electricity

Last month the UK Government announced that it will be banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars in a bid to reduce the amount of pollution in cities across the country. The levels of harmful pollution in areas of London and other major cities is the cause of a large number of deaths every year.

The past decade has seen a dramatic change in the makeup of energy charges, shifting from a cost primarily made up of the wholesale price of electricity to a cost primarily made up of various third party charges. Not only do these third party charges keep increasing in size, more of them are being introduced. The most recent being the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) charge which has been introduced in an attempt to mitigate further damage to energy intensive businesses such as the recent collapse of the steel industry in the UK.

There were continued rises in the gas and electricity markets throughout May, which was supported by increasing oil and other commodity prices. Seasonal gas prices jumped 6.3% throughout the month and winter 16 gas prices rose by 6.9%. It is believed these increases were driven by much higher gas demand due to the UK energy mix being dominated by gas fired power stations.

The UK Government has said that they will be streamlining the energy tax landscape for businesses, which will include simplifying policy and regulation. When the Conservative Government was elected in 2015 they believed that the business energy tax landscape had become over complicated and had became a burden for businesses. Energy efficiency policy was also criticised with a number of schemes being very similar, using up a lot of administrative time within businesses.

For the western world, nuclear power has been around for decades, and in Europe the amount of planned new nuclear plants is in decline. France was once leading the way with nuclear power, but now even they are reducing their dependency on nuclear. Countries such as Italy and Spain have been forced by public opinion to abandon any plans to expand their nuclear industry and Germany will phases out nuclear completely by 2022, opting for renewable energy to fill in the gap.

Energy giant Scottish Power is planning on doubling its energy storage facilities because of a huge increase in demand due to renewable energy. As the amount of energy coming from renewables such as wind power increases, the demand for electricity storage also increases. This is due to wind turbines creating the same amount of electricity at night as they do during the day, however, electricity demand is much higher during the day.

A new study has revealed that electric vehicles (EV’s) will represent around 35% of new car sales around the world by 2040. This comes on the same day a separate report revealed that 80% of Londoners said they would consider going green.

A report by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has revealed that demand for electric vehicles has risen in the UK. The rise in demand is thought to be in the region of 50% with demand for plug-in hybrids also increasing.

An investment totalling £132 million pound has been made to improve the North West’s power lines, underground electrical system and substations. The investment has came over the past 12 months and will benefit almost 5 million electricity users from Merseyside to Cumbria.

The improvements to the network included a £20 million fund dedicated to improving overhead power lines and pylons, as well as a £3.7 million investment to cut down trees that could cause a risk to the power lines.

The UK’s only planned gas power station is now in doubt after it emerged that Carlton Power, the company who was awarded a government subsidy to build the plant, had failed to secure financial backing. The plant was due to be built in Trafford, Manchester and was due to start producing electricity for the UK in 2018, however that now looks in doubt.

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