To help you keep up to date with this week’s events we’ve gathered together some of the top energy related news stories. You can follow us on Twitter too.


Greenpeace: renewables could account for 99.5% of EU power by 2050

A new Greenpeace report suggests that renewables could supply 99.5% of EU electricity needs by 2050  if nuclear is not granted priority to distribution networks. Current practice is that wind farms are stopped from generating in peak production phases in order to give priority to nuclear and coal fired power stations. This fits in with Good Energy’s own pathway to achieving 100% renewable for the UK by 2050.

Hot hot hot for 2010

More data out proving that despite Europe’s cold winter, 2010 was a hot year globally, according to Britain’s Climatic Research Unit whose data showed that 2010 was officially the second hottest year on record. It came second to 1998. The data also revealed that the last decade were among the ten warmest on record bar one.

Time to ration energy?

 

This week a group of MPs proposed an energy rationing scheme designed to keep the UK’s carbon reduction targets on course. ‘Tradable Energy Quotas’ (TEQ’s) would allocate each adult member of the population the same amount of energy units, with deductions each time the individual buys gas and electricity, or fills the car at the petrol station. Unused quotas could be traded so this should reduce overall energy consumption. We like this idea, as long as 100% renewable electricity is not given a grid average rating for carbon.

‘Windmade’ label coming to a shop near you

A ‘windmade’ label  is to appear on products that have used wind power in their manufacture, following a campaign led by Vestas and WWF. The label is to be launched in order to promote greener shopping habits, like other ethical consumer labels such as Fair Trade which was first used 23 years ago.
Let’s hope ‘windmade’ is mets with an equally positive response.

Is this the answer to storing excess wind energy?

Scotland has unveiled a hydrogen fuel-cell test centre set up to investigate how to store surplus electricity created by wind power. The £4.7m centre could be one solution to the issue of intermittent wind energy generation.