Don’t switch off the gas just yet
Dr Malcolm Smith
As COP 29 (the UN Climate Change Conference) takes place in Baku, our UK Government is almost certainly going to trot out the line (promoted by the previous Conservative Government too) that all of the UK’s electricity will come from renewables by 2035. That’s impossible.
The last few weeks of cloudy, dull, cool weather should have made that impossibility very clear. Apart from being very depressing, the lack of sun and wind means that the UK generated virtually no electricity from these key components of renewable investment. We were utterly reliant on gas, most of it imported, a major source of carbon thereby released into the atmosphere. More carbon equals yet more climate warming.
But, counter those optimists convinced that our target can be reached, we generate electricity from other renewable sources too. What about nuclear, biomass and hydro they argue.
Nuclear capacity
But nuclear capacity is small. It’s not able to produce more than 15% of the electricity we consume. And that’s when none of the plants are shut down for regular maintenance. We have just five nuclear power stations still operating in the UK.
They are mostly old, some built in the 1960s. Only one new plant is being built, at Hinkley in Somerset, and it’s several years late. With any large nuclear station taking at least a decade to develop, we can’t rely on nuclear to generate our increasing demand for electricity for a very long time.
Biomass, the burning mainly of wood waste, generates a few percent of our electricity needs. But most of the wood waste is shipped over from Canada and the US, a renewable resource provided replacement trees are planted but hardly a sustainable supply. And hydro, producing electricity from river or lake water as it cascades downhill, contributes an equally tiny amount.
Hydro
We can dismiss any contribution from pumped hydro like the Dinorwig Power Station which generates when water from the upper Marchlyn Mawr reservoir runs down to Llyn Peris. It consumes more electricity pumping it back up again than it can generate on the way down.
There are other ways of generating electricity sustainably. Tidal energy could be one. But although our Welsh Government was willing to help finance a prototype tidal generator in Swansea Bay, the UK Government of the day pulled the plug. So we don’t even know if our tides might be a contributor. And using the energy of waves – the UK is, of course, surrounded by sea – has not even got past an experimental stage. Just like wind power wave energy is a non starter in the weather conditions that have prevailed recently.
So we are left relying on gas when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Half of it is imported from Norway, the US and Qatar. If successive UK Governments over the last half century had taken more interest in our energy needs and invested in a range of renewables, nuclear included, we could probably be almost fossil fuel free by now.
Catch-up
So we need to play catch-up. And fast if we are to replace oil-based transport with electric vehicles and cope with the increasing demand for AI and internet access. We need to cut electricity and gas consumption by substantially more investment in home insulation plus compulsory solar panels and air or ground source heat pumps on all new buildings.
We need to accelerate the development of more large scale wind and solar farms in appropriate locations which don’t themselves cause environmental damage and we need to get a mix of small and large nuclear plants up and running speedily.
Then, by 2035, our carbon emitting gas demand should be lowered. But no one will be turning the supply off for a long time after that.
Dr Malcolm Smith is a former Chief Scientist at the then Countryside Council for Wales and has been a Board Member of The Environment Agency representing Welsh interests
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Poor guy has never heard of battery energy storage.
where would you stash all those batteries ? Batteries are a dirty product to make and dispose of at end of life. Better to go for a more regular sustainable supply – tidal and other marine.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/13/significant-breakthrough-this-new-sea-salt-battery-has-4-times-the-capacity-of-lithium
Battery technology is decades away from being a solution.
During those dead days for wind and solar I noticed that the tides continued to ebb and flow and currents further out in the channels were doing their usual thing. Maybe this country needs to ignore political and corporate vested interests and do what’s best for the consumer of energy – invest in tidal and other marine generation capability and enjoy the steady supply. These have their downsides just like onshore wind farms and solar farms but the reliability of supply must be taken into account if we want a genuinely sustainable supply base.
I think the problem is that tidal power very expensive. The most recent allocation round offered a strike price for tidal stream of more than three times that for wind or solar…and the strike prices for the latter were eye-wateringly expensive!
The strike price is measured over 25 years for solar and wind, and 40 years for nuclear. The same calculation has previously been used by the UK Government for tidal lagoons, but in reality they will have a working lifespan of over 100 years, and if this is applied, tidal lagoons will have the lowest strike price of any renewable technology.
Interesting, but there’s no indication of any major difference in the results document.
The tide does indeed ebb and flow, but it only reaches peak flow four times per day. There are a good few hours either side of high and low water with low or zero flow. Tidal power is more predictable than wind or solar, but it is still intermittent.
This is not true with lagoons, as the slack tide is offset by ‘swirl’. You just need generating gates each side of the installation as the slack not uniform. One side of the lagoon can still be generating while the other side is ‘on the turn’, then half an hour later the disposition is reversed. It can generate 24/7.
…but at nowhere near the maximum capacity. The Swansea project had a nameplate capacity of 320MW, but a time-average generation of 59MW – less than 20% of nameplate. Another factor is neap and spring tides. Tidal generation can’t give a consistent source of power, it’s a simple fact.
There is a simple rule that applies to grid power: it has to supply energy on demand. Once you grasp this basic fact the entire wind & solar argument crumbles into dust. We will still be using fossil fuels for decades to come, but our muppet politicians think they can claim fake ‘green’ credentials by importing it rather than drilling for it. Norway is a great case in point: the poster child for green living makes 75% of its money from…exporting gas and petroleum. .
Tidal energy is a distraction. And a very expensive one at that. The proposed Swansea Bay tidal lagoon was expected to generate 0.15% of Britain’s electricity for the princely sum of £1.3 billion (and we can guess whether or not it would be delivered on-budget). The nameplate capacity was 320MW, but the average generation was expected to be 60MW (due to variation in tidal flow). By comparison, Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will be 3,200MW and Pembroke gas power station is 2,200MW. The real problem is this: The tidal range in the Bristol Channel is the second highest in… Read more »
The problem with relying on imported gas in the form of LNG is the overall carbon emissions are about 20% higher than using North Sea gas. This is because of the huge energy cost of refrigerating gas to -162°C to liquefy it, and then the energy cost of revaporising it when it arrives in the UK. Dr Smith is absolutely right, we will be burning gas for a long time yet. The cleanest gas to burn is our own gas. Unfortunately our loony government has banned drilling in the North Sea despite the fact it makes climate sense as well… Read more »
A recent article on “Oilprice.com” 9 Oct, “Is LNG a bridge to nowhere” highlights some recent research that suggests LNG from fracking could have a 33% greater greenhouse gas footprint than coal over a 20 year period! There is a link there to the original research paper. As we import LNG from the US then that is clearly important.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Is-LNG-a-Bridge-to-Nowhere-Experts-Debate-Its-Future.html
The point that Dr Malcolm Smith is making is evident in almost all kitchens in Wales. Electricity costs 23.33p per Kwh while gas costs 6.14p per kWh. This means that it costs three times as much to boil an electric kettle as a stove top one on the gas burner. The answer is simple, burn gas to save money. On a larger scale, it’s the reason why the electricity bill to run heat-pumps is more than the cost of running gas central heating.