I have been musing lately over how things in the electricity generation sector have changed over the past few decades and what we may end up doing in the future.
Remember life pre-North Sea gas, when most of our electricity came from coal-fired power stations, a few nuclear power stations and even fewer hydro generators?
Then Tory PM Margaret Thatcher decided to kill off coal as far as she could and rely much more heavily on gas and a bunch of new gas-fired power stations, leading to – among other things – the demise of coal and the North Sea dash for gas of the 1990s.
I recall clearly my father – who was an electrical engineer and senior manager at one of the now privatised electricity boards – telling me at the time that few within the industry thought this was a very clever idea because it couldn’t be considered a long-term resource in the same way as coal, nuclear or hydro could.
As it turned out, he was right.
Until recently, all the gas was provided by our own North Sea fields. About 20% of the gas we consume is imported already and this will rise inexorably until we eventually need to import close to if not 100% of our gas needs by about 2025 at current rates of consumption.
Malcolm Wicks says in a new report on energy security he has prepared for Gordon Brown that this means we need more gas storage. Surely what we really need to do is both increase gas storage capacity and dramatically reduce our reliance on the use of gas.
As a simple example, why on Earth we still use gas for heating in new-build houses completely bewilders me. Design standards should be such that any house built from now on should be a “zero heat” design and gas should not be used for additional heat unless it comes from a sustainable source such as a biomass process.
At the moment, most of the imported gas we use comes from “friendly” sources – mostly Norway. But that will not always be the case.
So let’s discount gas altogether as a fuel for energy generation and domestic use and use what we have left for industrial purposes. This would greatly extend the life of our own resources and give even small new discoveries more importance.
Coal is, of course, a different matter. In Scotland alone, there are still substantial resources which, from the albeit various estimates available, would suggest that we could double the coal-fired generation capacity we have and run it for at least 25 years without having to import a single bagful.
However, according to the Scottish Government, our existing power stations use 4-6million tonnes of coal per annum and we produce 7million tonnes. So I’m assuming the rest must be exported or used for other purposes.
Importantly, the efficiency of coal-fired power stations is being improved by new technology such as “oxy firing”, which simply means burning the coal in an oxygen-rich atmosphere. This uses less coal and produces a much cleaner exhaust.
The UK Government is, of course, very much in favour of so-called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). I used to be in favour of CCS too, but that was before the huge advances in the use of algae which essentially “eat” CO and produce, in return, lipids which can be processed into a range of liquid fuels.
So I now see little logic in taking the CCS route when, in fact, we can turn the CO into a valuable product. But don’t believe me. Look instead at just some of the evidence.
In July, ExxonMobil announced that it plans to form an alliance with biotech company Synthetic Genomics and will invest more than $600million in biofuel generation. A US company called Solix Biofuels has already started up a first-of-a-kind two-acre demonstration facility in Colorado, where it is growing oil-producing algae in water and CO produced as waste from a coal-bed methane plant.
If ExxonMobil starts spending money on something, it’s probably wise to sit up and take some notice because this company is not given to backing losers.
Hydro? There is significant potential within Scotland for new hydro plants, with new ones popping up fairly regularly. I also think there are a large number of mini-hydro opportunities.
Biomass generation is growing. Eon has built a 40Mw plant near Lockerbie. We need more such plant spread around the country, and the investment should be found to do this.
One promising part of the biomass picture is the potential for bio-gas from anaerobic digestion plants. This is a simple technology that produces a combustible gas that can be used for power generation or, indeed, in domestic applications.
Household waste is a good biomass source but, equally, so is animal manure. I’ve often wondered how much gas could be produced if farmers co-operatively supplied manure to a central plant.
Wave and tidal energy technologies are coming along and will eventually make a useful contribution to our demand – provided, of course, the grid issues are sorted out. I’m particularly in favour of tidal energy because of its absolute predictability.
Let me now turn to the most controversial energy sources – nuclear and wind. Nuclear, in its present form in Scotland, is unlikely to survive beyond the life span of the existing stations without there being in place an acceptable plan for the disposal and storage of waste material. In fact, it may not survive even if that problem is solved because of concerns over cost, safety and even fuel supply.
It could be, however, that there is a potential nuclear alternative that’s worth looking at seriously, and that is a piece of technology developed by Hyperion Power Generation in the US, in collaboration with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Described as a nuclear battery, a single unit will provide sufficient power for 20,000 homes for five years, at which point it’s simply swapped out for a fully charged unit. It has created a lot of interest in other European countries, but seems not to have yet excited anyone in Scotland.
Wind, of course, is almost as controversial as nuclear. I receive numerous e-mails from various well organised anti-windfarm groups and, while some have legitimate and very good reasons for resisting a particular windfarm development, there is a hard core that are simply anti-wind, period.
They argue strongly that wind is intermittent and unreliable and still needs hydrocarbon-burning, CO-emitting back-up.
In my view, we need more wind turbines, preferably offshore, but onshore, too, where it’s appropriate. It’s just a pity we don’t manufacture the technology, and that takes me back neatly to the Wicks report on energy security.
Wicks writes: “For years, the UK was criticised for minimal commitment to energy technology, but we are now backing up our commitment to the climate-change agenda with an increase in spending. Despite this, our spending remains low by international standards. The rapid increase of the last few years looks set to level off this year and potentially reduce in future.”
Tell me about it. Bank bonuses are looking healthier, though.
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