Germany to keep Gas-fired power plants open by paying the fixed costs

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, in Electricity Sector Lessons from Ontario and Germany, Germany has now started the next round of increases in electricity pricing by moving to pay the fixed costs at 2 modern natural gas generators slated for closure by their owners due to an electricity system that made their profitability as merchant plants unlikely.

Irsching 4 and 5 Operators Agree with Tennet and BNetzA Not to Close Down Plants for Grid Security Reasons « German Energy Blog:

The operators of the Irsching 4 and 5 agreed with Tennet TSO GmbH not to close down the highly efficient but presently unprofitable gas-fired power plant units near Ingolstadt within the next three years. The units were needed to secure grid stability and the security of supply, and would continue to be operated to allow Tennet to resort to so-called redispatch measures if necessary, Tennet said. E.ON will receive the fixed costs for the power ...

The Irsching 4 and 5 are modern highly efficient combined cycle power plants. With a capacity of 569 MW, unit 4 (Ulrich Hartmann unit) reaches 60.4% efficiency, the highest efficiency worldwide. Unit 5 with a gross output of 860 MW reaches an efficiency of 59.7%. Yet it was not possible to operate the plants profitably in the recent past, as the growing renewable power plant output in Germany has to be purchased and transmitted with priority by the grid operators ...

Read the entire article at the German Energy Blog: 

Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear in 'Pandora's Promise' Trailer Premiere

Video: Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear in 'Pandora's Promise' Trailer Premiere | Rolling Stone:

Pandora's Promise examines the issue from the perspective of key environmentalists on both sides of the issue, starting with the writer Stewart Brand, who asks, "Can you be an environmentalist and be pro-nuclear? In light of climate change, can you be an environmentalist and not be pro-nuclear?" Stone admits that accepting that nuclear energy could be a viable power source was a struggle for him as well. "It's no easy thing for me to have come to the conclusion that the rapid deployment of nuclear power is now the greatest hope we have for saving us from an environmental catastrophe," he told Rolling Stone.

More text at Rolling Stone:

Great Lakes to get relief from low water levels

I have to cite this article because:

1. It's an issue taken up by grass roots folks concerned with the changes to their environment
2. They were told it wasn't a problem resulting from the dredging, for decades
3. That picture is taken not far from my home

Great Lakes to get relief from low water levels: Porter | Toronto Star:

Picture from source article

If you love Georgian Bay, as I do, I have good news for you.
We might be getting more water soon. Or, more aptly: we might stop losing as much water as we have been these past 14 years.
After years of cheerleading the “do-nothing” approach to the frightening drop in water levels on Lakes Huron and Michigan, the binational referee of water levels, the International Joint Commission, did a stunning about-face last Friday.
It instructed the Canadian and American governments to do something. In particular, research putting an adjustable plug in the St. Clair River, which drains water from Lakes Huron and Michigan down toward Lake Erie.
Hallelujah."

Continue reading at the Toronto Star:

The Dark Side of Energy Independence

I found this New York Times article particularly interesting having read a recent post at Gail the Actuary’s (aka Gail Tverberg) "Our Finite World" site titled "How Oil Exporters Reach Financial Collapse"

The Dark Side of Energy Independence - NYTimes.com:

...oil could fall to just $50 a barrel within the next two years, which could unleash unrest in regions crucial to American interests. Far from releasing the United States from the burden of global leadership, this process would force Washington to assume an even greater international role than it currently plays. 

Graphic from "Our Finite World"

If there’s one part of the world that America would like to be less encumbered by, it’s the volatile and oil-rich Middle East. But energy independence will not spell the end of American engagement in that region. On the contrary, lower energy prices will undermine the stability of the Persian Gulf monarchies, whose hefty oil revenues have allowed them to win their populations’ loyalties through patronage and a lack of taxation. These countries do not always share American values or help advance American interests, but anything that destabilizes them would create problems that Washington could not afford to ignore.
..

Graphic from "Our Finite World" 

Americans should cheer the energy revolution. It will do wonders for the American economy, and the democratic politics it could encourage in the Middle East and Russia may ultimately serve American interests. But in the meantime, Washington should expect a world far less stable than the one it is used to — and, in turn, prepare to adopt an even more outward-looking foreign policy.

Continue reading at the New York Times

How to Ruin an Electric Grid — Germany Shows Us How

William Tucker's article comes to a similar conclusion as my recent Electricity Sector Lessons from Ontario and Germany

Nuclear Townhall » Blog Archive » WILLIAM TUCKER: How to Ruin an Electric Grid — Germany Shows Us How:

Germany's coal and gas plants are losing money hand over fist while pampered renewables are collecting "feed-in tariffs” and all kinds of subsidies – and are still more expensive. As a result, their utilities are talking about putting some of fossil fuel burners in mothballs.

Now Germany certainly can't allow that because there wouldn’t be anything left to run the grid. So Chancellor Angela Merkel has come up with another idea. She wants to pay the coal and gas plants a "capacity fee" that will pay the just for standing by to generate electricity even when it’s not needed. She said yesterday:

“We have to think about how to slow down the dynamics so that we get a sensible expansion of renewable energies but not a situation in which no gas-fired power plant can be operated profitably anymore and each gas plant has to be subsidized so it provides baseload capacity.”

So that means Germans will be paying twice for their electricity – once when it is generated by renewables and again when it isn’t generated by something else. Renewables already added a 47 percent surcharge to electric bills at the beginning of this year. Now we’re going to see something worse. The big, power-consuming manufacturers have been exempted from these charges so they can stay competitive with the rest of the world, but everyone else is going to bear the brunt.

Japan ready to ditch target for emissions cut

Japan ready to ditch target for emissions cut | PHYS.ORG:

Japan is likely to abandon an ambitious pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter, the top government spokesman said on Thursday.
Asked to confirm if the new administration would review Tokyo's 2009 pledge, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the government was "moving in that direction in principle".
"I have been saying for some time that it is a tremendous target and would be impossible to achieve," he told a regular news conference.
Then-prime minister Yukio Hatoyama made the pledge in 2009, following a landslide election victory by his centre-left Democratic Party of Japan.
It was lauded by environmentalists as one of the most ambitious of any industrialised country.
Hatoyama said the nation would slash its carbon emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, provided other major polluters such as China and the United States also made sharp reductions.
But officials say the pledge will be difficult to fulfil because of the huge rise in fossil fuel use since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima put Tokyo's atomic energy programme on hold.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-japan-ready-ditch-emissions.html#jCp

Why Throw It Away, When There’s a Productive Use for Nuclear Spent Fuel?

Why Throw It Away, When There’s a Productive Use for Nuclear Spent Fuel? - Ontario Society of Professional Engineers:

Society now recycles or reuses many of our resources that were originally considered waste. However, due to our fear of nuclear proliferation, the recycling and reuse of nuclear spent fuel was banned in the USA some decades ago.
Did you know that during the subsequent 30 years, technology has advanced to the point where rogue states no longer use spent fuel to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons? They prefer a much cheaper and easier method to make atomic weapons. They use high speed centrifuges to enrich natural uranium into pure U-235. Natural uranium contains 99.3% non-fissile U-238 and only 0.7% U-235 which is fissile and can be used to make atomic weapons.
Did you know that our current thermal reactors consume only 1% of the uranium in the original mined ore? The rest is sitting either in the spent fuel in the case of natural uranium fuel for our CANDU reactors or in a combination of the spent fuel and in depleted uranium stockpiles in the case of enriched uranium fuel.

Cap-and-trade programs in California and Quebec to merge

Cap-and-trade programs in California and Quebec to merge - latimes.com:

The California Air Resources Board on Friday linked its program for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and curbing climate change with one in the French-speaking, Canadian province of Quebec. The merger starts Jan. 1.
On April 8, Gov. Jerry Brown certified the two cap-and-trade systems as compatible. As a result, Quebec's permits that let polluters emit carbon dioxide can be purchased and used by California oil refineries, food processors, cement plants and other facilities. And California-issued pollution permits will be valid in Quebec.
The tradable credits earned by planting trees and other actions that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be used by California companies to help them meet a state obligation to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Read the entire article at latimes.com:

Setting the record straight on affordable, clean nuclear

"Bruce Power sent this letter in response to an article that appeared in the Toronto Star and Metro News on April 18."

Setting the record straight on affordable, clean nuclear | Bruce Power: 

Editor:
We would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on an article that appeared in the Metro News on April 18 that inaccurately portrayed the cost of nuclear power.
While the report that was cited and commissioned by the Independent Electricity System Operator was accurate, the conclusions drawn by Metro News need to be corrected with further information from the report.
The article cites that nuclear energy contributed to 42 per cent of the global adjustment costs on electricity bills last year and suggests this makes nuclear generation costly to ratepayers– this is not the full story. While the global adjustment cost can be a complicated item to explain in relation to our energy system, this inaccurate conclusion related to nuclear can be easily explained.
Nuclear generation produced 56 per cent of Ontario’s electricity last year. 

Continue reading at Bruce Power:

New York PSC approves 1,000-MW Québec-NY City power line

New York PSC approves 1,000-MW Québec-NY City power line | Canada | Reuters: 

(Reuters) - The New York Public Service Commission on Thursday approved a plan to build the Champlain Hudson transmission line, which will be capable of moving 1,000 megawatts of hydropower from Québec to New York City.
...
The PSC said the project could provide up to 10 percent of the power used in New York City and would probably reduce power costs there and in the rest of the state.
The project developers, not the state's electric ratepayers, will fund the power line's construction, the PSC noted.
The PSC also said the line would cut emissions by reducing the amount of power the city generates at its oil and natural gas fired plants.

The entire article can be read at Reuters