{"id":3836,"date":"2013-05-16T08:34:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T07:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=3836"},"modified":"2013-05-16T08:34:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T07:34:51","slug":"a-trilemma-we-all-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/05\/16\/a-trilemma-we-all-share\/","title":{"rendered":"A trilemma we all share"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I listened to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npower.com\/home\/about-npower\">nPower<\/a>'s Paul Bowtell the other day at a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wiltshirewildlife.org\/Support-us\/Corporate-Green-Awards-2013\">Wildlife Trust<\/a> Corporate Green Awards breakfast. \u00a0He talked about the company's \"trilemma\" of<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333399\">Moving to a low carbon economy<br \/>\nMaintain a secure supply<br \/>\nKeeping energy affordable<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... all at the same time. \u00a0If this were a circle, it would certainly be hard to square. \u00a0But's that's just what we're all trying to do. \u00a0Actually, he might have said that nPower was <em>learning<\/em> how to<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333399\">move to a low carbon economy<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #333399\">maintain a secure supply<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #333399\">keep energy affordable<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">... but he didn't. \u00a0 It doesn't seem to cynical to think that it's the last of these that will prove the weakest leg of this stool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Bowtell also talked at length about nPower's Tilbury power station that has been converted to burn biomass. \u00a0He talked about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rwe.com\/web\/cms\/en\/1295424\/rwe-npower\/about-us\/our-businesses\/power-generation\/tilbury\/tilbury-biomass-conversion\/\">fire<\/a> that erupted as they learned how to manage the place, but didn't mention that the driving force for this shift comes, not for some company zeal for renewables, but from the EU tax-payers' generosity \u2013 not that we had much say in the matter, of course. \u00a0nPower (actually, the German <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rwe.com\/web\/cms\/en\/97798\/rwe-npower\">RWE<\/a>) <\/span>gets\u00a0\u00a345 per megawatt hour on top of what it sells its biomass electricity for. \u00a0 The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/leaders\/21575759-europes-wood-subsidies-show-folly-focusing-green-policy-renewables-bonfire\">Economist<\/a> gives further details of this policy which seems beyond financial sense in a piece it called\u00a0<em>Bonfire of the Subsidies.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I listened to nPower's Paul Bowtell the other day at a Wildlife Trust Corporate Green Awards breakfast. \u00a0He talked about the company's \"trilemma\" of Moving to a low carbon economy Maintain a secure supply Keeping energy affordable ... all at...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}