UK power companies fail to tackle climate change

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has claimed that the UK’s biggest power companies are failing to deal with climate change. In its annual survey, the WWF rated the UK’s top six energy companies in order of their attempts to tackle climate change. Top of the league came Centrica (owner of British Gas) for tackling carbon emissions and promoting energy efficiency followed by Scottish Power for having the highest investment in renewable energy resources. They were followed by E.ON UK, Scottish and Southern Energy, EDF Energy and finally RWE Power. EDF Energy and RWE Power had demonstrated the least progress in tackling climate change, but even the companies at the top of the list still lacked the vision necessary to combat climate change.

WWF’s head of climate change, Keith Allott said: "If you combined the best elements of Centrica's and Scottish Power's strategies, you might begin to see a real leader pushing towards a green and efficient power sector… The power sector's emissions have been rising in recent years and many companies are focusing on building new fossil fuel or nuclear stations rather than providing efficient energy services and clean renewable energy." For all their ‘green’ claims, the power companies are still not doing enough. Maybe consumer pressure would spur them on. If enough consumers changed suppliers to the ‘greenest’ companies, the rest would soon change their attitude to climate change.

[Via The Guardian]

Energy firms want government money for carbon capture research

The main electricity generating companies involved in the development of carbon capture technology have asked the government to give them £1 billion to help with project costs. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of capturing the CO2 emissions from large producers like power plants and then compressing and storing the CO2 in deep geological formations or in deep oceans. The technology to capture the CO2 exists, but the actual storage of the compressed CO2 is new and untested. This is the area energy companies want the government to invest in. Although this will eliminate around 90% of the CO2 from power stations, the process itself is energy intensive, costly, and will produce its own CO2 emissions. Whether CCS gives an overall reduction in CO2 emissions is still to be demonstrated.

BP has already abandoned its plans to build an experimental hydrogen plant using carbon capture in the North Sea due to government inaction. Other companies are threatening to do as BP has done and shelve their plans for CCS plants unless the government coughs up the money. Should the government, and by extension us the taxpayers, give money to private companies to carry out research that will benefit them and make them money? I suppose if the government doesn’t meet the costs of the project, the companies could always put their prices up to recover the costs anyway. Either way, we end up paying for the whole thing. It CCS actually helps the planet, then maybe it is just worth it.

[Via The Guardian]

Electricity firms are trying out new Smart meters

Four major UK electricity suppliers has signed a contract with the government to install 40,000 smart meters as part of a two year trial. The government is giving £10 million towards the costs of this. The purpose of the trial is to determine whether smart meters actually reduce people’s electricity consumption. It is hoped the smart meters will help people change the way they use electricity.

The smart meters will have a clip-on display unit that shows electricity use in real time. This means the consumer can see exactly how much each appliance is costing them to run. Whether this will make people change the way they use electricity remains to be seen. I’m sure people will be more likely to turn off lights and appliances on stand-by once they see how much it is costing them. The aim is to have every home fitted with smart meters by 2017.

The consumer watchdog energywatch believes this is inadequate and has asked the government to make all new and replacement meters smart meters. This makes so much more sense. Why install new meters and replace existing ones with ordinary meters, then in a few years time have to go through the whole process again and replace them all with smart meters. The only reasons I can see for this is that with the existing meters the electricity companies can give estimated bills and can make more money by over estimating electricity use, and if they install smart meters people will use less electricity so they will make less profit. It seems like a strange thing for any retailer to do, to ask their customers to buy less of their product! Maybe the government needs to bring in legal requirements for the use of smart meters.

[Via The Guardian]