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Britain’s Plans for Nuclear Power Plant Reach a Decisive Point

March 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

LONDON — If all goes according to plan, the British energy minister on Tuesday will formally approve construction of the country’s first new nuclear power plant in nearly two decades.

But little has gone according to plan in this ambitious project, which is already more than four years behind schedule. Although envisioned as a big bet on Britain’s clean-energy future, the project has been bogged down in months of dickering between the British government and EDF Energy, the French state-controlled power company that is supposed to oversee construction and eventually operate the plant.

EDF Energy, which already runs most of Britain’s aging fleet of nine nuclear power plants, is threatening to walk away unless the government guarantees a price for the electricity that is roughly double the current rate. With tens of billions of pounds and thousands of jobs riding on the deal, the issue might ultimately be decided at the highest reaches of the British and, possibly, French governments.

“This isn’t a decision about the price for one power station,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at the University of Oxford. “This is about whether we want a nuclear industry or don’t we. That is the question. Only the politicians can decide.”

EDF executives declined to comment.

Mark Malbas, a spokesman for Britain’s Energy and Climate Change Department, which is leading the talks, declined to discuss the negotiations in detail, other than to say that they were continuing and that the department was “focused on getting a fair deal for the consumer.”

Britain had been counting on nuclear energy as a big part of meeting its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the mid-2020s. Planners originally called for five or so new nuclear plants to be up and running by 2025. But with even the first of those plants not yet under construction, the concern is that as Britain closes its older nuclear stations — which generate about 20 percent of the country’s electricity, at a very low cost — new ones will not replace them.

“It will be a big setback for British energy policy if these negotiations break down,” said Tim Yeo, a Conservative who is chairman of the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee.

Britain’s nuclear ambitions already received a big setback last year, when two big German utilities, RWE and E.On, decided not to proceed with construction of a plant that had been planned for Wales. The companies cited the costs and the uncertainty of getting a return on their investment.

The EDF plan calls for a plant with two nuclear reactors to be built on a headland called Hinkley Point overlooking the Severn Estuary in southwest England. Earthmovers have been carving away at a hillside there in recent months. If the green light is given, that soil will be trucked into the next valley as part of a gargantuan project that is expected to create 25,000 construction jobs.

The site — 175 hectares, or about 430 acres — is just south of a 1970s-era nuclear station known as Hinkley Point B, which is operated by EDF. And looming over the fields are the eerie, boxy shells of two 1960s-era reactors that have been shut down for more than a decade but still employ a couple of hundred people in the decommissioning.

EDF executives say they have already spent £1 billion, or about $1.5 billion, getting to the “shovel-ready” point for the reactors. After years of study, Britain’s nuclear and environmental regulators have approved designs, and about 70 percent of the necessary contracts are already lined up and ready to be signed. If and when the new plant, Hinkley Point C, comes fully online, it will supply about 7 percent of Britain’s electricity. That would be enough power to meet the needs of five million homes, with the added benefit of no carbon emissions.

On Tuesday, Edward Davey, Britain’s energy and climate change minister, is expected to announce the final decision on whether Hinkley Point construction can begin. It would be a moot point, though, if EDF did not agree to proceed.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last name of an Investec analyst. He is Harold Hutchinson, not Hopkinson.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/business/energy-environment/britains-nuclear-plans-at-a-critical-point.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

E.P.A. Upholds Ethanol Standard on Use in Gasoline

November 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A summer drought that withered crops led to a spike in prices, hurting the livestock industry and others that depend on corn for food. Estimates indicate that as much as half of the nation’s crop will be used to produce ethanol this year to meet the federal renewable energy standard for transportation fuel.

“We recognize that this year’s drought has created hardship in some sectors of the economy, particularly for livestock producers,” Gina McCarthy, an E.P.A. assistant administrator, said in a statement. “But our extensive analysis makes clear that Congressional requirements for a waiver have not been met.”

To approve a change in the standard, the agency would have to conclude that the fuel rule would “severely harm” the economy. The E.P.A. said it had analyzed 500 potential market variations and that most of them showed no impact from the use of corn for ethanol; those that did showed an average impact of 7 cents a bushel, less than 1 percent of the price, it said.

A coalition of livestock groups expressed frustration with the decision, as did the National Council of Chain Restaurants, which says its costs have also risen because of the use of corn in ethanol production.

Several environmental groups are also opposed to the ethanol requirement, saying that corn ethanol production is not clean energy. “If the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years and skyrocketing food prices are not enough to make E.P.A. act, it falls to Congress to provide relief from our senseless federal support for corn ethanol,” Michal Rosenoer, a biofuels specialist at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. She said the mandate was “exacerbating our economic and environmental problems.”

That would put some environmentalists in rare alignment with the oil industry, which is required to use an increasing amount of ethanol in its fuel production but complains that its system is glutted with the substance.

Since Congress specified a year-by-year gallon quota for biofuels in 2007, total fuel demand in the United States has dropped, so the percentage of ethanol fuel in gasoline has reached unexpected highs.

Farm groups and trade associations for companies seeking to make ethanol from nonfood sources like wood chips or crop residues have applauded the mandate, however. They say that if the corn ethanol mandate is reduced, there will be less demand for their biofuels products as well.

At the Advanced Ethanol Council, Brooke Coleman, the executive director, pointed out that the quota rules include a provision that allows the oil industry to postpone up to 20 percent of its obligation to a future year “if there is a good year one year and a less good year the next.”

At Novozymes, which supplies enzymes to ethanol manufacturers, Adam Monroe, president of the company’s North American division, said the biofuels mandate “has generated 400,000 careers, billions in private investment, and domestic, renewable fuel for America.”

In the longer term, Congress anticipates substantial production of biofuels from nonfood sources, but so far that has not developed.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/business/energy-environment/epa-upholds-ethanol-standard-on-use-in-gasoline.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Europe Proposes New Conditions on Research and Development

November 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

BRUSSELS — The European Commission proposed new rules Wednesday that could make billions of euros of research and development financing conditional on any resulting inventions being marketed in Europe first.

The proposal is part of a broad package of measures aimed at generating jobs and stimulating growth in Europe, and would need to be approved by all 27 E.U. member states and the European Parliament. The conditions could apply to parts of that package of proposed research expenditures, called Horizon 2020, worth €80 billion, or $108 billion, from 2014 to the end of the decade.

The commission, the European Union’s executive branch, could “set additional exploitation conditions in the work program or the grant agreement” in specific cases where there was “very high investment” or where a “strategic interest” of the bloc was involved, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European commissioner for research, said Wednesday.

“This should not be taken as the European Union or the commission putting forward a protectionist policy,” Ms. Geoghegan-Quinn said.

She added that there was “no more open research program in the world” than in Europe.

The commission said its goals were to increase competitiveness, create jobs, attract more top researchers and simplify funding rules to facilitate scientific breakthroughs in areas like health, food security, clean energy and transport, and raw materials for manufacturing.

The additional conditions on commercialization also could help major European manufacturing companies keep production at home.

E.U. officials said the rules were in line with those in many other countries, including the United States, and would apply in only a few cases, like the first commercial applications of a potentially highly lucrative invention or where large numbers of jobs were at stake.

Industry groups including the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, TechAmerica and DigitalEurope have expressed concerns about the consequences of any “E.U. first” rules aimed at limiting commercialization of breakthroughs to Europe, saying that such a policy could discourage inventors and hurt the economy.

Representatives of the American Chamber and DigitalEurope said Wednesday that they were studying the proposals and had no immediate comment.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/business/global/europe-proposes-new-conditions-on-research-and-development.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S. Solar Panel Makers Accuse Chinese of Trade Violations

October 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The trade case, filed at the Commerce Department, seeks tariffs of more than 100 percent of the wholesale import price of solar panels from China. Imports of Chinese solar panels to the United States totaled $1.6 billion in the first eight months of this year.

The filing, which the Commerce Department has no choice but to review, under federal rules, comes as anti-China sentiments are running high in some Washington corridors.

The Senate recently passed a bill that would require the Treasury Department to order the Commerce Department to impose tough tariffs on certain Chinese goods, if Treasury found that China was improperly valuing its currency to gain an economic advantage. So far, Republicans have declined to bring the House version up for a vote.

Chinese commerce officials had no immediate comment about the solar panel filing, but have long vehemently opposed such trade cases. The matter will probably be controversial within the United States, too. For one thing, if successful it would drive up the cost of solar energy in the name of keeping the American industry competitive.

The case also coincides with criticism by Congressional Republicans of the Obama administration’s efforts to support American clean energy companies. Republicans argue that federal loan guarantees of more than a half-billion dollars to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra show the folly of the administration’s trying to guide industrial policy in clean energy.

But two Democratic senators on Wednesday supported the trade case. “American solar operations should be rapidly expanding to keep pace with the skyrocketing demand for these products,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who appeared at a Washington news conference on the case held by an Oregon solar panel maker, Solar World Industries America.

“But that is not what has been happening,” Mr. Wyden said. “There seems to be one primary explanation for this; that is, that China is cheating.” He was joined by his Oregon colleague Senator Jeff Merkley, who said China was engaging in “rogue practices.”

Whatever the partisan positioning, though, the trade case would procedurally begin above the political fray. It will follow a quasi-judicial path at the Commerce Department and a related American agency, the International Trade Commission, that is designed to operate without political partisanship influence. Congress created the apolitical process for trade cases during the cold war, because of a perception that Democratic and Republican administrations had tolerated subsidies and dumping by many countries as long as they were American allies against the Soviet Union.

Other recent industry cases against China that have followed this process include one filed in late March, involving galvanized steel wire. The most recently completed tariff case against China, in late May, resulted in tariffs of about 33 percent levied against certain types of imported aluminum products.

A Chinese solar company manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a telephone interview that in any trade case filed by the American industry, “we would be well prepared and are confident we could defend it.”

President Obama recently appeared to support the domestic solar industry’s concerns, in a White House news conference on Oct. 6: “Even if the technology was developed in the United States, they end up going to China because the Chinese government will say, ‘We’re going to help you get started, we’ll help you scale up, we’ll give you low-interest loans or no-interest loans, we will give siting, we will do whatever it takes for you to get started here.’ ”

United States policy toward China has also emerged as an issue in the presidential campaign, provoking an early back-and-forth between the Obama team and Mitt Romney, whom many Democrats expect to be the Republican nominee. Mr. Romney, talking tough in a Republican debate last week, said the United States had been “run over by China” for 20 years and “you have to have a president that will take action.”

In response, Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod, countered that Mr. Romney once again was flip-flopping, having criticized Mr. Obama in the past as “protectionist” for mounting a trade case against China on behalf of American tire producers.

Matthew L. Wald, Jackie Calmes and Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/business/global/us-solar-manufacturers-to-ask-for-duties-on-imports.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,