Deloitte on UK electricity to 2020

[Bandidoz]

Yes. They produce far more energy than is consumed by their manufacture, even with the intermittency taken into account. Every net MJ generated is a MJ that doesn't have to come from fossil fuel burn, and thus translates into an proportional CO2 emissions reduction.

The National Grid "shares" electricity, so when the wind blows it's supplementing the whole country, some of which goes into pumped hydro (or hydrogen fuel cell) storage.

[Billhook]

We already have 3 turbines just outside our village more than enough for the local communities, this had enough opposition in the first place. There is now an application for another four going in. The problem I face is that I have to be fairly diplomatic due to our business in the village and not wanting to upset people. However the main objection apart from the looks of the thing and it's impact on tourism e.t.c. is the intermittancy of the power produced. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could answer this objection?

Neil

Yes.

Start discussion about the sustainable alternatives to Onshore Wind Power.

Devon has some excellent forest growth rates for a start, plus some very large areas of marginal grazing. (google wood gasification)

It also has some exceptional Inshore Tidal Currents.

It also has some very good Offshore Wave potential.

About Geothermal and Offshore Wind I've no data, but they've got to be worth checking.

As I see it, if Walter Marshall, the nuclear engineer head of CEGB in the '80s (who ended up sacked for falsifying the books)
had led the way not into highly intermittent and predictably hugely contentious Onshore Wind, but instead into city-scale Offshore Wave Power,
then Nuclear Power would not be getting a look-in today, and your village's beauty would not be under threat.

Those who numbly accept a nuclear v onshore wind range of options are to my mind complicit in getting themselves (and the children) shafted by both.

I respect your position as an active villager with concern for PO+CC and keeping good relations - so I'd suggest that your best line is

"What are the most sustainable options for Devon ? If it's not more turbines, what should we do instead ?

regards,

Bill

[GD]

Good point Bill.

This was a little hasty though:

Wind turbines, spacing what? 300M between each one so 9 per square Km

i think you meant 10555/241590 = 4.3%

About the maths . . .

If that's 9km2 per turbine...

[Bandidoz]

Start discussion about the sustainable alternatives to Onshore Wind Power.....Those who numbly accept a nuclear v onshore wind range of options

I could say that you're having a similar attitude. If you'd said alternatives in conjunction with onshore then that would be a different manner, and be more in line with the "do everything" approach.

Most of the other said alternatives merely relocalise the problem, i.e. move it from your community to someone else's (e.g. fishermen who'd then object to their fishing grounds being off-limits). Everyone has to take ownership of the issue and confine it to their locality if at all possible. Otherwise it just promulgates the "it's someone else's problem" attitude.

With wind speeds increasing with height, is it not feasible to grow SRC around a wind farm, such that the trees grow to a lesser height than the turbine sweep area, or would they introduce too much turbulence? Just an idea.....possibly one for Mike to look in to?

[Billhook]

Good point Bill.

This was a little hasty though:

Wind turbines, spacing what? 300M between each one so 9 per square Km

i think you meant 10555/241590 = 4.3%

About the maths . . .

If that's 9km2 per turbine...

GD -

Note the careful, haste-free use of the word If . . .

regards,

Bill

[Billhook]

Start discussion about the sustainable alternatives to Onshore Wind Power.....Those who numbly accept a nuclear v onshore wind range of options

I could say that you're having a similar attitude. If you'd said alternatives in conjunction with onshore then that would be a different manner, and be more in line with the "do everything" approach.

Most of the other said alternatives merely relocalise the problem, i.e. move it from your community to someone else's (e.g. fishermen who'd then object to their fishing grounds being off-limits). Everyone has to take ownership of the issue and confine it to their locality if at all possible. Otherwise it just promulgates the "it's someone else's problem" attitude.

With wind speeds increasing with height, is it not feasible to grow SRC around a wind farm, such that the trees grow to a lesser height than the turbine sweep area, or would they introduce too much turbulence? Just an idea.....possibly one for Mike to look in to?

Bandidoz -

you're mistaken with regard to my attitude.
Far from accepting any maufactured parameters of the energy options worth considering,
including the evidently non-sensical idea of "Do Everything,"
over a good many years I've developed my own selection criteria by which to discriminate between the many options available.

As I suspect that I've already posted those criteria on Powerswitch, I'll not do so again unless anyone's interested in discussing them.

I well agree that we should, where ecologically sustainable and locally legitimate, develop energy resources that are globally relevant within our communities.

You will note that my first suggestion for a village in Devon was reforestation for Energy - which is very far from your suggestion that I'm recommending nimbism and the SEP field -
As a confirmed NIABY on various technologies, I don't have to bother with that.

Two other points -

First, both Offshore Wave and Wind offer serious ecological potential as nursery areas inherently proof against industrial scale fishing, while allowing and improving local inshore fishermens' catches.

Second, your proposal of extant pumped storage as a means of making good Wind Power's intermittency seems bizarre -

Just when do you expect to have more Wind Power than baseload demand will consume ?

And if you ever got near that point, just whose valleys do you think you're going to drown to gain any significant pumped storage capacity ?

Try proposing that just about anywhere in the hill country of Britain and I think you'll get a pretty short answer.

regards,

Bill

[Ballard]

I think, returning to the Deloitte Report, that the point is that we are NOT going to see 30 Nuke power stations/40,000 off shore/95,000 on-shore by 2020.

My daft Maths was just to illustrate the size of the problem we face.

I agree with the 'Do Everything' approach, if we got 10 Nukes, 2000 off-shore, and 2000 on-shore. I would be amazed.

I guess the rest of the gap will have to be filled with Gas and Coal Fired PowerStations as much as possible, and the gap that's left after that is still going to be very large.

But by that time so many people might be priced out of the gas/electricity market, with a subsequent loss of the UK Plastics industry for example and many more people slipping in fuel poverty, that demand may reduce quite significantly.

At the end of the day ?Supply and Demand? must balance, so no supply and the price will destroy demand.

[clv101]

I lot of these energy discussions go the way of the banana (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone). I had a meeting with my MP last night which I might elaborate on later if I get a chance but the discussion highlighted the problem of the UK losing most of its primary energy capacity without anything to replace it.

FF imports ? unavailable or too expensive
Local coal ? CO2, lack of miners
Nuclear ? expensive, waste, environmental, uranium imports
Tidal barrage ? expensive, environmental
Other marine - immature
Wind ? eyesore, intermittent
Bio crops ? area, scalability

Etc etc... The point being that there isn?t an idea solution; in fact there isn?t a total solution even if we throw away our ideals. Our challenge is to generate as much energy as we can afford to within an acceptable environmental envelope. The definition of the acceptable environmental envelope is of course up for discussion ? some people stretch it as far as not even spoiling the view, others think just reducing CO2 a little bit is enough.

According to Deloitte the challenge is 50GW within 14 years. We can reduce our demand by 50GW, build 50GW of supply or do something between. Given the magnitude of the energy gap I think the environmental envelope should only consider long term, macro scale damage... by not addressing the problem 30 years ago we forwent the right to maintain ideals like protecting the view or the wetlands of the Severn Estuary. Even within the UK Peak Oil community I think there is still a lack of appreciation of the severity of our energy gap.

[Bandidoz]

Hi Bill

You will note that my first suggestion for a village in Devon was reforestation for Energy - which is very far from your suggestion that I'm recommending nimbism and the SEP field -

Suggesting "offshore wind/wave instead" is totally about SEP though. The main point I make is that you come across as "wind OR reforestation" which is a similar kind of attitude to "wind OR nuclear", which fosters the notion of there being a single panacea, causing paralysis to avoid "making the wrong choice". My argument stands that both need to be pursued (in conjunction with other approaches) since every method has limits of scalability in terms of total capacity, rate of installation, number of personnel and mutual exclusivity. It also removes the choice, and thus should remove the procrastination. I would like to see whether wind turbines could coexist with forestry.

Offshore Wave and Wind offer serious ecological potential as nursery areas...

Totally agree; for some time I have imagined it's feasible to combine offshore wind with the Seaflow tidal turbine. BWEA appear to have made a similar statement recently. However I would bet money on fishermen being up in arms over losing fishing areas. I would also point out that the wave and tidal technologies are still in their infancy; it is a pity there hasn't been much R&D on them in the past but we cannot change that. I'd say it's dangerous to suspend CO2 abatement using today's implementations because of the promise of tomorrow's. It smacks of the guy who's never bought a PC because a "better one is just around the corner". Without wanting to grossly oversimplify I say make the investment today into wind, SWH, simple efficiency improvements and biomass (including co-fired coal/SRC), and tomorrow into tidal, wave, Solar PV and rebuild of housing stock.

your proposal of extant pumped storage as a means of making good Wind Power's intermittency seems bizarre

Pumped hydro already exists (e.g. Dinorwig). Hydrogen fuel cells already exist (e.g. Woking). The installation at Dinorwig did not have to flood valleys like some major hydro-dam. The place looked a mess before the installation (the spoils of slate mining), it looked a mess during installation, but now it's very tidy and the access roads are copiously tree covered.

Lots of localised storage is going to be necessary to support DG.

I'd say the inevitable paradigm shift will be from demand-controlled-supply to supply-controlled-demand. Put another way, from the "convenience" paradigm to the "rationed by the weather" paradigm. Pumped storage will provide some elasticity but eventually load-scheduling systems will need to be adopted to cater for the variability of ALL renewables. In other words, the inevitable paradigm would "design out" the problem of the weather's variability by embracing it rather than trying to fight it. Those who back coal and nuclear just hopelessly wish to keep the existing convenience paradigm going for as long as possible.

Given the magnitude of the energy gap I think the environmental envelope should only consider long term, macro scale damage... by not addressing the problem 30 years ago we forwent the right to maintain ideals like protecting the view or the wetlands of the Severn Estuary

Totally agree. I also believe that people were far less obsessed about the value of their property 30 years ago.
The time is to stop debating and get on with the programme. Tomorrow we will have even fewer options open to us.

[biffvernon]

I would like to see whether wind turbines could coexist with forestry.

NO.

Sheep or elephant grass are fine though.

[Billhook]

Deloitte have produced a fantastic report on the state of electricity production in the UK to 2020. It's fair to say they recognise the looming energy gap!

Stunning Clarity From Deloitte

Deloitte Report

clv - with respect, I have to differ with you about this report.

Far from stunning clarity I see just the same old puff that I've been reading for 25 years.

It is rhetorical, rather than specific, in that it lacks not only any references at all to back its opinions,
it even lacks enumeration of absolutely basic factors such as the projected rate of demand growth.

You may notice that there is a pattern of repeated references to nuclear, followed by other options, followed by "renewables",
not followed by conservation & efficiency options.

This alerts me to the prejudice of the authors, and removes any confidence that this is a useful and informative report.

The tactic used is that of "Predict & Provide", with the priority of maintaining "economic growth"
which is of course about maintaining the ongoing centralization of power and wealth.

I see this projection of a need to build 50GW capacity in 14 years is just a classic example of Predict & Provide.

1/. As the graphs show, the margin between average demand and total capacity is projected to grow by 9GW from 6GW now to 15GW in 2020.

2/. Demand is projected to grow by about 8GW (~10%) by 2020.

The maths, and the ethics, behind these projections are not discussed.

If I assume that a serious national program of C&E is applied to remove just 12GW of demand (~15%) by 2020,
then the replacement capacity required is:

50 - 9 - 8 - 12 = 21 GW.

That's an average of around 1,500 MW /yr required from one source or another, to maintain or improve present security of power supply in 2020.

With regard to your MP's banana's concern, I'd observe that he misses the point that some resources generate opposition in a democracy
while others (that tend to be less appealing to corporations) can enjoy the advantage of attracting popular support.

For example, a plan is afoot here to install Run-of-Current turbines down the length of the River Lugg,
which has so far had very positive responses in the local press.

I think the one-word dismissal of all "Marine" energy as "immature" speaks volumes for his outlook.
The fact that we're already installing both sea-bed and surface devices seems to have passed him by.

Equally the fact that EU research in the '80s reported that Wave energy has the potential to supply 80% of the EU15 power needs
seems to have escaped his attention.

I share your concern that even within the PeakOil community there is a lack of appreciation of the energy gap we face,
specifically of its global nature, meaning that fear-driven BAU solutions (as puffed by Deloitte)
that will only hasten damage & destabilization when replicated around the world, are a lethally seductive trap.

regards,

Bill

[clv101]

Yeah, I agree with your points. My "stunning clarity" point was about how they recognise the energy gap.

My main criticism of the report was how weak it was on conservation and efficiency, note my scenario assumed we wouldn't meet BAU demand by a long way but c&e would make a little go a lot further.

[RogerCO]

Billhook touches the absolutely key point (IMHO) which is that it is the assumption that economic growth is of itself a good and necessary thing to be pursued at any cost that is the problem.

This assumption of the necessity of economic growth inevitably leads to the predict and provide approach, and the desire to preserve BAU at all costs (including self destruction)

Economic growth is the problem.

Only once you get rid of the presumption for growth can you be creative in realising the apprpriate mix of solutions to ensure our long term survival.

Every so often in human history such a paradigm shift (did I hear a distant cry of 'House' from someone at the back playing buzzword bingo ? ) is possible.

If we are concerned for the future of our culture, civilization, and the planet, then we must start to push for this change in underlying assumption - arguments about wind vs nukes vs bio vs conservation, or what mix is best, are a total waste of time without this fundamental shift.

[snow hope]

Well said Roger.

Ultimately we will have to work out how to exist in a world without growth, in fact with retraction (is that the right word?). It is mainly business and the economic model we have subscribed to, that requires this growth.

All we have to do is to accept a new economic model that says it is fine to reduce and become smaller. Some companies are already doing this by saying they are concentrating on their core activities and getting rid of non-essential parts of their business.

[Bandidoz]

Some companies are already doing this by saying they are concentrating on their core activities and getting rid of non-essential parts of their business.

I'd substitute "some" with "a lot".