Green Madness: Europe’s Climate Law Could Devastate Forests, Raise CO2 Emissions

Europe’s decision to promote the use of wood as a “renewable fuel” will likely greatly increase Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and cause severe harm to the world’s forests, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications.

The paper, co-authored by eight scientists from the United States and Europe, estimates that this bioenergy provision in the Renewable Energy Directive will lead to the vast new cutting of the world’s forests.

This is because additional wood equal to all of Europe’s existing wood harvests will be needed just to supply 5 percent of Europe’s energy. —Princeton University, 12 September 2018

Natural gas for the coming winter is certainly neither abundant nor cheap. And filling that gap in the power mix is coal. The recent bull-run on EU emission allowances will soon no doubt draw the attention of policy-makers and the general media, which in turn could filter through to Europe’s wider population. —ICIS, 11 September 2018

The United States likely surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest crude oil producer earlier this year, based on preliminary estimates in EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). In February, U.S. crude oil production exceeded that of Saudi Arabia for the first time in more than two decades. In June and August, the United States surpassed Russia in crude oil production for the first time since February 1999. —U.S. Energy Information Administration, 12 September 2018

More than £1 billion was wiped off the value of one of Britain’s largest energy suppliers after it admitted its wind turbines ground to a halt during the summer heatwave. SSE, which supplies electricity to 3.8 million households, said profits would be far lower than expected after the warm, still weather dented output from its wind farms. —Daily Mail, 13 September 2018

Plans for a new nuclear power station in Cumbria are set to move closer to collapse next week, with the company developing the Moorside project expected to confirm that it is laying off the majority of its staff. —The Times, 8 September 2018

Nuclear engineer Andrew Dawson’s report Small Modular Nuclear: Crushed at birth criticises the government for effectively ending the development of small modular reactors in the UK. Published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Dawson claims that new funding for feasibility studies into a range of new nuclear technologies will “likely to be the end of the SMRs in the UK”. —New Civil Engineer, 11 September 2018

The government’s announcement last week of a funding package for feasibility studies into a range of modular nuclear reactors went largely unnoticed by the media. However, as a report published this week makes clear, the news actually represents a significant reversal of policy and one that achieves the remarkable feat of making the UK’s energy future look even bleaker than it does already. —The Spectator, 12 September 2018

The biggest and fastest energy transition in North America hasn’t been the addition of renewables, nor the pushing out of coal. It’s been the substitution of conventional natural gas with shale gas. —Peter Tertzakian, Financial Post, 12 September 2018