Should Britain Turn its Back on Nuclear?

The catastrophic events in Japan that led to Fukushima’s nuclear crisis made the world review their concepts about nuclear energy generation. What once was seen as an effective way to generate carbon free electricity is now being questioned about its safety that will sure comprise its economical viability.

What happened at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant caused deep wounds on the nuclear industry, forcing governments in every corner of the globe to review their nuclear development policies.

As countries around the globe start to decarbonise their economies, nuclear power is seen universally as a vital and cost effective carbon free energy generating resource. But new safety policies and other costs for new and existing nuclear power plants could turn nuclear power less economic or even uneconomic.

The nuclear industry has a strong safety record and there is no reason to believe that this cannot be maintained into the future but events in Japan have changed these parameters. Although we don’t have a detailed report of what happened at Fukushima nuclear power plant further improvements on the current high safety levels will sure be implemented and required by new nuclear power plants.

This leads us to the question: “Is it safe for Britain to go on building new nuclear plants?”

Writing to the telegraph Lord Hutton of Furness former secretary of state for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 2007-8, answered this question with an emphatic “YES” stating:

“Safety must, of course, always be at the heart of the case for nuclear energy, and regulators must make this their top priority. In 2008, when I had responsibility for energy policy, the safety case was fundamental to my decision to sanction a new generation of nuclear power stations for Britain. I have every confidence that this will be the same approach taken by ministers today. Modern nuclear technologies have multi-layered safety systems in place that offer a huge improvement on the older power plants.”

With ageing power plants due to close in coming years, time is running out for Britain and nuclear power seems like the most probable solution to not only to keep the “lights on” but also to cut down carbon emissions.

If Britain turns its back on nuclear the Government would be limited to very few energy generating resources. Renewables would be one of them, for the delight of the energy secretary Chris Hune. The second option would be gas as it is unlikely that the Government would sanction a new coal-fired power plant.

Meanwhile one thing is for sure the nuclear crisis in Japan will result in rising business gas prices and consequently higher business energy prices as LNG cargoes are diverted to the Far East to fill the gap left by the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

To sum things up I leave you with the question: “Should Britain Turn its Back on Nuclear?” – Share your thoughts and opinions in our comments section.

Contact Us

If you would like more information on our range of energy services or would simply like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

Bill Gates Investing Millions to Stop Global Warming

The man who revolutionised personal computing now wants to revolutionise the way we generate energy. After stepping down as the CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates has been investing millions of dollars to fight global warming; his ultimate goal is to find an energy source completely free of CO2 emissions.

Will Bill Gates ever find a way to generate carbon-free energy? Have your say here.

For the past few years Gates has dedicated most of his time and money to projects that range from the development of high voltage batteries to machines capable of extracting CO2 from the air.

As one of the most successful business men in history his words carry enormous credibility which gives more visibility to projects that might not leave the drawing board. Above all Bill Gates is seen as a visionary and if he believes such projects could change our lives, a lot of people will sit and hear what he has to say.

According to Mr. Gates the world needs an “energy miracle”, an energy source that is reliable, cheap and carbon free. He says we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket and purse every available path to achieve this really big breakthrough.

Around the globe there are many countries generating energy from renewable energy resources that look very promising but not big enough to cause the impact needed to make a change. Tidal energy, geothermal and even wind are all good and clean energy generating resources but we need more than that.

The father of Windows is working on a new nuclear approach called travelling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. That dream is far from becoming a reality but if it does we could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

To sum things up Bill Gates points out two immediate solutions the American and other Governments around the globe should take note to make the transition towards a carbon free society quicker. Increase investment in research and development of new energy generating technology and a well structured energy plan that considers each option based on the likelihood of success.

If you would like more information on our range of energy services or would simply like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

The Internet’s Energy Consumption and Its Carbon Footprint

Over the past few years there has been an ongoing debate about the growing amount of energy needed to power the World Wide Web, a.k.a the Internet, and the impacts on our environment.  Many have tried to pin down the exact amount of energy needed to power the internet and its carbon footprint. Recently The Guardian published an article saying that the Internet’s carbon footprint was around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.

The article was published in August and with the number of internet users growing by the day worldwide I wouldn’t be surprised if these figures were higher nowadays.  According to the UN by the end of the year there will be 2 billion world internet users, that is 1/6 of world population.

Hypothetically, if these growth rates remain the same, the entire world would be online by 2020.

To measure the Internet’s exact power consumption and then determine its carbon footprint we would need to know the precise number of computers, laptops and mobile phones that are online these days (which we don’t). Add that to the amount of energy consumed by all the Data Centres worldwide to then determine the internet power consumption and its carbon footprint.

Scary isn’t it? But we gathered some data just to give you a better understanding of roughly how much energy is needed to power the World Wide Web these days.

Back in 2006, data centres in America consumed a total of 61,000,000,000 kWh (yes you read it right 61 trillion kWh), which is enough to power the UK for 2 whole months.

A single Google search produces 0.2g of CO2. Not that much right? But now, 3,100,000 Google searches emit enough CO2 to power an average house for a whole month.

The monthly searches processed by Google produce 260 tons of CO2 which is equivalent to power an American fridge-freezer for 5,400 years. This consumes 3,900,000 kWh of energy, which is equal to washing 5.57 million loads of laundry.

But wait, it gets worse! A single spam message produces the equivalent of 0.3 grams of CO2. Multiply that by 62 trillion pieces of spam circling the World Wide Web each year and we have the emissions equivalent of driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.

Despite its huge energy consumption the internet is likely to play an important role as we move towards a low carbon economy. Thanks to advances in communication technologies an estimated 40% of the working population could work from home. If 40% of American workforce worked from home twice a week, carbon emission would be reduced by 53 million metric tons year, equivalent of taking 10 million cars on the road.

If you would like more information on our range of energy broker services or would like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

.

.

Is Facebook Responsible For Higher Energy Bills?

As a market leading energy broker we have noticed that the current generation is more committed to discovering and reducing its carbon footprint than ever before.  But despite this growing awareness and our need to conserve and reduce our energy consumption, there is one thing that has changed our lifestyle, and increased our energy consumption like nothing else we have ever seen before.  Facebook, the social networking site accounted for 1 in every 10 internet visits in September – up 4% from the same month last year, now overtaking popular search engines such as Google in the rankings.

Astonishingly Facebook now attracts 55% of all visits to social networking sites but others such as Twitter, Linkedin and Tumblr have seen visits at least double in the last 12-months, a recent report suggested.

With all of this increased online activity comes an obvious need for an increased supply of electricity, both from the millions of online users, to the huge new data centers needed to host all of this data.  With its membership now passing the 500-million mark back in July, the storage and transmitting of messages, pictures and other information through Facebook uses a vast and still rapidly increasing amount of energy, as the network continues to expand its worldwide operations.

And with 4.5 billion updates posted to Facebook every week, the vast amount of energy needed for all of this online activity is enormous.

One of the pricing fundamentals of any commodity is the supply and demand factor, and with any increased demand, we see an impact on the supply and eventually the cost.

Because of Facebook’s rapid growth, their new hosting facility will need to be twice the size of its previous data centre, and to compound this issue the main source of electricity for the site is from coal fired power stations, the largest source of global warming pollution.

But this problem isn’t just limited just to Facebook, as the demand for cloud based applications grows Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others are investing billions of dollars to build new data centers to meet their growing demand for Web services, adding to the world pollution from computing.

In fact a recent study has estimated that the average user now spends at least 7-hours a month on Facebook alone, and reports suggest that this desire for social networking is set to increase further over the coming years.

Given that energy is an expensive and rising cost, these service providers do have a financial and environmental motivation to use as little electricity as possible.

But the implications for increased online activity is unlike anything that we have ever experienced before in our life times, and our desire and hunger for further social media interaction wont stop here.

Facebook is set to launch its latest Google taunting product on Monday, the long anticipated Facebook email system. The launch of an @facebook.com email is not itself a great surprise, as the existence of a secret project officially known as Project Titan has been circulating since February.

We just hope that our dwindling business energy supplies can cope long term with all of this increased use of energy.

More Facebook Facts

• Facebook like served a billion likes in the first 24 hours after its launch
• To put your friend count in perspective, the average user has 130
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, while the current active official user count now stands at over 500 million.
• More than 2.5 billion pictures are uploaded to Facebook each month.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth-largest country in the world, after China, India, the U.S., and Indonesia.
• There are more than 800,000 developers building applications for Facebook.
• 70% of Facebook users live outside of the US.
• Yahoo! tried to buy Facebook in 2006 for $1,000,000,000.
• 8,300,000,000 hours are spent on Facebook monthly.
• Facebook was originally bankrolled by a co-founder of Paypal for $500,000

Please add your comments below as we would love to know your thoughts on this for you and your business.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

Ofgem’s new Unit spent more than £5m on energy consultants

Last week Ofgem quietly announced on its website the details of expenditures on external energy consultants.  In just six months the energy regulator spent over £5m on new green taxes and incentives that ranged from feed-in-tariffs to smart meters.

Ofgem has an annual budget of £50m, if spending continues at the same rate by the end of the year the amount spent with external consultants will account for 20% of its total budget.

To administer environmental programmes and sustainability projects Ofgem created a special unit called, Ofgem E-Serve. The “E” stands for Environment, Energy and Efficiency. The new unit has used external consultants on 63 different occasions between April and September this year accounting for the total sum of £5m.

The details were quietly published on Ofgem’s website last week, ahead of new rules forcing state-funded organisations to detail all spending of more than £25,000. Among the highest paid sums is an energy consultancy company that pocket a total of £1.4m.

A spokesman for the regulator said: “Ofgem is unique among Britain’s regulators in capping its costs to 3% below inflation. This and other savings has saved more than £11m.”

On top of that, the value of schemes Ofgem has to manage has rocketed from £150m a year to £4bn. Such increase required a significant investment to be able to deliver these projects.

More about Ofgem E-Serve

Ofgem E-Serve focuses on administering environmental programmes and the delivery of sustainability projects such as offshore electricity transmission. Already running a £15bn offshore transmission tendering regime and many environmental programmes and services (some £3bn per year) and this is expected to more than double in the next decade.

Operation of Environmental Programmes (Existing Schemes) sits under the newly created role of Group Finance Director along with the support services covering HR, Information Management and Technology, Finance and Risk Management, Procurement, Building Services and Project Management. Development and implementation of the Offshore and Smart Metering projects sits under the newly created role of Commercial Managing Director along with Legal, and New Scheme Development.

If you would like more information on our range of energy broker services or would like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Please add your comments below as we would love to know your thoughts on this subject.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

.

.

Our monthly analysis of the UK gas and power markets is now available on line for the month of November 2010. The service is intended to keep you up to date with all the major news in Europe’s gas and power markets. It is also designed to keep power executives focused on market activity in an easy to digest format.

Your find our November 2010 report here and all historical energy reports can be located here.

If you would like more information on our services or would like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

.

.

SSE announced a 9.4% gas price increase for next month

Scottish & Southern Energy to increase its standard gas prices by 9.4% from December 1st. Britain’s second largest energy supplier stated the increase is based on higher forward annual wholesale gas prices.

According to the energy supplier, annual wholesale gas prices have increased by more than 25% since the company last made changes to its prices in March 2010. The increase will affect around 3.6 million customers, mainly households. We are yet to see if this will affect business gas and energy prices.

With winter just about to kick in, these hikes could not have come at a worse time and from our market experience as leading energy brokers we can forsee that this move by SSE is likely to be followed by the other major energy suppliers, known as the “big six”.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, energy supply director of SSE, said: “The last few months have been marked by rising wholesale gas prices and, having absorbed losses in our gas supply business for some time, we cannot delay an increase in retail prices any longer. I am sorry it will take effect during the winter period.”

With wholesale gas prices raising month after month, it was only a matter of time before energy prices started to go up. Our advice is to be prepared for a sudden increase in energy bills over the next few months.

Even though these hikes are mainly aimed for households, business owners must be on their toes as business energy prices should go up as well. To shield your business energy expenses from imminent price increases, review your energy contracts to make sure you are on the best and cheapest energy tariffs possible.

Here at Catalyst Commercial we offer a complete range of energy brokering services to help your business save precious money with gas and electricity bills.

If you would like more information on our range of energy broker services or would like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

Please add your comments below as we would love to know your thoughts on this for you and your business.

Follow us on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

Or you might want to subscribe for further updates direct from our site.

.

.