Energy & Nuclear

According to The Times political editor, Philip Webster, a new generation of nuclear power stations will be built to supply unlimited amounts of electricity to Britian’s national grid.

“The Cabinet will give the go-ahead for the new building programme today [Tuesday 8th January] and John Hutton, the Business Secretary, will announce the decision on Thursday.

“He will pave the way for the nuclear industry to play a much bigger part in meeting Britain’s energy needs by making plain that there will be no limit on the amount of electricity it can supply to the grid.”

A draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government’s conviction that climate change (more properly described as “man-made global warming”) is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.

The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the “scenarios” and “projections” of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.

Read the rest of The New Zealand Herald article: ‘Brian Leyland: Powering our future or wrecking the economy?’

Meanwhile, in California controversial legislation is also pending to control energy use, in particular:

“In California, we have 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy efficiency, known as Title 24…

…What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24 is the requirement for what is called a “programmable communicating thermostat” or PCT. Every new home and every change to existing homes’ central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision. Each PCT will be fitted with a “non-removable ” FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose. During “price events” those changes are limited to +/- four degrees F and you would be able to manually override the changes. During “emergency events” the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be able to alter them….

…The real question poised by this invasion of the sanctity of our homes by state power is — why are we doing this? It seems to me to be the wrong fix for a problem that we don’t have to have. The common sense alternative is to build new power plants so that power shortages don’t occur. Of course, they can’t be coal or nuclear power plants! The coastal elites have their minds set against those undesirables. The state has wasted billions of our dollars on wind generation that hasn’t helped to meet peak loads. For natural gas, offshore drilling should be considered. While we have one liquefied natural gas terminal in Mexico supplying us with Indonesian and, in the near future, Russian, LNG, another receiving terminal to be supplied by Australian LNG was rejected by the State Coastal Commission.

While nowhere in the Bill of Rights is there explicitly a right to set one’s own thermostat to whatever temperature one desires (and is able to pay for), the new PCT requirement certainly seems to violate the “a man’s home is his castle” common law dictum.

Californians have until January 30th to send their opinions and comments on the pending revisions to Title 24 to the California Energy Commission and state legislators.

Read the whole article: ‘Who Will Control Your Thermostat?’ in American Thinker.

Such is the power of politics, driven by concerns about global warming, that according to the US-based online journal Grist, the tide has turned against coal and it is now officially “the enemy of the human race” with the states of California, Kansas, Florida and Washington denying permits or contracts for new coal-fired power stations.

It is also increasingly difficult for companies to undertake petroleum exploration in the US with production from existing fields not being replaced because potential new fields are off limits including off the coast of southern California, in Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

US policy is, however, supporting an ethanol industry with the target of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels likely to result in the construction of about 300 new ethanol plants, about 75 new corn ethanol facilities and more than 210 for conversion of cellulosic materials.

While this might all sound impressive and perhaps like the demise of fossil fuels, it is not really because renewables represent such a tiny part of energy production in the US. Indeed according to the latest forecast from the Energy Information Administration, traditional fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) will still meet 83 percent of total US primary energy supply requirements in 2030, down only slightly from 85 percent in 2006. Furthermore, US demand for petroleum, the main source for transportation fuels, is forecast to rise 0.8 percent a year, from 21 million barrels per day in 2008 to 25 million in 2030.

So the US will remain dependent on the Middle East including Iraq for its energy? And the US and Iraqi governments are trying to dramatically boost oil production with the World Socialist Website reporting that there are plans to increase oil production from 2.5 million barrels per day to at least three million by the end of 2008, and to six million within a decade.

The Greens have launched their Sun Fund policy in Cairns, which seeks to use the Federal Government’s claimed $300 million annual fossil fuels subsidy for renewable energy instead.

The Greens believe that this will reduce greenhouse gas emissions thus protecting the likes of the Barrier Reef and wet tropics.

ABC News: ‘Greens pledge to push renewable energy’

Thanks to Luke Walker for the link.

Summers in Cloncurry seem to last forever and there is always a sunny side to the street, making it an ideal place to become the first town to run entirely on solar power.

ABC News: ‘Cloncurry set for solar revolution’

In 1889, the Queensland town of Cloncurry recorded Australia’s hottest day – 53 degrees Celsius in the shade. It’s a record of which the town is very proud.

According to State record temperatures “There are also numerous extreme high temperatures which have been recorded prior to about 1910 using non-standard instrumentation, most notably a reading of 53.1 at Cloncurry in January 1889. It is likely that this will be struck from the official record in the near future.”

Thanks to Luke Walker for this one.

The rush for biofuels could harm the world’s poorest people, Oxfam has said.

In a new report, the UK aid charity appears to be joining a growing chorus of concern about the side-effects of Europe’s drive to get fuel from plants.

BBC News website: ‘Biofuel rush harmful, Oxfam warns’

Perhaps Oxfam should stop pushing climate change propaganda via ‘film parties’ etc.

Yes, it’s that science fiction film ‘AIT’ again.