Is the Oil Price Fall a Good Thing?

Glass half full or half empty? Probably a bit of both - as one of my wine suppliers put it > either way there's room for more wine!

There are two main drivers for the slump in price: on the supply side non-OPEC producers (principally the US and Canada) have sharply increase production (think fracking); on the demand side there is economic weakness in many developed nations (Europe, Japan, China).

The supply side factor is probably the dominant one so there's reason not to read the falling price as indicating catastrophic demand shrinkage as a result of economic woes. Indeed Christine Lagarde recently suggested that the oil price weakness could add 0.8% to GDP growth for many advanced economies.

All in all what we are seeing is a transfer of wealth from oil producers to oil consumers.

Of course, none of this helps the greening of our energy supply.

"Giant Battery"

Great to see another energy storage facility actually kick off. I've blogged a few times on the critical need for bulk storage as back-up for intermittent sources and now there is to be a new one actually linked into the network. The Edie report doesn't say anything about the storage technology being utilised but judging from the project application form it's relatively standard litium-ion batteries that will be used. So I guess that really the only innovation is the size. 'Tis one to watch.

Climate Change - a Threat Multiplier

That's the claim of Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti as reported by Building for Change. And it's difficult to argue with - climate change is likely to increase the incidence of humanitarian crises exacerbating the likelihood of conflict (think water wars, for instance). Of course, we also have our own internal multpliers - daft politicians who blunder into stupid, ill-thought out and unwinnable wars in the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Domestic Concentrated Solar

I've recently come across this site advertising a domestic scale concentrated solar hot water system. There's a suggestion that this is the first domestic concentrated solar system on the (US) market. The suppliers claim the increased efficiency over flat plate or evacuated tube systems gives payback up to 3 years earlier, under US conditions. I'm not sure exactly what their methodology is, and I have no desire to do any number crunching myself. However, I have one comment: our own flat plate system is more than adequate for our needs so a more efficient system would only produce our requirements more quickly which makes me think that in our case, if we were trying to choose a system right now, the deciding factor would be capital cost.

In Praise of Radio 3

In last weekend's Sunday Times Culture section there is an excellent article on Radio 3 by Bryan Appleyard. I sometimes find myself taking exception to Appleyard's writings but in this case he's pretty much spot on. The target, in general terms, is the dumming down of broadcasting and the transmission of cultural content driven by the populist stance of philistinic politicians and "managers".  Two of the former singled out by Appleyard are Ed Vaizey (a Classic FM listener) and Tom Watson ("Radio 3...is becoming a niche station"). As Appleyard pithily points out, Radio 3 was established by the Attlee government (as "The Third Programme") in the conviction that nothing was too good for the working man. If anything it is Classic FM - a purveyor of "these you have loved" and not much more - that is the niche station. Radio 3 is much, much more. I won't steal any more of Appleyard's essay - just urge you to read it.