Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

ed110220 said:

Martyn1981 said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

From the guardian:

"Solar could grow five times from 14GW to 70GW by 2035"

To me this seems pretty significant. Solar is more complementary to offshore wind than onshore wind.

If you can focus the onshore opposition on wind rather than solar that might be a good thing. They will be tilting at windmills whilst solar booms 

Personally, I am with you Martyn, I think wind turbines are beautiful. Few technological advancements are almost all positive. But I think wind turbines are up there there with bikes and dishwashers in that regard.

Yeah, I think there are positives. My biggest takeaway is that we should be able to largely decarbonise the grid this decade. I was concerned that the Gov's obsession with nuclear would slow that down, but looks like their slow and expensive nukes will arrive towards the end of the 2030's, long after the work has been done, so at least the key priority will be achieved.

The biggest benefits from on-shore wind are that they can be better distributed around the country, since a lot of current wind curtailment isn't because we have too much for the UK, but that our (pretty poor) leccy network can't move all of it to where it is needed. Storage and European interconnectors will help with that however.

Once the leccy is low carbon, then shifting industry, transport and space heating over to it, allows for the next big step. Can't help wondering how embarrassing things will get next decade when cheap and fast RE rollout has to be slowed down, to give the slow expensive new nuclear something to do when it finally arrives? [Note - I'm assuming that our current rollout of about 3.5%pa of leccy demand from new RE, will be greater than the annual increase in leccy demand from 'electrifying everything' before adding in new nuclear. M.]

Oh well, could be worse, but can't help feeling guilty for 'da yuff' as we saddle them with all this expensive nuclear leccy and decommissioning and storage costs. The future could have been brighter and cleaner.

I'm not convinced that much, if any new nuclear will be built. Perhaps Sizewell C, but getting [back] to 25% of electricity seems like a fantasy. Mainly all this talk of nuclear is for political purposes. This is why successive governments, Tory and Labour have talked a lot about nuclear for the past 15 years at least, but have only actually got two reactors under construction that won't even replace those that have already closed.

Some like the idea of nuclear for ideological reasons. Construction companies like the prospect of massive contracts. Major trade unions like the employment, especially the relatively skilled jobs. But no one likes the bill or the risk of major delays, so politicians calculate they can get the benefits but not the costs by doing a lot of talking and not much doing with nuclear.

Even Kwarteng's phrasing the other day was oddly fantastical: “There is a world where we have six or seven sites in the UK” as if he was talking of some alternative reality. And by 2050 which is still 28 years away, an absolute age in energy - as far from today as 1994 is!

Thanks Ed (and others), it's nice to know I'm not the only one with doubts about new nuclear being contracted. Maybe it is just something to keep some folk happy. Must be tricky for Boris now with so much support for onshore wind, even from Tory voters, rural voters, and those who already live near one.

Many years ago, a builder friend of mine found it odd that some people don't like WT's. His suggestion was to place a large cone around the tower with clever painting, including a picture of a door with Windy Miller standing in it waving, then divert all the British tourists and tourist revenue away from Holland and into the UK countryside ....... he was joking(ish).

Fingers crossed they can't sign anymore poison pill deals like HPC (£20bn if we cancel now), until the CfD 4th round results come out (spring/summer?) And double fingers crossed that the prices for PV / onshore wind are 'cheap', and hopefully offshore wind will be as cheap as round 3.

michaels

Were there any timescales for the nuclear - with closures, will HPC be the only nuke in operation in 2030 when we will be 90% green energy?

At which point we would presumably be building expensive nuclear to replace cheap wind and PV plus 10% gas that we might still need most (7%?) of even with 25% nuclear?

QrizB

michaels said:

Were there any timescales for the nuclear - with closures, will HPC be the only nuke in operation in 2030 when we will be 90% green energy?

Sizewell B is relatively young, commissioned in 1985, and is currently planned to remain operational to 2035.

NigeWick

shinytop said:

More solar sounds like a good idea; there are a lot of empty roofs.

  

When you say a lot, I read that to mean "MILLIONS!!!"

NigeWick

ed110220 said:

 Mainly all this talk of nuclear is for political purposes. 

Yep. Conservative backers own nuclear and Labour money comes from a union that wants nuclear.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Were there any timescales for the nuclear - with closures, will HPC be the only nuke in operation in 2030 when we will be 90% green energy?

At which point we would presumably be building expensive nuclear to replace cheap wind and PV plus 10% gas that we might still need most (7%?) of even with 25% nuclear?

Yes, in essence you've hit exactly what I'm thinking, even fearing.

As Qriz points out SZB may still be running, so somewhere around 2030 RE + nukes (HPC + SZB) will be generating the vast majority of leccy. The additional leccy demand growth (BEV's, HP's etc) will probably be less than the RE rollout, certainly the potential RE rollout of ~4%pa+.

By 2035, the earliest I can imagine more nuclear could come on line, if SZC gets approval 'today', we should already have enough RE (plus HPC) and intraday storage, and ~25GW of interconnectors, to start squeezing the low gas figure, perhaps 5% down towards zero(ish). If SZC is also contracted not to ramp down, then we can expect curtailments to be handled by wind, and all the blame for the 'waste' to be placed upon RE, or it'll be stored, and all the storage costs again blamed upon RE.

I know I knock nuclear, but it's genuinely because I can't understand why anyone would spend more, to get less, and have to wait 10+yrs longer, when we need to decarbonize leccy this decade. HPC wasn't a really bad deal in 2012, but it's now 2022.

So yes, it appears to me that any 'new' contracted nuclear will actually be displacing/fighting RE in 2035+. To prevent utter embarrassment, future Gov's might actually have to slow down RE deployment to give that nuclear something to do when it arrives.

Martyn1981

Selection of news items from renews, all nice and short, in fact I've quoted about 25% of the first one.

More subsidy free RE rolling out in the UK:

NextEnergy Solar starts 36MW UK PV build

NextEnergy Solar Fund has commenced construction of the 36MW Whitecross subsidy-free solar plant in Lincolnshire, England.

The amount of variable generation the Irish Grid can cope with keeps increasing (for the UK a figure of 100% 'low carbon' (so includes nuclear) should be manageable by 2025):

Irish grid primed for 75% variable generation

EirGrid had previously imposed a cap of 70% on the amount of variable renewable generation on the grid at a given time. 

This has now been raised to 75% following a successful 11-month trial.

Since the inception of the programme in 2011, EirGrid has increased the limit from 50% to 75% in a series of five steps.

Work will now begin on increasing the figure to 95% by 2030 in order to achieve Government renewable energy targets.

And Germany accelerates RE again with an 80% target for 2030, which won't include any nuclear unless current political/war events cause a delay. In fact I think the last are planned to shutdown this year.:

Germany unveils accelerated renewables strategy

The German federal government has unveiled a new energy package to accelerate and promote the expansion of renewables.  

At the heart of the "Easter package" is the principle that the use of renewable energies is in the overriding public interest and serves public safety, it said. 

Under the proposals, the expansion on land and at sea will be raised so that at least 80% of Germany's gross electricity consumption should come from renewable sources by 2030. 

Martyn1981

Great to see support for wind energy running high in yet another poll. Shows 78% support and 5% opposed. Though the article then gives higher percentages for all the major party voters, so something wrong with those numbers, or another party is heavily dragging down the overall support figure ..... Greens? 

So that's sorted then, expect lots more onshore wind to reflect what the public actually want (yes that's satire).

Three-quarters of Britons back expansion of wind power, poll reveals

In the Opinium poll, 79% of Tory voters said they were strongly or somewhat in favour of windfarms being installed in the UK, compared with 83% of Labour voters and 88% of Lib Dems. Two-thirds of all voters said they would be happy for a windfarm to be built near them.

Martyn1981

Fascinating vid. Suggesting a new/better way to process waste at sewage treatment farms. Lots of red tape (due to the material being a biohazard), but it seems to tick almost every box, and a treatment plant can actually be net positive producing more energy than it consumes for its processes.

One of the products is 'coal', or to be more precise lignite, which can be burnt/co-fired, and is effectively carbon free, as it will be part of the short carbon cycle - food (carbon) - human waste - burnt carbon released back into the environment.

Always good to hear about any sustainable energy sources, especially if the process may actually improve on the existing system, but also of interest (to me) as this could produce a form of energy storage / demand following generation if stockpiled till it's needed?

Undecided with Matt Ferrell.

Turning Human Waste into Renewable Energy?

gefnew

Green energy from sewage to power homes | Newsroom | Thames Water
Like this one.