Global Warming on C4 - Monbiot in the Guardian

In the days of the CEGB we produced about 33% of our electrical power by nuclear.

Today that figure has dropped to 20%

It seems the trend is against you.

Not entirely clear what the lead time for a nuclear power station is - I would estimate 10 years for the public enquiries and 8 years to build and commission.

The reduction achieved would have to take account of the amount of CO2 released for construction of a station.

The nature of electrical generation and usage means that in order to meet short term/ short notice demand a minimum of 20 - 30 % will have to be gas powered or coal powered so as to achieve the necessary response times.

If you consider domestic heating there is no choice other than fossil or electric - To cut 60% of this budget would put a considerable extra load on the electricity system - further increasing the number and size of nuclear and gas stations needed.

If you consider a 60% cut in road fuel, aviation fuel and Rail fuel - There is no viable alternative to fossil fuel for any but rail - which comes back to electricity. The is no alternative to reducing the amount of road fuel used by at least 60% - There is not present alternative technology.

The effects of that will be to completely stop personal motor transport - leaving what fuel may be used available for the transport of "essential services"

This will of course terminate all industries concerned with the production and use of motor cars - with the subsequent mass unemployment.

As far as I know "carbon capture" is little more than a theory - I know of no commercially viable systems that are in operation. Itr is a fact that FGD systems to remove SO2 significantly increased the fuel consumption of coal powered stations using it. Sufficient to make the power less economical for the grid to use.

I would love to know how you can increase the efficiency of electrical generation enough to produce a 60% saving in fuel consumption. Were it possible I am sure it would have been done already.

In short, apart from the 20% of our electrical power produced by nuclear - all other energy usage will have to be cut by 60% to meet the commitment.
 
>If you consider domestic heating there is no choice other than fossil or electric<

You seem to have forgotten local solar capture, and the potential of biomass carbon.

>If you consider a 60% cut in road fuel, aviation fuel and Rail fuel - There is no viable alternative to fossil fuel for any but rail <

Mmmm - how about bio carbon, hydrogen, fuel cells? Then more and better mass transit, rail freight rather than road freight, human power - walking and cycling is a very viable alternative to short trip road transport.

>In short, apart from the 20% of our electrical power produced by nuclear - all other energy usage will have to be cut by 60% to meet the commitment. <

At the risk of becoming repetitive - solar, wind, water, wave, tidal, biomass – and then start to consider the efficiency savings available through better insulation, transmission of power over shorter distances by decentralisition of power production, by buying local to cut back on national and international transport costs, by reduction of inessential consumption (esp packaging, for example), by habit change such as tele-commuting, wearing a fleece rather than racking up the thermostat, showering rather than bathing - the list is long if not endless.

BTW - I also think 60% is a tough target, but let me quote Sir Philip Sidney...

...Who shoots at the middday sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than he who aims but at a bush.
 
Its rather more complex than that. They is an increase in renewables - if we assume that grows to 10% to complement the 20% nuclear

I am convinced that there will be more nuclear power stations built over the next 20 years - at the very least to replace those that are coming to the end of life. I think it is likely that fossil fuels will account for less than 50% of electricity generation within 30 years - and to continue to drop off from there.

There are alternatives to fossil fuel for road transport already - Biofuel is already viable and fuel cells are getting very close to being commercial.

I'm not sure what the alternatives are for air travel - there is no real reason why bio-fuel shouldn't also be used for that.

At the same time we are getting ever more efficient in our use of power (although we are probably getting to the limit in many ways)

Given the current rate of growth of the global economy there is plenty of money available for us to address all these issues without significantly reducing our standard of living
 
"You seem to have forgotten local solar capture, and the potential of biomass carbon."

Biomas carbon still produces CO2 just as much as fossil - the cycle time is open to debate. The carbon removed is at ground level - The CO2 that is the alleged cause of the effect is at high altitude. The process is, as I read it, not fully understood.

"Mmmm - how about bio carbon, hydrogen, fuel cells? Then more and better mass transit, rail freight rather than road freight, human power - walking and cycling is a very viable alternative to short trip road transport."

Bio carbon I've covered but will add that the Bio bit will need huge areas of land presently devoted to food production being given over to fuel production - the effects of this on deaths by starvation in the 3rd world are difficult to estimate but will be significant when you consider the amount of food given in aid which will no longer exist.

Rail freight still uses fossil fuel - the capacity of the main lines is heavily used now and will not have the capacity to replace road transport in anything like its totality. Also there is no distribution network now for the railway as there was in pre Beecham days so you will be cross loading onto trucks (or horse & cart) for local deliveries

In favour of increased use of legs for transport - but look at any motorway on a working day - most of those vehicles are doing work of some sort and its not sensible to expect all of them being able to do it by leg power.

At pesent I work in Ipswich - on and off - try walking there from N Yorks.

>In short, apart from the 20% of our electrical power produced by nuclear - all other energy usage will have to be cut by 60% to meet the commitment. <


"At the risk of becoming repetitive - solar, wind, water, wave, tidal, biomass – and then start to consider the efficiency savings available through better insulation, transmission of power over shorter distances by decentralisition of power production, by buying local to cut back on national and international transport costs, by reduction of inessential consumption (esp packaging, for example), by habit change such as tele-commuting, wearing a fleece rather than racking up the thermostat, showering rather than bathing - the list is long if not endless."

Try calclating how you can produce 50 gW by these methods - you can't. Wind is unreliable an unpredictable - it has to have conventional back-up to make up for its unreliability.

No tidal exists and the building costs in both cash and carbon will take centuries to repay

A few miles from my home there is a brand new power station which has never been used , never generated a Watt. Its designed to burn coppiced willow - and it cannot be done economically.

Hydro is used widely in Scotland with small population and little industry but there is not the geography to use it in the rest of the UK.

Decentralisation sounds good but involves building lots of small generating capacity which means using fossil fuel. It also means reduced efficiency. The beauty of the system in this country is the Grid and its capability to make the most efficient use of available capacity - decentralisation would lose more in this loss of efficiency than it would gain.

Buying local again sounds good but the fact is that this country cannot feed itself and hasn't been able to do so for many years - that how the German U boats nearly won the war for Hitler. We have to import food and that means 2 things - transport to bring in the food and money to pay for it. Take away either and people go hungry. And hungry people are dangerous!

I agree with the other stuff as an economy measure - as a card carrying Yorkshireman I am already doing most of them and trust me, you don't save anything like 60% on the bill.

No matter how you try to massage reality cutting energy usage by 60% will have a catastrophic effect.

Just think back to the miners strike and the lengths that the government went to to keep coal going to the power stations - because to fail to do so would be catastrophic economically and politically. Remember Heath's 3 day week? The system is now probably less resilient than it was then.

We have to accept the fact that we are an energy dependant society and economy. The only way around it is to produce huge quantities of energy without using fossil. As of today that means nuclear - there is no alternative. If you can show me how to bring 50 gW of nuclear capaciy on line in <20 years I'll cheer you on.
 
I've covered most in my response to TK but I will add a few thoughts:

Fuel cells are a long way from being a viable power source. Apart from the high cost, the fuel you have to use to produce the hydrogen, the carbon debt from mining, purifying and transporting the materials there is one further problem with fuel cells.

According to one engineer working on a fuel cell project it is their tendancy to leave a crater in the road when they go faulty.

If there were the means to make significant economies in generation I am sure they would be made already.

You may be right that in 30 years 50 % non fossil fuel. With substantial investment in nuclear and the political drive to override the objections and the exxentricities of the British planning process it may be possible.

Thats a 20 - 25% cut in fossil fuel generated electricty

The trouble is the government have committed to a 60% cut in CO2 which means effectively a 60% cut and its that last 35 -40% that does the difference.

The global economy is driven by energy. The UK is the 5th or 6th biggest economy but if we follow this policy we will be reduced to 3rd world levels of economic production that will make a dent. If others follow suite you will quickly see a widespread depression in the world economy as production of "things" ceases which means the money from selling "things" also ceases. The simple fact is that almost all of the money you say is available is dependant upon fossil fuel either directly in the case of trading oil, gas and coal or is dependant at one remove using products that rely upon these basic fuels.
 
>Bio bit will need huge areas of land<

Not neccessarily, Scottish Power is planning a power station that will burn sewage sludge mixed with waste wood.

>Rail freight still uses fossil fuel<
Or electricity, which could be sustainbly generated.

>the capacity of the main lines is heavily used now and will not have the capacity to replace road transport in anything like its totality. Also there is no distribution network now for the railway as there was in pre Beecham days so you will be cross loading onto trucks (or horse & cart) for local deliveries<

Agreed, but there's a sensible argument that says that investing in rail infrastructure is more sensible than investing in, say, extra runways at airport, and that 'green taxes' should be invested in this sort of mass transit infrastructure.

> In favour of increased use of legs for transport - but look at any motorway on a working day - most of those vehicles are doing work of some sort and its not sensible to expect all of them being able to do it by leg power.<

We must assume that motorway journeys are neccessary (although some, no doubt could transfer to mass transit, esp if mass transit were more convenient and more pleasant). However, as an example of leg power's potential, 5% of all car journeys are for 'escort education' (the school run) and the average length of a school journey is 1.9 miles. No need to tell you how inefficient a car engine is on short trips in congestion.

>At pesent I work in Ipswich - on and off - try walking there from N Yorks.<

Move. Change jobs. Telecommute.
>Try calclating how you can produce 50 gW by these methods<

Well as a start, you don't need to produce what you save and the UK is nowhere when it comes to energy economy. There's huge scope for saving with a very rapid payback. And we haven't begun to be serious about wave and tidal (which doesn't neccessarily mean barrage tech) energy generation.

>Hydro is used widely in Scotland with small population and little industry but there is not the geography to use it in the rest of the UK.<

You're guilty of closed thinking. The potential for in-stream generation from major and minor rivers is enormous and the technology pushes no envelopes.

>The beauty of the system in this country is the Grid and its capability to make the most efficient use of available capacity - decentralisation would lose more in this loss of efficiency than it would gain.<

Efficiency in what sense? The largest wastage in the electricity chain is at generation, where typically 65% of primary energy of coal, or 50% of gas, is wasted as dumped heat, evident in cooling tower plumes. Power stations may do marginally better at optimum conditions; these are representative average figures. Further losses are typically 2%in transmission and 7% in distribution. Electricity delivered to the consumer is therefore on average about 0.4 x .98 x .93, i.e. 36 %, of the primary fuel energy. The combined loss in generation, transmission and distribution is on average some 64%. Therefore to deliver an average 30 GW, some 83 GW of primary fuel power are needed, of which some 53 GW is wasted. The value of that waste at a grid (wholesale) price of 2.5 p/kWh is 53x24x365x2.5 million p/year, or £11.60 billion per year. At retail electricity prices it would be three times as much.
 
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There are alternatives to fossil fuel for road transport already - Biofuel is already viable and fuel cells are getting very close to being commercial.

[/ QUOTE ]

As an aside, current research is showing Biofuels to be just as bad as fossil fuels.

Dave
 
Yes but how much power will sewage sludge generate – I will avoid all offensive comments re doing this in Scotland. Never heard of this one – presumably it generates methane – a greenhouse gas.

Its all very well making statements like having “sustainably generated” but it does not exist, is not as of now planned to exist and will take decades to bring on line.

I would totally agree that investing in rail is a good idea – better than in air transport, but once again it only makes carbon sense if you have nuclear power to drive it, and with all these large capital projects there is a large carbon cost to actually carrying them out, and that has to be repaid in savings before you start to benefit.

Again I agree about the school run, but I would suggest that you are taking an urban London centric view. Where I live the junior school is over 2 miles away, the secondary school is 8 – 9 miles away. I cannot expect a 12 year old to walk 18 miles every day, there are millions of people outside London and other big cities that have the same issue.

I change jobs frequently – was in Botswana for the last job so Ipswich is not too much of a problem. I do use tele-working extensively on this contract – that’s why its only on and off.

Again I am all in favour of economy – I am one of those who believe that forcing the use of low energy bulbs is a good idea. However, you have pointed out the losses inherent in generation and distribution of electricity and there is not a great deal of scope to radically reduce these.

The main gain in the use of power is to improve insulation in homes and workplaces, and I would support such actions. Perhaps if you could persuade the government to subsidise such projects, perhaps zero rate VAT on the products and services used.

Its all very well to say things have “enormous” potential but you have to put some numbers on this. You accuse me of closed thinking but I would say my thinking is based upon a realistic assessment of the available and effective technology, as opposed to fantasising about potential savings from technology which does not exist in any other than very basic prototype and has very limited potential capacity.

Cut it however you like the solution has to be the high volume generation of electricity.

Wind, wave riverbed turbines and all the other eccentric stuff is all very well as a novelty. None of it can generate in the Giga watt capacity that is required.

The major loss in the system is the conversion of chemical energy in the form of gas or coal to mechanical energy to drive a turbine.

This loss will exist in both centralised and distributed generation. The efficiency of both gas and coal boilers is at its highest when the units are operated at maximum capacity. The great advantage of the Grid is to allow most generation capacity to operate at its highest efficiency. In a distributed system the generation capacity has to react directly and immediately to the load, and each change reduces its efficiency.

For a simple example look at our mobo colleagues – they always use shore power in preference to their generation capacity – cos its cheaper!
 
>>>
5% of all car journeys are for 'escort education' (the school run) and the average length of a school journey is 1.9 miles. No need to tell you how inefficient a car engine is on short trips in congestion.
>>>
Narrow view being taken: many of those morning escort journeys are in fact the first part of someone's journey to work, which may be rather further than 1.9 miles. Have you ever tried to walk a reluctant 5 year old a mile to school, in the rain, then to walk back to wherever your home to work journey starts (schools are rarely that conveniently located) and get to work on time. School run is a soft target but I think it would irritate some folk if they had an analysis of how many are part of a larger whole.

Of course, I only speak from my own (or rather my wife's) experience where she is fortunate enough not to start work until 09:30. And my own experiience as a child, and observing other parents known to me, and after a survey at my son's school.
 
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Yes but how much power will sewage sludge generate – I will avoid all offensive comments re doing this in Scotland. Never heard of this one – presumably it generates methane – a greenhouse gas.

[/ QUOTE ] I'd guess it will burn the methane, which will generate CO2 and water. If the sewage decayed naturally then the same products would result. I don't know if that makes it "carbon neutral" or "zero carbon"
 
If Man Made Global Warming is true, then the choices are stark:-

1) Return to an Agrarian Lifestyle only generating and using enough energy for your local needs.
2) Massive investment in Nuclear Power.

As has been mentioned, efficiency of Central Generation and the National Grid is not good, so Centrallised Wave/Solar/Hydro/Geothermal will not produce enough power to be long term viable.

Fundamentally the "Greens" want option 1 as it tends to fit in with their Lifestyle choice, most of the rest of the population would rather go option 2 but of course "Nuclear Power is a BAD thing".
 
Bergman, you are consistently aiming at the bush. But aiming at the bush won't hit the target, which is higher than the bush. We have to seek new solutions. We have to look outside of the blinkers which the energy companies want us to wear (for their benefit not ours). We are surrounded by energy, we just don't capture it.

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Stand beside a flowing river. Contemplate the energy that represents. Work out a way to extract some of that energy. It's not difficult. We did it in the middle ages and the tech has got rather better since then.

Sail around a headland. Contemplate the energy represented by the flowing tide. Workout a way to extract some of that energy. Strangely, the same sort of tech that would work in-stream on a river would work here too. Yes, I know there are installation and maintenance problems, but man is an inventive creature and can find ways of solving problems like that.

Look at the heat given off in generation, in many industrial and domestic processes. Contemplate the energy resource that represents. Work out a way of capturing some of it (hint)

Consider the mountains of waste we produce. Consider the energy locked into that waste. Work out a way of releasing some or all of it.

Consider the calorific value of what we flush down the loo . Here's what Scottish Power is hoping to do but there are other solutions too.

Lay in the sun for an hour. How much energy have you absorbed? Find a way of putting that to work. It's not hard.

-----------

"Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems."
 
All boat owners know that there is a very simple argument against intelligent creationism.... What half way intelligent God would deliberately create a barnacle! Its no bleeding good to anyone, you cant even eat it, in fact it's a totally useless pain in the ass.... Must have evolved......
 
If there were no barnacles what would Barnacle Bill be called? Obviously God is not only intelligent but also has a poetic sense of humour.
 
Fuel cells have not yet really reached commercial viability but they have been shown to be technically viable so that it is only a matter of time.

You have the maths wrong on the reduction - a reduction of fossil-fuel usage from 80 to 50% of capacity represents a 40% reduction - so that is getting close.

However I do agree with the principle that the economy is driven by energy - and it is not feasible to reduce energy usage by more than a few percent without having an unacceptable impact. That is why I am a strong supporter of nuclear power (preferably fusion) - it is the only technology that has the potential to make the drastic reduction in CO2 emissions that are required
 
Biofuels based on the growth of annual crops - say sugar or oil seed rape - do not contribute to the growth of carbon because they simply release carbon that has been absorbed from the atmosphere recently.

There may be some small effect from reducing the cycle time -but that is a one off and does not increase the overall amount of carbon in the carbon cycle.
 
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