Tom Youngman

LeftCentral: Feed-in Tariff Review

Following a request to the UK Youth Climate Coalition website, I recently wrote an article for the ‘LeftCentral’ blog regarding the government’s fast-track review of the Feed-in Tariff. An extract of the article follows:

Last Sunday I watched the first episode in the new series of ‘Dragon’s Den’. At around 9:45 came the serious proposition, the project that (we’ve all now pretty much sussed the show’s structure) will definitely get investment. As a sustainability activist, it pleased me greatly to see Chris Hopkins, MD of Ploughcroft, a solar panel installer, occupying this slot.

His appearance on the show demonstrated one thing clearly – solar power is now a solid investment. All five ‘Dragons’ were keen to invest – Deborah Meaden even declared she already had a stake in another solar installer. It’s rare to hear a piece of technical energy policy mentioned on a peak-time television show, but the entrepreneur attributed the success of his business (and the British solar industry) quite explicitly to the Feed-in Tariff.

…

The fast-track review of the Feed-in Tariff for solar photovoltaic panels fundamentally conflicted with the original strengths of a highly successful policy. At the core of the policy is creating confidence on the part of the generator that their income from the subsidy is guaranteed. Price reviews were always acknowledged to be needed to keep the subsidy economic as the cost of technology decreased, but by holding a hurried review outside the regular cycle, the government severely knocked this essential confidence.

To read the full article, click here.

Inhabitat: China’s Wind Power Capacity Grew More than 60% in the First Quarter of 2011

There’s hope.

In 2010, China overtook the United States in installed wind power capacity when they reached the 42,287 megawatt benchmark. With their wind power capacity already up 60% in the first quarter of 2011, and plans on track to install even more throughout the year, experts think China’s wind power generation could expand rapidly and perhaps help bring down their carbon emissions by 30%.

They’re still destroyed by Danish wind, however. Article continues:

Though China’s installed capacity is higher than any other country in the world their per capita wind power capacity and per GDP wind power capacity still pale in comparison to the world leader in both those categories, Denmark. The Danes are crushing us all with their amazing 680.3 MW of capacity per million people — China has 33.6 MW per million people and the US has 129.6 MW per million.

Read full article here.

DECC Youth Advisory Panel blog: Royal Electricity Surge

I recently wrote the article of which this is an extract about ‘grid balancing’ for the DECC Youth Advisory Panel’s blog.

When the live coverage returned back to the television studio and viewers reached for the kettle, a 2400MW surge in electricity demand was experienced. This is equivalent to boiling nearly one million kettles.

This perfectly demonstrates the problems the National Grid face when dealing with electricity supply. This surge is the same size as the capacity of two a half Hinkley Point B nuclear power stations, nearly two thirds of Drax coal power station (the UK’s largest single emitter of Carbon Dioxide) and 1200 Scroby Sands-size wind turbines at peak output. You can easily imagine how finding this sort of energy for only a few short minutes presents a problem for the grid.

The full article is available here.

US & South Africa race to build world’s largest solar plant, rivaling nuclear power stations in capacity http://t.co/23hporU via @TreeHugger