Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation Reports That New Power Plants Are No
Longer Economically Viable
Every second power plant planned in Germany is about to fold. The
willingness to invest is decreasing rapidly as even the most efficient
gas-fired power plants can no longer be operated profitably. 50 existing power
plants could be decommissioned later this year. Germany's green energy
revolution is at a critical turning point. --Deutsche Mittelstands Nachrichten, 13
April 2015
Some 50 power
plants have applied for decommissioning in Germany this year, according to
Germany's
Bundesnetzagentur, February 2015
The economic viability of some 53 percent or 39 of the power plants planned for
construction in Europe’s largest economy by 2025 has been called into question,
German energy industry association BDEW said in a statement on Monday. The
association said investors were nervous because of lacking profitability for
coal- and gas-fired power stations because of competing energy supplies from
subsidised renewable power, and a tougher carbon emissions regime. Germany,
which is due to phase out nuclear energy by 2022, could face supply bottlenecks
in the next few years. --Vera Eckert, Reuters, 13 April 2015
Germany's Irsching gas-fired power plant, one of Europe's newest, is to be shut
down in April next year, its operators said on Monday, as competition from
renewable energy pushes conventional stations out of business. Irsching is one
of many power stations in Germany that are running at a fraction of the time
needed to be profitable, replaced by solar and wind energy which has priority
access to the grid. The statement, which puts pressure on the German government
to come up with a solution for modern but loss-making power plants, did not say
what impact the decision would have on jobs. --Reuters, 30 March 2015
Of all the unintended consequences of EU climate policy perhaps the most
bizarre is the detrimental effect of wind and solar schemes on the price of
electricity generated by natural gas. Gas-fired power generation has become
uneconomic in the EU, even for some of the most efficient and least
carbon-intensive plants. --Benny Peiser, Testimony To U.S. Senate Committee Hearing, 2 December
2014
The EU’s dysfunctional political system is turning clean energy
companies into a “zombie industry” of the living dead, the head of one of the
bloc’s biggest green power groups has warned. Manuel Sánchez Ortega, chief
executive of Spain’s Abengoa, said EU politicians are taking so long to decide
what sort of energy mix they want, especially in the biofuels sector, that
companies do not know if they should keep struggling on or shut down
completely. “It’s ridiculous. The EU is creating a zombie industry for clean
energy” thanks to bureaucratic delays. --Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 12 April 2015
France’s refusal to countenance exploiting shale gas deposits will cost it up
to €293 billion and 225,000 jobs over the next three decades, according to a
confidential government report. The report, which came down in favour of
waterless fracking, was leaked to the media yesterday after it had been shelved
by President Hollande’s Socialist-led cabinet. France’s radical shale gas laws
make it an offence even to look for the fuel. “Shale gas is no longer on the
agenda,” said Ségolène Royal, the environment minister, who is Mr Hollande’s
former partner. --Adam Sage, The Times, 8 April 2015
New technologies are rapidly revealing the bounty of Britain’s onshore energy
resources. The latest find is a field near London’s Gatwick Airport, which
could contain 100 billion barrels of oil—if British politicians are willing to
drill. That’s a major upgrade from previous assessments of the region, and it
follows other recent oil-and-gas discoveries across Britain. Now Britain’s
politicians will need to decide whether they value energy security and jobs
more highly than environmentalist scare tactics. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2015
Fracking could be used to exploit vast oil reserves discovered under South East
England, despite pledges by the company behind the find that it will not use
the controversial technique. ‘We reckon five to 15 per cent can be got out of
the oil in place,’ David Lenigas said, ‘but we have seen numbers with
technology and going to fracking you can get up to 30 to 40 per cent recovery
out of some of these things. But I am not interested in doing that.’ Across the
Weald basin, which covers much of East and West Sussex and Surrey, the bonanza
could hit 100 billion barrels. Even with low recovery rates, the find is the
biggest since the North Sea. --Simon Watkins, Mail on Sunday, 12 April 2015
More than half of Poland’s new major power generation projects to be built in
the next four years will be coal-fired in spite of strict targets imposed by
the EU on its member countries, capacity projections show. According to data
collected by ICIS, a total of 7.8GW will be added to the Polish electricity
grid in the next four years, of which 4.6GW will be coal-fired power plants
built by the country’s biggest state-owned utilities. To add to this bearish
prediction, the European Commission approved Poland’s Temporary National Plan,
under which implementation of the Industrial Emissions Directive has been
delayed from 2016 to 2020. --ICIS News, 13 April 2015
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