THE Big Six energy suppliers have been accused of “profit grabbing” as figures showed their earnings have multiplied five-fold to more than £1 billion since 2009.
Read this Herald article: “Energy firms under fire as they enjoy soaring profits”
My book E- Is For Energy will discuss the many ways that the big six hide profits from the tax man and use dodgy corporate accounting to hide even more profits.
Germany employs more people than the UK in the renewable sector. This is one of the biggest lost opportunities within the debate. The UK has always been a global leader in the invention, design, and manufacturing industries. Now we are failing to encourage the renewable sector to grow new jobs. This job growth is vital to our economic recovery. Government support and investment in renewable energy will pay huge dividends far into the future. Investing now in new technology will secure England’s financial future and return the UK to world prominence.
I have a number of interviews scheduled for different parts of the book E – Is For Energy. I spend all day Saturday interviewing two representatives of the Stop Hinkley Movement in Somerset. It was a very pleasant experience. The two spokes persons I met had a lot of knowledge regarding the nuclear power issue. I also had a chance to see the hinkley site for the first time.
I will be organising interviews with the pro nuclear lobby as well. I feel that it is vitally important to have a balanced discussion in order to arrive at the best decision for us all.
I have a film company working on this book project with me. Raccoon Productions is making a documentary about my awakening and book/blog project. They are also filming all my interviews. There are several hours of film from this weekend. I hope within a week to have some clips up on the net and available for you all to watch.
In Germany there are, as of September 2013, 35 Gigawatts of solar energy installed. This compares very poorly to the UK’s 1gigawatt of solar capacity. With all the starts and stops-the funding and then the cuts-the solar industry in the UK does not know if it is coming or going. More to the point the customers who would buy solar for their homes and their businesses have lost interest in this technology. We have just 1/35th of the solar Germany has and we have wasted over 3.5yrs precious time. This is time we and our planet’s climate do not have to waste.
Drilling is OK Right? Er. . NO!
What happens when you try to drill a gas well in a large gas field?
Sometimes all is well. Pun intended.
The only effect is the damage to the environment through burning the gas and making CO2 and other pollutants.
Other times it goes wrong, horribly wrong. How wrong you ask?
Remember you asked. . . and This is NOT a Joke:
Welcome to the
Burning for the last 42 years!
Door To Hell – Opened By Drilling for Gas
According to Wikipedia :
“The Door to Hell is noted for its natural gas fire which has been burning continuously since it was lit by Soviet petrochemical scientists in 1971, fed by the rich natural gas deposits in the area. The pungent smell of burning sulfur pervades the area for some distance.”
How did they light it? They decided to drill for natural gas!
I have always had a hard time understanding why power companies don’t rush to renewable energy. At first I thought it may be because they did not understand the advantages of clean renewable energy. Then I thought it was because they didn’t believe that it would work.
Now I believe they are not adopting renewable energy because the costs are much lower! The costs of ANY renewable energy technology spread out over its lifetime is a flat line. There are no rising costs of production, changing prices for fossil fuels, or supply chain costs. The labor costs are about the only thing that will go up. Perhaps the costs of maintenance for wind farms and hydroelectric plants may go up a bit too.
If you install renewable energy systems it becomes difficult to raise the price of energy every year by 8% or 10%. The cost of doing business starts to flat-line. The Sun and the Wind do not charge for their power. Energy companies are committed as corporations to delivering ever increasing profits and returning dividends to share holders.
It seems to me that the idea of a renewable energy future, where we get all of our energy need from the Sun, Wind, or Water for FREE is not compatible with business model of energy production.
The papers and news media act as if this plan is set in stone. It is NOT. We have the chance NOW to stop this plan before it gets approval.
Hear what Stop Hinkley C has to say:
Nikki Clark Stop Hinkley spokesperson said “Yesterdays announcement was much ado over nothing and despite all the fanfare and visits of the rich and famous to Hinkley, there is no legally binding agreement, nor will there be until the government get their plans past the European Commission which, according to various media outlets, would be summer 2014 at the earliest.”
The graph below shows the change this FIT cut has had in the solar industry and the peak before the cut. We now are returning to the lowest levels of installations for solar that occurred before the FIT was introduced. The cost for new solar installations on domestic roofs has not fallen as quickly as the FIT, as our government claims. This is causing a hold-up in the new solar installations the UK needs in order to expand our renewable energy sources.
Graph of installations returns to a flat line!
The graph below shows the truth of interest in solar.
Before the FIT cuts were announced, the domestic solar market was doing well. There was no great rush to domestic rooftop solar. There was a steady slow increase in the installation of new systems. This is similar to the pattern in Germany. The planned reduction in the UK FIT of 1% to 3% provided for the slow growth of installations and the gradual reduction in the price of solar systems. Companies opened for business and they did well. New jobs were created and more taxes came in to the government purse. After the FIT was announced there was a huge rush to buy and install solar before the deadline. There were over 700,000 installations during the last few months before the cuts.
Graph by week of solar installs.
Nuclear energy has never been ‘safe.’ Nuclear energy is inherently Unsafe and always will be. Nuclear energy is not clean or green. It causes massive pollution from mining to reprocessing. Nuclear waste is impossible to make safe. The American Department Of Defense is recycling spent uranium from nuclear plants – By making uranium tipped ammunition for weapons used in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Levels of radiation and pollution in these war-torn regions has gone up. The citizens of these countries are paying the price.
Cleaning up after a nuclear disaster is also fraught with problems and can take decades to complete.
Euronews website report:
The operators of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have postponed the extremely complicated and difficult task of removing damaged atomic rods.
New video footage from a robot has revealed new leaks within the damaged reactors meaning the rods now can’t be taken out as planned.
One of the fuel assemblies was damaged as far back as 1982 when it was mishandled during a transfer and is bent out of shape.
Kazuaki Matsui, the executive director of Japan’s Institute of Applied Energy said: “It’s very difficult to remove a spent rod because parts of the wall and the bottom of the reactor are all melted. We’ve never had to deal with this before so that adds to the complication.”
Meanwhile, decontamination workers say mismanagement is to blame for the delay of radiation removal work.
The initial plan called for the clean-up in the affected towns to be finished by March this year but the government now says the work will be delayed by as much as three years.
Link to the article at Euronews