Green energy balancing: impacts and reactions

Renewable energy sources are variable, and ways have to be found to compensate for that. Fortunately there are many, as my new book ‘Balancing Green Power: how to deal with variable energy,’ tries to show. While no single grid balancing option will be sufficient on its own, it suggests that, taken together, in an integrated and widely interconnected approach, using a range of renewable sources, including the non-variable options, effective balancing should be possible. Certainly the range of approaches is quite large, including energy storage, flexible backup plants, smart grid demand response and supergrid imports and exports.

However, some may have problems. For example, in relation to balancing of local surpluses and shortfalls across wide areas by interconnectors, it remains unclear how much excess output will be available when needed for trade. Much will depend on prices and market structures, as well on which renewables are developed and where they are located. Perversely, if supergrids spread, countries may be tempted to reduce their renewable over-capacity, and so have less to trade. It is also likely that there will be large surpluses in the summer, when demand is less and solar at a maximum, during which time few trades will be viable or needed, with some of the renewable capacity being left idle.  Storage capacity will also be unused then, unless it is inter-seasonal storage, and not much of that may exist. 

Given that renewable capacity may have to be set higher than would otherwise be needed to meet demand, there will also be surplus production at other times, for example when wind output is high and demand low. As critics have pointed out, in some scenarios, assuming extensive renewable expansion, the surplus can be quite large and would be very wasteful.  However, this misses the point that, not only can some curtailment be avoided by supergrid exports, some of the excess can be stored directly, or converted into valuable storable fuels, for later use, possibly in other sectors e.g. heating and transport. 

In addition to technical and economic issues like these, which I look at in detail, there is also the question of social and environmental impacts. Given that the aim of balancing is to aid the development and use of clean, green energy systems, it is fortunate that most of the balancing systems looked at in the book seem to be environmentally unproblematic, with perhaps the exception of pumped hydro storage. Some environmentalists have opposed large hydro projects, though that has mainly concerned major new projects in remote areas that might not be suited to pumped storage. Much of the current development work concerns modifying and perhaps linking up existing, often smaller, hydro projects, so that they can operate in pumped storage mode, although some new medium-scale systems are also being developed. 

Some energy storage systems involve the use of toxic materials (e.g. in batteries), but non-toxic versions are being developed. Hydrogen storage and transmission also has risks, but so does the storage and transmission of most fuels, with hydrogen arguably being one of the less risky options: it is lighter than air and so disperses easily. Supergrid links may be invasive, but there are options for overlaying them with existing grids, or putting some sections underground. That is easier with HVDC than with conventional DC grids since, as the energy losses in transmission are lower, there is less heat to dissipate, although going underground would still add to the cost. 

The use of biomass, as a firm source of energy, and for production of biogas as a possible energy storage medium, opens up some environmental issues. Some environmentalist oppose the use of biomass for energy production on the basis of land-use and ecological impacts: it depletes a crucial carbon sink, reduces the area available for food production and can undermine local biodiversity. However, biogas produced from farm and food wastes should not face these problems, and avoids the release of methane into the atmosphere, in which case it should be able to play a role in balancing variable renewables on a sustainable basis. Some other forms of biomass may also be less of a problem, short rotation coppicing of fast growing non-food crops for example, although clearly careful regulation is needed, as with all types of renewable system. 

Although the environmental and safety issues of the balancing options do not seem insurmountable, in some cases, there might be negative public reactions to deployment, as there have been in the case of renewable deployment generally. On the supply side, some of the changes will be essentially invisible to the public. Most utility-run storage facilities, pumped hydro apart, will look much like any other plants. Similarly for most back-up plants and associated biogas/syngas stores and Power to Gas conversion plants. As indicated above, supergrid links may however be much less invisible, although, like hydro, they would be remote from most people, and, with supergrids, there are options for going underground in sensitive areas.

On the demand side, there would be more intimate and widespread interactions. It is not clear how consumers will react to smart grid demand management and time-of-use pricing system and how much that will help limit peaks and avoid energy waste. Most consumers are likely not to want to have to be bothered with energy management, so automated systems may prove acceptable, as long as they see some benefits. These benefits however may be longer term and not just economic and there are data protection and privacy issues.

However, if the new system can be seen to deliver energy reliably, without undue costs or impacts, and without too much need for behavioural change, then it may be widely supported. Then again, some consumers seem willing to voluntarily adopt new energy systems, perhaps wishing to make personal contributions to energy sustainability on behalf of future generations. The growth of the ‘prosumer’ self generation movement in many way challenges the technological and market status quo, making old certainties redundant: a new system may be emerging. And that will have to include new balancing systems.

‘Balancing Green Power’, Institute of Physics Publications: http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-7503-1230-1

After Hinkley: Plan B

In March, Lynne Featherstone, a peer and former coalition minister, speaking in the House of Lords, asked: ‘If it does not proceed with Hinkley Point, what is the government’s plan B for the security of our energy supply in future years, given that the support for renewables industries has been completely undermined by the government and that there is still no commitment to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, which would provide energy for 120 years – three times as long as would a nuclear power station?’

With the Hinkley nuclear project looking increasingly likely to fail, she was not alone in seeing the Swansea tidal project as part of  a ‘Plan B’, and as in any case, as better than nuclear: David Jones, a Tory former cabinet minister, said: ‘Nuclear projects are finite and have potential unforeseen consequences in terms of disposal of waste, [but] tidal lagoons provide a clean source of power that, built on a Victorian scale, will last for many decades if not centuries.’ Another Welsh Tory MP, Byron Davies, said the lagoon ‘has the potential to produce energy that is cheaper than even nuclear and gas’, while the Labour MP Paul Flynn said tidal energy was ‘free, British and of immense power, whereas the source of energy for Hinkley Point is an imported form of fuel that will leave a legacy for all time’. www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/10/swansea-bay-tidal-lagoon-energy-project-hinkley-point-wales

Are they right? Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister, told MPs that the Swansea Bay scheme was ‘not comparable’ to the new nuclear station. Sadly, she is right, it’s only ~300MW compared to the 3.2GW nuclear plant- over ten times larger. And although its capital cost, put at around £1bn, would make it cheaper/MW than the £24bn Hinkley project (roughly £3m v £8m/MW), its load factor would be very much lower (maybe 18% v 90%), so the cost per kWh of electricity produced could be ~20% higher. Or even more, if EDF’s figure of £18bn for Hinkley is used (the £24bn figure is an estimate from the EU including the full project finance costs).  Certainly it’s been said the lagoon would need a much higher level of CfD support than Hinkley (around £160 v £92.5/MWh), although that could be reduced if the CfD contract ran over a long period. Hinkley’s contract is for 35 years. Renewables have only been given 15 years.

Leadsome did admit that ‘the Swansea Bay project was in our manifesto. The government absolutely recognises its potential to deliver low-carbon, secure energy for the future. However, it was not a commitment to deliver a contract for difference. This government [is] absolutely determined to prioritise keeping costs down, to be on the consumer’s side and to decarbonise at the lowest price while keeping the lights on.’ So while the project was ‘of huge interest’, the government ‘must keep a close eye on the cost’. 

That is not to say the Swansea lagoon and other larger, maybe cheaper, lagoons, cannot be part of Plan B, but, if we are seeking to replace the 3.2 GW Hinkley and the maybe 16GW of new nuclear at one time envisaged, we will need a lot more renewable energy projects as well as energy saving projects. That is on top of the already quite large contribution from renewables, with around 14GW of wind and 10GW of PV supplying about 20% of annual UK electricity at present. Renewables could reach over 30% by 2020 on current plans.  However, there is significant potential for expansion beyond that.

Hinkley is currently meant to come on line by around 2025, though more likely, in the event, it would be a bit later- if it goes ahead.  But if it doesn’t, there have been several high renewables scenarios, running up to 2030, that might be candidates for Plan B. For example from CAT: www.zerocarbonbritain.org  Greenpeace: www.greenpeace-energy.de/fileadmin/docs/pressematerial/Hinkley_Point/20160121_Study_Windgas_HPC_English.pdf   and  Friends of the Earth:  www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/plan_cbe_report.pdf And also, for the South West: http://mollymep.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-power-to-transform-the-South-West_FINAL1.pdf

They have their strengths and weaknesses. The Greenpeace ‘Windgas’ scenario focuses on direct replacement of Hinkley with wind, with power-to-gas conversion ensuring that the output would be the same- reliable around the clock. That’s fine for polemical purposes, meeting the intermittency issue head on. ‘Wind to gas’ is clearly clever and sensible. But a full alternative scenario would also include other renewables and other energy management options, as in the Friends of the Earth scenario. However, that was produced in 2012 and much has happened since then, including many advances in system management. Similarly, for the partial South West scenario. We need something new, fuller, and up to date. The best so far seems to be another one from Greenpeace: www.demandenergyequality.org/2030-energy-scenario.html  That aims to supply 85% of UK electricity from renewables by 2030. However, it too has limits. It downplays system management and does not look at the economics. Neither does the even more ambitious CAT near-100% renewable energy by 2030 scenario.

There are several 2050 UK renewables/low carbon scenarios which can act as guides, including one from a team of leading academics, which focuses heavily on local level systems, including biomass/waste-fired CHP,  feeding local heat networks: www.realisingtransitionpathways.org.uk/realisingtransitionpathways/news/distributing_power.html

And more recently, Dr Mark Barrett at University College has updated his extensive low carbon UK Energy system model, which runs up to 2050. He is presenting it in a talk soon:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ucl-iedelearn-lecture-a-renewable-uk-tickets-22457647428

So we have plenty of guides. Renewables are getting cheaper by the day- on shore wind is already 30% cheaper than Hinkley would be by 2025/26 and it will get even cheaper: http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/onshore-wind-schemes-now-being.html So will PV- there are already projects going ahead with lower CfD strike prices than Hinkley would get. And offshore wind could well also be cheaper by then: https://ore.catapult.org.uk/crmf  Indeed, the recent Budget announcement said offshore wind CfDs would be set at £85/MWh for projects commissioned in 2026- much less than the £92.5/MWh Hinkley would get then, if it’s built. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508193/HMT_Budget_2016_Web_Accessible.pdf

More will need to be done on the heat and transport side (e.g. with bio/green syngas), but electricity use is actually falling -generation fell by13% over the last decade: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/511931/Electricity.pdf

Given proper attention to energy saving, it should be possible to come up with a viable non-nuclear strategy, based on wind, on and offshore, PV solar, large and small, and biomass/waste CHP, as well as other renewables, including tidal current turbines and lagoons, along with the necessary balancing/energy management systems. The latter might add 10% to costs initially, but smart grid and supergrid systems will also lead to savings- the recent National Infrastructure Commission says of up to £8bn p.a. by 2030. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/505218/IC_Energy_Report_web.pdf 

However, someone has to put this all together and campaign effectively on it.  At present Labour’s shadow energy minister, Lisa Nandy, still seems in thrall to nuclear- her Plan B is apparently to go for mini nukes! Can it just be left to the NGOs and academics to rescue the situation?

The right mix: in praise of grid links

A new Greenpeace report on getting to 100% renewables globally by 2050 revisits the familiar issue of scale: what’s the right mix of large-scale centralised and small-scale local projects? It suggests a 70:30 ratio, arguing for mostly decentralised power (i.e prosumer domestic PV projects and community scale distributed generation), although it admits this will require more local capacity than if more imports from more efficient larger projects elsewhere were allowed. It does assume some are (e.g. from offshore wind and CSP), but not much: it’s keen of to get the benefits of local control and ownership, and it also worries about long distance transmission energy losses and grid cable visual impacts.

The issue of local control is an important one, but over-reliance on small-scale local systems comes at a cost: not all resources are even distributed.  Surely it is foolish to limit the use of efficient off-shore wind, wave and tidal farms and CSP in desert areas?  And surely, even if they are more autonomous than now, there is nothing inherently wrong with trading surpluses between communities?  It depends on how the trade is done. Technically, long distance transmission losses can be low (2%/1000km) and grid impacts can be avoided (it’s easier to bury HVDV than AC grids), or reduced by doubling up or replacing existing lines. But the other issue is that Greenpeace want to avoid most biomass use (not biogas from wastes, but all biomass imports). That means more electricity has to be produced for heating and transport. A report from the German Federal Environment Agency, UBA, says that, in this situation, even with a lot of Power to Gas/ Liquid conversion of excess renewable electricity (as Greenpeace also suggests), Germany will have to import a lot of green electricity from abroad, similar in scale (but not type) to their fuel import level now: with biomass limited, there wouldn’t be enough from local sources. www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/germany-2050-a-greenhouse-gas-neutral-country 

It does sound like you can’t avoid some long distance transmission, and of course if you have it, although it opens the door to centralised corporate power, it helps with balancing local variations in supply and demand across wide areas, with differing resource availability. So a 50:50 local/import ratio might make more sense, depending on location. Or, of course, if you want more local power, again depending on location, you could go for local biomass production and use. Forget about importing wood pellets, and probably most biofuels for vehicles, but, in addition to AD of local farm, food and home biomass wastes, surely some types of fast growing energy crops for power and heat, like short rotation coppicing, can be acceptable in rural areas, without land use or biodiversity conflicts?

Greenpeace is also nervous about hydro, with large projects being seen as invasive, despite the fact that hydro reservoirs can be used to help balance variable renewables, via pumped storage.  Some countries wont have much hydro capacity, but if they have grid links to other countries with hydro projects they can be used for pumped storage. That’s already done by Denmark, using Norwegian hydro to store its excess wind derived electricity, for later re-import when Danish wind is low and demand high. Once again it shows how useful grid links can be, as in fact an earlier Greenpeace study of EU options had argued: www.energynautics.com/news/#GP_EU

The new Greenpeace report is very good, arguing convincingly that, with proper attention to energy saving, supplying 100% of energy globally is possible using just renewables, and would not cost more net, given the savings on the use of fossil fuel.  But the issues touched on above are real ones. Big hydro and large-scale biomass use do both open up many environmental issues, so it may be that they have to be kept in check. Or at least be subject to careful regulation.  Similarly, there are political issues related to trading energy, as we are well aware of with fossil fuel and the power that has given to global energy corporations.  We don't want to replicate that with renewables. Surely we can come up with more democratic ways to manage energy systems, even large systems, and avoid rip-off trade relationships?  That's something that is currently a central political issue anyway, with, in the UK, much talk of taming the Big 6 power companies. It won’t be easy. Especially as we also need to reconfigure the energy system overall. 

However, as part of doing that, we have to face the issues raised above. It will vary by country. But in general, trying to duck these issues, by avoiding big hydro and biomass, and limiting trade/transmission, would add costs and, arguably, make it harder to develop a viable system. We need to decide what sort of system we need, how to link it up effectively and equitably, what impacts we can accept and what trade-offs we want to make between overall technical efficiency and community scale. Quite an agenda! www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/climate/2015/Energy-Revolution-2015-Full.pdf

An incremental approach is to just focus of local energy and hope that it can expand: building up from beneath.  The rise of ‘prosumers’ and local energy co-ops in Germany suggests that this might be possible, although it has occurred mainly due to favourable market frameworks provided by the government – and that may change. Indeed it already is, with FiTs being phased out, there and elsewhere. In the UK, the new Shadow Energy Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said Labour wants to ‘democratise rather than nationalise’ the energy system. She told delegates at last years Labour party conference that every community in the country should be able to own their own clean energy power station. http://ow.ly/SPLVa  That’s fine as far as it goes, but it probably wont be enough to completely change the system.  The Thousand Flowers UK scenario produced last year by the transition consortium looked to local councils playing a major role, and focused heavily on community-scale biomass-fired CHP, and heat as well as power production. That might reduce some of the power transmission issues: it would certainly be hard for the power grid to cope with the electricity needed to meet all the UK’s heat needs. But would there be enough biomass for that? And if so, would we be happy for it to be used? The issues wont go away!

www.realisingtransitionpathways.org.uk/realisingtransitionpathways/news/distributing_power.html

All this and much more is discussed in my new IoP book Balancing Green Power out later this year.

UK Energy Policy overview: not a good story

Sometimes it is worth looking back at how we got where we are. An academic paper published in Energy Policy looks at the UK’s record in the energy sector, focusing on RD&D and innovation policy. Under the Thatcher government it collapsed: ‘From the mid-1980s onwards, market liberalisation and industry privatisation led to a collapse in RD&D efforts; whilst these forces were felt globally, they were experienced particularly strongly in the UK. The UK's privatised energy companies had little strategic interest in technological innovation and there was very little public or private investment in energy innovation in the 1990s. One material aspect of this was the closure of much of the UK's public research infrastructure, with remaining skills and facilities dispersed across a small number of isolated research groups’.

However there were some reactions: ‘A number of high-profile reviews and enquiries in the early-2000s paved the way for increased innovation efforts, but this turn-around started in a very gradual fashion. The principal driver for change was an emerging decarbonisation imperative. The scale of the challenge presented by climate change for energy systems was highlighted by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The RCEP concluded that the UK should aim to reduce emissions by 60% on 1990 levels by 2050, implying wholesale changes in the production and use of energy. It also represented a challenge to the technology-neutral principles that had dominated UK energy innovation policy for more than a decade; the RCEP called for stronger market-pull mechanisms for mature technologies and increased early-stage support for those emerging technologies most relevant for the UK’.                 

The paper says that actual policy response was limited: ‘spending levels increased only slightly, organisational reforms were modest and there was no major shift from technology-neutrality toward a priority-based innovation system’. Nevertheless, energy and climate became prominent issues in policy debate, and in 2001, under the New Labour Government, the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) ‘undertook the first systematic energy review since privatisation. On innovation strategy, the PIU was informed by an Energy Research Review Group (ERRG) set up by the Government's Chief Scientific Advisor, a prominent advocate of greater efforts on energy innovation. The ERRG called for UK public spending on RD&D to be raised to bring it in line with that of European competitors’.                            

It took time for anything significant to happen. But the Labour Government did accept the RCEP's recommended 60% by 2050 target. The paper says that ‘though this re-established the legitimacy of long-term steerage of the energy system, it was modest in terms of its political, economic and institutional impact, at least over political and corporate planning horizons. The carbon emissions of the UK electricity system had fallen steadily during the 1990s and early 2000s and the Royal Commission and PIU both presented scenarios suggesting that the 60% target could be met largely by a gradual roll-out of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. Large-scale technologies such as nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS) were not seen as central strands of the required response at this time, at least over the short to medium term’.

However, then things changed, with PM Tony Blair famously announcing that nuclear power was back on the agenda ‘with a vengeance’. Sadly the paper doesn’t explore how or why this occurred, or the subsequent cut backs in renewables and expansion of nuclear support. It’s more concerned with R&D/institutional issues, but as far as it goes it is interesting. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514000147#f0005

Full disclosure: I was a member of the ERRG. I didn’t realise it was so influential.

So where are we now?  We are in the midst of cuts.  Energy Secretary Amber Rudd’s energy market reset plan did not offer much new, apart from the welcome proposal to dump coal use, just a reiteration of the wonders of market competition: ‘We need to work towards a market where success is driven by your ability to compete in a market. We need to work towards a market where success is driven by your ability to compete in a market.’ https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy

Competitive markets are not all bad. It is good to see generation costs falling. However  that may not lead to reduced prices. As Rudd said ‘It remains frustrating to me that the falls in wholesale gas prices have not been passed on to most households. It is also not clear that all business customers are benefiting from competition in a market that lacks transparency’. Moreover, the government is not actually imposing market discipline fairly. It is cutting the cheapest non-fossil options, but supporting one of the most expensive – nuclear. Backing Hinkley, and the follow up nuclear plants, will push up electricity bills by much more than would backing on-shore wind. Whereas the proposal to cut support for on-shore wind and PV solar may raise costs, since more expensive sources will have to be used if the 2020 renewables target is to be meet. The Citizens Advice Bureau says the CfD block to on-shore wind may cost £0.5bn, over the term of the CfD contracts so far awarded: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/Global/CitizensAdvice/Energy/GeneratingValue.pdf

Rudd says ‘We need a course correction using the tools we have already developed through Electricity Market Reform’. For all the talk about competition, her minor course correction seems to be mainly about imposing pre-set ideologically-based technology choices, and that seems likely to continue to take us in the wrong direction. No change (from Thatcher or Blair) there then! Rudd says ‘only when different technologies face their full costs can we achieve a more competitive market’. However, in practice, most of the choices being made are based, not on market tests, but on political preferences. Up to a point that’s fine. That is why we elect politicians – since not all choices can be made on the basis of market tests, even if they include external costs. But what do we do if they get it consistently wrong on key issues? Even Corbyn seems to be going the same way: ‘While I strongly support green energy in general, such as wind, wave, tidal, solar power and energy conservation measures, I understand that you have to have a base of electricity production. Otherwise when those renewable resources don't kick in you end up with no supply.’ Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leader, evidently now backing nuclear power.  If true, we have not moved on much in 30, or indeed 50, years.  www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/corbyn-we-need-to-protect-nuclear-jobs-and-regulate-the-industry-1.1230086

COP21 and Renewables

 

 Some said the COP 21 Paris climate deal was a great triumph, others were less sure. But most saw it as opening up the way for renewables. It certainly should, despite the lack of binding national targets. Pressure to divest from coal projects will grow. However, while the COP 21 agreement acknowledges ‘the need to promote universal access to sustainable energy in developing countries, in particular in Africa, through the enhanced deployment of renewable energy’, as the World Nuclear Association noted, it does not otherwise make reference to any specific energy technology.  So on the supply side we may see a scrabble for slots between renewables and nuclear, along with energy efficiency on the demand side, possibly within this sort of Deep Decarbonisation framework: http://deepdecarbonization.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/DDPP-press-release-150915.pdf          

Though there are other options. As the Financial Times put it ‘The 1.5C upper limit is likely to be breached in the coming decades but could possibly be regained later in the century through large-scale net negative emissions achieved via biological and geological carbon storage’. FT 14/12/15

Some look to biochar and new farming practices to improve carbon retention in soil, and on the supply side, Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), although the UK governments decision to abandon the £1bn CCS competition will have put that even further into the future. It was anyway an outsider option, not loved by all greens. CCS is often seen as just an expensive way to keep using fossil fuel, with a new set of risks (sudden CO2 release), but some felt that it might be condoned as a step to BECCS. Or could we just go straight to BECCS? No to both say Biofuelwatch!  www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/climate-technofix-weaving-carbon-into-gold-and-other-myths-of-negative-emissions/

DECC says that, despite the cuts to support for PV solar and on-shore wind, UK will meet its 2020 renewable electricity target. We will see.  But few are confident about it meeting the overall 15% by 2020 renewable energy target- progress on heat and transport has been slow.  Moreover, after 2020 then what?  The 2020 targets were imposed on the UK (and other EU members) by the EU Renewables Directive, but the UK and others have managed to resist any post-2020 national renewable targets being set. It’s simply left up to each county to decide how to meet the EU 2030 emissions targets, as with the new COP21 ‘aspirations’. DECC has said that it will continue to support renewables beyond 2020, including up to 10GW of new offshore wind, if the price falls, but DECC’s main focus seem to be to nuclear, apparently regardless of the price.  And that could be copied elsewhere in the EU- Hungary and Romania want new nuclear plants!  Judging by the disasters with the EPR nuclear plant construction programme so far (long overdue and massively over-budget) it could all come horribly unstuck. In which case global geo-engineering will no doubt then be highlighted as an emergency measure, with all sorts of risks associated with that. Surely rather than blocking out sunshine with aerosols injected into the atmosphere or vast mirrors orbiting in space, we should be using it!

The COP 21 agreement still has to be ratified by a majority of countries (the 55 largest energy users/emitters) and nothing much may happen until then. Indeed it seems that the EU will wait until the first of the proposed 5 year reviews to see if it will adopt to 40% emission reduction target it offered if other countries backed similar targets. Some now have, but, with no mandatory national targets, just the loose National plans and proposals submitted to COP21, there is some wriggle room.

Writing in the Financial Times (15 Dec), Martin Wolf was hopeful that peer pressure would suffice: ‘With every body committed to producing a plan (because everybody agrees the challenge is important), it will be far more difficult for any country to argue that failure to meet its promises does not matter.’ It will be interesting to see what the UK comes up with.

Looking globally, this thoughtful follow-up proposal seems sensible: www.postcarbon.org/renewable-energy-after-cop21/

Although it worries that, if we push ahead rapidly with building the renewable system we may run out of fossil energy fast, unless it’s rationed and prioitised for that purpose!

‘We may be entering a period of fossil fuel triage. Rather than allocating fossil fuels simply on a market basis (those who pay for them get them), it may be fairer, especially to lower-income citizens, for government (with wartime powers) to allocate fuels purposefully based on the strategic importance of the societal sectors that depend on them, and on the relative ease and timeliness of transitioning those sectors to renewable substitutes. Agriculture, for example, might be deemed the highest priority for continued fossil fuel allocations, with commercial air travel assuming a far lower priority. Perhaps we need not just a price on carbon, but different prices for different uses’.

Well maybe, but perhaps a more urgent problem is the attempt to slow down renewables by cutting  back on support systems. Dr David Toke says that the EU’s move away from Feed In Tariffs to competitive auctions may not actually cuts cost, but might cut capacity growth. http://journals.aau.dk/index.php/sepm/article/view/1197/1098  

And this excellent review of the EU Energy Transition pulls no punches on what is blocking it: http://dx.doi.org/10.5278/ijsepm.2015.5.6

None of these issue really surfaced at COP 21, which was focused on setting the big picture,  maybe rightly. Some said it did very well: www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/2439032/cop21-a-beautiful-peaceful-french-revolution  Though others didn’t agree: it allows many countries to carry on expanding emissions and has no binding national targets: https://globalclimatejobs.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/world-pledges-to-increase-emissions/ But it wasn’t as irrelevant as the dreaded ever-contrarian Lomborg claimed: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/09/3720613/lomborg-misleads-paris-climate-pledges/  and this tentatively hopeful view may be about right: www.rebeccawillis.co.uk/is-the-paris-agreement-a-success-emphatically-yes-a-little-bit-no-and-a-dose-of-it-depends/

However, it all rather depends on what happens next, in the EU, US, China and elsewhere …