Energy Policy

[GNEP]

Recently, for reasons I'd rather not go into just here and now, I've been doing a bit of research into UK energy policy, in particular with a view to writing a critique of the recent UK Energy Review (and for the whole pdf here). As I value your opinions here at MURC (no, honest I do!), I thought I'd see what people think.

Without getting too much into specifics, these are my current thoughts:
Energy policy needs to effectively address both the supply and the demand sides of the equation. Any particular policy direction, whether it be preferred sources of electricity generation, or incentives to change consumption profiles, needs to balance the following:

National Competitiveness
            /        \
          /           \
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Security-----------Environment

National Competitiveness effectively includes the economics of any particular issue, but also extends to things like developing a national expertise in a particular area and in future exporting that knowledge or manufactured items - for example, in the UK there is potential to invest in tidal power research, and to become the world leaders in any technology resulting. But as this is about policy (and not implementation - the hope is that given the right environment, business and "the market" would provide the exact solutions), National Competitiveness also means minimising inefficiencies, such as overly expensive and open-to-abuse planning permission procedures, and also adressing the problem of simply moving energy-intensive industry abroad and importing the finished goods as a "solution" to reducing energy use in the UK. Finally, togehter with Security, it is about having a stable long-term outlook so that optimal investment decisions are more likely to come about.

Security is not just about having an infrastructure resistant to potential terrorist threat; it is also about maintaining a balance of sources of energy across a portfolio of fuels, from a portfolio of locations. So if for example Russia decides to turn the pipes off, we still have gas here for the next few months at least. And if we suddenly find that wind turbines cause cancer, we don't have all our eggs in that basket.

Environment will mean different things to different people. It's about global climate change, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It's about keeping pollutants at ground level at acceptable levels for people. It's about keeping the countryside looking nice with lots of fluffy rabbits - and also not using land so intensively that aquifers drop from under us and we have fertiliser run-off in the surface rivers (in for example the growth of biofuels). But further than that, it's an acknowledgement of sustainabilty: fundamentally all our energy originally comes from the Great Big Fusion Reator in the Skyâ„¢ (ignoring momentarily deep geothermal and nuclear fission). Using fossil fuels to generate electricity in large centralised plants is using up in decades what took much longer to form. As they are such a convenient way of storing and transporting energy, why not concentrate on using them for that?

Anything related to overall policy, or to individual sources or uses of energy will generally satisfy one or two of the above three areas; as far as I can work out there is no silver bullet that balances all three and solves the conundrum.

I will extrapolate further with my thoughts as this thread develops (as I hope it will) - regarding overall strategy at a political level and also in response to individual technologies available, and the viability of various different elements of the energy debate. But I'll leave it at that for now so as not to kill of the thread before it's started...

What do you all think?

[lowlifecat]

what's the status of 'tidal' energy in the UK? how does it compair to other systems (if such exist) around the world?

[Brian Ellis]

I agree there is no silver bullet, whether it be for the UK, Cyprus, the USA or anywhere else. I've already addressed some of these problems in a series of essays at http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/

The important thing is to determine how politicians are guided and to make sure they don't go off at a tangent. We can see this happening in many countries; for example, the difference between George W's and Al Gore's views are pretty much diametrically opposed (IMHO, neither is anywhere near holding the silver bullet; perhaps the latter would be better served shooting the pair of them ). Unfortunately, politicians have a nasty habit of thinking that if they say something, they are right, especially when they know nothing of extremely vast and complex subjects and are disinformed by vested interests. As an example, the petroleum and gas suppliers would have us believe that natural gas causes less climate changing greenhouse gas emissions than any other fossil fuel. This is a lie; it is certainly worse than petroleum products and is very probably worse than coal, in most cases. However, I wouldn't mind betting that 99%++ of the population believes that using NG is great for the environment, because Shell, BP etc. tell you so in their TV ads.

I could go on for ever but dinner is ready I'll come back tomorrow with some further thoughts.

[GNEP]

Tidal energy is currently at prototype phase only in the UK, although I believe that the one system at the moment being tested is (a) expensive and (b) being tried in Portugal, not the UK. Can't find the specific scheme I'm thinking of, but here is a useful summary of the state of the technology: http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/ctmarine .

There is a large scale tidal barrage in France, built many years ago. The obvious place to build a similar barrage in the UK would be across the Severn esturary; this would be a major capital project, and would massively change the local ecosystem.

The potential for the UK to use tidal (and wave) power is amongst the highest in Europe - IIRC estimates of around 10% to 20% of total generating capacity have been floated around (excuse the pun). However whilst largely predictable (twice a day, every day, on the ebb and the flow...), it requires supplementary generating capacity, or the ability to store the energy on a large scale for use when needed. Energy storage is an area I may extapolate further if there is the desire

[GNEP]

Thanks Brian, I really appreciate your insights (and wait for Doc M to give the other side ) - I've read some of your essays before but will go over them again.

Most of you know that my background is with Shell, but believe it or not that doesn't mean I'm biased (or at least I try not to be). I have obviously consulted with them, amongst others, as I have some pretty useful contacts there and plenty of owed favours...

Regarding politicians - again without wanting to go into too much detail on what/who I am doing this for, I'm dealing directly with them at the moment. In person, often quite reasonable and intelligent, but in public I've been quite shocked as to the degree to which the media is actually one and the same system over here as the "official" parliamentary process (call me naive if you will!). Anyway, I digress...

[Dr Mordrid]

Won't bite on Brians bait to interject US politics into the discussion, other than to agree that AlGore needs to be on the next interplanetary flight off this rock

I'd say that a mix is of course necessary, but we have to be careful not to go for 'pie in the sky' solutions like wind. Yes, it works...but only in a select few locations. In much of world it's as useless as teats on a boar hog. Tidal power is in a similar situation plus its in a rather early stage of development with many competing schemes fighting over research & development resources. Not very conducive to decision making.

In the US we need to get over our anti-nuke paranoia and thank God GW has been at the foretront of at least trying to change the current stacked-against-nuclear regulatory environment.

We also have to get over NIMBY: not in my back yard. It's quite entertaining to hear politicians like Sen. Kennedy go all green over projects in the west but when someone wants to build windmills many miles off his beach property Hyannis Port it's a whole other story

What I'm curious about are the recent grants from the Energy Dept. to sequence the DNA of 6 strains of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae; Cyanothece 54112) with an eye towards efficient, and rapid, alcohol production. Why sequence six? The strains; two from Taiwan, one from India and three others from the deep ocean are related but each one comes from a different environments and might metabolize differently.

http://www.sysbio.wustl.edu/pakrasi/projects.php

[az]

Regarding environmental and national competetiveness issues, we have heavy subsidies for wind and solar power, with the result that Germany is among the world leaders at least for wind energy (not only current, but also windmills produced and technology for that). I think this was a wise move, even if it costs a lot in the short-term.

Decentralizing power generation (to a degree) can make the grid more stable and robust, and cogeneration plants use fuels much better than conventional plants.

Nuclear energy should be reviewed fairly, which is quite hard to do with all the lobbying: It is relatively environmentally friendly, as long as the plants work properly. But how high are the risks of catastrophic (or less dramatic) failure? Not as low as some would want one to believe, as recent failures in Europe have shown - although I wouldn't listen to crazy "environmentalists" (in quotes because they really aren't) either, who are just against it out of some diffuse fear of "the Atom". I know too little about this to allow myself a position - and I think many people should just follow my example

One very important part of energy policy isn't on the generation side, though. Much can be done to reduce usage - more efficient lighting, computers, heating; better insulation etc.

[Dr Mordrid]

Safety isn't such an issue with the new PBMR design: pebble bed modular reactor. Even if all the gas coolant (frequently helium) is released the core won't melt down. The design actually produces less power when the temperature rises too high, quickly reaching a state of equilibrium at no more than ~1100C. The 'modular' part refers to using several small PBM reactors in a large power plant, increasing reliability of supply and the investment can be gradual; adding cores as the need arises. Individual modules can also be mass produced because of the simplicity of the design.

While PBMR does have failure modes none are anywhere near as dramatic as other designs.

Basic core layout & pebbles a bit smaller than a tennis ball;



440,000 "pebbles" in a cylinder 58 particle diameters across
Dark = control pebbles; light = power pebbles
Graphite/carbide shell provides each microsphere its own containment.
As pebbles are removed from the bottom, they are replaced with new ones from above
About 350 pebbles discarded daily
Average pebble cycles through the core 15 times
Fuel-handling is the most intensive operation in the power plant

[KvHagedorn]

With the idea that oil and gas and coal are all finite sources of energy, sustainability needs to be given a lot more weight in your little matrix. As Brian says, burning fossil fuels puts all sorts of nasty unwanted crap into the environment, so a planet of billions all doing so just won't do. We see bad enough things happening from that already. The biggest mess we will face is the industialization of China and India, as well as any other hugely populous nations like Indonesia. If all these people start driving SUVs, we can just hang it up, because we are done for. There isn't enough oil to last long that way, and demand would put prices high and make a lot of rich Arabs (who want to fund Wahabbist schools of jihad) even richer.

If we just let capitalism decide, the fossil fuels will win the day and we will all be in extremely bad shape down the road. The government is woefuly inept, though, so much hands-off there is needed. Let's say tax incentives going in the right direction, like az says Germany has done, and see if that does the trick. Wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal are as ideal as we could hope for in the near term.. the least green thing about these forms of energy is the batteries needed to store their output during off hours, so better and cleaner battery technology would be something good to work on. Tidal and wave-action perhaps should be looked at as hydroelectric, except that the flow can be in any direction, so generation is much more complex. One idea I've always had for fat westerners who need more exercise is to have exercise equipment hooked up to a generator in the home. Very elegant solution there.

Nuclear might be a wonderful source for the 99% of the time everything is going right, but we are still dealing with high concentrations of extremely volatile stuff here. There is also a neccessary centralization of the grid with nuclear. Therefore there is the potential for terrorism, as really there is with any centralized plant. In areas of high population concentration, however, this might be the only choice.

Ideally, this planet would be only so populated in the right areas that the sustainable sources would suffice. It would actually be nice if there were just a few thousand people living along waterways with water wheels running everything.

[Dr Mordrid]

PBMR can work either way; centralized or localized. You could have one pebble bed core per 135 MW power utilization zone or one plant with 10-20 pebble beds feeding a whole region. Pick one.

The risks could be argued either way, but IMO it's easier to defend a large centralized facility than dozens of local facilities spread around the countryside.

For one you can put a huge exclusion zone around a large facility outside a metropolitan area. You can wall it up like a prison and protect it any way you want; anti-aircraft missiles, anti-personnel devices etc. Imagine trying to do that with dozens of localized facilities.

PBMR's use gas cooling and not water cooling. As such they are also more easily secured than reactors placed on a shoreline in order to get that water. No shoreline = no stealthy access by water at night.

Air security is a wash for large plants in either remote of shoreline locales, but can you imagine providing air security for dozens of localized power plants scattered here and there? No thanks.

[az]

Of course, as KvH said, with regenerative power we have the issue of storage. Pumped-Storage hydroelectric plants can store a lot of energy relatively efficiently (70-80%, though you have to factor in losses in transport to and from, etc.), and compressed air energy storage plants are being tested. The problem with the former is the huge amounts of land they eat up (and destruction of the environment there), while the latter need suitable caverns, but use very little space over the ground.

Theoretically, we could just solar power the whole planet and just conduct the electricity from the day side to the night side all the time

[Dr Mordrid]

Get those solar cells over 70% efficiency and it might be useful, but then you have places like Seattle where a 90% efficient solar cell is still pretty much useless

[KRSESQ]

Don't neglect recycling in your effort. Most of you probably already know I'm a pretty enthusiastic proponent of Thermal Conversion to eliminate the need for landfills, provide better community and agricultural sewage management, and provide new much needed sources for common fuels and industrial chemicals that don't involve new oil exploration. Of course, this doesn't address the greenhouse gas problem, but in balance with other energy production technologies (including nuclear) it holds a LOT of promise.

I know some of you have derided the process as "pie in the sky." That doesn't alter the fact that thermal conversion is proving sufficiently cost effective in waste management that pilot plants are springing up all over the world.

Kevin

[KRSESQ]

Okay, skimmed through the pdf and saw the (brief!) blub on energy from waste, but it seemed to be solely concerned with waste incineration as a means of producing electrical energy. Obviously this is a non-starter, as there are much more productive ways to address the problem (see above).

Kevin

[GNEP]

Thanks guys, really interesting stuff, and certainly helping me to crystalise my thoughts. I'll try and add my limited insight into the various new issues brought up. First nuclear, then I'll pick up on others in subseqeunt posts.

Nuclear. Always going to be more of a "heart" issue than a "head" issue. You can do study after study showing the pro- or anti- side perfectly logically and well backed-up with facts and figures, but politically those will not get a decision made either way. The electorate are either going to stay the way they are until a long, sustained and uni-directional PR offensive has been made. And at the moment the balance may well be anti, meaning if any new plants are going to be built in the UK, it's further away than the pro-lobbyists say that it could happen from any other standpoint.

However, with my logical mind, I'm still not convinced either way. Probably on balance against. The best overview of the various studies I found is coming from MIT. If you read this, I strongly recommend that you ignore completely both the press release and the exectutive summary and go straight into the main report, as what is said therein seems to bear no relation at all to the aforementioned parts...

But what I took from this and other, wider, reading is that for new-build nuclear power to succeed, there remain four critical problems: cost, safety, waste and proliferation.

• In costing a new plant, it would appear that the generally accepted methodology is to first decide what conclusion you want to draw, and then modify your inputs to suit. For example, the UK Energy Review uses as one of its benchmarks the reactor currently being built in Finland; what is not mentioned is that it is finananced with 100% debt at a 5% real interest rate, and will pay no income taxes. Not quite the same as "leaving it to the private sector." Not enough generation III or IV plants have been built yet to prove the costings one way or another, and I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with the UK being a pioneer in this area, given our history with the last Sizewell and large civil engineering projects in general... Having said that, once one starts putting a large enough value on emissions, the economics only tend towards the more favorable, even including the emissions cost of building the thing (which 99% of studies would seem to ignore).
• Safety is an interesting one. With regards to possible attacks on the national infrastructure, I would actually disagree with Doc M here, and say that distributed generation is in fact least prone to failure - one element might fail with a relatively high probability, but a negligable amount of your generating capacity is lost. Large, centralised generation might be much much less likely to fail, but if an element does then you are in much more serious trouble. Looking at potential accidents, we are talking here about a very very low probability of a very problematic event. There are, IIRC, statistical techniques for dealing with this sort of thing, but I'm not sure what conclusions they'd draw. In the end this is the one part that is particularly "heart" and not "head."
• Waste. I'm not sure what we should do with it, and I don't think anyone else is yet either. And we're only just about to start on a round of decomissioning, so there are big unknowns there as well. Too many unknowns for my liking in fact. At least once running, gaseous emissions are nice and low (one would hope).
• Proliferation. Hot topic, and I have seen it argued that the only real reason for having nuclear power is to provide a source of weapons-grade plutonium or whatever they use. Not sure that I necessarily agree with this, but certainly any large-scale expansion of the current global nuclear generation capacity would mean there was a lot more of it about. Finally I'll add it here, as it probably fits best, but fission fuel is by no means a limitless resource that is "sustainable" in any real sense of the word. Not sure how much is left that is easily accessible, but the number of decades would obviously reduce were we to increase our reliance on nuclear generation.

So overall? Meh, I'm not sure. Politically, if I was trying to appeal to one set of voters, I'd probably say, "Never" to nuclear. If I was trying to appeal to another set of voters, I'd probably say "Only as a last resort." And if I'd had a load of money donated by the pro-nuclear lobby, I'd probably say "We'll give all the help we can to the private sector to get planning permission for new plants, (but after that they have to bear all the costs and risks themselves, without subsidy)."

Interesting little tidbit, and I'm too young to have any feeling for its veracity: one of the people I've seen claimed that the only reason that France has its nuclear is that when public opinion in the US shifted against new plant, there was a lot of spare capacity in the system to build new generators, and they "did a deal" with the US. Anyone remember the situation back then? Is this fair to say?