Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

zeupater

NigeWick wrote: »

How much (extra) would it cost to make all new builds Zero Carbon, or whatever the correct expression is, so they hardly need any heating?

Hi

Good way to think about it! ....

Most of what I've read over the years seems to suggest an average of around £5k additional build cost per property would make the kind of difference to energy efficiency we'd need to get to, so if clearing the housing shortage needs ~350k new builds/year we're looking at an ongoing annual cost to purchasers of around £2billion ....

HTH
Z

GreatApe

There is no easy solution to heating

10-20 nuclear heating stations with a capacity of 100GW feeding a national heating grid would do it
£50 billion for the heating reactors and £50 billion for the distribution grid
The amount of uranium needed would only be about 30% of what France uses so only 30% of the 'waste' and you can store the waste indefinitely in the heating grid pools so it becomes a very long life fuel contributing to heating rather than 'waste'.

The reactors and distribution grid will be designed for 60 years but will probably last 100 years



The alternative of electrifying heating would be in the region of 10x that cost

35 million heat pump installations £350 billion? And only lasts 15-20 years.
100GW offshore wind. £400 billion? And only lasts 25-30 years
Upgrading the grid to handle 200GW ???£100 billion??
Building 150 additional large CCGT power stations to fill in the low wind winter voids £80-120 billion??

Not much change left over from £1 trillion



And it's not just money difference
£1 trillion can perhaps be done over 30 years and cost a huge amount
£0.1 trillion for nuclear distributed heat can be done over 10 years and cost much less

Operation and maintenance of the much smaller £0.1 trillion infrastructure rather than the £1 trillion infrastructure will also be less

ed110220

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Good way to think about it! ....

Most of what I've read over the years seems to suggest an average of around £5k additional build cost per property would make the kind of difference to energy efficiency we'd need to get to, so if clearing the housing shortage needs ~350k new builds/year we're looking at an ongoing annual cost to purchasers of around £2billion ....

HTH
Z

In other words a fairly insignificant amount compared with the cost of heating the home over its lifetime. It's really a no brainer.

pile-o-stone

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I've simply been addressing & supporting a post made by Hexane a few days ago ... had no idea that the troll has been reacting as it's been on my ignore list for ages (only profile ever at that!) ...

Hi Z,

My 'Don't feed the troll' comment wasn't aimed at anyone in particular - like yourself I have the troll on ignore and so I don't have to read his drivel. I can see that he has posted though and noticed another one of his attention seeking multi-posts (three in a row this time) and thought I'd encourage people not to respond to any provocation.

I was having a bored lunchtime stroll through some other boards in MSE land and noticed that he does the same on some of the other boards. It's a wonder that the board guides don't boot him off, but there you go.

ed110220 wrote: »

In other words a fairly insignificant amount compared with the cost of heating the home over its lifetime. It's really a no brainer.

If we go a bit further and install Passive House levels of insulation and airtightness, then we can do away completely with space heating and use electricity to heat water for showers, etc.

It's an easy solution to heating.

zeupater

ed110220 wrote: »

In other words a fairly insignificant amount compared with the cost of heating the home over its lifetime. It's really a no brainer.

Hi

Exactly .... it seems that most of what's published regarding heat requirements is based on current/historical energy consumption using inefficient heating technologies in thermally inefficient properties, resulting in hugely overestimated future demand requirements ...

Our own household energy imports (all sources) over the past 3 years now stand at around 4-5MWh, that representing a reduction from pre-improvement peaks of around (/in excess of) 90% ... Moreover, there's more that could be done if economic considerations were thrown to the wind! ....

HTH
Z

GreatApe

But anyway this is a discussion just for the sake of it

I accept the UK won't be doing nuclear heat even though it's a solution that would work and be affordable. We will instead just put off doing anything about heating for a long time. The government will give grants to install heat pumps but not in any significant number

Sometime in the 2030s maybe the government will get serious and give grants to a large number perhaps 2 million conversions per year. This will cost you the government £10-20 billion a year. peak winter demand will start going up rapidly and new CCGTs will have to be built to meet and guarantee that demand so the government or consumer will have to sub into existence £1billion per GW CCGTs.

We would probably need to build 5 large gas fired stations per year in the 2030s/40s to allow for a conversion to heat pumps

Come 2050 we will have 100 new large gas fired power stations to meet the new 150+ GW peak winter electricity demands and will have had to upgrade the grid and build new lines so that the grid can handle this 150-200GW peak demand periods

I look forward to this much more complex costly and slow engineering challenge

GreatApe

If you convert 2 million boilers to heat pumps per year. Which would be the rate needed from 2030-2050 what would peak winter demands go up by each year? 5GW ?

How do you build a grid which currently has peak winter demands of circa 50GW to become a grid which can handle closer to 200GW without additional fossil fuel infrastructure ?

Hope...lots and lot of hope

The colder days would need in the region of 3.5 TWh of electricity so yes 150GW of electricity that's how much thermal capacity you would need + 10% margin. So get finding the sites to build 100-120 new large gas fired power stations to electrify heating........

GreatApe

pile-o-stone wrote: »

If we go a bit further and install Passive House levels of insulation and airtightness, then we can do away completely with space heating and use electricity to heat water for showers, etc.

It's an easy solution to heating.

This is one of the solutions that sound so easy on first thoughts but reality quickly shows why it's really not possible and definitely not easy

It's major work and inconvenience to households
It isn't lagging a loft or injecting some foam I to the walls
It's replacing windows and doors. It's adding external insulation. It's adding mechanical ventilation it's a huge amount of work

Plus what's the cost of doing this to an existing house?
I've read conversion builds cost £80k upwards?
How many households have £80k sitting around to do a passive house conversion?
Take out a mortgage of £80k over 25 years and pay £340 mortgage PER MONTH on your house upgrade rather than £340 per YEAR for natural gas...no thanks

It's obvious why this isn't a solution
29 million homes X £80k = £2.3 trillion
Plus another 30% for the other buildings we need/use like shops offices etc
You are at over £3 trillion plus the significant inconvenience

Passive house so no space heating won't happen it's the most costly of all of the ideas
Although where it is affordable, like tower blocks or apartments which have much smaller wall surface area Vs floor area then do it for those but for normal homes it's not really an option

But yes insulate better to the point it is affordable but that is well before passive house

zeupater

pile-o-stone wrote: »

... If we go a bit further and install Passive House levels of insulation and airtightness, then we can do away completely with space heating and use electricity to heat water for showers, etc.

It's an easy solution to heating.

Hi

The issue that many don't understand is that the requirements for Passivhaus compliance has it's own issues ...

For example, we completely ace the Passivhaus primary energy demand requirements (60kWh/sqm(of living area)/year) but miss the target for space heating demand (15kWh/sqm/year) measure (and there is a point to revisit in these figures!) .. however, for the equivalent low energy refit equivalent (EnerPHiT) we're in the right ballpark and could get there with a couple of improvements we've already costed ... the problem is that the benefit analysis in terms of cost & energy saved make absolutely no sense ... it's a classic case of getting to 80% of the target on 20% of the expenditure, so the incremental saving left are ~25x more expensive on a per unit basis ....

Revisiting the point then .... the difference between 15kWh/sqm for heating & 60kWh/sqm for primary energy (imports) doesn't exactly encourage low energy consumption on non-direct heating products for example, a design including a number of 50" plasma TV panels or their thermal output equivalent wouldn't be classified as including heating devices, just creators of passive heat! .... in our case in our property it's energy efficiency that's driven what we've done, which doesn't include the various design 'cheats' that Passivhaus somehow allows! ...

... following on from the above, the 'Premium' PH standard balances out a reduction of the primary energy imports to 30kWh/sqm against self generation, and here's the ridiculous part - as long as the generated/collected energy is over 120kWh/sqm of self generation ... broadly speaking, a 150sqm house in the UK would need a PV array consisting of around 20kWp of panels to comply ... who needs to import 4.5MWh(30x150) of energy when they're self generating at least 18MWh? ... no lack of potential questions regarding the full relevance of Passivhaus there then!!

I'd stick with reducing consumption through addressing relatively easy efficiency measures and dismiss Passivhaus for now as the deliverables provide a far better (/faster) pathway to achieving overall energy demand reductions! ...

HTH
Z

pile-o-stone

Hi Z,

I recall from earlier conversations that your house was quite ahead of its time when it was built and has a high level of insulation already. I can therefore understand that the cost of further upgrading your insulation levels to passive house standard would not be worth it. The savings on your already low heating bills would not cover the costs involved. It's the law of diminishing returns where adding more and more insulation becomes pointless.

For example, a house with 100mm of external insulation and high quality double glazing would not really benefit much from adding in a further 100mm and replacing the double with triple glazing. Certainly not enough for a reasonable payback. Id wager the occupants wouldn't feel much difference in comfort.

However, with a standard UK home that has little or no wall insulation and perhaps single or old double glazing, the cost of updating it to a similar level of insulation as your house would be cost effective (as you already said in your earlier conversation).

I'd argue that doubling up and fitting fitting 200mm rather than 100mm of external insulation wouldn't double the cost. It'd just be the difference between 100mm of PIR insulation and 200mm, which isn't a huge amount and extra cost for longer mechanical fittings to attach the insulation to the wall.

Similarly, the total cost of fitting triple glazing instead of double glazing won't be double either. The labour costs for fitting would be virtually identical and any scaffolding would be exactly the same cost.

I'm not sure what point you were making about the multiple plasma TVs? If it was about how to heat the passive house, then this is predominantly passive solar gain (i.e. sun shining in through the windows) with a little heat from cooking food, bathing/showering and body heat. Heat recovery ventilation and attention to detail with air tightness (lots of tape!!) will help keep that heat in the house.