A golden opportunity for Britain to lead the world in energy production | Robin McKie
May 15, 2011 by
Filed under Green Electronics
The government’s bold commitment to new sources of power is welcome. But we must not botch it this time
This week, our leaders are expected to commit Britain to a civic overhaul that no other nation has had the courage – or recklessness, depending on your viewpoint – to contemplate. On Tuesday, the cabinet is set to approve measures that will lead to a revolution in power generation, transport, house construction, planning, manufacturing and farming in Britain over the next 20 years. The aim is to mitigate the worst ravages of global warming.
The proposals form the basis of the fourth budget of the Committee on Climate Change and will be presented for cabinet consideration this week so they can be made law by the end of June. Initial hostility from business secretary Vince Cable and from Treasury officials, who fear funds needed for economic recovery are being wasted on projects of no immediate benefit, has been swept aside. Soon, we will be committed to the basic, radical goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions to around 390m tonnes a year by 2027.
To put those figures in perspective, current emissions stand at 550m tonnes while subsequent measures could produce even greater reductions – to around 200m – by the middle of the century. Thus the cabinet will trigger moves that will bring about the virtual decarbonisation of our society. The fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – which powered Britain to industrial and imperial might will be outlawed. In their place, wind farms, nuclear power stations, electric cars and underground dumps of carbon dioxide will provide the bedrock for future economic growth in this country. Britain’s basic infrastructure is facing a radical rebuilding.
Other nations have made emission commitments, but most have planned no further than the end of this decade. The Committee on Climate Change’s budget takes Britain 10 years further down the line. As its chief executive, David Kennedy, says: “We have moved into uncharted territory and we are going to be watched, carefully, by other countries. No one else has a target like this.”
The budget is therefore not just one of domestic importance, it is of international significance. Hence the support of foreign secretary William Hague, who has made plain his backing for the budget. “If our domestic resolve is seen to be weakening, we will lose traction elsewhere,” he said last month. But what kind of nation will Britain be once we start investing those billions, raised from taxes and increased electricity costs, in new hardware? How will we move around the country and how will we power our homes and businesses? Very differently, it is clear. According to the committee, by 2027, we should be generating 40% of our electricity from renewable sources (currently only a few per cent) and 40% from nuclear plants (roughly double its present level). The remainder will come from coal, gas and oil plants, with the crucial caveat that most will be connected to carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems that will trap their carbon dioxide emissions and pump them underground for safe storage.
With that kind of kit, Britain can free itself from its dependence on fossil fuels and seriously cut back on harmful heating carbon emissions, says the committee. The obvious point is that most of this hardware does not exist yet. Carbon capture and storage is still only a gleam in the eyes of the odd, enthusiastic geologist, for example. Only one or two pilot plants are in operation at present. This is unproven technology.
Similarly, it is clear that the goal of generating 40% of our electricity from renewables cannot be met through our current obsession with building onshore wind farms. There is not enough land on the British Isles to provide homes for them. We will need other sources of renewable power. Tidal power plants and wave energy generators are two particularly promising candidates, though again the technologies involved are unproved.
And that might seem remiss. Relying on power sources that have still to be developed looks naive, an apparent oversight that will certainly be pounced on by those who deny that fossil fuels are dangerous and that we need to wean ourselves off their use. We are taxing ourselves to sustain an unrealistic ecological dream, they argue.
The argument is disingenuous, however. The very fact that many of these technologies are still in development offers us a key advantage. Over the past four decades, Britain has amassed a great deal of marine engineering experience following the exploitation of North Sea oil, for example. That expertise is precisely the kind needed to build up a strong offshore wind turbine industry in the UK.
The same is true for both tidal and wave power plants. The seas around Britain have some of the strongest tides in the world and are ripe for exploitation. Generating devices are still at a relatively primitive development stage, though plans have been announced for trials of tidal devices in Islay and Orkney. These are reckoned to have considerable promise. They will need careful and costly nurture, however.
The same goes for carbon capture and storage. We not only have North Sea oil experience, we have the depleted gas and oil fields that will make ideal stores for the carbon dioxide we extract from fossil plants. In total, it’s quite a package.
The crucial point is that by acting in a timely manner in facing up to climate change, Britain has given itself a chance to take pole position in the development of a range of renewable technologies which could then be sold round the world. For that, the government deserves congratulations. Passing the carbon budget is just the start, however, for it is equally clear that if we want to exploit these opportunities we will need to adopt a far more realistic attitude to the generation of power than we have in the past.
In the 20th century, Britain was given crucial leads that we should have used to build up other types of energy generation. We squandered them instead. Calder Hall, in Cumbria, was the first atom plant to supply power to a national grid, for example. However, development of the next generation of UK nuclear stations – the advanced gas-cooled reactor – was botched. As a result, Britain’s tranche of atom plants will be either French or American.
Similarly, we should have taken a lead in wind turbine development, given the gusty meteorological conditions of these islands but again we fluffed the chance. As a result, the wind farms that dot the countryside consist of turbines that are made in Denmark or Germany.
The new carbon budget gives Britain a chance to cut its emissions bill, establish energy security for the nation for the next century – and develop a range of new industries. The last on this list is arguably the most important – and the most vulnerable.
Renewable Energy World Europe announces schedule of panel discussions and keynote speakers
April 26, 2011 by
Filed under Green Electronics
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Renewable Energy World Europe, Europe’s leading renewable energy conference and exhibition, today announced details of the major panel discussions and keynote speakers scheduled for this year’s event at Fiera Milano City in Milan, from 7-9 June. With Europe’s 20-20-20 targets topping the industry agenda, organisations of all sizes and types are having to adopt a more strategic approach to renewable energy technologies. This year’s joint plenary panel discussion sets out to address European Power Policy and will examine how the industry can deliver on its ambitious clean energy targets.
Wind Power News – RenewableEnergyWorld.com
World Bank to limit funding for coal-fired power stations
April 4, 2011 by
Filed under Green Electronics
Only the very poorest countries would be eligible to receive funds for building new coal-fired power stations under proposed new rules
The World Bank is planning to restrict the money it gives to coal-fired power stations, bowing to pressure from green campaigners to radically revise its funding rules.
The new proposals would not mean an end to funding for fossil fuels, but would represent a departure from previous regulations. Under these rules, the bank has provided sizeable financial support for coal-fired power stations in the developing world in spite of protests from governments and green groups.
Under the proposed new rules, only the very poorest countries would be eligible to receive grants or loans for building new coal-fired power stations, and then only if they could prove they were necessary and that alternatives – such as renewable energy – were not feasible.
An entirely new energy strategy is being written by the development bank, in part because of concerns that its current funding practices favour fossil fuel power. The new draft proposals, seen by the Guardian, emphasise the potential of renewable sources of energy.
But the proposals were criticised by campaigners as inadequate. “The draft strategy is disappointing. It looks as though the World Bank is trying to greenwash its activities while by and large continuing with dirty business as usual,” said Alison Doig, senior adviser on climate change at the charity Christian Aid. “While it proposes a ban on coal lending to middle-income countries, the bank will continue its fossil fuel investments in the poorest countries, condemning them to a high-carbon future. In real terms, this means that the bank could still end up spending more than ever on fossil fuels, because it intends to keep backing such dirty projects in the poorest countries.”
She added: “The draft strategy eloquently describes the plight of the more than 2 billion people who live in energy poverty, cooking on smoky open fires and with no electric lighting and no power for their small businesses. But it is worryingly vague about how it will tackle this and the target is woefully short on ambition – it would reach less than 2% of people who currently do not have electricity in their homes.”
The World Bank’s record on funding fossil fuels has long been a target of green campaigners. Last year, for instance, the World Bank was attacked for its controversial decision to grant nearly $ 4bn (£2.5bn) to the South African company Eskom to build what would be one of the world’s largest coal-fired power stations.
The bank spent £3.4bn – one-quarter of all its spending on energy projects – on coal-fired power in developing countries in the year to June 2010. That was 40 times more than the sum spent five years previously.
Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, has frequently spoken out in public about the need to realign the institution’s funding criteria with its climate change goals. The World Bank is also one of the world’s biggest funders of low-carbon energy generation, but critics complain that there has been a lack of a coherent, institution-wide strategy on energy funding to date.
The bank has also been attacked for its attempts to take over the international funding of climate change projects. Under the 2009 Copenhagen accord, the bank could be charged with dispensing the billions of funding that rich countries are due to send to poor countries, in order to help them cope with the effects of climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Doig said: “The World Bank seems to think it can manage the world’s new climate funds while continuing to bankroll high-carbon development. Instead, it should be coming up with a coherent, credible strategy to promote thriving green economies which help developing countries to adopt technologies fit for the 21st century.”
The new proposals are likely to take months to be accepted.
China’s big hydro wins permission for 21.3GW dam in world heritage site
February 1, 2011 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
Hydroelectric power company Huadian will build a cascade of 13 dams in the spectacular “Grand Canyon of the Orient”
China‘s dam builders will press ahead with controversial plans to build a cascade of hydropower plants in one of the country’s most spectacular canyons, it was reported today, in an apparent reversal for prime minister Wen Jiabao.
The move to harness the power of the pristine Nu river – better known outside of China as the Salween – overturns a suspension ordered by the premier in 2004 on environmental grounds and reconfirmed in 2009.
Back then, conservation groups hailed the reprieve as a rare victory against Big Hydro in an area of southwest Yunnan province that is of global importance for biodiversity.
But Huadian – one of the country’s five biggest utilities – and the provincial government have argued that more low-carbon energy is needed to meet the climate commitments of the fast-growing economy.
Their lobbying appears to have been successful, according to reports in the state media.
“We believe the Nu River can be developed and we hope that progress can be made during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015),” Shi Lishan, the deputy director of new energy at the National Energy Administration, told Chinese national radio.
The plan envisages the construction of 13 dams on the middle and lower reaches of the river, with a total generating capacity of 21.3GW that is similar to that of the Three Gorges Dam.
The Nu (“angry river” in Chinese) flows from its source in the Himalayas through the heart of a United Nations world heritage site that has been called the “Grand Canyon of the Orient”. It is home to more than 80 endangered species, including snow leopards and Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys. Downstream, it provides water for Burma and Thailand, whose governments have joined a coalition of conservation groups and scientists in expressing opposition to the dam plans.
A recent report by China’s Economic Observer suggested the hydropower industry has overcome the political and environmental obstacles of the past five years and will now accelerate dam building.
Last month, the National Energy Agency said China plans to build an additional 140 gigawatts of hydropower capacity in the next five years as it tries to achieve the goal of producing 15% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020.
As well as the Nu, the next round of projects is also likely to include hydropower plants in Sichuan, Qinghai and Tibet.
Last month, conservationists expressed dismay at moves to redraw the boundaries at a vitally important fish reserve on the Jinsha to allow for dam construction.
How air-conditioning is baking our world
October 8, 2010 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
US homes use as much electricity for air conditioning as the whole of Africa, claims a new book by Stan Cox
• What is the most efficient form of air-conditioning for the home?
When you think of the causes of global warming, you may picture an SUV before you picture a central AC unit. But almost 20 percent of electricity consumption in U.S. homes goes to AC — that’s as much electricity as the entire continent of Africa uses for all purposes. So says Stan Cox in his new book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer).
Cox, a scientist and agricultural researcher who lives in Salina, Kansas, doesn’t paint AC as the bogeyman. Rather, he makes the point that our world has developed in many unsustainable directions overall, and air-conditioning has been a crucial part of that development. He also argues that making air-conditioners and other appliances more energy efficient isn’t going to get us out of this mess. He spoke to Grist last week about his new book. Open a window, undo a button, and enjoy …
Q. Why did you write a book on air-conditioning?
A. In the past half-century, a number of big, energy-guzzling technologies have really changed our lives: automobiles, computers, television, jet aircraft. All that time, air-conditioning has been humming away in the background, like a character actor you see in a whole bunch of movies. It’s never the star, but it always seems to be there moving the plot along.
When I looked at the doubling in the amount of electricity used for air conditioning homes in this country just since the mid-90s, I thought, we really need to address this, because it is a big contributor to greenhouse-gas release and it’s going to increase the likelihood that we’re going to have longer, more intense heat waves and hotter summers in the future, and we’re going to have to be running the air-conditioning even more.
Q. That seemed to be a theme throughout the book — that the use of air-conditioning leads to a cycle where it needs to be used more.
A. Yes, the biggest example of that is probably global warming. But there are a lot of ways in which air-conditioning creates need for itself, including by eroding our heat tolerance. Once we’ve built office buildings and commercial buildings on the assumption of air-conditioning, then we pretty much have to use it. We’ve created a lot of space that’s almost uninhabitable without it. In many buildings, the windows don’t open at all anymore.
In the book, I put a lot of emphasis on what’s known as the adaptive model of comfort. It’s based on surveys of people who are working at different temperatures and asked if they’re comfortable. People can psychologically adjust to buildings that are cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. The comment I’ve heard most since the book came out is from people who work in offices and complain that their offices are too cold in the summer, and they have to take sweaters or use space heaters, wasting even more energy. Without eroding people’s working conditions or quality of life at all, there could be a big savings there.
Q. I thought it was interesting that you linked AC to obesity, in the sense that people are indoors more often and their bodies don’t have to work to adjust to the temperature changes during the year.
A. Right, that’s one of the hypotheses that a group of medical researchers came up with to explain the rise in obesity — the slower burning of energy by the body in the comfort range, where it doesn’t have to work to either shed heat or generate heat (in addition to the normal explanations that people are eating more and exercising less). Another way AC could be affecting obesity is that people tend to eat more when in cooler conditions. And also, by making the indoors more attractive in the summertime, we’ve made it less likely that people are going to be outdoors where we’re more physically active.
Q. Has the advent of AC led to more social isolation, where we’re within our own homes and don’t interact as much with the community?
A. That’s right. Starting in the South, which led the nation into air-conditioning, you had the erosion of what they called the front-porch culture — neighbors would drop in on each other when they saw them sitting on the porch, kids would be running up and down the block.
[In the book, there's] an anecdote from a friend of mine who was out in her yard on a June day in Kansas when the power went out, and people started drifting out of their houses, and it sort of turned into an impromptu block party. She noticed nobody seemed to be going in to call the power company. Instead they’d seized the opportunity to socialize and get out of their cold isolation.
Q. AC has spurred a huge migration to hotter climates and drier climates.
A. It has allowed us to put cities in very fragile ecological zones like the desert area where Phoenix is, or the fringes of the Everglades, or actually out into the Everglades now in South Florida. We build up these big Sun Belt cities on the assumption of air-conditioning, so there’s limited green space. The heat island effect becomes pretty overwhelming — all the asphalt, concrete, and steel are trapping heat that’s then released throughout the night. In Phoenix you can easily have a lot of nights where the temperature never drops below 90, while in the normal desert climate you get a big drop in temperature.
By virtue of the fact that there was so much cheap land in the Sun Belt, there’s been this huge migration from the north and there’s much more sprawl in Sun Belt cities, so they’re generally more dependent on automobiles. When drivers are stuck in freeway traffic jams, they’re using the AC. So you have again this vicious circle where the kind of development that air-conditioning has fostered in the Sun Belt cities requires the use of even more air-conditioning.
Q. You write that energy efficiency is not the answer to our problems. Why?
A. The way economies work, efficiency and total consumption of energy always tend to rise together. Having greater energy efficiency, as a friend of mine likes to say, is like putting energy on sale. We’ll find more ways to use it.
Since the mid-90s, residential air-conditioners have increased in efficiency by 28 percent, but the amount of energy used to cool the average household in the U.S. has increased by 37 percent. Part of the reason is that house size has increased dramatically — we’re cooling much more square footage per house. And we’ve had hotter summers, and more people are turning to central air rather than room cooling. If it had been more expensive to heat and cool a house, we probably wouldn’t have had people wanting to build bigger and bigger houses.
There’s nothing wrong with greater efficiency, but that has to be preceded by a commitment to put some very hard limits on the total amount of energy or other resources that we’re going to use. That limit is going to have to be decreased year by year.
I didn’t write the book to call for a ban on air-conditioning, but if we take the sensible route and put overall limits on consumption, then people and businesses might see air-conditioning as a very good place to start cutting back, if they think about some of what we’ve lost in the age of air-conditioning.
Q. You make the case that we have to cut back our growth and our consumption, but that’s not compatible with the way our capitalist economy functions. So what is the potential solution to this?
A. Everybody in a position of power is talking about how to get economic growth racing ahead again, because that’s simply the way capitalist economies work — they have to have continuous growth. Despite some of the things you hear, that growth in the GDP is always going to be linked to growth in consumption of material resources and the generation of waste. Profits have to be generated, and they have to grow not just in the linear fashion, but by a certain percentage each year, and the bigger the economy gets, the more it has to grow in a given year to achieve that percentage. We’re reaching the edge of the petri dish here. A lot of footprint analyses show we’re already consuming more than one planet can provide. I cite one study by a professor at the University of Utah showing that even in the greenest scenario, using the best green technology, renewable energy and so forth, to stay below 450 ppm CO2, the world economy is going to have to shrink by 1 to 4 percent per year over the next 40 years. We’re going to have to have a different economic system, which is much easier said than done.
And the other thing we’re going to have to have, which nobody is going to like, is a pretty massive transfer of wealth from wealthy individuals, areas, or countries to those that are less wealthy. When you say we have to reduce the output of the economy by so much each year, there are many, many people in the world that have nothing to reduce. They actually need a bit more production just to get the basic necessities of life. Luxuries like AC have been promoted to the status of necessity, and we’re going to have to have an economy that returns to putting the necessities of life first, making sure everybody’s got those, and then see what’s left.
Unfortunately I’m not, and I’m not sure who is, smart enough to know how to get out of our situation. But I think people do respond to emergencies. A lot of people who lived through World War II or the Depression become very nostalgic about the way people had to share. People saw life as being much more important than the amount of money you made. It’s possible, I think, for people to think differently.
World Bank invests record sums in coal
September 15, 2010 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
Last year, $ 3.4bn was invested in the dirtiest fossil fuel despite international commitments to cut emissions
Record sums were invested last year in coal power – the most carbon intensive form of energy on the planet – by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
The World Bank said this week that a total of US$ 3.4bn (£2.2bn) – or a quarter of all funding for energy projects – was spent in the year to June 2010 helping to build new coal-fired power stations, including the controversial Medupi plant in South Africa. Over the same period the bank also spent $ 1bn (£640m) on looking and drilling for oil and gas.
However, the Bank Information Centre, which examined the spending, disagreed and said the figure invested in coal was $ 4.4bn in the fiscal year 2009-10.
The discrepancy is due to the World Bank not including in its figure a $ 1bn project in India which is funding power transmission networks for coal-fired power stations rather than the stations themselves.
Environmental campaign groups said spending on coal in that period was 40 times more than five years ago, and claimed there was an “incoherence at the heart of the World Bank’s thinking about energy” that would damage long term attempts to cut emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases from such plants.
“At the same time as the bank is seeking to gain control of the billions which will be channelled to developing countries to help them cope with global warming, the bank is still lending staggeringly large and growing sums to finance coal-fired power,” said Alison Doig, senior advisor on climate change for the charity Christian Aid.
“We know that coal is the dirtiest of all the fossil fuels – the one which most exacerbates the climate crisis which is having devastating effects on the lives of people living in poverty. We also know that by financing the building of coal power stations the bank is locking countries into coal use for the next 40 to 50 years [the life expectancy of the plants].”
The World Bank defended its payments saying that the figures for 2010 were distorted by two major coal projects in Botswana and South Africa, while over the five year period from 2005 the bank had spent US$ 4.5bn on coal power, and $ 12.5bn on renewable energy and energy efficiency – including a record year for these sectors also last year.
Coal plants were only subsidised when there were “exceptional circumstances where countries have few or no prospects for other energy sources,” said Roger Morier, a World Bank spokesman.
“Our energy portfolio is increasingly oriented to renewable energy and energy efficiency,” added Morier. “We are fulfilling our mandate of responding to the urgent needs of our client countries for access to efficient, reliable, affordable electricity, while also helping those countries to get on a low-carbon development path as soon as possible.”