There is little need for the power plant sector to worry about implementing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), says a new report.
Its analysis is that if the current energy policy priorities are retained, then even with ambitious climate protection targets, the expensive and untried technology is unnecessary.
The study, "Comparison of Renewable Energy Technologies with Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS): An Update" by the Wuppertal Institute, was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment.
Three conclusions will be of interest to policymakers:
• the technology is not expected to become available on a large scale before 2025
• if renewable energies and combined heat and power are expanded further and energy productivity is enhanced, there is likely to be only a limited demand for CCS power plants
• new life cycle assessments for CCS in the power plant sector indicate that the greenhouse gas emissions from one kwh of electricity generated by first-generation CCS power plants could only be reduced by 68 to 87%.
A major reason is that electricity generating costs of renewable energies are approaching those of CCS power plants.
Therefore, by 2020, several renewable technologies may well be in a position to offer electricity at a cheaper rate than CCS power plants.
CCS could constitute an important climate protection technology in large coal-consuming countries such as China, India and the USA, however, in order to meet their climate protection targets. If it can be shown to work cost-effectively.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The feedback loop accelerating climate change
The current awful drought and record high temperatures in Russia are attributed to global warming.
But besides causing 700 extra deaths a day in Moscow alone - due to the smoke from forest fires, according to its top health official - the smoke is hastening the melting of Arctic ice.
Forest and peat bog fires around Moscow are burning over 1,740 sq kms (672 sq mile), the Russian Emergencies Ministry says.
Similar fires in Asia are having a similar effect on glaciers in the Himalayas.
On the other side of the planet, official Brazilian data shows the Amazon rainforest lost 1,810 sq kms in almost a year to June 2010. The real figure is likely to be higher.
Brown clouds also form over parts of North America, Europe, the Amazon basin and southern Africa. Burning of savannah in sub-Saharan Africa, to clear land for crops, is a new source.
"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a new U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study called Atmospheric Brown Clouds.
This report says there are five hot spots for such clouds:
But the effects can be felt far away...
A team from Aberystwyth University currently doing research in Greenland has found unprecedented levels of melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
A key factor, they have discovered, is cryoconite, a form of ice dusted with minute specks - a mixture of desert sand blown thousands of kilometres from Africa, soot particles from power stations, vehicle exhausts and microscopic algae and bacteria.
These particles settle on the ice and, being dark, absorb the sun's rays, causing it to melt.
Besides that, the UNEP report says this atmospheric smog is near-permanent and blames it for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.
Since 1970, southern Greenland has warmed by 3oC (in Britain it is half of a degree). A week ago, a massive iceberg 100sq miles in area broke off the Petermann Glacier in the north-west of the island and floated into the ocean - the largest chunk of ice to break off Greenland for nearly half a century.
Greenland is losing, net, about 267 billion tons of ice a year, according to Aberystwyth University's Dr Alun Hubbard, Britain's leading glaciologist studying Greenland.
He says that two weeks ago an ice lake 2.5 miles across drained into the sea in just two hours when a crack opened up at the lake's deepest point.
He said it sounded like "an extraordinary rumbling, like an atomic bomb going off ". Ominous cracks opened up in the ice beneath his camp's tents as the lake was swallowed by the ice.
Such melt-water flows underneath the ice sheet to the sea, at the same time lubricating the passage of the ice above it and accelerating it towards oblivion. Exactly the same process is happening in the Himalayas and Antarctica.
If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, sea levels would rise by seven metres worldwide. London and Liverpool would be flooded. Hwever, current estimates are that this is unlikely to happen until a few hundred years have passed.
A reporter with the Daily Mail, embedded with the Aberystwyth University team, wrote this week that "Sceptics will argue that Greenland has always had moulins and meltwater rivers; this is true. But what is new is these used to be confined to the very edge of the icesheet, marginal, ephemeral features that lasted just a few weeks in the height of the summer melting season. Now there are lakes and moulins right on the centre of the cap, and persisting well into August."
When the normally sceptic Daily Mail and its climate change-denying columnist Michael Hanlon runs pieces like this, you know something is going on.
"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."
Elsewhere, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and so slows climate change. Despite this, overall, the report says, the brown clouds have the net effect of "heating of the surface-atmosphere system and therefore constitute a positive radiative forcing of the climate system and contribute to global warming. Thus, black carbon aerosols are major agents of regional and global warming."
The report says that in the Himalayas, "If the current rate of retreat continues unabated, these glaciers and snow packs are expected to shrink by as much as 75 per cent before the year 2050, posing grave danger to the region’s water security. Projections show that most parts of South and East Asia will suffer from water stress by 2050."
13 mega-city ABC hotspots in Asia have been identified: Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran.
Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic. He says the air over Russia has been fairly stable in recent days, but a shift in winds could blow the smoke towards the Arctic.
He supports Russian authorities' concerns that the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. He says radioactive isotopes include strontium 90 and caesium 137. Other industrial pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.
"Such conditions are likely to become more common in the future," Rodhe said of the Russian heatwave and related fires.
If they are, sea level rise is likely to accelerate at a faster rate than would be anticipated if only linked to a global average temperature rise.
Arctic sea ice, which shrinks in mid-September to an annual minimum before the winter freeze, now covers a slightly bigger area than in 2007 and 2008, the smallest extents since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.
But besides causing 700 extra deaths a day in Moscow alone - due to the smoke from forest fires, according to its top health official - the smoke is hastening the melting of Arctic ice.
Forest and peat bog fires around Moscow are burning over 1,740 sq kms (672 sq mile), the Russian Emergencies Ministry says.
Similar fires in Asia are having a similar effect on glaciers in the Himalayas.
On the other side of the planet, official Brazilian data shows the Amazon rainforest lost 1,810 sq kms in almost a year to June 2010. The real figure is likely to be higher.
Brown clouds also form over parts of North America, Europe, the Amazon basin and southern Africa. Burning of savannah in sub-Saharan Africa, to clear land for crops, is a new source.
"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a new U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study called Atmospheric Brown Clouds.
This report says there are five hot spots for such clouds:
- East Asia
- Indo-Gangetic Plain in South Asia
- Southeast Asia
- Southern Africa; and
- the Amazon Basin.
But the effects can be felt far away...
Melting Greenland
A team from Aberystwyth University currently doing research in Greenland has found unprecedented levels of melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
A key factor, they have discovered, is cryoconite, a form of ice dusted with minute specks - a mixture of desert sand blown thousands of kilometres from Africa, soot particles from power stations, vehicle exhausts and microscopic algae and bacteria.
These particles settle on the ice and, being dark, absorb the sun's rays, causing it to melt.
Besides that, the UNEP report says this atmospheric smog is near-permanent and blames it for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.
Since 1970, southern Greenland has warmed by 3oC (in Britain it is half of a degree). A week ago, a massive iceberg 100sq miles in area broke off the Petermann Glacier in the north-west of the island and floated into the ocean - the largest chunk of ice to break off Greenland for nearly half a century.
Greenland is losing, net, about 267 billion tons of ice a year, according to Aberystwyth University's Dr Alun Hubbard, Britain's leading glaciologist studying Greenland.
He says that two weeks ago an ice lake 2.5 miles across drained into the sea in just two hours when a crack opened up at the lake's deepest point.
He said it sounded like "an extraordinary rumbling, like an atomic bomb going off ". Ominous cracks opened up in the ice beneath his camp's tents as the lake was swallowed by the ice.
Such melt-water flows underneath the ice sheet to the sea, at the same time lubricating the passage of the ice above it and accelerating it towards oblivion. Exactly the same process is happening in the Himalayas and Antarctica.
If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, sea levels would rise by seven metres worldwide. London and Liverpool would be flooded. Hwever, current estimates are that this is unlikely to happen until a few hundred years have passed.
A reporter with the Daily Mail, embedded with the Aberystwyth University team, wrote this week that "Sceptics will argue that Greenland has always had moulins and meltwater rivers; this is true. But what is new is these used to be confined to the very edge of the icesheet, marginal, ephemeral features that lasted just a few weeks in the height of the summer melting season. Now there are lakes and moulins right on the centre of the cap, and persisting well into August."
When the normally sceptic Daily Mail and its climate change-denying columnist Michael Hanlon runs pieces like this, you know something is going on.
Brown clouds
"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."
Elsewhere, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and so slows climate change. Despite this, overall, the report says, the brown clouds have the net effect of "heating of the surface-atmosphere system and therefore constitute a positive radiative forcing of the climate system and contribute to global warming. Thus, black carbon aerosols are major agents of regional and global warming."
The report says that in the Himalayas, "If the current rate of retreat continues unabated, these glaciers and snow packs are expected to shrink by as much as 75 per cent before the year 2050, posing grave danger to the region’s water security. Projections show that most parts of South and East Asia will suffer from water stress by 2050."
Mega-city hotspots
13 mega-city ABC hotspots in Asia have been identified: Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran.
Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic. He says the air over Russia has been fairly stable in recent days, but a shift in winds could blow the smoke towards the Arctic.
He supports Russian authorities' concerns that the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. He says radioactive isotopes include strontium 90 and caesium 137. Other industrial pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.
"Such conditions are likely to become more common in the future," Rodhe said of the Russian heatwave and related fires.
If they are, sea level rise is likely to accelerate at a faster rate than would be anticipated if only linked to a global average temperature rise.
Arctic sea ice, which shrinks in mid-September to an annual minimum before the winter freeze, now covers a slightly bigger area than in 2007 and 2008, the smallest extents since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The battle in the British Isles against offshore drilling
Here's a question: in which country do you imagine that a police officer might say to a protestor who is trying to prevent an offshore gas/oil drilling exploration, “I have your last breath in my hands”?
Well, allegedly, it isn't the Gulf of Mexico but a good deal closer.
On the night of 14 July, a number of campaigners entered the water in Broadhaven Bay, County Mayo, on Ireland's north west coast, in kayaks and rafts in a peaceful attempt to prevent Shell from bringing in a borehole drilling platform.
They were met by five Garda water unit boats, with approximately 16 Gardaí on board.
Campaigners attempted to approach the platform but were prevented from
doing so by Gardaí who overturned their kayaks.
One managed to get close to the platform. When Gardaí overturned the kayak belonging to one of the campaigners, Eoin Lawless, he swam under the platform. A Garda then jumped into the water after him, and proceeded to drag him from the water into the nearby Garda boat.
Mr. Lawless rlates what happened next: “I said I would leave the area but they knelt on my back. One Garda then pinched my throat with his two fingers and cut off my air supply. He held me like that for about 90 seconds, allowing me to take one or two gasps. He kept saying into my ear that he had my last breath in his hands.
"It was terrifying. I truly believed he might kill me."
Mr. Lawless received medical attention at Belmullet Garda station and afterwards called for human rights observers to come back down to Mayo as a matter of urgency.
Such observers have been there before, because this is not the first time such a incident, or worse, has happened, in this long-running dispute that has been barely reported in the UK.
An independent report by Front Line, The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, concluded this year that Irish Government-sponsored incidents against these protestors, who are mostly local fishermen and crofters worried about the impact of the development on their livelihood in this environmentally-sensitive area, warranted defence under human rights legislation.
Off-shore discovery
The bakground to this story is that gas was found off North Mayo in 1996 by Enterprise Oil. A consortium of oil companies was established to develop the gas field, called Enterprise Energy Ireland EEI.
Shell later took over the exploration and now plans a pipeline coming onshore at Glengad, then crossing under Sruwaddacon Bay to Rossport and journeying nine kilometres overland to a refinery at Bellanaboy.
The development is controversial for a number of reasons. The planned pipeline is a high pressure one. It also carries raw gas, which is more volatile. Some residents argue that it goes too near to their houses – and fear the effects of an explosion. The refinery is located in – and the pipeline passes through – ecologically sensitive areas.
Shell to Sea, the group representing locals opposed to the project, has another concern – that the terms upon which the State has granted rights to oil companies were too generous (see below).
Shell to Sea wants the gas refined at sea on a shallow water platform.
In 2008, a previous group of protestors, Pobal Chill Chomáin, claiming to represent most locals opposed to the development, proposed building the refinery elsewhere – such as at Glinsk, a remote area in Mayo – with the pipeline coming onshore by a different route.
Shell has rejected this proposal. The refinery at Bellanaboy has now been substantially built. In order to pass over the lands at Rossport, either the consent of landowners had to be sought or compulsory purchase orders had to be made.
Most landowners consented but six did not. In 2004 planning permission was granted by an Bord Pleanála for the refinery at the Bellanaboy site, but the decision was a controversial one. Previously, a planning inspector had advised that the proposed development defied “any rational understanding of the term ‘sustainability’”.
Imprisonment
Some Rossport residents defied a court order by preventing Shell agents entering lands over which the planned pipeline was to run. As a result, they were imprisoned for 94 days. The men concerned became known as the Rossport 5. They were released on 30 September 2005. Their campaign against Shell’s plans had now become an international news story.
The Irish government commissioned a review of safety issues - but the consultancy commissioned to carry out the review, British Pipeline Agency (BPA), was 50% owned by Shell. BPA kept quiet about this, even though they knew that the Minister wanted the review to be independent. The Minister did not find out until after the report was published. This did not endear him to objectors or solve the stand-off, which has continued to date.
Shell went ahead with some works at Bellanaboy without authorisation. A new report was commissioned that expressed concern that the maximum pressure for the onshore pipeline be more than halved from 345 bar to 144 bar. Shell accepted this but protestors were not satisfied with the report because it didn't consider whether processing should be offshore or alternative routes for the pipeline or an alternative site for the refinery.
There have been many other objections. For example, levels of aluminium in discharge water from the Bellanaboy plant regularly exceeding those permitted by very large margins; a slip road being built without planning permission at Glengad; unauthorised drilling carried out by Shell consultants in a Special Area of Conservation.
The Bolivian connection
More significantly, the security firm hired by Shell, IRMS, was accused of being heavy-handed. It has come under scrutiny because some of its employees have been involved in activities on behalf of gas and oil interests in Bolivia which led to one of them, Michael Dwyer from Tipperary, being shot by the Bolivian government for involvement in a plot to destabilise the government of President Evo Morales.
This is where the plot gets even murkier.
Bolivia is the key player in the struggle by developing countries to secure justice in the international climate negotiations. Three months ago it hosted the World People´s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth carried out in Cochabamba.
Oil companies are prominent amongst those lobbying against action to counter climate change. Removing the Bolivian government would clearly be in their interests.
Links to oil and gas companies are indeed mentioned in a Prime Time investigation into the death of Dwyer, and the involvement of colleagues he met through his work with IRMS at Rossport, by reports Paul Murphy and Oonagh Smyth for the tv company RTE, broadcast on 3 December 2009.
They uncovered that the right wing Hungarian terrorist who recruited Dwyer and wanted to overturn the La Paz government was financed to the tune of millions of dollars, way beyond the capacity of local business interests to raise alone, and trace it back to oil and gas companies.
The Frontline report notes that one of the security guards had posted "inappropriate material regarding operations on Glengad" on a website he ran. He also headed a far right group, the Szeckler legion.
IRMS itself was not involved with the Bolivian group. But it has been involved in a string of violent incidents against protestors, along with the Gardai. Fisherman Pat O’Donnell for example claims that his boat was sunk by masked men on 11 June 2009.
He and others have been in Castlerea prison for much of this year for refusing to stop fishing in the vicinity of the proposed tunnel. He was released after 158 days on 17 July.
Another boat has been confiscated by the Gardai.
And on 22/23 April 2009 one Willie Corduff was allegedly assaulted by Gardaí and IRMS staff. Mr Corduff had been staging a sit in under a truck.
IRMS and Gardai boats have also on at least one occasion rammed the boats of protestors.
Last week, on the same night that Eoin Lawless was struggling to breathe at the hands of a policeman, a film about O'Donnell and the campaign, ‘The Pipe’ won best documentary at the Galway Film Fleadh.
The protest continues
The protest continues, led by a body called Shell to Sea, which claims it is a national campaign with active groups based across Ireland. It has three main aims:
• to have the Corrib gas field exploited in a safe way that will not expose the local community in Erris to unnecessary health, safety and environmental risks;
• to renegotiate the terms of the Great Oil and Gas Giveaway, which "sees
Ireland’s 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent off the West Coast go directly to the oil companies, with the Irish State retaining a 0% share, no energy security of supply and only 25% tax on profits against which all costs can be deducted";
• finally, to seek justice for the human rights abuses suffered by Shell to Sea campaigners.
Shell plans to drill up to 80 boreholes to survey the Sruth Fhada Chonn estuary to determine the course of a tunnel under the estuary linking up the offshore pipeline with the proposed inland refinery. The new route is still within 250m of several houses and the local community remains opposed to the plans.
The estuary is a Specially Protected Area & part of the Broadhaven Bay Special Area of Conservation. Protestors claim that the operation will damage parts of the estuary & disturb the wildlife there, particularly Atlantic salmon, otters & birds found on the intertidal areas.
Shell to Sea say their aim is to try to stop Shell from drilling the boreholes over the next few months through a campaign of peaceful protest.
In the planetwide shadow cast by BP's offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, these protestors' battle with the authorities has a significance way beyond the normally quiet Western Isles.
> www.shelltosea.com/content/environment
Well, allegedly, it isn't the Gulf of Mexico but a good deal closer.
On the night of 14 July, a number of campaigners entered the water in Broadhaven Bay, County Mayo, on Ireland's north west coast, in kayaks and rafts in a peaceful attempt to prevent Shell from bringing in a borehole drilling platform.
They were met by five Garda water unit boats, with approximately 16 Gardaí on board.
Campaigners attempted to approach the platform but were prevented from
doing so by Gardaí who overturned their kayaks.
One managed to get close to the platform. When Gardaí overturned the kayak belonging to one of the campaigners, Eoin Lawless, he swam under the platform. A Garda then jumped into the water after him, and proceeded to drag him from the water into the nearby Garda boat.
Mr. Lawless rlates what happened next: “I said I would leave the area but they knelt on my back. One Garda then pinched my throat with his two fingers and cut off my air supply. He held me like that for about 90 seconds, allowing me to take one or two gasps. He kept saying into my ear that he had my last breath in his hands.
"It was terrifying. I truly believed he might kill me."
Mr. Lawless received medical attention at Belmullet Garda station and afterwards called for human rights observers to come back down to Mayo as a matter of urgency.
Such observers have been there before, because this is not the first time such a incident, or worse, has happened, in this long-running dispute that has been barely reported in the UK.
An independent report by Front Line, The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, concluded this year that Irish Government-sponsored incidents against these protestors, who are mostly local fishermen and crofters worried about the impact of the development on their livelihood in this environmentally-sensitive area, warranted defence under human rights legislation.
Off-shore discovery
The bakground to this story is that gas was found off North Mayo in 1996 by Enterprise Oil. A consortium of oil companies was established to develop the gas field, called Enterprise Energy Ireland EEI.
Shell later took over the exploration and now plans a pipeline coming onshore at Glengad, then crossing under Sruwaddacon Bay to Rossport and journeying nine kilometres overland to a refinery at Bellanaboy.
The development is controversial for a number of reasons. The planned pipeline is a high pressure one. It also carries raw gas, which is more volatile. Some residents argue that it goes too near to their houses – and fear the effects of an explosion. The refinery is located in – and the pipeline passes through – ecologically sensitive areas.
Shell to Sea, the group representing locals opposed to the project, has another concern – that the terms upon which the State has granted rights to oil companies were too generous (see below).
Shell to Sea wants the gas refined at sea on a shallow water platform.
In 2008, a previous group of protestors, Pobal Chill Chomáin, claiming to represent most locals opposed to the development, proposed building the refinery elsewhere – such as at Glinsk, a remote area in Mayo – with the pipeline coming onshore by a different route.
Shell has rejected this proposal. The refinery at Bellanaboy has now been substantially built. In order to pass over the lands at Rossport, either the consent of landowners had to be sought or compulsory purchase orders had to be made.
Most landowners consented but six did not. In 2004 planning permission was granted by an Bord Pleanála for the refinery at the Bellanaboy site, but the decision was a controversial one. Previously, a planning inspector had advised that the proposed development defied “any rational understanding of the term ‘sustainability’”.
Imprisonment
Some Rossport residents defied a court order by preventing Shell agents entering lands over which the planned pipeline was to run. As a result, they were imprisoned for 94 days. The men concerned became known as the Rossport 5. They were released on 30 September 2005. Their campaign against Shell’s plans had now become an international news story.
The Irish government commissioned a review of safety issues - but the consultancy commissioned to carry out the review, British Pipeline Agency (BPA), was 50% owned by Shell. BPA kept quiet about this, even though they knew that the Minister wanted the review to be independent. The Minister did not find out until after the report was published. This did not endear him to objectors or solve the stand-off, which has continued to date.
Shell went ahead with some works at Bellanaboy without authorisation. A new report was commissioned that expressed concern that the maximum pressure for the onshore pipeline be more than halved from 345 bar to 144 bar. Shell accepted this but protestors were not satisfied with the report because it didn't consider whether processing should be offshore or alternative routes for the pipeline or an alternative site for the refinery.
There have been many other objections. For example, levels of aluminium in discharge water from the Bellanaboy plant regularly exceeding those permitted by very large margins; a slip road being built without planning permission at Glengad; unauthorised drilling carried out by Shell consultants in a Special Area of Conservation.
The Bolivian connection
More significantly, the security firm hired by Shell, IRMS, was accused of being heavy-handed. It has come under scrutiny because some of its employees have been involved in activities on behalf of gas and oil interests in Bolivia which led to one of them, Michael Dwyer from Tipperary, being shot by the Bolivian government for involvement in a plot to destabilise the government of President Evo Morales.
This is where the plot gets even murkier.
Bolivia is the key player in the struggle by developing countries to secure justice in the international climate negotiations. Three months ago it hosted the World People´s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth carried out in Cochabamba.
Oil companies are prominent amongst those lobbying against action to counter climate change. Removing the Bolivian government would clearly be in their interests.
Links to oil and gas companies are indeed mentioned in a Prime Time investigation into the death of Dwyer, and the involvement of colleagues he met through his work with IRMS at Rossport, by reports Paul Murphy and Oonagh Smyth for the tv company RTE, broadcast on 3 December 2009.
They uncovered that the right wing Hungarian terrorist who recruited Dwyer and wanted to overturn the La Paz government was financed to the tune of millions of dollars, way beyond the capacity of local business interests to raise alone, and trace it back to oil and gas companies.
The Frontline report notes that one of the security guards had posted "inappropriate material regarding operations on Glengad" on a website he ran. He also headed a far right group, the Szeckler legion.
IRMS itself was not involved with the Bolivian group. But it has been involved in a string of violent incidents against protestors, along with the Gardai. Fisherman Pat O’Donnell for example claims that his boat was sunk by masked men on 11 June 2009.
He and others have been in Castlerea prison for much of this year for refusing to stop fishing in the vicinity of the proposed tunnel. He was released after 158 days on 17 July.
Another boat has been confiscated by the Gardai.
And on 22/23 April 2009 one Willie Corduff was allegedly assaulted by Gardaí and IRMS staff. Mr Corduff had been staging a sit in under a truck.
IRMS and Gardai boats have also on at least one occasion rammed the boats of protestors.
Last week, on the same night that Eoin Lawless was struggling to breathe at the hands of a policeman, a film about O'Donnell and the campaign, ‘The Pipe’ won best documentary at the Galway Film Fleadh.
The protest continues
The protest continues, led by a body called Shell to Sea, which claims it is a national campaign with active groups based across Ireland. It has three main aims:
• to have the Corrib gas field exploited in a safe way that will not expose the local community in Erris to unnecessary health, safety and environmental risks;
• to renegotiate the terms of the Great Oil and Gas Giveaway, which "sees
Ireland’s 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent off the West Coast go directly to the oil companies, with the Irish State retaining a 0% share, no energy security of supply and only 25% tax on profits against which all costs can be deducted";
• finally, to seek justice for the human rights abuses suffered by Shell to Sea campaigners.
Shell plans to drill up to 80 boreholes to survey the Sruth Fhada Chonn estuary to determine the course of a tunnel under the estuary linking up the offshore pipeline with the proposed inland refinery. The new route is still within 250m of several houses and the local community remains opposed to the plans.
The estuary is a Specially Protected Area & part of the Broadhaven Bay Special Area of Conservation. Protestors claim that the operation will damage parts of the estuary & disturb the wildlife there, particularly Atlantic salmon, otters & birds found on the intertidal areas.
Shell to Sea say their aim is to try to stop Shell from drilling the boreholes over the next few months through a campaign of peaceful protest.
In the planetwide shadow cast by BP's offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, these protestors' battle with the authorities has a significance way beyond the normally quiet Western Isles.
> www.shelltosea.com/content/environment
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Sustainable Home Refurbishment
My new book, Sustainable Home Refurbishment: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, is out now, published by Earthscan.
"This is an excellent book - comprehensively-researched, powerfully-presented and crystal clear. It should be the first stop for anyone seeking objective advice in a field cluttered with misleading claims. I couldn't recommend it more strongly." - George Monbiot
"As the idea of radical retrofit of our existing housing stock gradually moves from geek-dom to chic-dom, this book is a must have for all involved in this burgeoning industry. This book is both for the capable amateur and the professionally engaged.
"There is all the detail you could wish for with a vast array of practical examples and materials. This is not a book for the total novice but is a life saver for anyone on the road to radical retrofit.
"We can't recommend it highly enough. David has managed to make the book a good and interesting ready whilst managing to get all the necessary hard-core energy information in there as well." - Penney Poyzer (tv presenter, writer, Queen of Green, grass roots activist) and Gil Schalom (architect) .
A retro-fit offers many benefits: cutting electricity and heating bills, increasing the resale value of homes, slashing carbon emissions and creating a healthier place to live. This book is the guide to making it happen.
It looks at:
Enlivened with helpful diagrams and photographs, plus plenty of pointers for further information, it provides a comprehensive resource handbook for any building professional and contractor, students - or any homeowner serious about efficiency (cash and carbon) savings.
CONTENTS
It looks at:
- draught-proofing, insulation and damp
- ventilation, heating and cooling
- electrical efficiency and renewable energy
- water use and re-use
- materials' life cycles and incorporating nature
- protection from climate change impacts
- modelling energy flows and embodied energy
- how we can meet the need to cut carbon emissions from dwellings by 80% by 2050.
Enlivened with helpful diagrams and photographs, plus plenty of pointers for further information, it provides a comprehensive resource handbook for any building professional and contractor, students - or any homeowner serious about efficiency (cash and carbon) savings.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Airtightness: Reducing Energy Demand for Heating and Cooling
2. Insulation Materials
3. Insulation Strategies
4. Going All The Way - Towards Passivhaus
5. Windows and Doors
6. Ventilation, Cooling and Heating
7. Water Management
8. Electricity Efficiency and Supply
9. Contextual Issues
1. Airtightness: Reducing Energy Demand for Heating and Cooling
2. Insulation Materials
3. Insulation Strategies
4. Going All The Way - Towards Passivhaus
5. Windows and Doors
6. Ventilation, Cooling and Heating
7. Water Management
8. Electricity Efficiency and Supply
9. Contextual Issues
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
‘Climategate’ review clears scientists and replicates their results
The long-awaited third review of the co-called 'Climategate' affair chaired by Sir Muir Russell has cleared the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) of any wrong-doing.
The scientists at the heart of the matter, particularly Professor Phil Jones, have been cleared of any attempt to mislead or manipulate data or display bias. The report concludes, "we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt."
The review team also tried to replicate the CRU's results using publicly available data which critics had said was not possible. This confirmed the conclusions of the IPCC and CRU that average global temperatures are increasing.
Background
In November 2009, approximately 1000 e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) were hacked into by climate sceptics and published on blogs.
CRU is a small research unit which over the last 30 years has played an important role in the development of climate science, in particular in their work on developing global temperature trends.
The leak happened in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks last November and were partly responsible for a rise in perceived scepticism of the reality of global warming. The results of those climate talks are widely held to have been disappointing.
It's therefore vitally important that the science behind the IPCC's verdicts on climate change is held up to rigorous scrutiny and perceived to be robust.
But scientists have been their own enemy too often in this respect. So besides urging the to be more open, the Review urges them to learn to communicate and defend themselves better.
The 'blogosphere' has been the principle arena for attacking their work. The
Review team therefore "simply urges all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand."
But also "scientists should be supported to explain their position, and ... a public space can be created where these debates can be conducted on appropriate terms, where what is and is not uncertain can be recognised".
The Russell Report's conclusions
In a nutshell, the report says:
• there's no evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments
• CRU was not in a position to withhold access to land station temperature data or tamper with it
• no evidence of bias in the selection of stations for evidence
• no evidence to support that implication that CRU s work in this area shouldn't be trusted
• there was no subversion of the peer process
• the phenomenon of “divergence” in expressing the uncertainty associated
with reconstruction is not hidden and that the subject is openly and extensively discussed in the literature, including CRU papers
• the way that data derived from tree rings is described and presented in Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 is not misleading
• the references in a specific e-mail to a "trick" and to "hide the decline" in respect of a 1999 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report figure show evidence of intent to paint a misleading picture, we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the IPCC Third Assessment Report), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading.
However on the negative side:
• CRU should have made available an unambiguous list of the stations used in each of the versions of the Climatic Research Unit Land Temperature Record
(CRUTEM).
• CRU’s responses to reasonable requests for information were unhelpful and defensive
• Ruusell urges CRU to follow "the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication".
The question of replication
A chief criticism of CRU was that it did not make available the raw data collected from the weather-monitoring land stations, which it used to produce its report. Nor did it make available the computer code used to crunch these numbers.
To test this, the Review team tried to replicate the process adopted by CRU themselves.
They found three sources of data that are publicly available and would be known to scientists working in the field. They were able, using a competent programmer, to write their own code in just two days to process this data.
They then ran the data through the process and compared it to the results obtained by CRU and to the results published in the IPCC’s 4th report.
What is significant is that all four lines - shown below - more or less tally.
In other words, the data is publicly available, easily processed, and produces graphs showing temperature increases that corroborate each other.
They note that it doesn't even matter that some of the land stations are urban and may be influenced by the 'heat island' effect – another criticism of CRU by sceptics like Benny Peizer. The overall trend of temperature change is still upwards, rising with the same degree of statistical variation.
The need for openness
However the Review does say that CRU should have been more open - a view expressed also by the House of Commons science and technology select committee in their report on 31 March. That report concluded that "Professor Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research."
But the Russell Review says "Without such openness, the credibility of their
work will suffer because it will always be at risk of allegations of concealment
and hence mal-practice."
Frustrating as it is, it is part of his job to deal with such enquiries, or at least that of the UEA who should have responded to the freedom of information requests, not CRU, as the Select Committee observed.
Lord Oxburgh's subsequent "international panel" review examined "the integrity" of CRU's research and that also cleared the unit.
"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the CRU and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it," the review concluded. "Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups, their internal procedures were rather informal."
Given the global importance of this work it’s clear that groups such as this must be better resourced and supported to carry it out thoroughly.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
More money needed for the new Green Deal
The ″greenest government ever″ must put serious money behind this scheme to let householders eco-renovate and repay their loans from their savings on fuel bills.
The UK's domestic properties need to be renovated to a high energy efficiency standard at a rate of 700,000 a year in order to have renovated them all by the year 2050. We need to do this because there are 28 million homes in the UK which are responsible for 27% of our greenhouse gas emissions, most of them will still be standing by then, and they need to be treated to make a contribution to meeting our national targets of reducing these emissions by 80% by 2050. ['The 40% House', Boardman et. al., 2005, and The Low-Carbon Strategy, 2008 (Oxford Environmental Change Institute)]
It would be alright if we knew exactly what it is that we have to do. The problem is that there are many areas of uncertainty, not least of which is the embodied energy of the materials used in construction. Unless we know this cannot estimate the carbon balance of the measures we are proposing to take and know that we are really saving carbon.
There also needs to be agreement on what measures these are to be - and they will be different for each type of property. There is an appalling lack of experience in this country of monitoring and measuring the efficacy of sustainable refurbishments that have already taken place to see how effective they have been.
One thing we do know is that they often don't live up to expectations, whether it is because of poor workmanship leaving, for example, gaps in insulation or whether it is that the occupants of the treated houses do not behave in a manner predicted by the architects and continue to turn their heating up.
Retrofit for the Future is a government-sponsored project that is hoping to find the answers to some of these questions for the social housing sector. I shared a panel with Neil Morgan, the project director, at the recent Greener Homes & Buildings show and he gave an outline of a number of research projects they are backing. One of these projects - by Anne Thorne Architects - showed that they are going for the demanding Passivhaus standard, which is more or less the standard that we are going to have to aim at in every case.
Neil gave some costs: they are allocating a budget of £120,000 per property for a sustainable renovation. Of this perhaps £60-£70,000 will actually be used for the renovation itself, the rest might go on overheads, sorting out the supply chain issues - which are right at their infancy and help to increase costs - dramatically, and post-occupancy monitoring and evaluation.
The government announced in the new energy bill that it would institute a Pay As You Save scheme to support households that wanted to carry out eco-renovation. No figure has yet been put on the loans that will be available to householders but before the election the Tories were touting the figure of £6,500.
This is about one tenth of what Retrofit for the Future is allocating. In Germany where similar pioneering work was done quite a few years ago costs in the region of £20-£40,000 per property were common, and another figure that has been offered is around at least 10% of the value of the house.
In other words, £6,500 is going to be nowhere near enough.
Everybody working in this field is advocating that whenever any work is done on a property the opportunity should be taken to renovate it to the highest possible energy efficiency standard to reduce the electricity and heating cost demands. These measures will of course pay for themselves in the future.
In other words if you are having workmen going into your house or scaffolding being put up, it makes sense to get them to do other jobs that need to be done while they are there rather than to get them back later. It would be more expensive if you were to do that and a valuable opportunity would be lost. For example if the roof is being replaced it makes a good idea to put solar water heating panels on it at the same time or at least put the pipes through the insulation and the roof so that they can be added easily later when a budget permits without having to tear apart your earlier work.
The danger is that in an era where savage public spending cuts are to be made then the amount of money that is going to be loaned to householders will be nowhere near enough, and the work will not be done to the sufficient standard. Another opportunity will have been wasted to help not only the UK reach its carbon emissions reductions targets but also for householders to reduce their ongoing energy costs.
Demand reduction is the best investment. It also means that we have to build fewer power stations and there is less likelihood of the lights going out in the future.
The UK's domestic properties need to be renovated to a high energy efficiency standard at a rate of 700,000 a year in order to have renovated them all by the year 2050. We need to do this because there are 28 million homes in the UK which are responsible for 27% of our greenhouse gas emissions, most of them will still be standing by then, and they need to be treated to make a contribution to meeting our national targets of reducing these emissions by 80% by 2050. ['The 40% House', Boardman et. al., 2005, and The Low-Carbon Strategy, 2008 (Oxford Environmental Change Institute)]
It would be alright if we knew exactly what it is that we have to do. The problem is that there are many areas of uncertainty, not least of which is the embodied energy of the materials used in construction. Unless we know this cannot estimate the carbon balance of the measures we are proposing to take and know that we are really saving carbon.
There also needs to be agreement on what measures these are to be - and they will be different for each type of property. There is an appalling lack of experience in this country of monitoring and measuring the efficacy of sustainable refurbishments that have already taken place to see how effective they have been.
One thing we do know is that they often don't live up to expectations, whether it is because of poor workmanship leaving, for example, gaps in insulation or whether it is that the occupants of the treated houses do not behave in a manner predicted by the architects and continue to turn their heating up.
Retrofit for the Future is a government-sponsored project that is hoping to find the answers to some of these questions for the social housing sector. I shared a panel with Neil Morgan, the project director, at the recent Greener Homes & Buildings show and he gave an outline of a number of research projects they are backing. One of these projects - by Anne Thorne Architects - showed that they are going for the demanding Passivhaus standard, which is more or less the standard that we are going to have to aim at in every case.
Neil gave some costs: they are allocating a budget of £120,000 per property for a sustainable renovation. Of this perhaps £60-£70,000 will actually be used for the renovation itself, the rest might go on overheads, sorting out the supply chain issues - which are right at their infancy and help to increase costs - dramatically, and post-occupancy monitoring and evaluation.
The government announced in the new energy bill that it would institute a Pay As You Save scheme to support households that wanted to carry out eco-renovation. No figure has yet been put on the loans that will be available to householders but before the election the Tories were touting the figure of £6,500.
This is about one tenth of what Retrofit for the Future is allocating. In Germany where similar pioneering work was done quite a few years ago costs in the region of £20-£40,000 per property were common, and another figure that has been offered is around at least 10% of the value of the house.
In other words, £6,500 is going to be nowhere near enough.
Everybody working in this field is advocating that whenever any work is done on a property the opportunity should be taken to renovate it to the highest possible energy efficiency standard to reduce the electricity and heating cost demands. These measures will of course pay for themselves in the future.
In other words if you are having workmen going into your house or scaffolding being put up, it makes sense to get them to do other jobs that need to be done while they are there rather than to get them back later. It would be more expensive if you were to do that and a valuable opportunity would be lost. For example if the roof is being replaced it makes a good idea to put solar water heating panels on it at the same time or at least put the pipes through the insulation and the roof so that they can be added easily later when a budget permits without having to tear apart your earlier work.
The danger is that in an era where savage public spending cuts are to be made then the amount of money that is going to be loaned to householders will be nowhere near enough, and the work will not be done to the sufficient standard. Another opportunity will have been wasted to help not only the UK reach its carbon emissions reductions targets but also for householders to reduce their ongoing energy costs.
Demand reduction is the best investment. It also means that we have to build fewer power stations and there is less likelihood of the lights going out in the future.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
European Union is NOT increasing its emissions cut targets!
A number of newspapers and other sources, including The Times, are claiming this week that the European Union plans to increase the target for greenhouse gas emission cuts.
They report that a new target of cutting emissions by 30 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, would be set and that this "would cost the EU an extra £33 billion a year by 2020".
Unfortunately, there is no truth in the story.
It is true that the European Commission has released a discussion document on the subject. But it is not, as The Times describes, a draft of a communication.
In fact, it explicitly says, "The purpose of this Communication is not to decide now to move to a 30% target: the conditions set are clearly not met."
The conditions remain the same as they were during the Copenhagen discussions in December. At that point the Commission said that it would move from the current target of 20% to 30% if everybody else committed to legally binding targets.
A spokesperson for the European Commission told us unequivocally that there are no plans to increase the target to 30%.
And currently the expectation is that a legally binding global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that would be a successor to the Kyoto Protocol will not happen, if it ever will, until mid-2011 at the earliest.
One might wonder why The Times is publishing so prominently - it was on the front page - a story like this. It contains the following paragraph:
"Business leaders fear that thousands of jobs could be lost and energy bills could soar. Carbon taxes on road fuel, heating and other sources of emissions could be introduced, with proceeds reinvested in renewable energy products."
Those who hold conspiracy theories about sceptics of climate change or the European Union might draw their own conclusions.
They report that a new target of cutting emissions by 30 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, would be set and that this "would cost the EU an extra £33 billion a year by 2020".
Unfortunately, there is no truth in the story.
It is true that the European Commission has released a discussion document on the subject. But it is not, as The Times describes, a draft of a communication.
In fact, it explicitly says, "The purpose of this Communication is not to decide now to move to a 30% target: the conditions set are clearly not met."
The conditions remain the same as they were during the Copenhagen discussions in December. At that point the Commission said that it would move from the current target of 20% to 30% if everybody else committed to legally binding targets.
A spokesperson for the European Commission told us unequivocally that there are no plans to increase the target to 30%.
And currently the expectation is that a legally binding global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that would be a successor to the Kyoto Protocol will not happen, if it ever will, until mid-2011 at the earliest.
One might wonder why The Times is publishing so prominently - it was on the front page - a story like this. It contains the following paragraph:
"Business leaders fear that thousands of jobs could be lost and energy bills could soar. Carbon taxes on road fuel, heating and other sources of emissions could be introduced, with proceeds reinvested in renewable energy products."
Those who hold conspiracy theories about sceptics of climate change or the European Union might draw their own conclusions.
Will the "greenest government ever" preside over a 'blackout Britain'?
Before the election, the energy sector and the CBI by and large supported a policy programme that promised to "keep the lights on" and build a low carbon economy.
In five to ten years' time some current coal and nuclear power stations may have to be mothballed and there is now doubt that new nuclear power stations - which anyway would not be producing power for 15 years - will now be built, as Chris Huhne is known not to favour spending public money on them.
Add this to the cuts in both DECC's and Defra's budgets, and there is concern over a possible 'energy gap' looming.
“We need to explore alternative ways to combat this shortfall, such as building green oil power plants that run off of sustainable oil, waste to energy systems that use all municipal solid waste (MSW) to generate electricity, which means there is no need for consumers to sort out their waste," said David Weaver, CEO of clean-tech company Ultra Green.
“These kinds of projects can be completed and producing power within five years. However, we need government support in the form of development grants and guarantees to accelerate the Britain’s renewables growth programme.”
We have already seen the loss of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) grants which will adversely affect the renewable heat sector (see my previous blog post).
An energy efficiency drive will reduce the rate of increase in demand for electricity.
But the sector requires immediately huge input in research, development, infrastructure and plant to quickly evolve a low carbon energy supply mix that meets future demand and bridges the energy gap.
Furthermore, the Queen's Speech contains bills that could have a negative impact on the UK’s energy and environmental sector.
A Devolution and Localism Bill, which will give local councils more control, could affect onshore renewable energy projects, by giving more power to NIMBYs.
Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralisation, said, "This Bill would reverse years of creeping state control and return power to people, communities and councils."
But the vast majority of councils which have rejected wind farm planning applications across the country have historically been Tory held.
One commentator, Howard Thomas, said on a government website that the coalition policy on ensuring 'sustainable development’ in planning is too vague and requires clarity. He called for "a clause in planning policy statements that every new development must not increase global-warming emissions and should save on them".
There's also the Public Bodies (Reform) Bill, which promises to do the opposite to the Localism Bill - centralise power by abolishing, merging or transferring quangos back into Departments.
Cutting quangos like The Carbon Trust, The Technology Strategy Board and its Knowledge Transfer Networks, and WRAP could seriously affect low carbon delivery objectives.
This could result in the loss of support for emerging tender shoots of nascent low carbon technologies.
In five to ten years' time some current coal and nuclear power stations may have to be mothballed and there is now doubt that new nuclear power stations - which anyway would not be producing power for 15 years - will now be built, as Chris Huhne is known not to favour spending public money on them.
Add this to the cuts in both DECC's and Defra's budgets, and there is concern over a possible 'energy gap' looming.
The Energy Gap
“We need to explore alternative ways to combat this shortfall, such as building green oil power plants that run off of sustainable oil, waste to energy systems that use all municipal solid waste (MSW) to generate electricity, which means there is no need for consumers to sort out their waste," said David Weaver, CEO of clean-tech company Ultra Green.
“These kinds of projects can be completed and producing power within five years. However, we need government support in the form of development grants and guarantees to accelerate the Britain’s renewables growth programme.”
We have already seen the loss of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) grants which will adversely affect the renewable heat sector (see my previous blog post).
An energy efficiency drive will reduce the rate of increase in demand for electricity.
But the sector requires immediately huge input in research, development, infrastructure and plant to quickly evolve a low carbon energy supply mix that meets future demand and bridges the energy gap.
Furthermore, the Queen's Speech contains bills that could have a negative impact on the UK’s energy and environmental sector.
Planning issues
A Devolution and Localism Bill, which will give local councils more control, could affect onshore renewable energy projects, by giving more power to NIMBYs.
Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralisation, said, "This Bill would reverse years of creeping state control and return power to people, communities and councils."
But the vast majority of councils which have rejected wind farm planning applications across the country have historically been Tory held.
One commentator, Howard Thomas, said on a government website that the coalition policy on ensuring 'sustainable development’ in planning is too vague and requires clarity. He called for "a clause in planning policy statements that every new development must not increase global-warming emissions and should save on them".
Loss of support
There's also the Public Bodies (Reform) Bill, which promises to do the opposite to the Localism Bill - centralise power by abolishing, merging or transferring quangos back into Departments.
Cutting quangos like The Carbon Trust, The Technology Strategy Board and its Knowledge Transfer Networks, and WRAP could seriously affect low carbon delivery objectives.
This could result in the loss of support for emerging tender shoots of nascent low carbon technologies.
Renewable energy grant scheme abruptly halted
The new Government's self-professed green credentials have come under question as a key grant scheme to put renewable heating into buildings has been stopped, to save a mere £3 million.
As of 6am on Monday, May 24th, the Government stopped taking fresh applications for grants for renewable heat systems. These were available under phase 2e of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP).
The previous government’s intent was for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to take over from the LCBP. However there is now a gap of ten months before this goes live on April 1st 2011.
The LCPB's website says that "demand for grants has been unprecedented" and "we had very little unallocated funding remaining". It has therefore "been decided that by closing the programme now, these unallocated funds will contribute towards DECC’s overall savings".
The Solar Trade Association (STA) called it a "a retrogressive step" given "the relatively small budget required to support the LCBP".
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said it had to make the cut to as its part of the £6bn cuts announced by George Osbourne and the Treasury. DECC is contributing £85m to this total.
About half this figure will come from efficiencies and other savings across our central spending and that of DECC's quangos. The other half comes from cutting or slowing down planned expenditure.
The declared "unprecedented demand" indicates a healthy sector and the public's desire to install microgeneration. Many social housing providers had significant plans to install renewable technologies such as heat pumps this year under the scheme.
These and other projects will now most likely be put on hold until the RHI comes in, although its exact form has yet to be confirmed.
Therefore the STA believes the ten month gap will cause a loss of jobs in the industry just at the moment the country wants to build capacity to install hundreds of thousands of renewable heating systems each year.
They called on the Government to find a small extra element in its budget to support the LCBP until the launch of the new incentive.
Howard Johns, Chairman of the STA said “This is very bad news for the solar industry, and a very disappointing move from the new coalition who are aiming to be the greenest Government ever. Once again been undermined for short term gain. At this point we have no idea what the RHI will look like and whether we will get it at all - effectively leaving our sector in limbo, and jobs at risk.”
Scott McLean, marketing director of Ownergy, commented: "The same happened to LCBP grants for renewable electricity installations ahead of the Feed-In Tariffs going live. We don't see it as any indication that the Renewable Heat Incentive is under threat."
The LCBP grant programme has provided approximately 20,000 grants for the capital and installation costs of Microgeneration equipment of which, to date 11,000 have been for thermal technology (33% by value, 58% by number of installations). These have produced lifetime carbon savings of 300,000 tonnes of CO2.
Feed-In-Tariff for renewable electricity, introduced on 1 April 2010, mean that LCBP is no longer required for electrical microgeneration.
As of 6am on Monday, May 24th, the Government stopped taking fresh applications for grants for renewable heat systems. These were available under phase 2e of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP).
The previous government’s intent was for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to take over from the LCBP. However there is now a gap of ten months before this goes live on April 1st 2011.
The LCPB's website says that "demand for grants has been unprecedented" and "we had very little unallocated funding remaining". It has therefore "been decided that by closing the programme now, these unallocated funds will contribute towards DECC’s overall savings".
The Solar Trade Association (STA) called it a "a retrogressive step" given "the relatively small budget required to support the LCBP".
DECC's cuts
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said it had to make the cut to as its part of the £6bn cuts announced by George Osbourne and the Treasury. DECC is contributing £85m to this total.
About half this figure will come from efficiencies and other savings across our central spending and that of DECC's quangos. The other half comes from cutting or slowing down planned expenditure.
Effect on the industry
The declared "unprecedented demand" indicates a healthy sector and the public's desire to install microgeneration. Many social housing providers had significant plans to install renewable technologies such as heat pumps this year under the scheme.
These and other projects will now most likely be put on hold until the RHI comes in, although its exact form has yet to be confirmed.
Therefore the STA believes the ten month gap will cause a loss of jobs in the industry just at the moment the country wants to build capacity to install hundreds of thousands of renewable heating systems each year.
They called on the Government to find a small extra element in its budget to support the LCBP until the launch of the new incentive.
Howard Johns, Chairman of the STA said “This is very bad news for the solar industry, and a very disappointing move from the new coalition who are aiming to be the greenest Government ever. Once again been undermined for short term gain. At this point we have no idea what the RHI will look like and whether we will get it at all - effectively leaving our sector in limbo, and jobs at risk.”
Scott McLean, marketing director of Ownergy, commented: "The same happened to LCBP grants for renewable electricity installations ahead of the Feed-In Tariffs going live. We don't see it as any indication that the Renewable Heat Incentive is under threat."
The Low Carbon Buildings Programme
The LCBP grant programme has provided approximately 20,000 grants for the capital and installation costs of Microgeneration equipment of which, to date 11,000 have been for thermal technology (33% by value, 58% by number of installations). These have produced lifetime carbon savings of 300,000 tonnes of CO2.
Feed-In-Tariff for renewable electricity, introduced on 1 April 2010, mean that LCBP is no longer required for electrical microgeneration.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Green Belt campaigner and serial expenses abuser is new Defra chief
Caroline Spelman has joined the Cabinet as one of the few women members and is the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - Defra.
She is MP for Meriden in the West Midlands and was once the Conservative party chairman (Jul 2007 - Jan 2009) but was removed during the expenses scandal.
During that time she was forced to apologise and pay back £9,600 of Commons allowances she 'inadvertently' misused to pay her children's nanny.
She also faced questions over her Commons expenses after pocketing £40,000 to run her Georgian mansion, claiming it was her 'second' home - allowing her to claim a small fortune of taxpayers' cash for cleaning and bills - while her husband Mark claimed it was his main home during his unsuccessful bid to become a Conservative MEP in this month's European elections.
And she overclaimed £200 for council tax which she has paid back. She said it was a 'one-off administrative oversight'.
More recently she has kept well within her expenses limit.
She also appears to have been confused about what to do with the House of Lords having voted both "strongly" against removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords and "strongly" for a wholly elected House of Lords.
Previous posts she has held are:
• Shadow communities and local government secretary since Jan 2009
• Shadow secretary of state for communities and local government (Dec 2005 - Jul 2007)
• Shadow secretary of state for local and devolved government (Mar 2004 - Dec 2005)
• Opposition spokesperson, environment and shadow minister for women (Nov 2003 - Mar 2004)
• Opposition spokesperson, international development (Sep 2001 - Nov 2003).
She has also authored a book on the non-food use of agricultural products.
She has a particular interest in preserving the "green belt" and housing.
On her website she writes "Striking an appropriate balance between the sustainance of rural character and the allowance of urban growth is a particularly sensitive issue in the Meriden Constituency.
"I was elected with a pledge to try and defend the Green belt and find myself in a pitched battle with the Government's planning rules."
She has campaigned against ‘garden developments’ or ‘garden grabbing’, arguing that “Currently, gardens are not protected as ‘green space’, but are treated as ‘Brownfield land’. What is needed is clarification of the definition of ‘Brownfield Land’”.
This is something that I blogged about last week, as an area that the coalition will need to look at.
She introduced a Private Members’ Bill in Parliament at the end of 2006 which would protect these green spaces and adjust planning rules so as to take this need into consideration.
Hopefully this is something she is in a better position to see through now.
With her obvious lack of experience and questionable judgment she will need to sharpen up quickly, before she gets eaten by farmers and waste disposal engineers.
She is MP for Meriden in the West Midlands and was once the Conservative party chairman (Jul 2007 - Jan 2009) but was removed during the expenses scandal.
During that time she was forced to apologise and pay back £9,600 of Commons allowances she 'inadvertently' misused to pay her children's nanny.
She also faced questions over her Commons expenses after pocketing £40,000 to run her Georgian mansion, claiming it was her 'second' home - allowing her to claim a small fortune of taxpayers' cash for cleaning and bills - while her husband Mark claimed it was his main home during his unsuccessful bid to become a Conservative MEP in this month's European elections.
And she overclaimed £200 for council tax which she has paid back. She said it was a 'one-off administrative oversight'.
More recently she has kept well within her expenses limit.
Previous attitudes
According to They Work For You, she has voted "very strongly" for laws to stop climate change and for replacing Trident - opposing her new Liberal Democrat colleagues.She also appears to have been confused about what to do with the House of Lords having voted both "strongly" against removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords and "strongly" for a wholly elected House of Lords.
Previous posts she has held are:
• Shadow communities and local government secretary since Jan 2009
• Shadow secretary of state for communities and local government (Dec 2005 - Jul 2007)
• Shadow secretary of state for local and devolved government (Mar 2004 - Dec 2005)
• Opposition spokesperson, environment and shadow minister for women (Nov 2003 - Mar 2004)
• Opposition spokesperson, international development (Sep 2001 - Nov 2003).
Why has she been chosen for Defra?
Defra says that before then Mrs Spelman had an extensive career in the agriculture sector, with fifteen years in the agriculture industry and in-depth experience of the international arena, including as deputy director of the International Confederation of European Beet Growers and a research fellow for the Centre for European Agricultural Studies.She has also authored a book on the non-food use of agricultural products.
She has a particular interest in preserving the "green belt" and housing.
On her website she writes "Striking an appropriate balance between the sustainance of rural character and the allowance of urban growth is a particularly sensitive issue in the Meriden Constituency.
"I was elected with a pledge to try and defend the Green belt and find myself in a pitched battle with the Government's planning rules."
She has campaigned against ‘garden developments’ or ‘garden grabbing’, arguing that “Currently, gardens are not protected as ‘green space’, but are treated as ‘Brownfield land’. What is needed is clarification of the definition of ‘Brownfield Land’”.
This is something that I blogged about last week, as an area that the coalition will need to look at.
She introduced a Private Members’ Bill in Parliament at the end of 2006 which would protect these green spaces and adjust planning rules so as to take this need into consideration.
Hopefully this is something she is in a better position to see through now.
With her obvious lack of experience and questionable judgment she will need to sharpen up quickly, before she gets eaten by farmers and waste disposal engineers.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
New DECC man Huhne faces tough challenges
Chris Huhne is the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary. The Liberal Democrat, 55, MP for Eastleigh in Hampshire, was latterly the party's Home Affairs shadow, and previously its environment spokesman.
Simon Hughes, who was the LibDem's Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, might be surprised at the appointment.
But according to the website They Work For You, Mr Huhne does have a better record than Mr Hughes on voting to stop climate change.
Mr Huhne is particularly interested in tax reform, which might explain his appointment.
He has in the past advocated a switch from taxing employment and labour on to resource use, pollution and carbon emissions.
Together with Vince Cable, it's possible that they may influence George Osbourne's position in the Treasury on these crucial issues.
As we enter a period of public spending cuts the new coalition Government will have little room to bankroll environmental action, but instead has an opportunity to shift the burden of taxation to both protect jobs and the environment.
But there will be other tough decisions on policy.
During the election campaign, the Conservatives said they wanted to replace the Renewable Obligation and system of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) with an extended feed-in tariff scheme.
This could mean considerable uncertainty for large-scale renewable energy projects investors, such as wind farms, which are currently being planned based on the returns they could realise through the ROC system.
Huhne will have to spell out very soon what he plans to do about this.
In addition, the Tories are for nuclear and the LibDems against.
Apparently the Tories are giving their coalition partners the option of abstaining on any Parliamentary vote on nuclear power, leaving them have to get Labour on board to secure a majority, as well as promising not to spend any public money on the technology.
This could mean that new nuclear build faces an uncertain future.
Simon Hughes, who was the LibDem's Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, might be surprised at the appointment.
But according to the website They Work For You, Mr Huhne does have a better record than Mr Hughes on voting to stop climate change.
Mr Huhne is particularly interested in tax reform, which might explain his appointment.
He has in the past advocated a switch from taxing employment and labour on to resource use, pollution and carbon emissions.
Together with Vince Cable, it's possible that they may influence George Osbourne's position in the Treasury on these crucial issues.
As we enter a period of public spending cuts the new coalition Government will have little room to bankroll environmental action, but instead has an opportunity to shift the burden of taxation to both protect jobs and the environment.
But there will be other tough decisions on policy.
During the election campaign, the Conservatives said they wanted to replace the Renewable Obligation and system of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) with an extended feed-in tariff scheme.
This could mean considerable uncertainty for large-scale renewable energy projects investors, such as wind farms, which are currently being planned based on the returns they could realise through the ROC system.
Huhne will have to spell out very soon what he plans to do about this.
In addition, the Tories are for nuclear and the LibDems against.
Apparently the Tories are giving their coalition partners the option of abstaining on any Parliamentary vote on nuclear power, leaving them have to get Labour on board to secure a majority, as well as promising not to spend any public money on the technology.
This could mean that new nuclear build faces an uncertain future.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Will a hung Parliament be good for the environment?
Now that we know there is to be a hung Parliament, the stage is set for much horse trading on environmental issues between the three main parties.
And, now that Caroline Lucas has become the first Green Party MP since Cynog Dafis won his seat in the '90s on a joint Green-Plaid Cymru ticket, it will be fascinating to see if she succeeds in raising the profile of environmental issues.
She deserves huge congratulations, as she has won this on the back of many years of dedication and hard work as a Green MEP.
On the whole, the Liberal Democrats hold the greenest of policies amongst the main three, but if, as seems likely, they attempt to forge an alliance with the Conservatives, then it will be very interesting to see how a party that is against nuclear power and for onshore wind can get on with one that opposes these policies.
Let's take one topic and see what could happen: planning and housing.
Where both Tories and LibDems agree, and differ from Labour, is in a promise to abolish regional planning, including regional spatial strategies.
Although the Liberal Democrat Policies for the Environment election document had little to say about spatial planning it did pledge to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and return planning, including housing targets to "local people", something the Tories might agree with.
A Conservative government would pay councils to release land for housing by matching pound-for-pound the council tax receipts they receive from new housing, and the LibDems could support that.
But the Tories have no target for housing on brownfield land to protect greenspace, unlike the Labour Government, which set one at 75%.
Labour promised to maintain the 60% brownfield and minimum density targets for housing in its election document A Green Future for All, and was the only main party to say it would enforce greenfield land releases, according to its Plan for Housing.
Labour also promised promise to end so-called "garden grabbing" by defining them as greenfield sites in "planning law" so they cannot be so easily built over.
The Tory document, Modern Conservatism: Our Quality of Life Agenda launched during the campaign represented a very pale green version of John Gummer's 2007 quality of life commission document which promoted a wide range of radical Smart Growth policies.
One thing seems certain: the prospect of a hung Parliament will act as a brake on the deregulatory excesses of the right that historically have not boded well for the environment - which, naturally, does not have a vote.
And, now that Caroline Lucas has become the first Green Party MP since Cynog Dafis won his seat in the '90s on a joint Green-Plaid Cymru ticket, it will be fascinating to see if she succeeds in raising the profile of environmental issues.
She deserves huge congratulations, as she has won this on the back of many years of dedication and hard work as a Green MEP.
On the whole, the Liberal Democrats hold the greenest of policies amongst the main three, but if, as seems likely, they attempt to forge an alliance with the Conservatives, then it will be very interesting to see how a party that is against nuclear power and for onshore wind can get on with one that opposes these policies.
Let's take one topic and see what could happen: planning and housing.
Where both Tories and LibDems agree, and differ from Labour, is in a promise to abolish regional planning, including regional spatial strategies.
Although the Liberal Democrat Policies for the Environment election document had little to say about spatial planning it did pledge to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and return planning, including housing targets to "local people", something the Tories might agree with.
A Conservative government would pay councils to release land for housing by matching pound-for-pound the council tax receipts they receive from new housing, and the LibDems could support that.
But the Tories have no target for housing on brownfield land to protect greenspace, unlike the Labour Government, which set one at 75%.
Labour promised to maintain the 60% brownfield and minimum density targets for housing in its election document A Green Future for All, and was the only main party to say it would enforce greenfield land releases, according to its Plan for Housing.
Labour also promised promise to end so-called "garden grabbing" by defining them as greenfield sites in "planning law" so they cannot be so easily built over.
The Tory document, Modern Conservatism: Our Quality of Life Agenda launched during the campaign represented a very pale green version of John Gummer's 2007 quality of life commission document which promoted a wide range of radical Smart Growth policies.
One thing seems certain: the prospect of a hung Parliament will act as a brake on the deregulatory excesses of the right that historically have not boded well for the environment - which, naturally, does not have a vote.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
How to vote tactically for a greener new government
Thanks to Frannie Armstrong for this!
A Tory government would be a disaster for the environment and climate change.
Their candidates rank climate change as 19th out of 19 most important issues and want to decrease onshore wind and increase North Sea oil drilling. Their party is riddled with climate sceptics (with one even rumoured to be lurking in the shadow cabinet).
There are six seats (Battersea, Brighton Kemptown, Calder Valley, Colne Valley, Hove and Stroud) where the Green vote is large enough to give a Labour seat to the Tories.
There are at least three (including Carshalton and Wallington, Dorset West and Torridge and West Devon) where it would either give a Lib Dem seat to the Tories or prevent the Lib Dems from taking one from them.
So we urge everyone who understands the precipice on which we all stand to be highly tactical with their vote:
Meanwhile, till Friday morning, you can watch The Age of Stupid free for 48 hours - from now till the polls close tomorrow night.
A Tory government would be a disaster for the environment and climate change.
Their candidates rank climate change as 19th out of 19 most important issues and want to decrease onshore wind and increase North Sea oil drilling. Their party is riddled with climate sceptics (with one even rumoured to be lurking in the shadow cabinet).
There are six seats (Battersea, Brighton Kemptown, Calder Valley, Colne Valley, Hove and Stroud) where the Green vote is large enough to give a Labour seat to the Tories.
There are at least three (including Carshalton and Wallington, Dorset West and Torridge and West Devon) where it would either give a Lib Dem seat to the Tories or prevent the Lib Dems from taking one from them.
So we urge everyone who understands the precipice on which we all stand to be highly tactical with their vote:
- If you live in a hope-in-hell constituency, vote Green: Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion (now the bookies' favourite), Tony Juniper in Cambridge, Adrian Ramsay in Norwich South and Darren Johnson in Lewisham Deptford.
- If you're in a Labour-Tory marginal, steel your environmentalist's heart and vote Labour rather than Green
- If you're in a Lib Dem-Tory marginal, vote Lib Dem rather than Green
- If you're in a Labour-Lib Dem marginal, vote for Labour, with an eye on helping stop Clegg siding with the Tories if there's a hung parliament. (Clegg said last week that he'd be happy to work with the Tories as long as they concurred on four policies - fairer taxes, a shake-up of the education system and economic and political reform. Nothing else important, Nick?)
- If you're in a safe seat for any of the three main parties vote Green to add one more to the Greens' total and strengthen the case for proportional representation next time.
Meanwhile, till Friday morning, you can watch The Age of Stupid free for 48 hours - from now till the polls close tomorrow night.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Tories are the most un-green of the parties, LibDem greenest
Of the mainstream 3 parties, the LibDems have the greenest policies and candidates followed by Labour with the Tories trailing badly.
FoE supporters contacted their parliamentary candidates to ask them to support four pledges:
The results were:
Andrew Smith, former Labour minister and candidate for Oxford East, said: " A Tory government would threaten the low-carbon transition: sceptic MPs, no to onshore wind, on the fringes in Europe."
The Conservatives also plan to increase oil drilling in UK waters.
According to a green paper on energy policy published in March, a future Conservative government would "implement a tax regime that offers sufficient incentive to keep existing fields open as long as possible, and which also makes new exploration on the UK continental shelf attractive".
It added: "In addition, we will improve the incentives for exploring and developing marginal fields ... opening up new areas, including in the seas west of the Shetlands."
When questioned by George Monbiot, Greg Clarke, the Tory energy shadow, could see no contradiction between this stance and having a carbon emissions reduction target.
In this video he comes across as woolly and superficial in his thinking.
In addition, the Tories want to scrap many quangos and let ministers make more decisions.
This could mean a severe shrinking of anti-pollution measures resulting in a more polluted country.
When I asked Central Office to deny categorically that the Tories would not scrap the Waste and Resources Action Programme or the Environment Agency, they could not do so.
Finally, the LibDems are the only party wanting to scrap nuclear power and Trident.
Use your vote wisely.
FoE supporters contacted their parliamentary candidates to ask them to support four pledges:
- a strong and fair international agreement to tackle climate change;
- a local carbon budget for every local authority;
- investment in switching to a low-carbon economy;
- and tackling the major greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation caused by the UK's dependence on imported feeds for livestock.
The results were:
- Less than 1% of Tory candidates agreed (4),
- 182 of the 446 Lib Dems agreed;
- 96 of the 479 Labour candidates agreed
Andrew Smith, former Labour minister and candidate for Oxford East, said: " A Tory government would threaten the low-carbon transition: sceptic MPs, no to onshore wind, on the fringes in Europe."
The Conservatives also plan to increase oil drilling in UK waters.
According to a green paper on energy policy published in March, a future Conservative government would "implement a tax regime that offers sufficient incentive to keep existing fields open as long as possible, and which also makes new exploration on the UK continental shelf attractive".
It added: "In addition, we will improve the incentives for exploring and developing marginal fields ... opening up new areas, including in the seas west of the Shetlands."
When questioned by George Monbiot, Greg Clarke, the Tory energy shadow, could see no contradiction between this stance and having a carbon emissions reduction target.
In this video he comes across as woolly and superficial in his thinking.
In addition, the Tories want to scrap many quangos and let ministers make more decisions.
This could mean a severe shrinking of anti-pollution measures resulting in a more polluted country.
When I asked Central Office to deny categorically that the Tories would not scrap the Waste and Resources Action Programme or the Environment Agency, they could not do so.
Finally, the LibDems are the only party wanting to scrap nuclear power and Trident.
Use your vote wisely.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Grid connection and intermittency of renewable energy
It's still said that when the wind doesn't blow you need other sources of power, so wind farms are really a waste of money.
This topic - grid integration of renewables and variability - has been extensively investigated.
One conclusion - from the UK Government report quoted below - is: "For penetrations of intermittent renewables up to 20% of electricity supply, additional system balancing reserves due to short term (hourly) fluctuations in wind generation amount to about 5-10% of installed wind capacity."
Peter Freere, formerly an engineering professor at Monash University in Australia says:
"It is correct that in normal electric grids (without energy storage - eg pumped storage, charging electric cars, etc.), a single wind farm would not work well on its own and some conventional energy sources are also required.
"The same applies to the conventional energy sources, especially nuclear, whose response time is so slow that they must have a fast responding generation system in parallel.
"It is also true that due to the large sizes of modern generators in conventional systems (eg. 500 MW per generator), to allow for maintenance and breakdowns, it is necessary to have a complete spare generator ready to take over when another stops working (for whatever reason)."
"Hence the risk with wind farms is not so great - no more than many conventional systems."
The largest study on grid integration was done in Germany by DENA. The gist is that investment in the grid will be necessary to integrate the new renewable generation needed meet the German target of 20% of supply from renewable energy by 2020. The investment required is less expensive than additional grid expansion if new central-station plants are built, and this investment will result in making the grid more stable with or without the renewable generation.
A March 2006 UK Energy Research Centre report analysed the results of 200 studies on the grid integration of intermittent renewables. The following are excerpts from the summary of The Costs and Impacts of Intermittency: An assessment of the evidence on the costs and impacts of intermittent generation on the British electricity network. Below are its conclusions:
Below are a few links to other reports on grid integration of renewables.
This topic - grid integration of renewables and variability - has been extensively investigated.
One conclusion - from the UK Government report quoted below - is: "For penetrations of intermittent renewables up to 20% of electricity supply, additional system balancing reserves due to short term (hourly) fluctuations in wind generation amount to about 5-10% of installed wind capacity."
Peter Freere, formerly an engineering professor at Monash University in Australia says:
"It is correct that in normal electric grids (without energy storage - eg pumped storage, charging electric cars, etc.), a single wind farm would not work well on its own and some conventional energy sources are also required.
"The same applies to the conventional energy sources, especially nuclear, whose response time is so slow that they must have a fast responding generation system in parallel.
"It is also true that due to the large sizes of modern generators in conventional systems (eg. 500 MW per generator), to allow for maintenance and breakdowns, it is necessary to have a complete spare generator ready to take over when another stops working (for whatever reason)."
"Hence the risk with wind farms is not so great - no more than many conventional systems."
The largest study on grid integration was done in Germany by DENA. The gist is that investment in the grid will be necessary to integrate the new renewable generation needed meet the German target of 20% of supply from renewable energy by 2020. The investment required is less expensive than additional grid expansion if new central-station plants are built, and this investment will result in making the grid more stable with or without the renewable generation.
A March 2006 UK Energy Research Centre report analysed the results of 200 studies on the grid integration of intermittent renewables. The following are excerpts from the summary of The Costs and Impacts of Intermittency: An assessment of the evidence on the costs and impacts of intermittent generation on the British electricity network. Below are its conclusions:
- It is sometimes said that wind energy, for example, does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions because the intermittent nature of its output means it needs to be backed up by fossil fuel plant. Wind turbines do not displace fossil generating capacity on a one-for-one basis. But it is unambiguously the case that wind energy can displace fossil fuel-based generation, reducing both fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.
- Wind generation does mean that the output of fossil fuel-plant needs to be adjusted more frequently, to cope with fluctuations in output. Some power stations will be operated below their maximum output to facilitate this, and extra system balancing reserves will be needed. Efficiency may be reduced as a result. At high penetrations (above 20%) energy may need to be 'spilled' because the electricity system cannot always make use of it. (However it is hoped that in the future elecric cars will be charged sing this energy.) But overall these effects are much smaller than the savings in fuel and emissions that renewables can deliver at the levels of penetration examined in this report.
- None of the 200+ studies reviewed suggest that introducing significant levels of intermittent renewable energy generation on to the British electricity system must lead to reduced reliability of electricity supply2. Many of the studies consider intermittent generation of up to 20% of electricity demand, some considerably more. It is clear that intermittent generation need not compromise electricity system reliability at any level of penetration foreseeable in Britain over the next 20 years, although it may increase costs. In the longer term much larger penetrations may also be feasible given appropriate changes to electricity networks.
- The introduction of significant amounts of intermittent generation will affect the way the electricity system operates. There are two main categories of impact and associated cost. The first, so called system balancing impacts, relates to the relatively rapid short term adjustments needed to manage fluctuations over the time period from minutes to hours. The second, which is termed here 'reliability impacts', relates to the extent to which we can be confident that sufficient generation will be available to meet peak demands. No electricity system can be 100% reliable, since there will always be a small chance of major failures in power stations or transmission lines when demands are high. Intermittent generation introduces additional uncertainties, and the effect of these can be quantified.
- System balancing entails costs which are passed on to electricity consumers. Intermittent generation adds to these costs. For penetrations of intermittent renewables up to 20% of electricity supply, additional system balancing reserves due to short term (hourly) fluctuations in wind generation amount to about
5-10% of installed wind capacity. Globally, most studies estimate that the associated costs are less than £5/MWh ($0.0087/kWh) of intermittent output, in some cases substantially less. The range in UK relevant studies is £2 - £3/MWh ($0.0035-$0.0052/kWh). - Unless there is a large amount of responsive or controllable demand, a system margin is needed to cope with unavailability of installed generation and fluctuations in electricity requirements (e.g. due to the weather). Conventional plant - coal, gas, nuclear - cannot be completely relied upon to generate electricity at times of peak demand as there is, very approximately, a one-in-ten chance that unexpected failures (or "forced outages") in power plant or electricity transmission networks will cause any individualconventional generating unit not to be available to generate power. Even with a system margin, there is no absolute guarantee in any electricity system that all demands can be met at all times.
- Intermittent generation increases the size of the system margin required to maintain a given level of reliability. This is because the variability in output of intermittent generators means they are less likely to be generating at full power at times of peak demand. The system margin needed to achieve a desired level of reliability depends on many complex factors but may be explored by statistical calculations or simplified models. Intermittent generation introduces new factors into the calculations and changes some of the numbers, but it does not change the fundamental principles on which such calculations are based.
- Intermittent generators can make a contribution to system reliability, provided there is some probability of output during peak periods. They may be generating power when conventional stations experience forced outages and their output may be independent of fluctuations in energy demand. These factors can be taken into account when the relationship between system margin and reliability is calculated using statistical principles.
- Capacity credit is a measure of the contribution that intermittent generation can make to reliability. It is usually expressed as a percentage of the installed capacity of the intermittent generators. There is a range of estimates for capacity credits in the literature and the reasons for there being a range are well understood. The range of findings relevant to British conditions is approximately 20 - 30% of installed capacity when up to 20% of electricity is sourced from intermittent supplies (usually assumed to be wind power). Capacity credit as a percentage of installed intermittent capacity declines as the share of electricity supplied by intermittent sources increases.
- The capacity credit for intermittent generation, the additional conventional capacity required to maintain a given level of reliability and thus the overall system margin are all related to each other. The smaller the capacity credit, the more capacity needed to maintain reliability, hence the larger the system margin. The amount by which the system margin must rise in order to maintain reliability has been described in some studies as "standby capacity","back-up capacity" or the "system reserves". But there is no need to provide dedicated "back-up" capacity to support individual generators. [Emphasis added] These terms have meaning only at the system level.
- This assumes around 20% of electricity is supplied by well dispersed wind power. Current costs are much lower; indeed there is little or no impact on reliability at existing levels of wind power penetration. The cost of maintaining reliability will increase as the market share of intermittent generation rises.
- The aggregate 'costs of intermittency' are made up of additional short-run balancing costs and the additional longer term costs associated with maintaining reliability via an adequate system margin. Intermittency costs in Britain are of the order of £5 to £8/MWh ($0.0087-$0.0139/kWh), made up of £2 to £3/MWh from shortrun balancing costs and £3 to £5/MWh from the cost of maintaining a higher system margin. For comparison, the direct costs of wind generation would typically be approximately £30 to £55/MWh ($0.052-$0.0958). If shared between all consumers the impact of intermittency on electricity prices would be of the order 0.1to 0.15 p/kWh ($0.0017-$0.0026/kWh).
Below are a few links to other reports on grid integration of renewables.
- Managing Variability: A report to WWF-UK, RSPB, Greenpeace UK and Friends of the Earth EWNI by David Milborrow, June, 2009
- Impact of Intermittency: How Wind Variability Could Change the Share of the British and Irish Electricity Markets July, 2009
- Design and Operation of Power Systems with Large Amounts of Wind Power, IEA Wind Task 25, 2007
- Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by
Interconnecting Wind Farms, Cristina Archer, Mark Jacobson, Stanford, 2007 - Midwest Wind Integration Study
- Wind Penetration Update Denmark 2007
- Wind Penetration Update 2006
- Wind Power in Power Systems by Thomas Ackermann
- The Costs and Impacts
of Intermittency: An assessment of the evidence on the costs and impacts of
intermittent generation on the British electricity network by the the UK Energy Research Centre’s Technology and Policy Assessment function, March, 2006. - Summary of the Essential Results of the Study, Planning of the Grid Integration of Wind Energy in Germany Onshore and Offshore up to the Year 2020 (Dena Grid study), by the Project Steering Group, Deutsche Energie-Agentur, Berlin, 2005.
- Large Scale Integration of Wind Energy in the European Power Supply: analysis, issues, and recommendations, EWEA, Brussels, 2005.
- An Analysis of the Impacts of Large-Scale Wind Generation on the Ontario Electricity System, CanWEA, AWS TrueWind, 2005.
- California Renewables Portfolio Standard Renewable Generation Integration Cost Analysis Phase III: Recommendations For Implementation, Publication Number: 500-04-054, 2004
- The Costs of Wind's Variability: Is There a Threshold?, Joseph F. DeCarolis and David W. Keith, January/February 2005.
- The Economics and Environmental Impacts of Large-Scale Wind Power in a
Carbon Constrained World, by Joseph Frank DeCarolis (PhD dissertation), Carnegie Mellon, 2004 - The Economics of Wind Power with Energy Storage, Liliana E. Dragulescu, Pablo C. Benítez and G. Cornelis van Kooten, Resource and Environmental economics and Policy Analysis (REPA) Research Group Department of Economics University of Victoria, January 2006.
- Renewable Electricity and the Grid, The Challenge of Variability, edited by Godfrey Boyle, Earthscan, September 2007
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The cost-effectiveness of low or zero carbon energy generation
This update is following from my previous blog and George Monbiot's attack on feed-in tarriffs and responses to it.
Reliable independent figures on cost-effectiveness of low or zero carbon energy generation based on real monitored examples are yet few, and I'm trying to collate them, because this kind of evidence is what we need to help determine policy.
Crucially, page 37 of the 2009 impact assessment of the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) (which places an obligation on energy suppliers and electricity generators to meet a CO2 reduction target) ranks the effectiveness of non-large-scale generation measures in kgCO2 per pound sterling spent as follows:
1 Existing community heat to CHP 88 (kg CO2 score per £ spent)
2 Electric to community CHP 39
3 Wood pellet boilers (primary) 24
4 Micro Hydro (0.7kWp, 50% LF) 16
5 Ground source heat pumps 14
6 Air source heat pump 13
7 MiniCHP (revised) 9
8 Mini-wind 5 kW, 20% LF 4
9 Solar Water Heater (4m2) 4
10 Photovoltaic panels (2.5 kWp) 3
11 Micro Wind (1 kWp, 1% LF) 0
From this it is quite glaringly obvious that for both heat and power the community scale is by far the most efficient level for interventions. Right at the bottom are the single-dwelling only solutions (I dispute the figures for wood pellet boilers since data on their carbon content is disputed) except where hydro is available (not many places).
The Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008 (CERT) looked into the cost and carbon reduction effectiveness of various measures. The document Explanatory Memorandum To The Electricity And Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008 contains a further Evidence Base.
In this community CHP with woodchips comes out at nine times more cost-effective in ££ per tonne of carbon saved than solar water heating and about the same as ground source heat pumps.
The figures are (- with suppliers’ cost to save one tonne C02 (£/tC02) for the Priority Group):
1 Community heating with wood chip 3
2 Ground source heat pumps 42
3 Wood chip CHP 49
4 Wood pellet boilers (primary) 58
5 Micro Hydro (0.7kWp, 50% LF) 60
6 Log burning stoves 110
7 Mini-wind 5 kW, 20% LF 125
8 Wood pellet stoves (secondary) 126
9 mCHP 176
10 Photovoltaic panels (2.5 kWp) 218
11 Solar Water Heater (4m2) 346
12 Micro Wind (1 kWp, 10% LF) 685
13 Community ground source heat pumps 697
The above underscores that renewable energies are frequently site-dependent and sensitive to economies of scale, because you have to cost the whole system.
Only 2% of UK homes can have a small wind turbine. This Energy Saving Trust report suggests the best sites and how to pick them.
In my previous blog I link to actual surveys of real PV installations and the figures show that they do not generate sufficient power in the UK when we need it for the reason that there is not enough sunshine in the winter - unless you have a huge array, which is currently very expensive.
If PVs could become as cheap as a low-e coated window unit, with spray-on or printed nano-scale circuitry or similar it might be worthwhile. This is a technological advance not a deployment advance. They would also need to capture a greater range of frequencies of light.
I would suggest that the standard for measuring and marketing the rated output of a panel or a system is changed to make it more realistic and easier for buyers to understand. As discussed in the blog above, the test conditions are way different from European field conditions and led to unreal expectations, or to potential obfuscation by the industry/ unscrupulous installation companies.
All of this suggests that while renewable heat can work on a community level, only CHP can universally provide electricity, whatever the power source, and then not that much in relation to demand since there is a limit to the available waste, waste heat and biomass.
Therefore we have to conclude that for renewable electricity generation larger scale wind and marine power are what is required at a massive scale. Of these, only wind is currently cost-effective and that is why it is being aggressively pursued offshore and onshore.
Reliable independent figures on cost-effectiveness of low or zero carbon energy generation based on real monitored examples are yet few, and I'm trying to collate them, because this kind of evidence is what we need to help determine policy.
Crucially, page 37 of the 2009 impact assessment of the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) (which places an obligation on energy suppliers and electricity generators to meet a CO2 reduction target) ranks the effectiveness of non-large-scale generation measures in kgCO2 per pound sterling spent as follows:
1 Existing community heat to CHP 88 (kg CO2 score per £ spent)
2 Electric to community CHP 39
3 Wood pellet boilers (primary) 24
4 Micro Hydro (0.7kWp, 50% LF) 16
5 Ground source heat pumps 14
6 Air source heat pump 13
7 MiniCHP (revised) 9
8 Mini-wind 5 kW, 20% LF 4
9 Solar Water Heater (4m2) 4
10 Photovoltaic panels (2.5 kWp) 3
11 Micro Wind (1 kWp, 1% LF) 0
From this it is quite glaringly obvious that for both heat and power the community scale is by far the most efficient level for interventions. Right at the bottom are the single-dwelling only solutions (I dispute the figures for wood pellet boilers since data on their carbon content is disputed) except where hydro is available (not many places).
The Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008 (CERT) looked into the cost and carbon reduction effectiveness of various measures. The document Explanatory Memorandum To The Electricity And Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008 contains a further Evidence Base.
In this community CHP with woodchips comes out at nine times more cost-effective in ££ per tonne of carbon saved than solar water heating and about the same as ground source heat pumps.
The figures are (- with suppliers’ cost to save one tonne C02 (£/tC02) for the Priority Group):
1 Community heating with wood chip 3
2 Ground source heat pumps 42
3 Wood chip CHP 49
4 Wood pellet boilers (primary) 58
5 Micro Hydro (0.7kWp, 50% LF) 60
6 Log burning stoves 110
7 Mini-wind 5 kW, 20% LF 125
8 Wood pellet stoves (secondary) 126
9 mCHP 176
10 Photovoltaic panels (2.5 kWp) 218
11 Solar Water Heater (4m2) 346
12 Micro Wind (1 kWp, 10% LF) 685
13 Community ground source heat pumps 697
The above underscores that renewable energies are frequently site-dependent and sensitive to economies of scale, because you have to cost the whole system.
Only 2% of UK homes can have a small wind turbine. This Energy Saving Trust report suggests the best sites and how to pick them.
Solar electricity
In my previous blog I link to actual surveys of real PV installations and the figures show that they do not generate sufficient power in the UK when we need it for the reason that there is not enough sunshine in the winter - unless you have a huge array, which is currently very expensive.
If PVs could become as cheap as a low-e coated window unit, with spray-on or printed nano-scale circuitry or similar it might be worthwhile. This is a technological advance not a deployment advance. They would also need to capture a greater range of frequencies of light.
I would suggest that the standard for measuring and marketing the rated output of a panel or a system is changed to make it more realistic and easier for buyers to understand. As discussed in the blog above, the test conditions are way different from European field conditions and led to unreal expectations, or to potential obfuscation by the industry/ unscrupulous installation companies.
Conclusion
All of this suggests that while renewable heat can work on a community level, only CHP can universally provide electricity, whatever the power source, and then not that much in relation to demand since there is a limit to the available waste, waste heat and biomass.
Therefore we have to conclude that for renewable electricity generation larger scale wind and marine power are what is required at a massive scale. Of these, only wind is currently cost-effective and that is why it is being aggressively pursued offshore and onshore.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Does PV - solar electricity - work in the UK?
The Government's Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) programme - energy cashback - will soon give subsidies for householders installing renewable energy in their homes.
George Monbiot told me last night he's going to publish tomorrow a critique of them (it's online now, here), arguing that when subsidising solar electricity (photovoltaic/PV) panels they are a waste of money and a rip-off to taxpayers.
As I have in the past campaigned for FITs, I was initially taken aback. But then I recalled I'd looked into the cost-effectiveness of PV systems before and agreed.
The truth is they do have very long cash payback times, even with a subsidy, which is an artificial way of reducing payback and doesn't reduce its actual real-world cost.
The question then arises - shouldn't we spend the money on other technologies which can have the same impact on reducing carbon emissions but more cost-effectively? George quotes the same McKinsey report comparison table Ive used before and which is in the Stern Report, to indicate which technologies do offer value for money.
Firstly: Here are the results of a 2006 study from Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London:
This paper compared two solar systems, an actual building integrated, photovoltaic roof (BIPV) and a notional solar thermal system for a residential block in London, UK.
The carbon payback for the solar thermal system is 2 years, the BIPV system has a carbon payback of 6 years.
Simple economic payback times for both systems are more than 50 years. Calculations considering the current UK energy price increase (10%/yr), reduce the economic payback time for the PV roof to under 30 years.
The costs to reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions using a BIPV roof are £196/tonne CO2, solar thermal individual systems at £65/tonne CO2 and community solar thermal at £38/tonne CO2.
Secondly: A BRE / DTI 2006 UK Photovoltaic Domestic Field Trail (PV DFT) made recommendations on installing PV but did not even look at payback.
Thirdly: Here's something I wrote in my forthcoming book on environmental refurbishment that was taken out by an editor:
Photovoltaics would not need the high level of financial support that the technology clearly does if there wasn’t a problem with generating enough power in extreme latitudes to justify their installation.
Many people have had their enthusiasm for photovoltaics curbed when they find out exactly how much power they can expect to generate for their cash. Therefore it is important to be quite clear on this: you are unlikely to generate more than a fraction of what you need and if you’re looking for quick paybacks, forget it.
The best way to demonstrate this is through a worked example.
Lesson 1: Solar panel manufacturers quote figures for the “peak power” and “installed capacity” of their products. According to industry standards these are the amounts of electrical output in watts that they would generate if one kilowatt per square metre of the sun’s energy were to fall on them. But how close is this to the amount of sunshine at your location? These figures can be found out from the same source on insolation given in the section on solar water heating. For most of the latitudes that cover England and Wales, the summer insolation is a fraction of that figure. Even Europe’s sunniest place, Limassol in Cyprus, only gets 325 W per square metre. London gets 198 and Edinburgh 172 in July. In December, the figures are 96, 22 and 13 respectively. So in the winter, it’s a lot less -- and that’s when you need more power because the lights will be on for longer.
On average, Edinburgh receives just 9% of the solar energy required by the panel to generate what it says it will on the box.
Lesson 2: Suppose you installed 30m2 of panels that were quoted by the manufacturer as having a peak power or installed capacity of 5.7kWp. Suppose they were installed in London, which has an average insolation figure over the year of 109W/m2. In that case you wouldn’t get 5.7kW averaged over the year, but 0.109 x 5.7kW = 621W. However that is the average figure.
In darkest December they were generating just 125W, or enough to power 10 low energy light bulbs. In fact it might be even less than this, because of shading, downtime and other system inefficiencies.
Lesson 3: How much would this cost and what would your payback be? Here are some figures from 2004 for an installation on the roof of The Insolvency Service, in Bloomsbury London. (There aren’t that many case studies where the figures are all available -- this one comes from a UK government report - Large-Scale Building Integrated Photovoltaic Field Trial: URN Number 07/1316, BERR, 2007:
Size Annual Output Project Cost Cost per peak W Cost per kWh Payback time
kWp MWh/year £ £/Wp p/kWh (years)
25.4 11.8 318,760 12.6 108.2 237
237 years payback? This is a good example of how not to do it - and perhaps ironic given the purpose of the institution (if we did this we would go bankrupt).
The best performance figures in the report come from a water park in the Cotswolds.
These are from 300 building-integrated monocrystalline modules rated at 85W on a 150m2 sloping roof, with a yield of 51kWp. The system cost €397,500 in 2003 and the following year generated 44.3MWh. The figures in the report are:
51.0 42.8 2 65,000 5.2 24 .8 54
54 years is still a long time to wait to get your money back, especially when the modules only came with a 20 year warranty from BP. And 24.8p per kWh is still twice the current average electricity price.
(These examples illustrate how to work out PV systems’ cost effectiveness. To work out how much carbon emissions they save, simply multiply the megawatt-hours by the carbon dioxide emissions figure given for fossil fuel electricity, which presumably the panels will displace, given on page x - 550 kg/MWh.)
Lesson 4: Although the figures from the field trials report a mean/peak power ratio of over 7%, equivalent to an annual yield of over 610kWh/kWp, if we accept a grid-purchased electricity price of £0.114/kWh (the 2008 UK average), and require a 5 year payback period, the break-even cost of a PV system - the total installation cost per peak watt - is £0.35/Wp.
But the UK Energy Saving Trust, in its brochure on solar electricity published in 2007, quotes installation prices for domestic rooftop PV of £5–£7.50/Wp. This seems a bit steep, but: it is 14–20 times higher than the break-even value.
And you’re only generating a fraction of the power you need.
George Monbiot told me last night he's going to publish tomorrow a critique of them (it's online now, here), arguing that when subsidising solar electricity (photovoltaic/PV) panels they are a waste of money and a rip-off to taxpayers.
As I have in the past campaigned for FITs, I was initially taken aback. But then I recalled I'd looked into the cost-effectiveness of PV systems before and agreed.
The truth is they do have very long cash payback times, even with a subsidy, which is an artificial way of reducing payback and doesn't reduce its actual real-world cost.
The question then arises - shouldn't we spend the money on other technologies which can have the same impact on reducing carbon emissions but more cost-effectively? George quotes the same McKinsey report comparison table Ive used before and which is in the Stern Report, to indicate which technologies do offer value for money.
What's the evidence for saying they are a waste of money?
Firstly: Here are the results of a 2006 study from Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London:
This paper compared two solar systems, an actual building integrated, photovoltaic roof (BIPV) and a notional solar thermal system for a residential block in London, UK.
The carbon payback for the solar thermal system is 2 years, the BIPV system has a carbon payback of 6 years.
Simple economic payback times for both systems are more than 50 years. Calculations considering the current UK energy price increase (10%/yr), reduce the economic payback time for the PV roof to under 30 years.
The costs to reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions using a BIPV roof are £196/tonne CO2, solar thermal individual systems at £65/tonne CO2 and community solar thermal at £38/tonne CO2.
Secondly: A BRE / DTI 2006 UK Photovoltaic Domestic Field Trail (PV DFT) made recommendations on installing PV but did not even look at payback.
Thirdly: Here's something I wrote in my forthcoming book on environmental refurbishment that was taken out by an editor:
Photovoltaics would not need the high level of financial support that the technology clearly does if there wasn’t a problem with generating enough power in extreme latitudes to justify their installation.
Many people have had their enthusiasm for photovoltaics curbed when they find out exactly how much power they can expect to generate for their cash. Therefore it is important to be quite clear on this: you are unlikely to generate more than a fraction of what you need and if you’re looking for quick paybacks, forget it.
The best way to demonstrate this is through a worked example.
Lesson 1: Solar panel manufacturers quote figures for the “peak power” and “installed capacity” of their products. According to industry standards these are the amounts of electrical output in watts that they would generate if one kilowatt per square metre of the sun’s energy were to fall on them. But how close is this to the amount of sunshine at your location? These figures can be found out from the same source on insolation given in the section on solar water heating. For most of the latitudes that cover England and Wales, the summer insolation is a fraction of that figure. Even Europe’s sunniest place, Limassol in Cyprus, only gets 325 W per square metre. London gets 198 and Edinburgh 172 in July. In December, the figures are 96, 22 and 13 respectively. So in the winter, it’s a lot less -- and that’s when you need more power because the lights will be on for longer.
On average, Edinburgh receives just 9% of the solar energy required by the panel to generate what it says it will on the box.
Lesson 2: Suppose you installed 30m2 of panels that were quoted by the manufacturer as having a peak power or installed capacity of 5.7kWp. Suppose they were installed in London, which has an average insolation figure over the year of 109W/m2. In that case you wouldn’t get 5.7kW averaged over the year, but 0.109 x 5.7kW = 621W. However that is the average figure.
In darkest December they were generating just 125W, or enough to power 10 low energy light bulbs. In fact it might be even less than this, because of shading, downtime and other system inefficiencies.
Lesson 3: How much would this cost and what would your payback be? Here are some figures from 2004 for an installation on the roof of The Insolvency Service, in Bloomsbury London. (There aren’t that many case studies where the figures are all available -- this one comes from a UK government report - Large-Scale Building Integrated Photovoltaic Field Trial: URN Number 07/1316, BERR, 2007:
Size Annual Output Project Cost Cost per peak W Cost per kWh Payback time
kWp MWh/year £ £/Wp p/kWh (years)
25.4 11.8 318,760 12.6 108.2 237
237 years payback? This is a good example of how not to do it - and perhaps ironic given the purpose of the institution (if we did this we would go bankrupt).
The best performance figures in the report come from a water park in the Cotswolds.
These are from 300 building-integrated monocrystalline modules rated at 85W on a 150m2 sloping roof, with a yield of 51kWp. The system cost €397,500 in 2003 and the following year generated 44.3MWh. The figures in the report are:
51.0 42.8 2 65,000 5.2 24 .8 54
54 years is still a long time to wait to get your money back, especially when the modules only came with a 20 year warranty from BP. And 24.8p per kWh is still twice the current average electricity price.
(These examples illustrate how to work out PV systems’ cost effectiveness. To work out how much carbon emissions they save, simply multiply the megawatt-hours by the carbon dioxide emissions figure given for fossil fuel electricity, which presumably the panels will displace, given on page x - 550 kg/MWh.)
Lesson 4: Although the figures from the field trials report a mean/peak power ratio of over 7%, equivalent to an annual yield of over 610kWh/kWp, if we accept a grid-purchased electricity price of £0.114/kWh (the 2008 UK average), and require a 5 year payback period, the break-even cost of a PV system - the total installation cost per peak watt - is £0.35/Wp.
But the UK Energy Saving Trust, in its brochure on solar electricity published in 2007, quotes installation prices for domestic rooftop PV of £5–£7.50/Wp. This seems a bit steep, but: it is 14–20 times higher than the break-even value.
And you’re only generating a fraction of the power you need.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Renewable domestic heating
On a domestic level, the Government has committed to support domestic micro-CHP with £2,300* cash support. But this does not apply to district level heating schemes.
This article looks at both ideas, carbon impacts and support in the UK.
District heating is more carbon-efficient than heating individual homes where the density of accommodation is high enough. The example in Southampton is often cited.
The idea was part of last year's DECC Heat and Energy Saving Strategy Consultation. It did suggest support for these schemes.
The conclusions were published in August 2009. We're still waiting to see what the Government decides to do.... and will probably wait for some time as there is an election on.
District heating is recommended to the Government by this month's report from the Green Building Council. This says:
1. Public sector buildings should be required, where available and viable, to connect to existing or planned community heat networks, to provide an ‘anchor load’ of demand, and large businesses should be encouraged to do the same.
2. The ‘allowable solutions’ mechanism should be used as a way of providing additional ring fenced capital to support the delivery of heat infrastructure. Government has said that developers will be able to invest in so-called 'allowable solutions' in order to meet the required standard when constructing new zero carbon buildings.
It says nothing about existing non-public buildings though.
Neither is district heating part of the current renewable heat consultation. This scheme, which is due to start in April 2011, will subsidise a rapid increase in the number of homes and offices heated by woodfuel, biogas, solar thermal, heat pumps and waste-to-energy technologies. The deadline for responses to this consultation is Monday 26 April so do have your say.
District heating systems are ideal if a whole street, area or block of flats is to be renovated. Economies of scale make this form of heat and power delivery the cheapest on a per-household basis, and by far the most carbon-efficient, if low carbon fuel sources are specified.
A district heating scheme in Southampton, England, serves many residential developments from gas-fired CHP and geothermal energy, saving 11,000 tonnes of carbon a year and benefiting residents with a service price 5 per cent less than the market rate.
Systems are most efficient when servicing both homes and businesses or premises used during the day, as the two heat loads throughout a 24 hour period suit the continuous running required of a large plant.
District CHP plants may utilize fuel sources from waste to biomass, as well as geothermal where it is available. They work best where buildings are close together. A not-for-profit energy service company is usually formed to manage the system.
Micro-CHP – combined heat and power – is a nascent technology of small units for individual homes, typically the size of a fridge. They run on natural gas to produce up to about 10kW of power.
The current crop of models are based on the Stirling engine, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) or internal combustion engine. The first two have high thermal efficiency and output but low electrical efficiency (10 per cent) – and this is a sticking point.
Electricity output is around 1.1kW, enough to maintain back-up power in the event of a power cut or boil a kettle. A 1kWe (1kW electrical power) model from Honda called Ecowill has sold well in Japan.
A 2007 trial by the UK’s Carbon Trust concluded that micro-CHP can cut electricity bills and overall CO2 emissions by 15–20 per cent when they’re the lead boiler in larger contexts like care homes, district schemes, apartment blocks and leisure centres.
The best individual home for them therefore is a medium-to-large, moderately well-insulated one, maybe with solid walls, solid floors and no loft space that is harder to insulate well and has a relatively large heat demand.
Here, micro-CHP units can potentially deliver carbon savings of 5–10 per cent – fewer than a condensing boiler, since capacity is likely to be best matched to demand, for both heat and power.
Payback can be as little as five years. But they offer limited benefits for smaller and newer dwellings.
The key to success is matching the thermal output to the building’s pattern of use so that they operate not intermittently but for many hours at a time, making the value of electricity generated pay for the marginal investment in as little as three years in a typical family home.
It therefore works best with a buffer storage tank to save the surplus heat for later.
Grid connection for electricity export is going to be crucial to micro-CHP’s widespread acceptance. On average, half of all electricity generated by a typical 1kWe micro-CHP device is exported to the grid as it’s not needed at the time.
Reliability is also a key issue – service agreements will be essential. So homeowners shouldn’t yet trade in their condensing boilers, which have about the same overall heating efficiency – 90 per cent – without also producing electricity, but they might keep an eye on developments.
Superinsulated homes will have to wait until the next generation of machines, based on fuel cells. These generally come in two types – proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs).
They have a heat to power ratio that is approximately equal so for example they could produce 5kW of heat and 5kW of electricity.
Under the Feed-in Tarriff scheme, from the 1st April 2010, microCHP units with a capacity below 2kW will receive 10p per kW hour generated, for a period of ten years. This tariff is available for the first 30,000 microCHP installations. A review will take place when 12,000 units have been installed.
However the Government has not followed through on commitments made in the Energy Act to support miniCHP units of up to 50 kW capacity.
* - based on 10p generation tariff and assuming a 3p pence export rate. Assuming annual generation of 2000 kWh and 50% export. Assuming import electricity price of 14p kWh-1. The total income paid to a generator over a 10 year FiT period would be £2,300 over full period of 10 years. Annual figure therefore of £230.
The Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme is the first phase of the Government’s Clean Energy Cashback programme - see the Energy Saving Trust website for details.
An independent survey conducted by the UK Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes which looked at the carbon impact of different domestic heating and hot water systems in both houses and flats concluded that the following performed best, all other things being equal (figures in kgCO2/m2/yr):
• community heating and CHP, fuelled wholly or mainly by biomass - 4.15
• community heating without CHP fuelled wholly or mainly by biomass - 7.11
• wood burning boilers - 10.02
• wood burning boilers with solar water heating panels - 10.09
• ground source heat pumps with low temperature heat distribution/emitters (e.g. underfloor heating) - 20.83
• solar water heating panels in conjunction with gas boiler systems - 21.98
Source: Heating Strategy Group of the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes, January 2008
This article looks at both ideas, carbon impacts and support in the UK.
District heating
District heating is more carbon-efficient than heating individual homes where the density of accommodation is high enough. The example in Southampton is often cited.
The idea was part of last year's DECC Heat and Energy Saving Strategy Consultation. It did suggest support for these schemes.
The conclusions were published in August 2009. We're still waiting to see what the Government decides to do.... and will probably wait for some time as there is an election on.
District heating is recommended to the Government by this month's report from the Green Building Council. This says:
1. Public sector buildings should be required, where available and viable, to connect to existing or planned community heat networks, to provide an ‘anchor load’ of demand, and large businesses should be encouraged to do the same.
2. The ‘allowable solutions’ mechanism should be used as a way of providing additional ring fenced capital to support the delivery of heat infrastructure. Government has said that developers will be able to invest in so-called 'allowable solutions' in order to meet the required standard when constructing new zero carbon buildings.
It says nothing about existing non-public buildings though.
Neither is district heating part of the current renewable heat consultation. This scheme, which is due to start in April 2011, will subsidise a rapid increase in the number of homes and offices heated by woodfuel, biogas, solar thermal, heat pumps and waste-to-energy technologies. The deadline for responses to this consultation is Monday 26 April so do have your say.
District heating systems are ideal if a whole street, area or block of flats is to be renovated. Economies of scale make this form of heat and power delivery the cheapest on a per-household basis, and by far the most carbon-efficient, if low carbon fuel sources are specified.
A district heating scheme in Southampton, England, serves many residential developments from gas-fired CHP and geothermal energy, saving 11,000 tonnes of carbon a year and benefiting residents with a service price 5 per cent less than the market rate.
Systems are most efficient when servicing both homes and businesses or premises used during the day, as the two heat loads throughout a 24 hour period suit the continuous running required of a large plant.
District CHP plants may utilize fuel sources from waste to biomass, as well as geothermal where it is available. They work best where buildings are close together. A not-for-profit energy service company is usually formed to manage the system.
Micro-CHP
Micro-CHP – combined heat and power – is a nascent technology of small units for individual homes, typically the size of a fridge. They run on natural gas to produce up to about 10kW of power.
The current crop of models are based on the Stirling engine, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) or internal combustion engine. The first two have high thermal efficiency and output but low electrical efficiency (10 per cent) – and this is a sticking point.
Electricity output is around 1.1kW, enough to maintain back-up power in the event of a power cut or boil a kettle. A 1kWe (1kW electrical power) model from Honda called Ecowill has sold well in Japan.
A 2007 trial by the UK’s Carbon Trust concluded that micro-CHP can cut electricity bills and overall CO2 emissions by 15–20 per cent when they’re the lead boiler in larger contexts like care homes, district schemes, apartment blocks and leisure centres.
The best individual home for them therefore is a medium-to-large, moderately well-insulated one, maybe with solid walls, solid floors and no loft space that is harder to insulate well and has a relatively large heat demand.
Here, micro-CHP units can potentially deliver carbon savings of 5–10 per cent – fewer than a condensing boiler, since capacity is likely to be best matched to demand, for both heat and power.
Payback can be as little as five years. But they offer limited benefits for smaller and newer dwellings.
The key to success is matching the thermal output to the building’s pattern of use so that they operate not intermittently but for many hours at a time, making the value of electricity generated pay for the marginal investment in as little as three years in a typical family home.
It therefore works best with a buffer storage tank to save the surplus heat for later.
Grid connection for electricity export is going to be crucial to micro-CHP’s widespread acceptance. On average, half of all electricity generated by a typical 1kWe micro-CHP device is exported to the grid as it’s not needed at the time.
Reliability is also a key issue – service agreements will be essential. So homeowners shouldn’t yet trade in their condensing boilers, which have about the same overall heating efficiency – 90 per cent – without also producing electricity, but they might keep an eye on developments.
Superinsulated homes will have to wait until the next generation of machines, based on fuel cells. These generally come in two types – proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs).
They have a heat to power ratio that is approximately equal so for example they could produce 5kW of heat and 5kW of electricity.
Support for micro-CHP
Under the Feed-in Tarriff scheme, from the 1st April 2010, microCHP units with a capacity below 2kW will receive 10p per kW hour generated, for a period of ten years. This tariff is available for the first 30,000 microCHP installations. A review will take place when 12,000 units have been installed.
However the Government has not followed through on commitments made in the Energy Act to support miniCHP units of up to 50 kW capacity.
* - based on 10p generation tariff and assuming a 3p pence export rate. Assuming annual generation of 2000 kWh and 50% export. Assuming import electricity price of 14p kWh-1. The total income paid to a generator over a 10 year FiT period would be £2,300 over full period of 10 years. Annual figure therefore of £230.
The Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme is the first phase of the Government’s Clean Energy Cashback programme - see the Energy Saving Trust website for details.
What is the most carbon efficient heating?
An independent survey conducted by the UK Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes which looked at the carbon impact of different domestic heating and hot water systems in both houses and flats concluded that the following performed best, all other things being equal (figures in kgCO2/m2/yr):
• community heating and CHP, fuelled wholly or mainly by biomass - 4.15
• community heating without CHP fuelled wholly or mainly by biomass - 7.11
• wood burning boilers - 10.02
• wood burning boilers with solar water heating panels - 10.09
• ground source heat pumps with low temperature heat distribution/emitters (e.g. underfloor heating) - 20.83
• solar water heating panels in conjunction with gas boiler systems - 21.98
Source: Heating Strategy Group of the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes, January 2008
Friday, February 26, 2010
Green gadgets - do people care?
A new survey 'Is There Any Hope For Green Gadgets?' into attitudes towards buying more eco-friendly products makes depressing reading.
However, its question 'What would make you more 'green' with gadgets?' (an awkward question anyway) is loaded with its multiple choice answers.
56% of people said tax rebates and cash incentives.
47% of people said easier ways to recycle gadgets.
29% said information to educate them about what they can do to help.
17% said new laws would make them more green.
Of course people are going to answer tax rebates and cash incentives! and not like new laws.
In fact it is environmental legislation that drives companies to make changes in their product standards, save resources, and indeed develop international standards like Energy Star.
Legislation should actually remove inefficient and wasteful goods from the market. If the choice is taken out, so you can't buy them, there's no need for consumers to feel they have to be bribed or plagued by guilt to help nature.
This is happening with old fashioned light bulbs. It should happen with all wasteful gadgets.
But there is another point. Gadgets are becoming more efficient. But we are not using less energy. This is because we are buying more gadgets.
There's only one real answer - to buy less.
However, its question 'What would make you more 'green' with gadgets?' (an awkward question anyway) is loaded with its multiple choice answers.
56% of people said tax rebates and cash incentives.
47% of people said easier ways to recycle gadgets.
29% said information to educate them about what they can do to help.
17% said new laws would make them more green.
Of course people are going to answer tax rebates and cash incentives! and not like new laws.
In fact it is environmental legislation that drives companies to make changes in their product standards, save resources, and indeed develop international standards like Energy Star.
Legislation should actually remove inefficient and wasteful goods from the market. If the choice is taken out, so you can't buy them, there's no need for consumers to feel they have to be bribed or plagued by guilt to help nature.
This is happening with old fashioned light bulbs. It should happen with all wasteful gadgets.
But there is another point. Gadgets are becoming more efficient. But we are not using less energy. This is because we are buying more gadgets.
There's only one real answer - to buy less.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Bloom box mania - behind the hype
Lot of fuss in the States about the 'Bloom Box'. Wild claims and fantasy. Let's just set it straight:
What is it? = a solid oxide fuel cell
What does it do? = convert one type of energy - hydrocarbon chemical - into another - electricity
Is it renewable? - Depends what you charge up the fuel cell with. As with electric cars, think beyond the battery. It runs on ethanol, biodiesel, methane or natural gas. At least one of these (the last) is not renewable. Ethanol can be distilled from plants. Methane can be tapped from landfill/sewage etc. Whether the first two are sustainable (the real question) depends on the original bio-material - plenty of controversy about biofuels right now. Indonesian palm oil? No thanks. Displacing food-growing? Also no. High fertiliser and pesticide input? (ie fossil fuel and pollution) Also no.
Is it efficient? = The unit is not even a mini-chp (combined heat and power) plant - so the heat output is wasted. Solid oxide fuel cells have an efficiency of around 50% - better than a conventional power plant (32%) but CHP is over 90%.
Should I buy one? = You're better off with a mini-CHP and using the heat. These're also fridge-sized, will heat your building a well as power it, are more efficient when grid-connected, and will be mass market in a couple of years. They are already fairly big in Japan.
What is it? = a solid oxide fuel cell
What does it do? = convert one type of energy - hydrocarbon chemical - into another - electricity
Is it renewable? - Depends what you charge up the fuel cell with. As with electric cars, think beyond the battery. It runs on ethanol, biodiesel, methane or natural gas. At least one of these (the last) is not renewable. Ethanol can be distilled from plants. Methane can be tapped from landfill/sewage etc. Whether the first two are sustainable (the real question) depends on the original bio-material - plenty of controversy about biofuels right now. Indonesian palm oil? No thanks. Displacing food-growing? Also no. High fertiliser and pesticide input? (ie fossil fuel and pollution) Also no.
Is it efficient? = The unit is not even a mini-chp (combined heat and power) plant - so the heat output is wasted. Solid oxide fuel cells have an efficiency of around 50% - better than a conventional power plant (32%) but CHP is over 90%.
Should I buy one? = You're better off with a mini-CHP and using the heat. These're also fridge-sized, will heat your building a well as power it, are more efficient when grid-connected, and will be mass market in a couple of years. They are already fairly big in Japan.
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