renewables | Common News Update

Oct52020 by adminNo Comments

Study: Renewables, not nuclear power, can provide truly low carbon energy

Science

Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Nuclear energy programs around the world have failed to deliver on promises of carbon emissions reductions, according to a new survey. When researchers at the University of Sussex Business School, in Britain, and the ISM University of Management and Economics, in Lithuania, analyzed nuclear energy programs and renewable power operations in 123 countries over the last 25 years, they found the two tend not to co-exist all that well. Advertisement In low-carbon energy systems, the two programs crowd one another other out of the energy market, as well as diminish the efficiency of the other, researchers said. The latest findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Energy, suggest countries are less likely to meet carbon emissions reduction targets when nuclear energy progr...

Britain goes coal free as renewables edge out fossil fuels

Science

Britain is about to pass a significant landmark - at midnight on Wednesday it will have gone two full months without burning coal to generate power.A decade ago about 40% 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 9 April. 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 figures apply to Britain only, as Northern Ireland i...

Low-carbon advocates say U.S. renewables breaking records

Business

Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Amid the pushback on Washington's efforts to back coal and nuclear power, a report from low-carbon advocates found clean energy has organic momentum.An annual report from the Natural Resources Defense Council said some components of the renewable energy sector have accelerated faster than the government estimated. Wind power capacity, for example, was 350 percent above a government forecast from 10 years ago."Dozens of clean energy records have been shattered across the United States in the last year and a half," Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of NRDC's energy program, said in a statement. "And despite some new political headwinds, ever-improving economics will propel the clean energy transition in the years to come."President Donald Trump and his energy secretary, Rick Perry,...