However, really it’s more complex than any of these views suggest (the academic view!) It is not clear how much shale gas there is, or how much it will cost, or whether we will need a lot of backup for wind beyond what exist, given a bit of replacement of old plants. After all there is storage, smart grid DSM, imports via interconnectors. If we ignore or limit all these, then yes we may need more CCGT and more gas at some point, but not for a while- after 2030 maybe. We would also need more CCGT if we opted for wind –to-gas, i,e. hydrogen production from excess wind, but again not maybe until after 2030.
Then
again all this sits in a wider frame of the debate over electricity v gas. DECC seems to want is to phase
out most of the use of gas for heating, replacing it with (excess) electricity
from wind and nuclear, powering heat pumps. You can see why the gas lobby may want to fight back and call for more electricity
from gas. Some greens would
also like to see ‘green gas’ being
the main distribution vector, not electricity - since it can be stored, and the
gas main already transmits four times more energy than the power grid, with lower loses. They would also like to see heat
being piped around from biomass fired CHP plants
Ah,
but then we come to the reality check (the pessimists view). There may not be
enough green gas around to do much of this, given land use and cost
constraints, and renewables may not expand enough to matter much. Nuclear
neither. So, as old coal and gas
and nuclear plants close, we will need some new gas plants and shale gas to run
them.
More
positively (the optimists view) all these problems could be resolved if we just
accelerated renewables, CHP/DH and energy efficiency. Wind, wave and tidal can
provide most of the power. Biomass, geothermal and solar fired CHP/DH, with
backup heat stores, can help balance variable wind and replace gas for heating.
Efficiency and smart grids can tame (and retime) demand. And to top up we have
wind to gas and supergrid imports. The only issue then is can we move fast
enough. But that still leave open the question of how many CCGT we would need!. Maybe not a lot. Unless you
want them for insurance-, and to leave shale gas where it is, as a strategic
reserve!
You
could argue that if Carbon Capture and Storage was ready then maybe we could think about more gas and even
shale gas, but it does not look very likely for some while. The UK first attempt at finding a
competitor for its £1bn CCS prize failed miserably. It ‘s now having a second
go. European plans for CCS have also been much delayed and, if
they do finally get going on a significant scale, will require a network of
22,000 kilometres of CO2-pipelines to be built across Europe, to transport 1200
million tons of CO2 per year by 2050, at a cost of €50 billion. This is
conclusion of an international consortium of companies and research
institutions, CO2Europipe,
Nevertheless it if often claimed that that without
CCS, fighting climate change will be much harder . James Smith, chair of the
Carbon Trust and former chair of Shell UK, wrote in the Guardian (17th
Dec) that, around the world, ‘like
it or not, relatively cheap coal and gas will be the major fuels for the next
few decades in generating electricity. Unless CCS is used to stop the resultant
carbon dioxide getting into the atmosphere, man-made climate change cannot be
contained’.
However, Brad Page from the Global Carbon
Capture and Storage Institute says
that it’s unlikely there will be 130 in CCS projects in operation globally by
2020, the number his organisation. But there might be some: ‘ I think you’ll
see by 2015 16 plants’ and ‘ we’re probably on
track for 20 by 2020’.
According
to Vaclav Smil ‘To sequester just 25% of carbon dioxide emitted in 2005 by
large stationary sources of the gas (9.6 G cu m at the supercritical
density of 0.468 g cu cm), we would have to create a system whose
annual throughput (by volume) would be slightly more than twice that of the
world's crude-oil industry, an undertaking that would take many decades to
accomplish.’ (Nature 453,
154 8 May 2008)
Should we really bother? Why not get
stuck into the renewables and energy efficiency?
It is true that, despite having the best
wind, wave and tidal resources by far in the EU, we are lamentably behind in
developing them. While the leaders are at 30 and 40% (of total energy coming from renewables) we are at about 4%,
only just beating Malta and Luxembourg.
See www.eurobserv-er.org/pdf/press/year_2012/RES/English.pdf
It’s embarrassing and shameful. But if the government doesn’t want to, then maybe we had better do it
ourselves. That is what is helping push to government on in Germany; they are
now 600 local energy co-ops there. We could do the same. Last year’s report
‘Co-operative Energy in the UK’ written by Rebecca Willis and Jenny Willis
provides some inspiring UK case studies, http://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/renewableenergy_0_0.pdf
Also
see the ‘Community Energy:
Manifesto for a Community Energy Revolution’ at http://www.co-operative.coop/Corporate/CSR/downloads/community_energy_manifesto_2012_the_co-operative.pdf
And
'Community Energy in the UK' by Seyfang, Park and Smith (2012) http://www.3s.uea.ac.uk/publications/community-energy-uk
Also The Rough Guide to Community
Energy
http://www.roughguide.to/communityenergy/
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