Local residents will be able to block all future onshore wind farms under new measures to be fast-tracked into law, the new energy secretary has announced. “It will mean no more onshore wind farm subsidies and no more onshore wind farms without local community support.” In an interview with The Sunday Times Amber Rudd also said the Tory government would kick-start a shale gas revolution and loosen rules so it could be extracted from under national parks. –Tim Shipman, The Sunday Times, 17 May 2015
The European Union is increasing pressure on Washington to include an energy chapter in a planned trans-Atlantic trade deal that would allow U.S. exports of natural gas and oil and reduce the bloc’s dependency on Russia. The U.S. has so far resisted an energy chapter in TTIP, but the shale-gas boom in the U.S. and the EU’s trouble with Russia have pushed the issue into focus. –Gabriele Steinhauser, The Wall Street Journal, 18 May 2015
The Indian Government today said investments worth $ 250 billion are planned over the next five years in coal, power and renewable energy and it is looking at opening 40-50 new coal mines in 18 months. “The Power, Coal and Renewable energy sectors have plans to invest nearly USD 250 billion in the next five years…. In the coal sector we are looking at opening nearly 40-50 new mines in the next one and half year,” Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said at a seminar here. —Press Trust of India, 13 May 2015
China and India have issued a rare joint statement, demanding to know when the $100 billion green money they were promised [by President Obama] is going to be delivered. –Eric Worrall, Watts Up With That, 16 May 2015
Of course, divestment represents an admission that fossil fuels are not going to run out, as was commonly believed until the shale bonanza began. The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, seems sympathetic to the argument that climate change policies will soon make fossil fuels unburnable and that oil reserves may become “stranded assets”. So sell your BP shares before the company’s raison d’etre vanishes in a puff of non-smoke. It’s all mad. Divestment won’t work, is unethical, hypocritical, aimed at the wrong target and based on flawed premises. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 18 May 2015
