuclear"

That's the verdict of Citigroup. It seems difficult to believe but apparently you have trouble grasping the amount of impact on load reduction that results from the energy efficiency programs that were in place. And while coal is certainly a factor, it is the amount of demand that exists for nuclear relevant to renewables and energy efficiency that emerged from the analysis.

"If we assume that energy efficiency will not contribute, that would imply a load factor for the plants of 18%. Looking at the entire available nuclear fleet that would imply a load factor of just 76%. We do believe though that steps towards energy efficiency will also be taken, thus the impact on load factors could be larger. "

So when, in the face of that information, you start trying to protect nuclear by saying they did it for coal, it certainly leads to the impression that your meaning was:

So you are saying the government is using the excuse of nuclear to ensure funding for coal? Your view is that they are cutting effective programs like renewables and energy efficiency to make it seem like they want nuclear, all the while they are really just using nuclear as a scapegoat to provide another decade or so of support for coal.

Poor little nuclear lobby, always getting picked on...

[joshcryer]

13. So you contend that new nuclear will be built?

Because it won't.

And that's why if anyone is defending nuclear here, it is you, with the starry eyed belief that new nuclear will be built.

[kristopher]

14. Says longtime diehard nuclear advocate joshcryer...

The Conservative govt in the UK is doing everything they can to ensure new nuclear does get built. They've set a planning target of 50 plants with a total capacity of 75GW, and they are clearly willing to do anything at all to make that happen. It has taken them a number of years to get around the pledge to not subsidize nuclear, but they took the plunge this year.

Fifty new nuclear plants could be goal in official energy plans
21 Dec 2013: Documents submitted to Department of Energy and Climate Change raise questions regarding future energy policy
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/21/nuclear-plants-energy-plans


Toshiba to buy majority stake in UK nuclear consortium
26 Dec 2013: Japanese company keen to kickstart ambitious reactor building programme that stalled after 2011 disaster at Fukushima
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/26/toshiba-stake-uk-nuclear-consortium

To help with the economics they not only needed to subsidize the reactors, they need to ensure a market will exist where the per kWh subsidy can be paid out. To that end they have turned against renewables and energy efficiency in order to sell every kWh of electricity they produce at those plants.

The only remaining obstacle is the EU investigation of their subsidy plan.
Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidy plan queried by European commission
Officials promise to investigate, saying they doubt claims of market failure and fear UK will start a 'subsidy race'
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/18/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-subsidy-european-commission

[joshcryer]

15. Who cares what they try to do.

The reality is that it won't be built. Renewables are more profitable when conjoined with fossil, particularly natural gas. Your own Jacobson points this out.

You do realize my criticism for renewables is not that they're not going to work.

But that they aren't going to work quickly enough.

That's it.

I only support Gen IV nuclear which no one is building and then it would need to be mass manufactured for it to be worth anything which is unlikely to happen. So it's a pipe dream.

[kristopher]

16. Who care what someone who spends all their time...

promoting militarism and ALL nuclear power thinks about renewables.

[joshcryer]

17. Does not parse.

[kristopher]

18. Then you should feel right at home with it

[joshcryer]

19. No, seriously, you OK?

Having a stroke?