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Bring out the candles...!!
"I
know the world is changing and we have to have
these things (wind turbines) but I haven't
written to the council to support them - so
where does that leave me?"
This country faces a serious
energy crisis. Within a decade a large fraction
of the UK’s antiquated power-generating
capacity, both coal-fired and nuclear, is due to
close. If it is not replaced, we face a
nightmarish future of power shortages and
blackouts. In the meantime, we desperately need
to reduce this country’s greenhouse gas
emissions: 90 per cent of our energy currently
comes from fossil fuels. This country’s current
and past emissions are far more than our share
of the world population. Unless we reduce our
carbon pollution urgently, we will be in breach
of our moral, as well as EU and UN, obligations.
These enormous challenges mean we need to get real about
energy. At the moment the public discussion is
intensely emotional, polarised and mistrustful.
Every option is strongly opposed: the public
seems to be anti-wind, anti-coal,
anti-waste-to-energy, anti-tidal-barrage,
anti-fuel-duty and anti-nuclear. We can’t be
anti-everything, and time is running out. In
fact: if all CO2 emissions stopped
today, the planet would continue to warm up for
another 100 years and then take around 1,000
years to cool down again. What is at stake is
whether or not our grandchildren have a planet
to live on. And large
energy projects take many years to construct.
It’s important to
understand the scale of the challenge. Yes,
Britain has enormous renewable resources – but
as
David MacKay’s excellent new book, Sustainable
Energy –Without the Hot Air shows, we will
need country-sized energy investments to extract
them. Anyone who wants to have
energy for the future but expects the associated
infrastructure not to be large or intrusive is
deluding themselves.
So next time you're sitting
watching Big Brother while electricity magically comes out of the
plug on the wall think on this... our existing electricity
generating capacity is in a bad way and supplies
will be in serious jeopardy as soon as 2015 if something isn't done
- and fast!
Not only that, but
electricity requirements will increase dramatically over the coming
years as demand from applications such as transport which have
historically used hydrocarbon fuels move over to clean electricity.
This isn't just some
more media hype designed to sell newspapers - in fact you've
probably not even heard a lot about it. But it's real, it's serious,
it's urgent
and you need to know about it. Just like the banking crisis
it's something that people in the industry saw coming and that the
Government should have been working on ten years ago. Doing nothing
is no longer an option.
Now here's why:-
1. Our nuclear power
stations are knackered!
Did you know that of the 12
nuclear reactors we have in the UK around a half are currently out
of service or operating at reduced power for safety reasons? The
problems are serious and are unlikely to be fixed any time soon, if
ever. At least one reactor is running at reduced power due to cracks
in the reactor core - and is likely to be decommissioned rather than
fixed. In fact, we're not sure that it's even fixable. The current
generation of nuclear power stations is coming to the end of their
working lives in the next five years or so. Then what...?
2. The "next generation"
of nuclear power stations are all hype.
The Government announced in
2008 that the UK would be building a new generation of nuclear power
stations. These to be built by private enterprise - British Energy,
the state owned nuclear generating business, having been sold off to
the French owned EDF Energy. However, so far NOBODY from the
private sector has expressed any interest in building this next
generation of generating stations. And this includes EDF Energy who
were considered to be the most likely candidate. Meanwhile it takes
a minimum of ten years to get a nuclear station operational.
There are
very few companies on the planet capable of building a nuclear power
station, Britain hardly has a nuclear industry any more - there
being very few experienced nuclear engineers left. It's the same
story in Germany, and also in America where not a single nuclear
reactor has been built since the Three Mile Island disaster.There are currently only two nuclear stations in
construction in the whole of Europe - one in Finland and the other
in France. Both builds have run into massive technical problems and
cost and time overruns. Nuclear power? Yeah, right - bring it
on!
3. Nuclear can't deliver
anyway.
And even if the next generation nuclear
stations were to be built all they would do is replace the capacity
lost when the current ones are decommissioned. A report in the summer of
2008 by the
OECD Nuclear Energy Agency said that even if they were to build
nuclear reactors flat out between now and 2050 (which they can't)
nuclear would barely be able to meet 12% of world electricity
requirements.
It's not going to happen -
they needed to have started ten years ago!
4. Coal is going out of
fashion.
Our current major coal fired
generating stations are due to go out of service over the next ten
years. They are coming to the end of their lives and will not be
rebuilt because CO2 reduction requirements will not allow
it.
5. "Clean coal" is a
myth!
Carbon Capture and Storage
(CCS) - otherwise known as "clean coal" has yet to be demonstrated
on a commercial scale. The Government would have us believe that it
is the answer - but it doesn't exist! Despite huge interest around
the world nobody has yet got it to work. Furthermore nobody has yet
come up with a convincing plan of what to do with the CO2
once it has been captured to store it for geological timescales. The
only real solution is to combine it chemically with the rocks deep
underground and nobody has yet worked out how to do this on a
massive scale. Don't hold your breath.
6. Nuclear fusion is
decades away.
Taming nuclear fusion - the
power that lights the sun - is the most difficult scientific and
engineering challenge that humanity has ever faced. Ultimately it
will provide us with a limitless supply of energy - forever. It has
been demonstrated on Earth in the form of the Hydrogen Bomb (err...
no thanks!) and on a small scale at the JET laboratory in
Oxfordshire. Most nuclear scientists believe that it will probably
be around 2040 before it starts to deliver on anything like a
commercial scale. Meanwhile as a country we spend more on
downloading ring tones to annoy our friends than we do on fusion
research to save humanity. MADNESS! Or are we just too stupid
to survive...?
7. Wind is the most
promising of all the non-fossil energy sources.
Check out this report in
New Scientist. The top new energy sources listed in order of
preference are: 1) Wind 2) Concentrated Solar Power (mirrors heating
a tower of water) 3) Geothermal 4) Tidal 5) Solar Panels 6) Wave
energy 7) Hydroelectric. Nuclear and "clean coal" come right at the
bottom of the list.
8. Wind is the only
source that can be installed quickly enough to meet the
requirements.
Currently the longest stage
of building a windfarm is getting planning consent. There are
currently around 2,500 turbines operational in the UK and it takes
less than a year from placing your order with the turbine
manufacturer to having it operational. No other technology can
deliver this fast. Issues with planning delays are very much on the
agenda and the granting of planning consent for installations above
50MW has now been taken away from local planning authorities to
speed up the approvals process. It is only a matter of time before
smaller installations get the same treatment.
Save Planet Earth |
