Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

GreatApe

silverwhistle wrote: »

I've just read on my phone quite the most biaised article I've seen for some time from the US magazine Forbes arguing against RE from somebody who is "NY Times Environmental Champion", or some such.

No direct advocacy of any alternative, although natural gas is seen as an alternative and coal gets some positive mentions. No mention of the issues with !!!!!!, particularly in view of recent well publicised issues, although Kenyan wind turbines and bird deaths get a mention. At the same time criticises Germany both for its RE policy and for digging up coal with no mention of why they have needed to, at least in the short term.

Ah, here we are, found it on my PC, take the bones out of this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to/#506736a8ea2b

The only country in the world to have successfully solved the problem is France and they had it solved about 30+ years ago. (This excludes hydro rich and often small population countries like Norway but we cant magic up hydro resources)

Not only did the French solve all their electricity needs they also solved a significant part of their heating needs too (millions more french homes and businesses are electrically heated which is why France uses so much more electricity than the UK for roughly the same population) and they have so much spare capacity that if BEVs are successful they can power 35 million french cars with more or less just the spare capacity of their existing nukes at very close to zero marginal cost. So interestingly if we magic up 35 million BEVs for the French today their electricity prices would actually go down (per unit) & their oil consumption would crash.

So Electricity + energy for 35 million BEVs + a portion of heating all solved 30 years ago


This is quite pro nuclear but I accept it is too late for the UK and much of the world which has embraced PV & Wind. The amount of money put into it means it will likely work but it will take another 30 years so some 60 years after the French solved their needs with a few gen 2 nukes. And it may take longer than 30 years to green the UK/German Grid with Wind/PV especially as it gets more difficult and things like long distance electricity lines are needed but objected to by the locals.

GreatApe

• Flying would not be banned, but the number of flights will depend on how much airlines can cut emissions with electric planes or biofuels.

Even if we do not care about CO2 a long life EV will win for economic reasons for most flights under 1,000 miles

London to Glasgow ~420 miles
£60+ by train >10 hours (plus some dead time)
£40+ by plane ~6 hours (including all the dead time)
£20 by a tesla taxi <7 hours (£80 divided by 4 passangers) (assuming million mile life for the EV. 5p/mile capital cost 4p/mile lifetime maintenance cost. 4p/mile electricity. 5p/mile margin for running service)

The tesla assuming 4 passengers is also about 10 x as energy efficient as the plane (not even taking into account the energy usage of the actual airport but comparing electricity to fuel) and is more efficient than the train too

Even many international flights too eg London to pairs is 320 miles which is less than the 420 miles to Glasgow will be done by robo EVs replacing planes and trains

GreatApe

Natural gas heavy + BEVs could get a nation like Germany towards 3.6 tons CO2/capita compared to 9 tons CO2/capita today.

That is very significant and it actually gets close to the -80% target on 1990 levels and that is without any nuclear or wind or solar on its grid nor the requirement to build masses of inter-connectors or new transmission lines. In the case of Germany and also many other nations they could meet their -80% CO2 targets by switching to gas and BEVs.

Not only does a switch to Gas from coal reduce CO2 per kWh by about half but mass deploying BEVs takes the CCGT fleet from ~48% average efficiency towards ~60% average efficiency so you gain a lot of 'free' electricity too from the same amount of NG. It also allows CCGTs to operate at high CFs so reducing per unit capital/maint costs too.

This really shows how important BEVs are.
If BEVs were 100% of the market today even countries that are anti wind/pv/nuclear would be much cleaner and greener.

I am beginning to think governments should regulate BEVs into existence as soon as possible.
Maybe as much as 10% of sales in 2023, 20% in 2024, 30% in 2025 etc until it is 100% in 2032

Not sure how but if Germany is able willing to sub solar and wind to the tune of about $250 billion maybe they should be subbing the creation of giga factories esp as it would have a bigger impact on energy usage and local clean air.

Martyn1981

The IMF are scaling up their comments and concerns about AGW.

Yes, The International Monetary Fund Is Waking Up To Financial Risks Of The Climate Crisis

One of the new papers is a comprehensive update of global fossil fuel subsidies and negative externalities like air pollution. The paper found that the world is wasting a whopping 6.5% of global GDP—$5.2 trillion per year—subsidizing dirty energy. Under-pricing of local air pollution, which the World Health Organization estimates kills 4.2 million people each year, is the largest part of these costs. Coal remains the largest recipient of subsidies, despite being the most polluting.

For the first time, the IMF’s subsidies assessment is paired with a new paper exploring how countries can apply a range of fiscal policies to deliver their goals under the international Paris Agreement on climate change, and what the IMF can do to support them. The paper emphasized the central importance of carbon pricing and measures to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, as well as the importance of accompanying measures like investments in R&D, infrastructure investment, financial market policies, and strategies to support vulnerable groups.

These two papers from the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department are excellent. The challenge now is to integrate the wealth of guidance they contain into relevant work across the rest of the IMF, as well as into national policies.

GreatApe

Propaganda helps no one. A lot of the 'subsidies' on fossil fuels are just nonsense and the costs of pollution grossly exaggerated

Having said that the UK should go offshore wind heavy not because it will save our health (maybe very marginally) but simply not to send money and capital to the large net fossil fuel exporters.

Aim for as high as 65% of electricity from offshore wind power 5% from nuclear (just the legacy 2 x EPR 1 x 1.2GW so no additional builds) 5% from PV and the remaining 25% from imports and CCGTs (probably 10% & 15% respectively)

Offshore wind also has an ok correlation with seasonal heating demand which will help electrify heating (~30% CF during Q2 & Q3 while ~50% CF during Q1 & Q4) but be prepared to pay 15p a unit for wind electricity rather than 3p a unit for NG to heat your homes

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

Propaganda helps no one. A lot of the 'subsidies' on fossil fuels are just nonsense and the costs of pollution grossly exaggerated

Having said that the UK should go offshore wind heavy not because it will save our health (maybe very marginally) but simply not to send money and capital to the large net fossil fuel exporters.

Aim for as high as 65% of electricity from offshore wind power 5% from nuclear (just the legacy 2 x EPR 1 x 1.2GW so no additional builds) 5% from PV and the remaining 25% from imports and CCGTs (probably 10% & 15% respectively)

Offshore wind also has an ok correlation with seasonal heating demand which will help electrify heating (~30% CF during Q2 & Q3 while ~50% CF during Q1 & Q4) but be prepared to pay 15p a unit for wind electricity rather than 3p a unit for NG to heat your homes

Issue then becomes the average cop for the ashp. Whilst in theory this is 3-4 there seem to be lots of problems with retrofit into older properties that are not optimised for insulation and lower temp high flow heating. This is holding us back from installing right now, despite a theoretically good epc we have a high space heating energy demand and so might need to start again with insulation and draughts proofing and completely replace all the central heating pipes and rads......

Martyn1981

One issue holding all of us back, sadly, is the small but vocal number of people (and FF companies) that deny the externality costs of FF's, whether AGW or health.

Obviously we all now know that emissions from coal burning are atrociously foul, but I recall 'cells' (a few years back) denying this on the grounds that he'd 'stood on a large pile of coal, and it didn't smell that bad too him'.

So long as people (even a very small percentage) deny the externality costs of FF's, costs that have been accessed and calculated many times, we won't see a shift as fast as it could be, and history will judge all of us badly.

@michaels - Sadly the HP COP v's boiler efficiency gets ignored every time by those trying to mislead, or scare, on the grounds of costs. I don't know why? I also don't know why the externality cost of the FF gas is ignored.

Anyways, with a 3.2 to 1 advantage (average ASHP COP in the UK of 2.9 v's a GCH boiler efficiency of 0.9), then just a small carbon tax on FF gas means that RE leccy wins out. Investment in insulation, draft proofing, and a long term 'policy' of slowly reducing household temps, only makes it better and better. Personally the recent weather has been an eye opener for me. Typically we don't need heating in late Apr / early may, but the cold air temps have resulted in us using the A/C unit for top up on some days. The bonus of course being that cold temps and sunshine mean ever higher PV generation, and only a small percentage of gen being consumed by the heat pump.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Issue then becomes the average cop for the ashp. Whilst in theory this is 3-4 there seem to be lots of problems with retrofit into older properties that are not optimised for insulation and lower temp high flow heating. This is holding us back from installing right now, despite a theoretically good epc we have a high space heating energy demand and so might need to start again with insulation and draughts proofing and completely replace all the central heating pipes and rads......

The real issue is that electricity prices are too high
This can be solved by regulating so the energy companies have to offer 3 different charging bands

1: For normal eletricity basically the same as today @15p a unit
2: For EV charging at a price around 6p a unit
3: For heating homes @ 6p a unit

The EV charging @6p/kwh would only be permitted during non peak times which means basically any time excluding winter evenings and in future dynamically controlled for wind

The heating @6p/kWh again would be at any time excluding peak times and again controlled for wind power output.

If you want to heat or Charge an EV outside of these times then the normal 15p a unit applies

How can the power companies supply electricity for 6p a unit when they can only do for 15p a unit today?

Well 6p is roughly the cost the rest is all the overheads and grid costs but that is provided for via the charges in #1

This system would allow more rapid deployment of EVs (An EV doing 250,000 miles in its life would pay £5,000 less to charge itself) and much more rapid deployment of electrical heating both heat pumps and normal heaters

Electrical heating is actually very efficient.
Sure a boiler is supposedly 90% efficient and a resistant heated home is closer to 50% efficient (assuming the marginal electricity is supplied by a CCGT) however this is largely wrong because very few boilers actually operate at 90% and very few wet systems are perfectly balanced

For example I just had a new boiler and rads installed in an old house
The installer clearly had no real understanding of what they were doing.

For example they grossly undersized the radiator in the living room so much so that I have to set the boiler to 85 centigrade for heating (the max) which already means it is not operating in condensing mode so maybe the efficiency is down to 80%. But the other rads are sized correctly so what this means is while the living room struggles to get to 20 centigrade with 85 centigrade water through the rads the rest of the house is boiling (and wasting heat)

So overall I would be surprised if the setup is an actual 50% efficient vs a perfectly set up and balanced gas fired setup

I know what has to be done in this instance, I need to install a second radiator in the living room to balance things out and allow me to set the boiler to 60 or even 55 centigrade. but I would wager lots of people wouldn't know whats really going on and would live with it as is

So while in theory boilers are 90% efficient in reality in most instances its much less.
Electrical heating even if powered by CCGTs is probably not going to be much less efficient especially as electric heaters are really cheap and highly controllable you can set each room to its own temp and even have semi smart heaters for instance when the family is sleeping the heaters in the bedroom are on the rest of the house is off. Or even have this for all cases. Heaters only ever on when someone is in the room and to the temp set for that room. This would be possible because a 3KW or even a 6KW will heat a room up very rapidly vs a 1KW water radiator

Smart electrical heating will be use case very efficient even if headline is only about 50% efficient powered via a CCGT. Electrical heating will also have a lot less embedded CO2 since the heaters are lighter and cheaper and there is no need for a gas grid to be laid or maintained etc

So yeh, we need different pricing for heating and EVs compared to normal electricity

GreatApe

Also the UK grid is very soon going to be very low carbon so charging EVs or electrically heating homes will be low carbon

By 2023 the UK grid will be zero coal and probably low NG too

2018 Figures were ~150TWh for coal&Gas combined

If the UK builds 10GW of offshore wind (2GW/yr) from 2018-2023 and the 4.8GW of additional links to France and Norway open up we could see a combined 60 TWh from those displacing !!!!!! towards 90 TWh in 2023 which would mean !!!!!! make up only ~27% of the grid in 2023 at some 135 grams/KWh

A smart electrically resistance heated home could be much lower carbon than a dumb central gas fired home often built in sub optimal performance

The ban of NG in new builds should be moved forward to 2021 which will save more than half a million homes from connecting to the gas grid.

Martyn1981

Not exactly green energy, but part of the solution to the UK getting CO2 emissions down to net zero.

Rewild a quarter of UK to fight climate crisis, campaigners urge

A quarter of the UK’s land could be restored to nature, making a significant contribution towards cutting the nation’s carbon emissions to zero, under a new rewilding proposal.

The plan, published by Rewilding Britain, calls for billions of pounds in farm subsidies to be redirected towards creating native woodlands and meadows and protecting peat bogs and salt marshes. The group says wildlife would benefit, farmers would not lose money and food production need not fall.