Friday, December 16, 2022
Coal deliveries surge 77pc as Britain turns to fossil fuels
The amount of coal transported on Britain’s railways has increased by more than three quarters as the country turns to fossil fuels to keep the lights on this winter.
Some 120m net tonne kilometres of coal were moved by rail in the three months to the end of September, an increase of 77.5pc compared to a year earlier, according to official figures.
The steep rise was due to a need for extra fuel at power stations in West Burton, Lincs, and Ratcliffe, Notts, which are being paid by the National Grid to provide backup electricity generation this winter.
This has led to more coal being transported on freight trains from ports including Grimsby and Immingham, Lincs, the Office for Rail and Road (ORR) said on Tuesday.
It comes after the National Grid briefly put the country’s coal power stations on standby to fortify the electricity grid in the face of a cold snap.
Energy supplies have been stretched globally in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has roiled oil and gas supplies and triggered sanctions by Western countries.
But as wind generation dwindled this week due to the weather conditions, the Grid was forced to rely more heavily on gas-fired plants, with more than 60pc of electricity generated that way on Monday.
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‘Endangered’ Listing for Nevada Wildflower Threatens Proposed Lithium Mine in Nevada
America needs lithium mines to compete with China’s dominance of the electric vehicle battery chain, but environmentalists are suing to block those mines.
American wildlife officials declared a Nevada wildflower endangered on Wednesday at the only place it’s known to exist — on a high-desert ridge where a lithium mine is planned to help meet growing demand for electric car batteries.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s formal listing of Tiehm’s buckwheat and its accompanying designation of 910 acres of critical habitat for the six-inch-tall flower with yellow blooms raises another potential hurdle for President Joe Biden’s “green energy” agenda.
With an estimated remaining population of only about 16,000 plants, the service concluded that Tiehm’s buckwheat is on the brink of extinction.
“We find that a threatened species status is not appropriate because the threats are severe and imminent, and Tiehm’s buckwheat is in danger of extinction now, as opposed to likely to become endangered in the future,” the agency said.
The proposed mine is not the only threat facing the flower. It also is threatened by road-building, livestock grazing, rodents that eat it, invasive plants and climate change, the service said. It said an apparent, unprecedented rodent attack wiped out about 60 percent of its estimated population in 2020.
Lithium is a critical component in modern batteries, especially those for the electric vehicles that many environmentalists are urging more Americans to embrace in the name of combating climate change.
Despite being home to three percent of the world’s reserves, America has only one active lithium mine and is dependent on Chinese supply chains for batteries built from the metal. Several projects aimed at correcting that problem have been hamstrung by lawsuits from environmental groups.
Ioneer, the Australian mining company that’s been planning for years to dig for lithium where the flower grows on federal land halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, says it has developed a protection plan that would allow the plant and the project to coexist.
The listing under the Endangered Species Act, however, subjects the mine to its most stringent regulatory requirement to date. It also underscores the challenges facing the Biden administration in its efforts to combat climate change through an accelerated transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
“Lithium is an important part of our renewable energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the listing in 2019 and sued last year to expedite the plant’s protection.
Ioneer said the decision “provides further clarity for the path forward” and is “fully in line with Ioneer’s expectations” for development of the mine site at Rhyolite Ridge in the Silver Peak Range west of Tonopah near the California border.
“We are committed to the protection and conservation of the species and have incorporated numerous measures into our current and future plans to ensure this occurs,” Ioneer managing director, Bernard Rowe, said in a statement.
“Our operations have and will continue to avoid all Tiehm’s buckwheat populations,” he said.
The service’s final listing rule will be published Thursday in the Federal Register.
The conservationists who sued to protect the plant insist that Ioneer’s mitigation plan won’t pass legal muster. They pledge to resume their court battle if necessary to protect the buckwheat’s habitat from the rush to develop new lithium deposits.
The flowers are found on a total of just 10 acres spread across about three square miles. Federal agencies are prohibited from approving any activity on federal lands that could destroy, modify or adversely affect any listed species’ critical habitat.
Mr. Donnelly said the company’s latest operations plan for the first phase of the mine proposes avoiding a “tiny island of land” containing 75 percent of its population — surrounded by an open pit mine and tailings dumps within 12 feet of the flowers.
The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing the environmental impacts of Ioneer’s latest operations and protection plans.
Mr. Donnelley noted that the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated in Wednesday’s final listing rule that the proposed scenario would “disturb and remove up to 38 percent of the critical habitat for this species, impacting pollinator populations, altering hydrology, removing soil and risking subsidence.”
“Ioneer’s ‘Buckwheat Island’ scenario would spell doom for this sensitive little flower,” Donnelly said.
The mine is among several renewable energy-related projects facing legal or regulatory challenges in Nevada. They include another lithium mine proposed near the Oregon border and a geothermal power plant where the Dixie Valley toad has been declared endangered in wetlands about 100 miles east of Reno.
“Now that the buckwheat is protected, we’ll use the full power of the Endangered Species Act to ensure Ioneer doesn’t harm one hair on a buckwheat’s head,” Mr. Donnelly said.
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EU becomes first major economy to legislate ‘green tariffs’
The European Union has struck a political deal to impose carbon tariffs on the importation of polluting goods such as steel and cement, in a world-first scheme that aims to support its domestic industries against those from countries with weak climate laws.
The 27-member bloc proposed a law to impose a green levy from 2026 on steel, cement, fertilisers, aluminium and electricity imports last year.
After an all-night sitting of the European Parliament measures will now also apply to imported hydrogen, and some downstream products such as screws and bolts and similar articles made of iron or steel.
The scheme, known as the carbon border adjustment mechanism, has been criticised by countries with high-carbon exports including Australia, China, Turkey, India, as a protectionist measure, although Brussels has said exporting countries could be exempted if they have a domestic carbon price akin to the EU’s, or similar climate change targets. The EU’s target under the Paris Accord is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent on 1990 levels by 2030.
The measure comes amid heightened trade tensions with the United States over its Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for green technologies, which the EU has said could disadvantage European firms.
Brussels argues the new scheme is designed to be in full compliance with World Trade Organisation rules and plans for it to apply from October 1 next year, with a transition period, where the obligations of the importer shall be limited to reporting.
Before the end of the transition period the European Commission will assess whether to extend the scope to other goods at risk of carbon leakage, including organic chemicals and polymers, with the goal to include all goods covered by the current European emissions trading scheme by 2030. They will also assess the methodology for indirect emissions and the possibility to include more downstream products.
Companies importing goods into the EU will be required to buy certificates to cover their embedded carbon emissions. The scheme is designed to apply the same carbon cost to overseas firms and domestic EU industries – the latter of which are already required to buy permits from the EU carbon market when they pollute.
Mohammed Chahim, European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the law, said the border tariff would be crucial to EU efforts to fight climate change.
“It is one of the only mechanisms we have to incentivise our trading partners to decarbonise their manufacturing industry,” he said. “On top of this, it is an alternative to our current carbon leakage measures, which will allow us to apply the ‘polluter pays’ principle to our own industry. A win-win situation.”
Some details on the law, including its start date, will be determined later this week in related negotiations on a reform of the EU carbon market.
Australian industry players have said the country had little to fear in the medium term from implementable border adjustments by the EU because only 0.25 per cent of trade with Europe was affected by the current proposal.
However, the scheme will likely expand and similar schemes in the United States, Japan or other economies could affect much more trade.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has said it would examine the EU’s proposal to see whether it is WTO compliant.
The department said it was committed to participating in multilateral discussions that promote trade, build sustainable supply chains and share knowledge.
Charity groups have criticised the EU for introducing the measure without lifting climate funding to developing economies, which will likely be hit hardest by the scheme.
Oxfam EU Tax expert Chiara Putaturo said Europeans were responsible for double the carbon emissions as the poorest half of the world.
“Yet, the EU just agreed to pass the buck to those least responsible by forcing them to pay a tariff despite being hardest hit by the climate crisis. EU countries did not even accept to channel revenues to climate finance funds,” she said.
“The EU and EU countries need to increase climate finance funds, especially now that poor countries are going to bear the cost of the carbon tariff.”
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Britain braces for winter of factory shutdowns as freezing conditions strain energy crisis
Amid staggeringly high energy costs, sub-zero temperatures are posing a huge threat to the industrial sector which has already been struggling to keep its head above water, with shutdowns looming. As the cold snap hit Britain, wholesale energy costs soared as firms raced to secure expensive supplies amid the price spike. Brought on by a period of cold, dry days, with very slow winds, power output plummeted while demand soared. Worryingly, the challenges have already forced some factories to slam the brakes on production.
Gareth Stace, director of industry association UK Steel, told the Telegraph that the eye-watering wholesale electricity prices on Monday forced all his members to shut down some production until rates went back to normal.
He said: "We're just priced out of the market. There would be no point in the energy companies telling our members to turn off, because they know that they will. You just couldn't keep going, you just lose money for every tonne of steel you make with [energy] prices at these levels."
But while the steel industry may recover in the coming days, the high prices are threatening shutdowns across a number of other industries that fear they will not be able to cope with the devastating combination of high energy prices and poor weather conditions.
Back in September, MakeUK, a manufacturing lobby organisation, warned that 42 percent of manufacturers have seen their electricity bills soar by 100 percent in 12 months from September 2021, while 32 percent have seen their gas bills double.
It said that 13 percent of manufacturers had to reduce their hours of operation, while 12 percent were forced to make cuts as a direct result of the surging costs energy bills. The large bulk of businesses have warned that if bills continue to rise this year and by over 50 percent, closures and redundancies "will become inevitable".
On Monday, the lobby downgraded its outlook for the sector, warning of a steep recession-driven in part by the high energy costs. The difficulties have come after Russia's weaponization of wholesale gas supplies and his war in Ukraine laid bare the UK's exposure to the volatile fossil fuel markets.
Heading into the winter, there are fears that a further gas cut and a failure to shore up enough energy imports from Europe could leave Britain seriously tight on supplies. So much so, in fact, that National Grid has drafted an emergency plan in its Winter Outlook which would see Britons subjected to three-hour rolling blackouts during the coldest months of the year.
Fears the "unlikely worst-case scenario" was coming closer to fruition deepened this week after National Grid put two coal units on standby at the Drax power station in Yorkshire. However, the request was later cancelled and the operator said people should continue to use energy as normal.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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