French want nuclear subsidy

French giant, EDF, owned mostly by their government now says that it will not invest in a new range of nuclear plants unless the British government offers generous subsidies.
Yet again, new labour is found out. Ed Miliband recently said nuclear would receive no subsidies and would be the answer to our low carbon energy sector.
Wrong.
Nuclear always costs much more than they first day and is a gift to suppliers.
EDF fears that wind generators will outflank it.
Isn’t that a turn around ?

farid Bakht

Source : Ft.com

Electric cars to run on dirty electricity. Wow.

There’s no point running clean electric cars on dirty electricity.

This ‘initiative’ isn’t clean or green. Not if New Labour insists on running these cars on electricity produced by coal, oil or gas.

They will then insist on rewarding US and French muiltinationals in producing incredibly expensive nuclear electricity, rather than much more effective wind turbines.

One final point: what about people without cars?
Why not first make public transport go electric and then increase buses and trains to make them regular/timely AND make them cheap enough?

Electric cars on their own makes no change to reducing carbon emissions and says nothing about how the inequality between rich and the majority is reduced.

Farid Bakht

Wars don’t worry about recessions

We are becoming blase now.  Numbed by the daily reports of job losses, we are resigned to 2009 being a tale of woe.

Not for all, though. BAe (British Aerospace) has bucked the trend by announcing its plan for 8,000 more jobs. They said they could do this due to “the security of state orders”.

While industries collapse, and services look set for draconian cuts, the government is comfortable with diverting precious resources to arms companies for wars we don’t need.

By the way, ex-armed forces chiefs have expressed their belief that the impending Trident nuclear system is  useless in a post cold war world. That’s another couple of billion down the drain every year.

The annual UK defence budget is around £32 billion pounds. Yet, the war lobby are calling for more money on the basis that the troops are not being supplied with proper equipment.

They would do better to cut extravagant programmes such as Trident and use those resources to kit out the infantry.

Better still, they should get out of unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and let Washington do its own dirty work.

Question: do you know how many UK and US forces are based in Germany still? Yes, it’s twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall…….

 

Farid Bakht

Portugal surfs wave power while Britain flirts with nuclear and dirty coal

Portugal has just inaugurated the world’s first commercial scale wave power station. It will eventually produce 21 MW, enough to power 14,000 homes.

The Guardian reported this, saying: “…..  the Portuguese are investing heavily in other renewable technologies….. In the past three years, the country has also trebled its hydroelectric capacity and quadrupled its wind power sources – northern Portugal has the world’s biggest wind farm with more than 130 turbines and a factory that builds the 40m-long blades.

Pinho wants Portugal to rival Denmark or Japan in its commitment to developing renewables industries – he predicts his country will generate 31% of all its power from clean sources by 2020, compared with Britain’s target of 15%. The Portuguese target means increasing the generation of electricity from renewable sources from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020.”

“The €9m (£7.14m) first phase of the Aguçadoura project, which involves the energy firms Enersis and Energias de Portrugal, has been helped partly by the Portuguese government agreeing to guarantee a premium for the electricity the station will generate via a feed-in tariff of 25c per KWh. The project has also been given a €1.25m grant from the Portuguese Agência de Inovação.”

The company building the wave generators is Scottish, raising questions about why New Labour is not committed enough to being the leader in wave energy, given the available technical skills and potential wave resources.

New Labour seems overly enamoured with coal and nuclear at the expense of viable renewables today. So do the Conservatives. Indeed, a campaign is being waged to ‘plug the energy gap’ with coal and nuclear. The carrot being waved is the avoidance of blackouts and also lower bills.

Meanwhile a Portuguese Minister can highlight his country’s ambition to be to renewables what Finland (Nokia) is to phones.

His UK equivalent’s ambition is to invite the French to build a network of incredibly expensive nuclear power stations and ignore the wind and wave potential of this island. Money talks.

Farid Bakht

Why we don’t need nuclear power

A Green Party spokesperson reacted to the Government’s announcement of a new generation of nuclear power stations:

“The cheapest and most effective way of cutting emissions in London would be to decentralise energy production and put solar panels and wind turbines on every house and office. 

We already have the technology to make it happen but are simply lacking the political will and investment.  The Government should give small businesses and householders the money to install renewables instead of paying for expensive nuclear power stations.”

Building new nuclear power stations could cost over a billion pounds more than investing in local renewable energy and reduce climate change emissions by far less, according to a recent report³.  It is likely that the cost of building a giant nuclear waste storage facility will fall upon taxpayers, and Londoners may also face higher electricity bills as a way of meeting the clean-up costs when the nuclear reactors reach the end of their lifespan.”

To which I would add just one word: GERMANY.

Time we found out how they have created one of the world’s largest renewable energy industry…..

Farid Bakht

New Labour’s 3 point Climate Change Plan

• Talk Green
•  Blame everything on India and China
• Build coal and nuclear power plants

Last week, the government made a great noise about a new offshore wind power scheme which would power the equivalent of 20% of the UK’s homes. Actually it was old news (last announced in 2002). It is not a commitment at all, and is only a study on the project. Cynically, they told us all while the Bali negotiations were going on, just to look good. Now it’s over and the media have moved on, guess what they will do with the project?

Farid Bakht, Tower Hamlets GP

Tower Hamlets watches on the edge

Tower Hamlets is sandwiched between two of the greatest financial centres in the world, Canary Wharf and The City of London..

Money shufflers are planning the next great climate busting bonanza:

•       The destruction of Canada’s forests by digging out tar sands – heavy oil, making Canada the new Saudi Arabia
•       The return of nuclear power stations

Farid Bakht