A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

October 23rd 2012

The UK’s Changing Energy Supply; A John Hayes Approach (Another Shambles!)

There are an almost endless number of perks to being a student at Imperial College, and in particular one studying the environmental and energy sciences, not least the free wine nights held ‘traditionally’ every Thursday night after a guest talk. However, this week’s treat was one of a slightly higher and more professional calibre - a talk by the recently crowned energy minister of state at DECC, John Hayes, the man leading the ‘greenest party ever’ forward unto the dawn.

I was unashamedly quite excited about this guest spot, as not only was it to be my first experience with a powerful politician in a public speaking environment, but it was also a man who was directly responsible for much of what I define as my most passionate of interests and enjoyments, the energy debate, and within that, the UK’s shambles of an attempt. So with this confidence, and of course a rather large expectation for something to annoy/anger/depress being said, I went to watch him speak to an audience of students, professionals, politicians and interested parties yesterday evening. The focus of the topic? The changing UK energy supply. Fascinating and current stuff for sure.

Unfortunately, it was not to be the case. Not only did I come out the talk feeling let down, disappointed, confused and kinda angry at the whole thing, but these feelings were far stronger than I thought I would experience going in. Politics never fails to surprise eh.

From start to finish, John Hayes, a man who recently replaced the much-loved by all (even greenies) Charles Hendry from an utterly un-environmentally linked background, gave us a masterclass in dodging the elephants in the room, not answering questions but doing enough to move on and being wholly like a Tory politician should be; funny in a way which boils the blood and patronisingly cocky at the same time.

When he finally stumbled onto the topic of energy sources and generation, with me believing at one point that he was never going to mention the words ‘sustainable’, ‘renewable’ or ‘climate change’, it was a speech filled with techno-political babble and attempts at covering everything possible with as little information as possible. He screamed past the likes of biomass production, solar PV and onshore wind without even mentioning offshore or tidal, focusing on the topic long enough to merely list their names, avoiding going into any deep, or even shallow conversation in regards to deployment, costs, future developments or the coalition’s stance. It was all behind us in a matter of seconds and yet it couldn’t have been more of an important topic when debating energy supply.

He only delved into onshore wind briefly when he wanted to point out, in a manner I felt similar to veiled hostility, that he had called for investigations into their costs and effectiveness, and to how best the communities affected by their development could be compensated. Of course, he was basically saying that he wasn’t prepared to talk at any length about them unless he was 100% sure they didn’t piss people off or ruin the countryside. Seems his anti-wind stance people had hoped he had dropped was still living on.

CCS, nuclear and natural gas, spiced up with some North Sea offshore drilling then became the main subjects of conversation, with each one generously fleshed out and described in a detail which was rarely employed anywhere else in his entire talk.

Carbon-Capture & Storage: Why All The Bother?

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I’m sure many of you have, at some point in your journeys through the energy and renewable world heard the term ‘carbon-capture and storage’, or more simply ‘CCS’, but might not have known fully what it was, how it works or why it is being given such prominence in modern policy discussion. Well here’s my attempt at giving you a brief but hopefully in-depth look at the technology and the science surrounding some of the obsession associated with big oil companies, the Republicans and general economists.

CCS does mostly what it says on the tin; it aims to capture carbon or CO2 from the fumes and emissions given off by dirty industry, such as oil, coal or gas burning power plants, usually by grabbing the stuff out of the air with scrubbers or biological substances, before condensing it down into liquid form which can be easily transported. This lovely carbon-ooze is subsequently pumped elsewhere, generally far from the source, and deep into the Earth’s crust, within depleted fossil fuel reserves or geologically appropriate formations, such as aquifers or rock beds.

Via this technology, it is greatly hoped that carbon emissions from our already well-established dirty fossil industries can be hugely reduced, without radical changes in attitude and infrastructure required. We’ll see why this is not the grand idea is sounds to be.

The whole science of capturing the CO2 has been relatively well-tested on a small scale, with multiple projects spanning from the start of the millennia, such as simple scrubbing of power plant chimneys. However, capture on a larger scale has proved a much more ambitious and expensive venture, with price-tags commonly running into the hundreds of millions if not billions just for the initial CCS stages. Examples of these include projects in Denmark through Vattenfall, pilot capture facilities in Sweden and Norway and greater Europe, with plenty more in the planning stage (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/qics/). Unfortunately practically all of the projects currently in play, whether they’re still in planning or near-completion, only involve the ‘capture’ part of CCS, merely test-beds for working out the kinks in collecting the stuff for subsequent storage, with the resultant carbon being released into the atmosphere once the experiments are complete. Only eight (in 2011) CCS plants were actually injecting CO2 back into the ground worldwide, with at least three of them acting purely as partners to deep-sea offshore drilling platforms, collecting their waste and pumping it back into the seabed, to no real net gain to society.

As for the larger scale storage aspect of CCS, nearing 100 projects are in place since mid-2012, but current financial and political woes have all but put the majority of these on the shelf, no doubt for the indefinite future, seen as far too expensive, risky and a distraction from the real issue at hand. Specifically, the EU recently slashed its fund for CCS from a prospective £4.8bn to just £1bn, with finalised figures coming in a month or so, meaning that the 12 projects originally guaranteed funding are no in serious jeopardy. Similar issues are being experienced by the industry globally, as the idea of big, high-risk, high-dollar energy resources such as nuclear rapidly fall out of favour with both the public and professionals.

This however does not seem true in the US, where the [unfortunate] boom in shale gas extraction has fuelled great interest in ways to reduce the already disgustingly damaging practice of fracking and shale prospecting. Shell has been a major player in this region of the world, jumping on the natural gas bandwagon without hesitation, setting up shop in Alberta, where one of the world’s largest reserves of shale gas resides. Just google this yourself and switch to images and before long you will understand why myself and many others recoil at the very idea of extracting this utter mess. Anyway, back on topic.

UK Energy Policy Takes Yet Another Muddled Route - Solar Cut By 50%

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UK energy policy is sure one confusing and constantly changing subject, with many recent news stories no deviation from this pattern. Us English and our government just love mixing and muddling our energy futures as much as we cash, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes it seems like it’s just for the kicks.

A little over half a year ago, I went to an open day for a course in environmental technology, energy and renewables at Imperial College London, and there I was given a brief talk regarding one of the key course options, aptly named ‘Energy Policy’. This was all very interesting and the main reason I intend to do a master there, but there was one particular comment which stuck with me, made by the course convenor.

He stated halfway through his introduction that, as a whole, “the UK government has tried every single energy policy ever thought of, and failed at most of them”. I feel this comment is pretty appropriate given the latest news on that very subject, of which I’ll brush over below.

Of late, the UK government and David Cameron have come to the decision to cut the solar feed-in-tariffs (FiTs) which are music to every solar-owner ears, which effectively pay the user for producing clean solar energy and feeding it back into the grid. This once sat at 21p per KWh, but is set to drop to 16p by August 1st, with similar drops on a 3 monthly basis, until the price is either frozen or adjusted once more.

This idea has provoked a stern response from many consumers of solar energy, who feel that these uncertain prices and abrupt slashes will deeply hurt the UK solar industry, which as we all know, is absolutely booming, both here and globally, and would be detrimental to everyone. However, these cuts must be made if the government is to be financially able to continue providing such FiTs, although many could argue their seemingly pointless endeavours into fossil fuel and nuclear could easily be rerouted to this sector.

On the other hand, this new FiT is still highly competitive in the global market, and as we’ve seen in Germany, has continued to drive strong growth in solar sales and installations, and so we shouldn’t be too hasty to condemn it.