Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

... and what if investment was also made in tidal flow schemes, tidal barrages & multi-segmented tidal lagoons plus hi/lo high volume pumped storage strategic reserves, combined onshore wind/pumped storage schemes and biogas(/fuel) processing to directly displace FF whilst utilising existing plant (with minor modification) .... then again, there's vast potential for smart-control demand smoothing, household, business & transport energy efficiencies reducing overall requirements ...

HTH
Z

Also, and just because this often gets forgotten, there is overcapacity and spill - with ever cheaper RE, you can actually factor in overcapacity so that generation at lower performance is still higher than if scaled for 'only' 100% of annual target.

With PV and wind at or heading for half the price of HPC, you can, in very simple terms, have twice the generation and 'waste' 50% of it, but still breakeven on a £/MWh consumed basis.

I forget the correct terms for this, but I'm sure you'll know, is it marginal cost(?) as RE has no fuel cost, so generating more/too much gets cheaper ..... sort of!

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Also, and just because this often gets forgotten, there is overcapacity and spill - with ever cheaper RE, you can actually factor in overcapacity ...

Hi

... and of course, those having an aversion to change seem to equate terms such as 'thermal capacity' solely with !!!!!! as opposed to recognising alternatives including biofuels, biomass, hydrogen & the potential for synthetic fuels based on stripping existing carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and combing it with hydrogen derived from water - all examples of utilising the short carbon cycle energy provision to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentration ...

In the main, those with vested interests in maintaining legacy generation technologies seem to have realised that they've effectively lost almost every battle of data & logic against the scientific community, then the same for governments, so in recent years they look to have moved on to targetting public attitudes & opinion directly through employing the same information manipulation techniques as used unsuccessfully previously, but this time utilising press, websites & various social media ... of course, the belief being that a good proportion of the public, through generally having a very short attention-span, would tend to believe their views and have little inclination to question both logic & accuracy, especially so if it's continually repeated .. repeated .. repeated .. in various sources.

HTH
Z

NigeWick

zeupater wrote: »

and what if investment was also made in

As long as they are value for money, no problem.

I gather that energy efficient houses can now be built at a similar cost to what I'll call conventional houses. I suspect they're not because naysayers have put their oar in, like to those who poopoo the idea battery electric vehicles

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Also, and just because this often gets forgotten, there is overcapacity and spill - with ever cheaper RE, you can actually factor in overcapacity so that generation at lower performance is still higher than if scaled for 'only' 100% of annual target.

With PV and wind at or heading for half the price of HPC, you can, in very simple terms, have twice the generation and 'waste' 50% of it, but still breakeven on a £/MWh consumed basis.

I forget the correct terms for this, but I'm sure you'll know, is it marginal cost(?) as RE has no fuel cost, so generating more/too much gets cheaper ..... sort of!

That makes no viable sense without considering the alternatives you can spend the wasted resources on

In the link you post they had something like 200TWh annual curtailment. That is £10 billion a year (at £50/MWh) which could instead be used on the NHS or schools or pensions or forign aid or anything else so the green revolution better be worth it if you are willing to literally throw away £10 billion a year rather than direct it to the NHS

Also HPC is first of a kind for 20 years using that to bash nuclear would be as stupid as using the first 1GW of solar PV prices to bash PV

And it is not wind vs nuclear, nuclear has already lost the hearts of the public thanks to the green lobby. it is wind/solar vs just keeping some fossil fuels in the mix so as not to throw away billions in over capacity to meet some ideological green targets

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

... and of course, those having an aversion to change seem to equate terms such as 'thermal capacity' solely with !!!!!! as opposed to recognising alternatives including biofuels, biomass

If the heath cost of burning coal is so great what is the heath cost of burning even more dirty biomass?

hydrogen & the potential for synthetic fuels based on stripping existing carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and combing it with hydrogen derived from water - all examples of utilising the short carbon cycle energy provision to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentration ...

Syn fuel production is going to be costly and dirty.
Hydrogen production when the wind blows in excess is as silly as proposing a steel plant that only runs at 20% capacity trying to time the wind rather than at 100% capacity. I dont think any mass syn fuel production will happen but if it does it makes sense to couple it with nuclear both running at 95% capacity but as I note syn fuel simply is not going to happen on any significant scale just like hydrogen cars are a dead end before they even begin

n the main, those with vested interests in maintaining legacy generation technologies seem to have realised that they've effectively lost almost every battle of data & logic against the scientific community, then the same for governments, so in recent years they look to have moved on to targetting public attitudes & opinion directly through employing the same information manipulation techniques as used unsuccessfully previously, but this time utilising press, websites & various social media ... of course, the belief being that a good proportion of the public, through generally having a very short attention-span, would tend to believe their views and have little inclination to question both logic & accuracy, especially so if it's continually repeated .. repeated .. repeated .. in various sources.

The public really dont give a !!!! they just want reliable affordable electricity they dont care if its from coal nuclear or wind. And no one is stupid enough to spend time on a forum with barely a dozen posters to try and influence 'public opinion' of these dozen posters. The truth is we are all just armature hobbyists that some of us have slightly differing views does not mean we are here to 'influence public option' you have far too grand a view of yourself and other posters here

We will maintain 'legacy' infrastructure for decades because ....it works

You also do not appreciate how slow this transition is going to be.
The Germans plan for 2030 is to be about -30% on fossil fuel use in power generation compared to 2017 that is 13 years to reduce fossil fuel usage by 30% and this is assuming they can actually hit their 2030 targets which is no guarantee seeing as they will likely miss the 2020 targets. And even by 2030 their grid will be a good deal more dirty than the French grid which by then would have mostly been clean for over half a century

pile-o-stone

GreatApe wrote: »

And no one is stupid enough to spend time on a forum with barely a dozen posters to try and influence 'public opinion' of these dozen posters.

You've said this a couple of times and yet you are still spending time on this forum trying to push your views on Nuclear Energy, which most people on here feel is neither Green or Ethical energy.

That aside, if you wish to debate the various advantages and disadvantages of energy production technologies, could you please start a new "Debate Energy Production Technologies" thread on this board? This particular thread is primarily for posting news stories about green energy, with some small debate on the individual news story. It's tedious to scroll through off-topic posts to see if there any new Green and Ethical News Stories have been posted.

Cheers.

GreatApe

pile-o-stone wrote: »

you are still spending time on this forum trying to push your views on Nuclear Energy

My views on nuclear in the UK are negative it will be costly and slow so I do not think it is a good idea. But if costly and slow is acceptable there is no doubt it could work to do a very deep decarbing of electricity transport (BEVs) and base load heating (water heating not space heating) with only some ~12 nuclear sites with ~60 reactors for the whole nation. But once again this is not going to happen it is too late for that

Instead the most likely future is going to be more and more wind with still a lot of NG for a long time yet. Also we are yet to know for sure if this wind future is going to be cheaper or more effective than the nuclear future as the heavy wind/solar future is going to have lots of additional costs like curtailment, storage, backup, grid-expansion, and likely more gas thermal generation too. But I think the additional cost is acceptable as I am no fan of sending fossil fuel money to mostly less than ideal fossil fuel exporting nations.

So 'we' are mostly in agreement the UK should deploy more and more wind and use less and less !!!!!! and hopefully BEVs will solve transport energy needs. The only bit we differ is on timescale and how far you can go at an acceptable cost. I think pretty far we could get to 70-80% green but I dont think 100% is economically reasonably attainable and we shouldn't shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to go to 100% if it is prohibitively expensive nor should we fool ourselves with pretending bio-fuel burning is clean so as to go towards 100% with pretend 'green' biofuels. But again this is a problem so far out whats the point arguing about it we can figure it out when we are at ~50% wind

zeupater

GreatApe wrote: »

If the heath cost of burning coal is so great what is the heath cost of burning even more dirty biomass?

Syn fuel production is going to be costly and dirty.
Hydrogen production when the wind blows in excess is as silly as proposing a steel plant that only runs at 20% capacity trying to time the wind rather than at 100% capacity. I dont think any mass syn fuel production will happen but if it does it makes sense to couple it with nuclear both running at 95% capacity but as I note syn fuel simply is not going to happen on any significant scale just like hydrogen cars are a dead end before they even begin

The public really dont give a !!!! they just want reliable affordable electricity they dont care if its from coal nuclear or wind. And no one is stupid enough to spend time on a forum with barely a dozen posters to try and influence 'public opinion' of these dozen posters. The truth is we are all just armature hobbyists that some of us have slightly differing views does not mean we are here to 'influence public option' you have far too grand a view of yourself and other posters here

We will maintain 'legacy' infrastructure for decades because ....it works

You also do not appreciate how slow this transition is going to be.
The Germans plan for 2030 is to be about -30% on fossil fuel use in power generation compared to 2017 that is 13 years to reduce fossil fuel usage by 30% and this is assuming they can actually hit their 2030 targets which is no guarantee seeing as they will likely miss the 2020 targets. And even by 2030 their grid will be a good deal more dirty than the French grid which by then would have mostly been clean for over half a century

Hi

Any storyline continuity issues arising here ... weren't you particularly pro-nuclear in the past, before recently stating "I was also pro nuclear but now am anti nuclear ... " specifically on cost grounds -

Odd really, argue when it suits, then self-absolve when reality finally hits home ... however, although those limited to argument may have the luxury of being able to flip positions, multi-year, multi-£billion project decisions don't ... if you'd been in a position to influence decisions on building HPC, maybe you'd now consider those decisions to have be flawed and extremely costly compared to alternatives you now support, thus wasting vast sums of money ...

However, do occasionally continue to consider that "This sub forum is a waste of my time ..", it'll finally sink in that your unsupported postulations and tedious argument regarding global and national policies are totally misdirected as this forum is not frequented by the policy makers you need to attempt to impress (even if it was then we'd still not be impressed!), it's simply a loose community of like minded individuals looking to make a difference and, in the case of this particular thread, follow newsworthy issues & developments which may be of personal interest.

It seems that whilst many reading these posts have taken solid steps to do something to contribute towards energy efficiency & emissions reduction, others use multiple profile registrations to contribute absolutely nothing but recycled argument, negativity & hot air ...

HTH
Z

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

weren't you particularly pro-nuclear in the past

I am pro nuclear in the sense that it works and can achieve very deep decarbing of electricity transport and base load heating and doing so would get us towards a much lower FF usage world.

But I can see and understand small volume builds of anything are always costly and slow so I think a nuclear build for the UK is not a good idea plus it simply is not going to happen. The choice is not nuclear vs wind/pv the choice is how much wind/pv vs how much dirty coal/NG/biomass. My guess is 70-80% solar/wind with 20-30% dirty biomass/NG

Anyway as you note we are all just sideline observers I dont see why my ideas and predictions erk some of you so much. We are not even all that different I think 70-80% green is possible some of you hope 100% is but the road is the same road for probably another 20 years before any divergence

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Odd really, argue when it suits, then self-absolve when reality finally hits home ...

Yes changing your mind might seem odd to religious zelots

If you'd been in a position to influence decisions on building HPC, maybe you'd now consider those decisions to have be flawed and extremely costly compared to alternatives you now support, thus wasting vast sums of money

I would not have approved HPC it is too low volume to be economically successful but I might have approved a 25GW build out of ~20 LWR reactors across ~6 sites (existing nuke sites and perhaps some of the old coal sites) all of the same design if I had believed the total cost would be below £5,000/KW to be followed by another 25GW if BEVs took off. The combined 50GW would have been sufficient to meet ~90% of electricity+transport needs with the remaining ~10% from NG. A further 5GW could have been built to meet base load heating needs

Actually even then I would not have decided on nuclear because I do not think the first 20 reactors would be enough volume for economic success vs fossil fuels. If economics was a secondary consideration and did not matter then this 50GW scenario could have achieved deep decarb and is not beyond the realms of possibility considering the french did a 60GW+ build decades ago with a smaller population and less technology at their disposal

Anyway that is an irrelevant what if.

The reality is the UK/EU will install more and more wind and keep doing so while probably phasing out most of its existing nukes bar perhaps France. If Germany is anything to go by the next 12 years will be more and more wind and some more solar so by 2030 the German grid sees some -30% in FF usage compared to 2017