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U.K. Sees Record-Breaking Year For Renewable Energy.
Sam Osborne
January 01, 2023
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China Starts Work On The World’s Largest Desert-Based Renewable Energy Project.
Meme Of The Week.
U.K. Sees Record-Breaking Year For Renewable Energy.
Quick And Clean Weekly Bites.
China Starts Work On The World’s Largest Desert-Based Renewable Energy Project.
China has broken ground on a renewable energy project worth an estimated $11 billion in the province of Inner Mongolia.
According to a Bloomberg report, the project will have a capacity of 16 Giga-Watts and produce some 40 billion KiloWatt-Hour of electricity to Beijing and the provinces of Tianjin and Hebei. The project will combine solar, wind, and upgraded coal power, and is set to become the largest renewable energy project in a desert region.
The Kubuqi Desert, where the project will be located, is already home to a massive solar farm comprising 196,000 panels on 1.4 million square meters. The project has already generated some 2.3 billion kWh, according to Chinese media reports.
As of 2021, China’s renewable power generation capacity stood at 1,063 GW and represented close to 45 percent of the country’s total generation capacity. Per government plans, China should be producing 33 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and it is extremely close to that target, with the figure for 2022 at 31.9 percent according to a Reuters report.
Plans are to expand wind and solar capacity to 1,200 GW by 2030, Reuters reported earlier this year, as Beijing plans peak emissions by that year. Currently, China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Meme Of The Week.
U.K. Sees Record-Breaking Year For Renewable Energy.
The UK saw a record amount of its electricity generated from renewable energy sources in 2022, according to new figures.
Researchers from Imperial College London found wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower accounted for 40 percent of the country’s electricity this year – up from 35 percent in 2021.
Despite this increase in clean energy output, the report commissioned by Drax Electric Insights also found that the share of fossil fuel energy production has also risen.
“This has been a year like no other for the energy industry,” said Iain Staffell from Imperial College London, who was the lead author of the report. “The public are feeling the pain of high gas prices on their energy bills, even though renewables are providing the grid with more cheap, green electricity than ever before. The lesson from 2022 is that we need to break our addiction to fossil fuels once and for all if we want to lower costs and better secure energy supplies.”
Dr. Staffell said he hoped increased investment in clean energy technologies could help the UK become “Europe’s renewable electricity powerhouse”, cutting energy bills and boosting the economy by exporting power to neighbouring countries.
Quick And Clean Weekly Bites.
The European Union has announced a deal to impose a carbon dioxide tariff on imports of polluting goods such as steel and cement. Known as the "Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism" (CBAM), the agreement will cover industrial imports from the bloc's 27 member states, targeting the highest polluting products first. Link.
Belgium is going to impose new taxes on older, noisier planes as well as private jets and short-haul flights, according to a government statement. The move aims to reduce noise and air pollution. As of 1 April 2023, taxes will not only be dependent on noise but on air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and the destination of the flight. Until now, small planes such as private jets have been exempt. Link.
It's fun, it's green, it's clean and it's becoming more popular by the day. Barcelona's bike bus, or 'bicibus', as the scheme is known locally, allows hundreds of children to cycle safely to school in a convoy, taking over entire streets in Spain's second-largest city. The citizen-led project, supported by Barcelona City Council, began in March 2021 with one route in the Sarria neighbourhood. Link.