It is clear that the energy transition is underway and moving at a positive trajectory.

Our future will be driven forward by an almost 100 per cent mix of solar and wind energy coupled with battery storage – with rapid further electrification of transport and heating too.

I can confidently say that this vision is perfectly feasible within the next decade. And what’s more, this future will have a very low CO2 footprint and usher in a new era of energy security and independence.

One thing that is important to point out is that short-term compromises need to be accepted in order to achieve this long-term vision and endpoint.

Nuclear and hydrogen are important – but not the best options

For one, we should retain existing nuclear plants until they are no longer necessary, but let’s also not allow the nuclear industry to have the power source relabelled as renewable, resilient or green, it’s not – so let’s not fool ourselves.

Nuclear bears environmental and safety risks and encourages a dangerous reliance on a handful of centralised power plants. A further nuclear build-out would be a distraction insofar as it would suck in resources required to build our renewables-based future, while not providing a reliable way of generating more power within any relevant timeframe.

A similar distraction is hydrogen. It will play a niche role in coming years, such as in the production of fertiliser, and complex industrial processes, but we must not mistake hydrogen for a viable mass-power alternative.

Nuclear power has its place in the energy transition, but it’s not the most reliable or safe option.Canva

Hydrogen has received an excessive amount of attention – disproportionate to the benefits it has produced to date, or could do in future – and it also carries the risk of enabling oil and gas companies to continue business as usual, via hydrogen production from gas. 

To be clear, oil and gas companies have a role to play in the energy transition, but it should not involve the continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Instead, the funding, development and scaling of renewables such as solar and wind energy, and battery storage should be prioritised.

The truth about solar energy

Now, let’s compare this with solar – parks are being built across the globe right now, people are installing residential systems at a remarkable rate, using tried, tested and safe technology.

All of which is cheap, scalable, and reliable.

The truth is, solar carries little to no environmental downsides or risks and enjoys massive political support across the world. Just the other week, the UK government said it wanted to boost solar capacity fivefold by 2035, up from 14 GW today.

This is why we should rely on solar the most for the future of power generation.

Solar energy is fast, reliable and infinite.Getty Images

Solar power’s energy source – the sun – is the most powerful and vast one we have. The amount of energy that hits the earth from the sun is 10,000 times higher than we need for all our power demands and requires less than 1 per cent of the Sahara to capture it.

We are blessed in Europe to have acres of untapped land for solar developments that we could begin utilising tomorrow if we have the conviction to do so, scaling solar at speed in parallel to wind energy.

Solar parks actually encourage biodiversity

The solar industry has worked hard to build an enhanced awareness of the environment in which solar parks are located. It is now widely expected that operators conduct an investigation of what plants and animals exist on a site, before creating a tailored plan that ensures this biodiversity increases.

It is commonplace to have ambitious biodiversity plans that include measures such as planting meadow flowers for pollinating insects, having sheep grazing as part of vegetation management, creating roosting spaces for bats, planting hedges and tree lines beyond required fencing, and preserving wildlife corridors.

Yet even then, some would rather suitable land be left to sit, rather than power their homes, businesses, and the continent, through a free and vast energy source in the sun.

We have to reach a point where, collectively, we accept that having some land host solar panels and wind farms is better than the alternative.

Only a handful of relatively simple policy actions are needed to make solar accelerate across Europe:

Fewer barriers to land developmentReform to roofing regulationsMaking the interconnection process easier

Such measures, coupled with a willingness to utilise just a fraction of our land for solar, would enable Europe to make solar a reliable cornerstone of our power system within the next decade.

Solar farms actually encourage biodiversity.Canva

Tackling the root of emissions

Companies like Alight build out solar power with no subsidies required at all, through industrial solar installations underpinned by 10 to 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs).

This delivers long-term cost savings to business customers by providing solar power as a service without the need to invest capital. It maintains the infrastructure, that delivers the power that is subsequently purchased per kilowatt-hour by customers through a long-term PPA – which shields them from price surges while drastically reducing their emissions from fossil power sources.

No wonder then, given the clear advantages to be had, that solar arrays at European businesses are set to jump by about 15 per cent in Europe this year compared to 2021, according to data from BloombergNEF.

This is at a time when we have still barely even scratched the surface of solar’s true potential to revolutionise the global power system through its quick, cheap and infinite modular deployment.

Battery storage systems are the next frontier in this roll-out, increasingly co-located with solar power production to give us the means through which to store the sun’s rays for flexible usage.

By embracing the potential of solar, and committing to its long-term viability, we will be on a path to a 100 per cent renewable world.

The post Why solar power is the greenest renewable we have at our disposal first appeared on Magazin Haber Ajansı.

Two tugboats are currently moving a vast array of 12,000 solar panels, the size of four football pitches, to their mooring on the reservoir.

Built by EDP, the country’s main utility company, on Western Europe’s biggest artificial lake, the shiny floating island is part of Portugal’s plan to cut reliance on imported fossil fuels whose prices have surged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Blessed by long hours of sunshine and Atlantic winds, Portugal has accelerated its shift to renewables. But even though the country uses almost no Russian hydrocarbons, its gas-fired power plants still feel the squeeze of rising fuel prices.

Miguel Patena, EDP group director in charge of the solar project, said on Thursday that electricity produced from the floating park, with installed capacity of 5 megawatts (MW), would cost a third of that produced from a gas-fired plant.

The panels on the Alqueva reservoir, which is used to generate hydropower, would produce 7.5 gigawatt/hours (GWh) of electricity a year, and would be complemented by lithium batteries to store 2 GWh.

Portugal’s largest solar park opening in July.Reuters

The solar panels will supply 1,500 families with power, or a third of the needs of the nearby towns of Moura and Portel.

“This project is the biggest floating solar park in a hydro dam in Europe, it is a very good benchmark,” Patena said.

Solar panels mounted on pontoons on lakes, or at sea, have been installed in a range of places from California to polluted industrial ponds in China, in the fight to cut CO2 emissions.

Floating panels do not require valuable real estate and those on reservoirs used for hydropower are particularly cost effective as they can hook up to existing links to the power grid. Excess power generated on sunny days can pump water up into the lake to be stored for use on cloudy days or at night.

EDP executive board member Ana Paula Marques said the war in Ukraine showed the need to accelerate the shift to renewables

She said the Alqueva project was part of EDP’s strategy “to go 100 per cent green by 2030”, with hydropower and other renewables now accounting for 78 per cent of EDP’s 25.6 GW of installed capacity.

In 2017, EDP installed a pilot floating solar project with 840 panels on the Alto Rabagao dam, the first in Europe to test how hydro and solar power could complement each other.

EDP already has plans to expand the Alqueva project. It secured the right in April to build a second floating farm with 70 MW installed capacity.

The post Portugal is opening Europe’s biggest floating solar park this year first appeared on Magazin Haber Ajansı.

BP’s report shows that this money has effectively been cancelled out by its decision to cut investments in Russian oil following the invasion of Ukraine.

But the corporation isn’t alone in reporting a big rise in profits. According to energy consultancy firm, Rystad Energy, the world’s leading oil and gas companies are set to shatter previous records this year.

Now there are renewed calls for a windfall tax on these oil giants as people around Europe struggle to keep the lights on.

“Fossil fuel companies made bumper profits while people froze this winter, and instead of investing in renewables they’ve kept on driving the climate crisis and making their shareholders richer,” says Murray Worthy, gas campaign leader at Global Witness.

“They absolutely cannot be trusted to do the right thing, we urgently need a windfall tax to fund a massive wave of renewables and insulation.”

What is a windfall tax and how does it work?

To put it simply, a windfall tax is a one-off tax imposed by the government on a sector when it makes huge profits from a situation it has no control over.

With energy prices high, companies that extract oil and gas from the ground charge much higher prices than they would have done before. There has been greater demand as the world slowly recovers from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine creates uncertainty about supplies from Russia.

This scenario is an example of where an industry has benefited from circumstances it can’t control – leading to a windfall.

Several European countries, including Spain and Italy, had already introduced a windfall tax before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the situation worse.

In September last year, Spain agreed to remove taxes from home energy bills, instead enforcing a windfall tax on companies profiting from the crisis to make up for the lost income.

A pumpjack as seen on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in Tatum, New Mexico.AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio

This week Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi detailed a €14 billion plan to tackle rising energy costs. It includes subsidies for vulnerable families, cash payouts for those on low incomes and tax credits for energy-intensive industries.

The subsidies will be funded by Italy’s windfall tax, introduced in January 2022, which will rise from 10 to 25 per cent.

How has the war in Ukraine impacted oil and gas?

For some, huge profits made by companies buying Russian oil and gas are a slap in the face to Ukrainians suffering the impacts of war. While many have exited investments in the region following the invasion, there are still some nations purchasing Russian fossil fuels, such as India.

“Ukrainians have watched in disbelief as our partners in the European Union continued to purchase Russian fossil fuels, funding war crimes in our country to the tune of €1 billion every day,” says Oleg Ustenko, chief economic advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Despite this, he adds, companies are trading Russian fossil fuels, shipping and piping huge quantities of oil, gas and coal around the world.

A police officer stands guard at the Nustar Clydebank oil terminal in Glasgow during a protest by Just Stop Oil climate activists in Glasgow on May 3, 2022.ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP

“We have a simple message for these companies – we are watching you. Ukraine will not forget those who supported us, nor will we forget those who chose Putin’s side.”

Brussels has just proposed a ban on imports of all Russian oil by the end of the year. It could be part of the sixth package of sanctions resulting from the war in Ukraine.

“This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The reprisals are yet to be formally approved by member states and the vote could be derailed by countries like Hungary and Slovakia that are heavily reliant on Russian fossil fuels.

Von der Leyen added that it would not be easy, but “Putin must pay a price, a high price, for his brutal aggression.”

The post What is a windfall tax and how would it help with the cost of living? first appeared on Magazin Haber Ajansı.