Senate Democrats eye quick repeal of Trump rules
In this newsletter:
1) Control of US Senate allows Democrats to act on Biden’s climate agenda
CNBC, 6 January 2021
2) Senate Democrats eye quick repeal of Trump rules
E&E News, 6 January 2021
3) Biden plans to build a grand alliance to counter China.
The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2021
4) China's useful idiots: Biden should trade “liberal international order” for Chinese cooperation on climate
Abhijnan Rej, The Diplomat, 4 January 2021
5) British Govt gives go-ahead for new UK coal mine
Financial Times, 6 January 2021
6) Chinese cities reportedly go dark as country faces shortage of coal
CNBC, 5 December 2021
7) Told you so: UK power grid creaks at risk of blackouts
Bloomberg, 6 January 2021
CNBC, 5 December 2021
7) Told you so: UK power grid creaks at risk of blackouts
Bloomberg, 6 January 2021
8) Arctic sea ice extent in 2020
Science Matters, 4 January 2021
9) German 'climate foundation' aims to shield Russian gas pipeline against U.S. sanctions
Clean Energy Wire, 6 January 2021
10) Bad news for Russia, as gas from Azerbaijan now flows to Western Europe
Ariel Cohen, Forbes, 6 January 2021
11) And finally: Spain records lowest temperature ever at -34C
Reuters, 7 January 2021
Reuters, 7 January 2021
Full details:
1) Control of US Senate allows Democrats to act on Biden’s climate agenda
CNBC, 6 January 2021
Democrats won Tuesday’s two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, NBC News projected Wednesday, clinching control of the U.S. Senate and significantly shaping what President-elect Joe Biden can accomplish on climate change and other issues when he takes office.
Democratic candidates for Senate Jon Ossoff (L), Raphael Warnock (C) and US President-elect Joe Biden (R) bump elbows on stage during a rally outside Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4, 2021. Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
The projected victories of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff give the Democratic Party 50 seats and leave a tiebreaking vote to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will become majority leader in place of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, and Schumer will then decide what occurs on the Senate floor.
Without a GOP-controlled Senate, Biden has greater leeway to pass climate change legislation. The former vice president’s climate action pledge includes an ambitious $2 trillion economic plan that would accelerate a clean-energy transition, cut carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The goals of Biden’s climate plan are in line with targets set by other major economies including China and the European Union. However, many of the policies would have been blocked by a Republican-controlled Senate.
The $2 trillion plan will still be a tough sell even as Democrats take over the White House and Senate. But experts are optimistic for some broader bipartisan-backed climate legislation to pass in upcoming years.
“Democratic control of the Senate means funding for climate action and the energy transition through appropriations, policy advances through the reconciliation process, political support and messaging from Congressional leadership, and potentially, if one is being highly optimistic, big ticket climate legislation with some level of bipartisan support,” said Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Some environmental experts worry that not enough Democrats will take serious climate action and expect more modest bipartisan legislation that won’t match demands of climate advocates or actions by other countries.
Full story
2) Senate Democrats eye quick repeal of Trump rules
E&E News, 6 January 2021
The impending power shift in the Senate means Congress will once again turn to the Congressional Review Act to scrap a bevy of regulations.
The law will allow the Democratic House and Senate and President-elect Joe Biden to rapidly repeal regulations finalized roughly within the past six months.
Hill Republicans and President Trump used the CRA to kill 16 Obama-era rules in 2017. Democrats, in contrast, have never deployed the CRA. They're wary of the law's blunt, deregulatory nature.
But yesterday's elections in Georgia, which appear to give Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate, have reignited the debate among lawmakers and advocates.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told Politico reporter Burgess Everett that using the CRA to repeal Trump rules would be among the Democrats' first orders of business.
Others have held their tongue. Yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said President-elect Joe Biden "is certainly looking at that."
"He'll make some recommendations," Hoyer told reporters. "Our committees are looking at that, as well. They will make recommendations. I don't want to speak to that at this point in time, but certainly I think there is no doubt that that — we're looking at what [President Trump] has done ... and what actions, if any, are warranted."
Experts caution that the CRA, which requires only a simple majority of both chambers, could backfire on Democrats. If they use the law to block a Trump rule, the administration could be barred from drafting a regulation that is "substantially the same."
"In effect, the CRA is like a rubber mallet that can smash rules opposed by Congress, but it destroys the possibility of fixing them," said Dan Weiss, a longtime environmental consultant.
The law does not define "substantially the same," nor does it say who should, and the matter has never been tested in court. Experts say Democrats may be fearful.
Full story ($)
3) Biden plans to build a grand alliance to counter China.
The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2021
The president-elect wants a coalition of democracies to pressure Beijing to curtail what he sees as unfair practices; Xi Jinping has been thinking along the same lines
With tensions between the U.S. and China rising on many fronts, President-elect Joe Biden will take office aiming to align Western democracies to broadly pressure Beijing, a clear break with President Trump’s go-it-alone approach.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been thinking along the same lines and is a step ahead, setting up an overt competition for global leadership. He has been busy in recent years trying to draw traditional U.S. allies into China’s economic orbit.
Moves this week by both Washington and Beijing are forcing China higher on the Biden agenda. Upon taking office he’ll need to decide whether to overturn recent Trump administration actions. They include delisting Chinese telecommunications companies on the New York Stock Exchange, banning transactions with Chinese-connected apps, including the Alipay payment platform, and blacklisting China’s largest computer chip maker and other firms.
He will also need to decide how hard to press Beijing over its broad crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
At the heart of Mr. Biden’s China policy is what he calls a Summit of Democracies that would seek to establish a clear alternative to Beijing’s autocratic rule, said Biden senior advisers interviewed during and after the presidential campaign. The U.S. will also try to organize smaller groups of democracies to tackle specific issues such as advanced telecommunications and artificial intelligence.
Full post ($)
4) China's useful idiots: Biden should trade “liberal international order” for Chinese cooperation on climate
Abhijnan Rej, The Diplomat, 4 January 2021
"But if climate change is indeed the numero uno national and international security threat, should it not be dealt with as such? If such efforts can only succeed through bringing Beijing onboard, does common sense then not dictate that it be done so, even at the cost of sustaining a “liberal international order”?
A recent essay by Brookings Institution scholar Tom Wright has caused a small storm among watchers of China-U.S. relations. In the process, the essay has indirectly raised difficult questions around strategic priorities – and the difficulties in managing competing ones. But even more fundamentally, Wright’s article once again brings to the fore old dilemmas around strategic tradeoffs when it comes to the “right” mix of competitive and cooperative elements in the United States’ China strategy, strategies of linkage, and the extent to which future, lasting gains from cooperation around wicked global problems – such as climate change – may come at the cost of ceding geostrategic space to Beijing.
Writing in The Atlantic on December 23, Wright focuses on President-elect Joe Biden appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as special presidential envoy on climate change, and the dangers it may entail in terms of pushing back Chinese intransigence. Based on his conversations with sources close to Kerry, Wright notes that Kerry would front-and-center cooperation around climate change and push geopolitical rivalry to the background. As Wright writes, “Kerry believes that cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China.”
Without litigating the merit of Kerry’s apparent proposition, Wright’s article, as well as the debate surrounding it, highlights three sets of vexing questions, none of which are easy – and some of them impossible — to answer.
The first revolve around strategic priorities. As author David Wallace-Wells in “The Uninhabitable Earth,” his 2019 book on climate change, describes it, the gradualness of climate change is a “pernicious fairy tale.” In fact, as he documents, drawing on a wealth of research, the effects of climate change – some near apocalyptic – are already here for all to see, if we choose to look, that is. Simply put, climate change is as much part of the extant global security landscape as missile batteries on artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Given these circumstances, Kerry is quite right to view it as the defining challenge that ought to shape relations between great, industrial, powers.
But if climate change is indeed the numero uno national and international security threat, should it not be dealt with as such? Put provocatively, why should the United States not put it ahead of the pursuit of continued hegemony in the Pacific? Even more provocatively: the South China Sea as a Chinese lake is unlikely to pose an existential threat to the United States; failing to arrest and mitigate climate change would certainly be.
If such efforts can only succeed through bringing Beijing onboard, does common sense then not dictate that it be done so, even at the cost of sustaining a “liberal international order”? After all, for any world order to work and be sustained over time – liberal or otherwise – one would need a world to begin with.
Full post
5) British Govt gives go-ahead for new UK coal mine
Financial Times, 6 January 2021
Decision on new coal mine in Cumbria is seen by environmentalists as a sign that the Conservative party will prioritise economic growth in ‘red wall’ seats over climate change
Environmental campaigners have attacked a UK government decision to permit the country’s first new deep coal mine for 30 years, despite its pledge to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050.
The pit in Cumbria, north-west England, would create 500 jobs in an area reliant on the nuclear industry and seasonal tourism.
But the decision by housing secretary Robert Jenrick to leave the local council to grant the approval, rather than assess the plan himself, is seen by environmentalists as a sign that the Conservative party will prioritise economic growth over climate change as it seeks to cement its electoral gains in former industrial areas of England.
Full story (£)
8) Arctic sea ice extent in 2020
The chart above shows the record available from Sea Ice Index (SII) since 1989, along with the comparable record from MASIE 2006 to present. It shows 2020 is down 150k km2 (1%) from 2019, and 300k km2 above the low year 2017. In fact 2020 is nearly average for the last decade.
As noted in a previous post, alarms were raised over slower than average Arctic refreezing in October. Those fears were laid to rest firstly when ice extents roared back in November, and then with the Arctic freezing fast in December.
In November, 3.5 Wadhams of sea ice were added during the month. (The metric 1 Wadham = 1 M km2 comes from the professor’s predictions of an ice-free Arctic, meaning less than 1 M km2 extent). In December a further 2.7 Wadhams were added. The last two months more than offset the deficit in October.
Full post
9) German 'climate foundation' aims to shield Russian gas pipeline against U.S. sanctions
Clean Energy Wire, 6 January 2021
A German state government attempts to circumvent looming U.S. sanctions on the contentious natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 with the help of a “climate” foundation.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the pipeline will land, announced the manoeuvre would help shield companies involved in the construction. The foundation’s official use will be for funding environment and climate projects. To justify its purpose of finalising Nord Stream 2, the pipeline is highlighted as a special contribution to energy security and the energy transition "bridging technology” natural gas. The Nord Stream 2 AG has agreed to put up an initial 20 million euros. NGO Environmental Action Germany criticised the plans and said they would fuel the climate crisis.
The government of northern German state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has announced it wants to set up a state-owned “climate” foundation, hoping to avoid U.S. sanctions on companies involved in the completion of the contentious natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.
The coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives CDU aims to use the so-called “Foundation for climate and environment protection” to quickly buy and store products needed for the pipeline’s completion, such as building materials – thus shielding selling companies from future sanctions. The materials will later be made available for the construction. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania lies on the Baltic Sea, where the pipeline will be connected to the German grid.
Full story
10) Bad news for Russia, as gas from Azerbaijan now flows to Western Europe
Ariel Cohen, Forbes, 6 January 2021
The long-awaited Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project officially began operating on the last day of 2020, as Azerbaijani oil and gas company SOCAR reported the first commercial gas delivery from the Azeri Shah Deniz offshore field to Italy’s Melendugno point on the Adriatic coast.
CNBC, 6 January 2021
Democrats won Tuesday’s two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, NBC News projected Wednesday, clinching control of the U.S. Senate and significantly shaping what President-elect Joe Biden can accomplish on climate change and other issues when he takes office.
Democratic candidates for Senate Jon Ossoff (L), Raphael Warnock (C) and US President-elect Joe Biden (R) bump elbows on stage during a rally outside Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4, 2021. Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
The projected victories of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff give the Democratic Party 50 seats and leave a tiebreaking vote to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will become majority leader in place of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, and Schumer will then decide what occurs on the Senate floor.
Without a GOP-controlled Senate, Biden has greater leeway to pass climate change legislation. The former vice president’s climate action pledge includes an ambitious $2 trillion economic plan that would accelerate a clean-energy transition, cut carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The goals of Biden’s climate plan are in line with targets set by other major economies including China and the European Union. However, many of the policies would have been blocked by a Republican-controlled Senate.
The $2 trillion plan will still be a tough sell even as Democrats take over the White House and Senate. But experts are optimistic for some broader bipartisan-backed climate legislation to pass in upcoming years.
“Democratic control of the Senate means funding for climate action and the energy transition through appropriations, policy advances through the reconciliation process, political support and messaging from Congressional leadership, and potentially, if one is being highly optimistic, big ticket climate legislation with some level of bipartisan support,” said Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Some environmental experts worry that not enough Democrats will take serious climate action and expect more modest bipartisan legislation that won’t match demands of climate advocates or actions by other countries.
Full story
2) Senate Democrats eye quick repeal of Trump rules
E&E News, 6 January 2021
The impending power shift in the Senate means Congress will once again turn to the Congressional Review Act to scrap a bevy of regulations.
The law will allow the Democratic House and Senate and President-elect Joe Biden to rapidly repeal regulations finalized roughly within the past six months.
Hill Republicans and President Trump used the CRA to kill 16 Obama-era rules in 2017. Democrats, in contrast, have never deployed the CRA. They're wary of the law's blunt, deregulatory nature.
But yesterday's elections in Georgia, which appear to give Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate, have reignited the debate among lawmakers and advocates.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told Politico reporter Burgess Everett that using the CRA to repeal Trump rules would be among the Democrats' first orders of business.
Others have held their tongue. Yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said President-elect Joe Biden "is certainly looking at that."
"He'll make some recommendations," Hoyer told reporters. "Our committees are looking at that, as well. They will make recommendations. I don't want to speak to that at this point in time, but certainly I think there is no doubt that that — we're looking at what [President Trump] has done ... and what actions, if any, are warranted."
Experts caution that the CRA, which requires only a simple majority of both chambers, could backfire on Democrats. If they use the law to block a Trump rule, the administration could be barred from drafting a regulation that is "substantially the same."
"In effect, the CRA is like a rubber mallet that can smash rules opposed by Congress, but it destroys the possibility of fixing them," said Dan Weiss, a longtime environmental consultant.
The law does not define "substantially the same," nor does it say who should, and the matter has never been tested in court. Experts say Democrats may be fearful.
Full story ($)
3) Biden plans to build a grand alliance to counter China.
The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2021
The president-elect wants a coalition of democracies to pressure Beijing to curtail what he sees as unfair practices; Xi Jinping has been thinking along the same lines
With tensions between the U.S. and China rising on many fronts, President-elect Joe Biden will take office aiming to align Western democracies to broadly pressure Beijing, a clear break with President Trump’s go-it-alone approach.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been thinking along the same lines and is a step ahead, setting up an overt competition for global leadership. He has been busy in recent years trying to draw traditional U.S. allies into China’s economic orbit.
Moves this week by both Washington and Beijing are forcing China higher on the Biden agenda. Upon taking office he’ll need to decide whether to overturn recent Trump administration actions. They include delisting Chinese telecommunications companies on the New York Stock Exchange, banning transactions with Chinese-connected apps, including the Alipay payment platform, and blacklisting China’s largest computer chip maker and other firms.
He will also need to decide how hard to press Beijing over its broad crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
At the heart of Mr. Biden’s China policy is what he calls a Summit of Democracies that would seek to establish a clear alternative to Beijing’s autocratic rule, said Biden senior advisers interviewed during and after the presidential campaign. The U.S. will also try to organize smaller groups of democracies to tackle specific issues such as advanced telecommunications and artificial intelligence.
Full post ($)
4) China's useful idiots: Biden should trade “liberal international order” for Chinese cooperation on climate
Abhijnan Rej, The Diplomat, 4 January 2021
"But if climate change is indeed the numero uno national and international security threat, should it not be dealt with as such? If such efforts can only succeed through bringing Beijing onboard, does common sense then not dictate that it be done so, even at the cost of sustaining a “liberal international order”?
A recent essay by Brookings Institution scholar Tom Wright has caused a small storm among watchers of China-U.S. relations. In the process, the essay has indirectly raised difficult questions around strategic priorities – and the difficulties in managing competing ones. But even more fundamentally, Wright’s article once again brings to the fore old dilemmas around strategic tradeoffs when it comes to the “right” mix of competitive and cooperative elements in the United States’ China strategy, strategies of linkage, and the extent to which future, lasting gains from cooperation around wicked global problems – such as climate change – may come at the cost of ceding geostrategic space to Beijing.
Writing in The Atlantic on December 23, Wright focuses on President-elect Joe Biden appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as special presidential envoy on climate change, and the dangers it may entail in terms of pushing back Chinese intransigence. Based on his conversations with sources close to Kerry, Wright notes that Kerry would front-and-center cooperation around climate change and push geopolitical rivalry to the background. As Wright writes, “Kerry believes that cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China.”
Without litigating the merit of Kerry’s apparent proposition, Wright’s article, as well as the debate surrounding it, highlights three sets of vexing questions, none of which are easy – and some of them impossible — to answer.
The first revolve around strategic priorities. As author David Wallace-Wells in “The Uninhabitable Earth,” his 2019 book on climate change, describes it, the gradualness of climate change is a “pernicious fairy tale.” In fact, as he documents, drawing on a wealth of research, the effects of climate change – some near apocalyptic – are already here for all to see, if we choose to look, that is. Simply put, climate change is as much part of the extant global security landscape as missile batteries on artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Given these circumstances, Kerry is quite right to view it as the defining challenge that ought to shape relations between great, industrial, powers.
But if climate change is indeed the numero uno national and international security threat, should it not be dealt with as such? Put provocatively, why should the United States not put it ahead of the pursuit of continued hegemony in the Pacific? Even more provocatively: the South China Sea as a Chinese lake is unlikely to pose an existential threat to the United States; failing to arrest and mitigate climate change would certainly be.
If such efforts can only succeed through bringing Beijing onboard, does common sense then not dictate that it be done so, even at the cost of sustaining a “liberal international order”? After all, for any world order to work and be sustained over time – liberal or otherwise – one would need a world to begin with.
Full post
5) British Govt gives go-ahead for new UK coal mine
Financial Times, 6 January 2021
Decision on new coal mine in Cumbria is seen by environmentalists as a sign that the Conservative party will prioritise economic growth in ‘red wall’ seats over climate change
Environmental campaigners have attacked a UK government decision to permit the country’s first new deep coal mine for 30 years, despite its pledge to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050.
The pit in Cumbria, north-west England, would create 500 jobs in an area reliant on the nuclear industry and seasonal tourism.
But the decision by housing secretary Robert Jenrick to leave the local council to grant the approval, rather than assess the plan himself, is seen by environmentalists as a sign that the Conservative party will prioritise economic growth over climate change as it seeks to cement its electoral gains in former industrial areas of England.
Full story (£)
6) Chinese cities reportedly go dark as country faces shortage of coal
CNBC, 5 December 2021
Several major Chinese cities have reportedly gone dark as authorities limit power usage, citing a shortage of coal.
Analysts said prices of the commodity in the country have shot up due to the reported crunch and some tie the shortages and blackouts to the unofficial ban on Australian coal.
Chinese authorities have not tied the blackouts to tensions with Australia or the coal restrictions. They instead attribute the restrictions on power use to exceptionally high demand and routine maintenance.
Analysts said prices of the commodity in the country have shot up due to the reported crunch. The reports also follow rising trade tensions between Beijing and Canberra, leading some analysts to tie the coal shortages and blackouts to the unofficial ban on Australian coal.
Coal restrictions leading to blackouts?
Prices of coal in China have shot up as a result of the shortage and research firm Wood Mackenzie predicts they will remain high during the peak winter demand period.
“China’s thermal coal market is in chaos, with prices rocketing after daily price index releases were suspended on 3 December,” research firm Wood Mackenzie said.
The report said power rationing “has already commenced” in Hunan and Zhejiang provinces due to the shortages, and there is “little scope” for increased production from Chinese producers.
Concerns about the availability of electricity for ordinary Chinese spiked in December. A widely shared online article listed planned blackouts by the Shanghai State Grid for different parts of Shanghai on Dec. 22.
Other regions have also restricted electricity use, the Shanghai State Grid added.
Full story
7) Told you so: UK power grid creaks at risk of blackouts
Bloomberg, 6 January 2021
The U.K. power market is showing signs of strain. For the fourth time this winter National Grid Plc warned that the buffer needed to ensure security of supply and keep the lights on was too small.
CNBC, 5 December 2021
Several major Chinese cities have reportedly gone dark as authorities limit power usage, citing a shortage of coal.
Analysts said prices of the commodity in the country have shot up due to the reported crunch and some tie the shortages and blackouts to the unofficial ban on Australian coal.
Chinese authorities have not tied the blackouts to tensions with Australia or the coal restrictions. They instead attribute the restrictions on power use to exceptionally high demand and routine maintenance.
Analysts said prices of the commodity in the country have shot up due to the reported crunch. The reports also follow rising trade tensions between Beijing and Canberra, leading some analysts to tie the coal shortages and blackouts to the unofficial ban on Australian coal.
Coal restrictions leading to blackouts?
Prices of coal in China have shot up as a result of the shortage and research firm Wood Mackenzie predicts they will remain high during the peak winter demand period.
“China’s thermal coal market is in chaos, with prices rocketing after daily price index releases were suspended on 3 December,” research firm Wood Mackenzie said.
The report said power rationing “has already commenced” in Hunan and Zhejiang provinces due to the shortages, and there is “little scope” for increased production from Chinese producers.
Concerns about the availability of electricity for ordinary Chinese spiked in December. A widely shared online article listed planned blackouts by the Shanghai State Grid for different parts of Shanghai on Dec. 22.
Other regions have also restricted electricity use, the Shanghai State Grid added.
Full story
7) Told you so: UK power grid creaks at risk of blackouts
Bloomberg, 6 January 2021
The U.K. power market is showing signs of strain. For the fourth time this winter National Grid Plc warned that the buffer needed to ensure security of supply and keep the lights on was too small.
John Constable: The Brink of Darkness: Britain’s Fragile Power Grid (PDF)
While the U.K. has made swift progress on switching from fossil fuels to renewables, this is the downside to cleaning up its energy system. And, like Wednesday, when the wind doesn’t blow, cold weather boosts demand and several nuclear plants are offline the grid operator is left scrambling to avoid blackouts.
Each time a so-called electricity market notice is published, the issue has been resolved within hours by power plants ramping up supply or by a planned reduction in demand from industry. Until this winter, there hadn’t been a market warning for four years.
The reality is that the network operator needs to get better at balancing the system when turbines aren’t spinning as policymakers plan to quadruple the nation’s offshore wind capacity within 9 years.
“As the U.K. continues to rely on intermittent renewables, you need to have more and more backup capacities in place,” said Weijie Mak, project leader Aurora Energy Research Ltd. “You get into this issue where it’s harder and harder to manage the system.”
For National Grid, the difficulty is setting up the system so that the costs and benefits align, Mak said. It doesn’t make economic sense to pay for long-term backup capacity just to cover instances of unusually low wind.
The tools National Grid have seem to be working, meaning things are unlikely to change until there’s a blackout, according to Rory McCarthy, research manager for European power at Wood Mackenzie Ltd....
Auction prices spiked to a record 1,000 pounds ($1,365) for Wednesday evening, the same period in which National Grid identified a 584-megawatt shortfall in the cushion of spare capacity it needs to keep the lights on.
When power plants fire up at short notice in the balancing market they are paid much more than the market rate. A cost the consumer ultimately pays.
Full story
While the U.K. has made swift progress on switching from fossil fuels to renewables, this is the downside to cleaning up its energy system. And, like Wednesday, when the wind doesn’t blow, cold weather boosts demand and several nuclear plants are offline the grid operator is left scrambling to avoid blackouts.
Each time a so-called electricity market notice is published, the issue has been resolved within hours by power plants ramping up supply or by a planned reduction in demand from industry. Until this winter, there hadn’t been a market warning for four years.
The reality is that the network operator needs to get better at balancing the system when turbines aren’t spinning as policymakers plan to quadruple the nation’s offshore wind capacity within 9 years.
“As the U.K. continues to rely on intermittent renewables, you need to have more and more backup capacities in place,” said Weijie Mak, project leader Aurora Energy Research Ltd. “You get into this issue where it’s harder and harder to manage the system.”
For National Grid, the difficulty is setting up the system so that the costs and benefits align, Mak said. It doesn’t make economic sense to pay for long-term backup capacity just to cover instances of unusually low wind.
The tools National Grid have seem to be working, meaning things are unlikely to change until there’s a blackout, according to Rory McCarthy, research manager for European power at Wood Mackenzie Ltd....
Auction prices spiked to a record 1,000 pounds ($1,365) for Wednesday evening, the same period in which National Grid identified a 584-megawatt shortfall in the cushion of spare capacity it needs to keep the lights on.
When power plants fire up at short notice in the balancing market they are paid much more than the market rate. A cost the consumer ultimately pays.
Full story
8) Arctic sea ice extent in 2020
Science Matters, 4 January 2021
Arctic sea ice extent in 2020 was nearly average for the last decade.
Arctic sea ice extent in 2020 was nearly average for the last decade.
As noted in a previous post, alarms were raised over slower than average Arctic refreezing in October. Those fears were laid to rest firstly when ice extents roared back in November, and then with the Arctic freezing fast in December.
In November, 3.5 Wadhams of sea ice were added during the month. (The metric 1 Wadham = 1 M km2 comes from the professor’s predictions of an ice-free Arctic, meaning less than 1 M km2 extent). In December a further 2.7 Wadhams were added. The last two months more than offset the deficit in October.
Full post
9) German 'climate foundation' aims to shield Russian gas pipeline against U.S. sanctions
Clean Energy Wire, 6 January 2021
A German state government attempts to circumvent looming U.S. sanctions on the contentious natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 with the help of a “climate” foundation.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the pipeline will land, announced the manoeuvre would help shield companies involved in the construction. The foundation’s official use will be for funding environment and climate projects. To justify its purpose of finalising Nord Stream 2, the pipeline is highlighted as a special contribution to energy security and the energy transition "bridging technology” natural gas. The Nord Stream 2 AG has agreed to put up an initial 20 million euros. NGO Environmental Action Germany criticised the plans and said they would fuel the climate crisis.
The government of northern German state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has announced it wants to set up a state-owned “climate” foundation, hoping to avoid U.S. sanctions on companies involved in the completion of the contentious natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.
The coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives CDU aims to use the so-called “Foundation for climate and environment protection” to quickly buy and store products needed for the pipeline’s completion, such as building materials – thus shielding selling companies from future sanctions. The materials will later be made available for the construction. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania lies on the Baltic Sea, where the pipeline will be connected to the German grid.
Full story
10) Bad news for Russia, as gas from Azerbaijan now flows to Western Europe
Ariel Cohen, Forbes, 6 January 2021
The long-awaited Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project officially began operating on the last day of 2020, as Azerbaijani oil and gas company SOCAR reported the first commercial gas delivery from the Azeri Shah Deniz offshore field to Italy’s Melendugno point on the Adriatic coast.
The 3500 km-long pipeline project consists of three sub-pipeline routes – the South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion (SCPX), the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and will deliver 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year (bcma). Of this volume, Turkey will get 6 bcm and Europe will get 10 bcm.
Since its announcement by the Azeri government in 2013, the SGC project has been touted as a much needed energy diversity project for Europe, which is majorly dependent on Russian supplies both in natural gas and in oil. Almost three quarters of the EU's natural gas imports (40%) and nearly one-third (30%) of the Union’s crude oil imports came from Russia in Q1 of 2020.
Specifically, through TAP, the SGC will deliver more than 10 bcm of gas annually to European countries in the next 25 years. Of this 10 bcm, 8 bcm will be exported to Italy, while 2 bcm will be exported equally to Greece and Bulgaria, and the rest to the surrounding markets.
Full story
Since its announcement by the Azeri government in 2013, the SGC project has been touted as a much needed energy diversity project for Europe, which is majorly dependent on Russian supplies both in natural gas and in oil. Almost three quarters of the EU's natural gas imports (40%) and nearly one-third (30%) of the Union’s crude oil imports came from Russia in Q1 of 2020.
Specifically, through TAP, the SGC will deliver more than 10 bcm of gas annually to European countries in the next 25 years. Of this 10 bcm, 8 bcm will be exported to Italy, while 2 bcm will be exported equally to Greece and Bulgaria, and the rest to the surrounding markets.
Full story
11) And finally: Spain records lowest temperature ever at -34C
Reuters, 7 January 2021
MADRID (Reuters) - Heavy snow and icy winds blasted Spain as temperatures plumetted to -34.1C, the lowest ever recorded on the Iberian peninsula, the State Meterololgical Agency said on Wednesday.
Reuters, 7 January 2021
MADRID (Reuters) - Heavy snow and icy winds blasted Spain as temperatures plumetted to -34.1C, the lowest ever recorded on the Iberian peninsula, the State Meterololgical Agency said on Wednesday.
The chilling temperature was recorded at Clot del Tuc de la Llanca in Aragon in the Spanish Pyrenees at 5.19 a.m., the agency said.
This was two degrees lower than in 1956, when temperatures of -32C were recorded in Estany-Gento, in Lleida, in northeastern Spain.
Full story
This was two degrees lower than in 1956, when temperatures of -32C were recorded in Estany-Gento, in Lleida, in northeastern Spain.
Full story
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