Energy Policy

[GNEP]

Generally, if you are interested in what technologies are available, there is a fascinating document published by the IEA in response to the Gleneagles G8 meeting in 2005 - "Energy Technology Perspectives: Scenarios & Strategies to 2050". If you can get hold of a copy, I can thoroughly recommend it as a good overview with decent detail (it's just under 500 pages long). Unfortunately I don't think it's available for free on the interweb. I would've really liked a hardcopy, but only managed to get it as a pdf in the end...

Doc's aside about the sequencing of cyanobacteria is actually very interesting, and couples nicely with "second generation" biofuels, often referred to as lignocellulosic ethanol. Still at the research stages, but with a lot of longer-term potential, especially if one co-produces ethanol, electricity and other products in a "biorefinery". It's certainly not the magic bullet, but in terms of piggy-backing existing transport infrastructure it makes sense, and avoids some of the total-lifecycle and agriculure-intensive worries around first-generation biofuels. Not something I know an awful lot about to be honest, so need to do a bit of reading I think.

DNA sequencing in fuel crops and bacteria, according to one source I have, is to do with an interesting development from the whole GM debate we had a couple of years back. Basically, what they are doing is mapping the genes and functions, and then off the basis of this knowledge to do accelerated selective breeding. Kind of Gregor Mendel on speed - GM without the objections

[az]

What Kevin said is very interesting, and is actually somethign I wanted to mention. This is tied in with decentralization, as smaller communities could build biowaste cogeneration plants to help generate their energy.

Very very small cogeneration plants (for powering and heating individual houses) are also being thought of, but I know too little about this.

One very very important part of energy policy though is network policy. You have to establish a system of buying and selling energy (subsidizing regenerative energy - in germany, power companies have to buy energy from photovoltaic panels installed on private houses at a fixed, quite high price) and there must be a way for customers to choose who they buy their energy from (in reality, of course my electricity comes from a plant in Berlin, but what I pay could for instance go to another firm producing wind energy, who buy my electricity from Vattenfall, who own the plants in Berlin - so I get virtual windmill energy. The energy I get isn't made from windmills, but the amount of energy I consume gets produced by windmills somewhere and put into the grid. Was that clear? I'm pretty tired.).

[GNEP]

Decentralisation of power generation and combined heat and power: I'm glad Az and Kevin brought this up (edit: and Az, yes that was clear to me at least about you not buying the precise electrons that a windmill separated from their atoms ). A lot of potential there, and I think that microgeneration fits well with a management of perceptions to energy use. If people see more directly what it takes to let them have the house hot enough to wear a T-shirt in winter, then good Also if you've got the natural gas infrastructure in place, then it makes sense to make use of it in order to use the spare heat resulting from electricity generation. As far as I can tell, overall thermal efficiency is now at a level comparable to central generation of electicity. I think it was Tony that linked to this the other day. (Bizarrely way back when I did my A-Levels one of my physics research projects was on the stirling cycle heat pump/external combustion engine ) I'm all for generation from waste combustion and landfill gas, but this time I don't think they're big enough to be that magic silver bullet...

Fundamentally shifting towards a distributed model brings with it its own problems - you are less easily able to cope with the non-demand-driven generation such as wind and solar. Or at least you are until a way of storing energy is available. As I see it, currently these are the main contenders for energy storage:

• pumped hyrdo
• compressed air (usually in salt caverns)
• hyrdrogen
• synthesised gas/other hyrdrocarbons (eg the bioethanol mentioned above)
• flywheels
• batteries

Any more I've missed? All of these are of course applicable for different uses and on different scales, but with differing overall efficiencies and costs, and lifetimes and problems. If there was a magic bullet that could capture the output of a wind turbine in a hard pellet with 100% efficiency, in a way totally benign to the environment that then allowed me to run a car or TV or to heat my house by releasing that energy kinetically, thermally or electrically with 100% efficiency, my job would be a lot easier The lack of a decent storage and transportation option for sustainably captured energy is a real blocker unfortunately (and yes, I could live without that 100% efficiency at both ends). And something that the IEA book and the UK Energy Review completely fails to acknowledge as far as I can see.

What is mentioned is gas storage. As the UK moves from importing 20% or so of its gas to importing >80% within the next couple of decades, we will need more gas storage to both give us security from interruption of supply, and the ability to manage seasonal variation better (if we ever annoy the Norweigans, we are screwed!). Currently the government is persuing a laissez-faire approach to new gas storage, and relying on the interconnectors with the continent for the rest. Problem here is that the interconnectors work fine in theory, if the gas markets at both ends are fully liberalised. But they're not (on balance the UK side is probably "freer" than the continental ends), so even when the pricing differential is relatively large, gas won't necessarily flow.

So we need more storage. At the moment we have only Rough, in the North Sea (2800mcm) and Humberley (sometimes Humbly) Grove (280mcm - just open). Annual gas consumption is around 95-100 bcm. Currently there has been planning permission granted for a further 1,655 mcm, and proposals (no permission yet) for a further 3,645mcm - split roughly 50/50 between salt caverns and onshore small ex-oil/gas fields around the country. Good, and nice and close to final usage, but IMO nowhere near enough. Other countries (France, Italy, Germany, USA) typically have gas storage at around 20% of annual consumption. Moving from 3% to less than 9% is worrying in its lack of ambition. I like the free-market approach personally, but here is an obvious example of something of "strategic importance" need an extra kick. Or am I missing something?

[Sasq]

too early in the morning here for exact details.
We can now buy fuel cells for our homes, the left over heat from heating up our hot water is converted into electricity and fed back into the grid (or used to power the toaster etc).

Not hugely efficient, but, its at least putting waste exhaust gas to more use then it was before.

[Brian Ellis]

Far too many points here to give detailed replies. The crux is that we have to change our mindset from fossil fuels ad lib to:
a) Conservation: a recent study has shown that the UK wastes more energy than any other European country. As a start, forbid the sale of tungsten light bulbs for general space lighting.
b) Mixed sources: wind. tide, wave, solar, waste, nuclear: not one will do. The silver bullet is in diversification.
c) Security: if I were a terrorist, I could bring the UK to its knees with just four or five well placed car bombs. I would not tackle power stations of any kind (nuke ones are far too difficult, anyway, because of the reactor containment). I would tackle the major grid nodes. A simultaneous attack would not only cut electricity off over the whole nation, but would damage the alternators, as they could not be shut down fast enough. Without electricity, no fuel pumps, no natural gas, no water pumps, there would be total anarchy overnight. Furthermore, even if there were a reserve of the vital equipment, it would be impossible to transport it to the key places.
d) Waste: as part of the formula of mixing energy sources, any city agglomeration with a population of about 100,000 or more can profitably incinerate household garbage to generate 9-10% of the agglomeration's electricity needs at no extra transport expense (often reduced). The fuel is in regular supply. It has another advantage: it reduces landfill needs by 80-90% and the landfills are hygienic (rats can't live on clinker and ash). This is done in many cities already, but it does require sophisticated flue gas treatment. The latest opened last month in Lausanne (http://www.tridel.ch/ in French) at a cost of ~$300 M to serve most of the Canton of Vaud (pop. 660,000). It runs at an overall efficiency of 47%, higher than most other thermal power stations. It replaces the old waste power station of Vallon which has served the region over the last 40 years and was one of the pioneers of the technology. This is a must for all populous regions.
e) pumped hydro storage: there are few viable places left where this could be implemented.
f) compressed air storage: far too inefficient (electricity inut ratio ~2.5:1) because of the energy losses in adiabatic compression
g) battery storage: impossible on a large scale, very costly
h) hydrogen: overall efficiency very poor; fuel cells too expensive and impossible to manufacture in sufficiently large quantities (not enough platinum in the world)
i) flywheels: energy storage for 5-10 minutes OK. Could be used for when a sudden, unforecast, drop of wind energy occurs, allowing gas turbines to be started.
j) transport: the only short to medium term solution for private cars are very small diesel cars with ultra-efficient engines and Prius-style hybrids: these could cut fuel consumption by a good half and reduce noxious emissions by even more.
k) NIMBY factor: this is a big problem, especially for nuclear waste, even though we have the technology to ensure maximal safety. This is an emotional subject and applies to all energy generation and nuclear and non-nuclear waste disposal. Just to show how emotional and unscientific this is, Switzerland's nuclear waste disposal site is 800 metres down in an impermeable and geologically stable stratum, underneath a wine-growing region. The wine-growers are afraid no one will buy their wine because it will be radioactive! There is no proving to them that it will make no difference. Governments should have the right to overrule irrational opposition and a rapid procedural mechanism must be set up to allow this to be judged by an independent organisation. Of course, eco-political NGOs love to foment emotional opposition and this must also be recognised.

Just a couple of cents worth to be going on with.

[GNEP]

Cheers Brian. Will come back to some of those points, but just thought I'd raise one interesting suggestion that someone brought up: if there is large-scale uptake of hybrid cars, then effectively that is providing for us a large distributed generating and storage capacity if they are plugged into the grid when not in use. Not something I'd thought of to be honest, but if the capacity is there anyway, well why not?

[Brian Ellis]

I forgot to add:
l. Nuclear fuel supplies: it is true that easily accessible uranium ores are limited to less than a century's supply at the present rate of consumption. This is mainly because none of the spent nuclear fuel in the USA is recycled, like it is in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Once-through fuel is not only wasteful, it produces a lot of very highly radioactive waste which is more difficult to handle and store. With the MOX process, 96% of the spent fuel is recycled for reuse and the 4% left is only medium waste. If all reactors worldwide were replaced with MOX reactors, we would have enough uranium to see us through a long time, even if we tripled the number of reactors. In addition, there are very large quantities of lower grade uranium ore that could be exploited if the price rose to $100-200/kg, with almost no impact on electricity prices (the cost of the uranium is a minute part of the cost of running a power station). On top of this, there are trillions of tonnes of uranium in the oceans. We don't have the technology to extract this, yet, but the Japanese have developed an experimental static system of nets made from a special plastic that adsorbs (not absorbs) very heavy metals from seawater. They have, so far, extracted about 1 kg of uranium on a small scale (plus several kg of other valuable metals such as molybdenum). They estimate that, on a large scale, uranium extraction would cost ~$300/kg, which would still be acceptable if there were no more readily mined ore. It's called fishin' for fission! Then there is thorium, three times more abundant (and cheaper) than uranium and easily mined. It is easily transmuted to uranium-233 by slow neutron bombardment. Finally, a few fast breeder reactors produce up to 200 times the amount of fissile materials than they consume. Quite frankly, I guess we have foreseeable supplies of fissile metals for at least a millennium by which time there should be no need for fission.

[az]

I've thought about electric cars being used as distributed energy storage, but this process would probably be quite inefficient - generator use even more so, and who would really want whole streets of cars stinking up the air to generate electricity?