EDF to buy UK's leading nuclear power producer
June 24, 2008 at 3:37 am
Newspapers have been speculating frantically about the possible takeover of British Energy by the French power giant EDF. It now looks increasingly likely that a deal to buy the UK’s leading nuclear power producer will go ahead in the near future.
British Energy, in which the government has a 35.2% stake, currently provides 19% of the electricity needs for the entire country. The vast company owns eight of the ten nuclear power stations in the UK, and is by far the leading producer of nuclear power.
EDF is the biggest energy producer in Europe, already controlling nearly half of all Europe’s nuclear energy, and its proposed takeover suggests that it is seeking to expand further into the continent.
A recent report in The Observer, where the news was first revealed, claims that once EDF have tabled their bid and finalised the details, the deal is almost certain to go ahead.
It also now looks increasingly likely that the two main rival bidders, Iberdrola from Spain, and the German company RWE, will pull out of any proposed bids, although they have yet to do so officially.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, EDF needs about £11.5 billion for the bid, and is presently holding talks with banks to arrange getting hold of the money. However, the Financial Times reports that if no agreement emerges by the end of the month, EDF may drop the bid completely.
Whatever speculation the newspapers are printing, it seems certain that this month will be an important one for the UK nuclear power industry.
People power is the future
June 17, 2008 at 2:50 pm
A report commissioned by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has found that if people were to generate their own power through wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable sources of energy, they could generate the same amount of electricity in one year as that created by five nuclear power stations.
Furthermore, the benefits to the environment would be huge. According to the report, microgeneration could potentially save up to 30 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030, or 5% of all the emissions currently produced in the production of our electricity.
The report stated that investment and incentives are needed to encourage more people across the county to install these systems. If this happened, then up to ten million such installations could be up and running by 2020.
Even if no such incentives are offered, the number of microgeneration units is still set to rise, but only by up to two or three million. If this figure were to reach ten million, it would mean one in five buildings would be producing their own power in the near future, which would be great news for the environment and the power supply in general.
The research comes amid concerns that the UK is not taking the issue of small scale people power as seriously as other European countries. Both Germany and Sweden, for example, have both invested heavily in such technologies.
But people will need support and incentives if the schemes are to really get off the ground, such as grants for the installation of a unit, or rewards for people generating their own electricity. At the moment there are only 100,000 units in the UK and most of these are solar water heaters.
Power returns as National Grid blamed
June 10, 2008 at 2:34 pm
The power cuts on Tuesday 27th May hit thousands of homes and businesses across the country, causing widespread problems for many. Now that the power has returned, it is becoming clearer what the problems were, and fingers are being pointed.
The main areas affected were London, Cheshire, East Anglia and Merseyside, and the power cuts were due to two power stations going down within minutes of each other, a rare event especially at this time of year when demand is not considered high.
Sizewell B nuclear power plant in Suffolk and Longannet power station in Fife were the two stations to go down, and after it took about a day to sort out the chaos, everything got back to working order fairly quickly.
It was an incredibly rare event to take place, and the National Grid has taken a large proportion of the blame from some quarters. However, it insists that the shutdowns were unavoidable and that many smaller problems were instead to blame.
The government has also come under fire, with David Hunter, the energy analyst at the independent energy consultancy McKinnon and Clarke, saying: “The government’s inability to make long-term energy security decisions over the last decade is coming home to roost”.
However, criticism has focused more specifically on the National Grid’s requirement to work within a 20% margin, whereby it can easily call for other power supplies if its own fail, and this was clearly not the case in the recent blackouts. Despite this, the National Grid has insisted that it was just a freak event and that no managerial decisions were to blame.
Hard times ahead for UK electricity
June 2, 2008 at 4:04 am
In a major new report released by the REF (Renewable Energy Foundation) on 23rd May, bleak times are ahead for the future of the UK electricity industry. It states that the future is likely to be “dark, dirty and costly”, citing numerous reasons as to how this grim conclusion has been reached.
According to the report, the three main problems that are going to be encountered are an increasing dependence on foreign power, tighter capacity margins, and higher prices.
One of the main points of the report is that the government has only anticipated that 20 GW of generating power will close by 2020, whereas the large generating companies have predicted more than 30 GW of generating power to close by 2015. This vastly differing sum suggests that the UK will simply not be able to provide enough energy for its needs, which will lead to further blackouts such as the ones that struck the country recently.
The REF also predicts that the margins of the generation of power over the huge demand will become increasingly tighter over the next ten years, with solutions such as the reintroduction of coal power stations being considered, even though they are by far the dirtiest provider in terms of harmful greenhouse gasses.
They also highlight problems with renewable energy production, such as the poor subsidies that are currently provided to carry out research and construct facilities, as a reason why companies will invest more heavily in gas plants instead, despite the detrimental effect on competitiveness and higher prices which will follow.
By highlighting the potential problems that we are facing, the REF is urging the government to take these issues seriously and take the necessary steps before it is too late.
