Group items tagged

Europe could switch to low carbon sources of electricity, with up to 100% coming from renewables by 2050, without risking energy reliability or pushing up energy bills, according to a major new study, Roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon Europe, developed by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) with contributions from McKinsey, KEMA, Imperial College London and Oxford Economics. It says that a transition to a low- or zero-carbon power supply based on high levels of renewable energy would have no impact on reliability, and would have little overall impact on the cost of generating electricity.

Research by Scotland’s consumer watchdog, Consumer Focus Scotland, is to be presented at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations’ “renewables event” in Edinburgh today showing both landlords and tenants are finding renewable systems can provide warmer homes at lower costs than traditional alternatives.

Edinburgh Napier University transformed pott ale and draff from the making of whisky into fuel to run a vehicle, and now the university has turned that process into a business called Celtic Renewables Ltd.!

The JRC has published a study mapping the potential of renewable energy sources in Africa. The report analyses the continent's current energy consumption and assesses potential of renewable energy sources - solar, wind, biomass and hydropower - and their cost efficiency and environmental sustainability.

It turns out, however, that what most environmentalists know about the future supply of natural gas and other fossil fuels is based more on industry hype than on actual data. And, that means that they are missing a key argument in their discussions about renewable energy, one that could be used to persuade those less concerned about pollution and climate change and more concerned about energy security: There is increasing evidence that no fossil fuel will continue to see its rate of production climb significantly in the decades ahead and so none of them is a viable "bridge fuel," not natural gas, not oil, not coal. This means that global society must leap over fossil fuels and move directly to renewables as quickly as possible. In advanced economies this leap must be combined with a program of radical reductions in energy use, reductions which are achievable using known technologies and practices.

Norway set a renewable energy target for 2020 of 67.5 percent of its domestic production. The Norwegian Energy and Petroleum Ministry said that means the country needs to increase its renewable energy portfolio around 9 percent per year

A 2009 progress report by the Commission suggests that the EU will fall short of its 2010 renewable energy targets as set out in the first Renewables Directive and the Biofuels Directives. The Commission projects that the EU will achieve 19% instead of the target of 21% of total electricity consumption, and 4% instead of the 5.75% target for the transport sector. This failure may in part be due to the absence of binding targets in either directive.