The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

France's nuclear meltdown has big implications for Britain

France’s nuclear industry is in slow-motion meltdown. A fifth of the country’s 56 reactors are currently shut, mostly because of corrosion and welding problems in the safety injection system.

The scale of outages this winter has reached the point where it is tightening Europe’s interlinked energy market, adding to the extreme pressure on electricity, gas and coal prices. 

It comes at the moment of peak seasonal demand, during the worst global gas shock since the Second World War. The French power network is firing up its old coal plants. These emit 62 times as much CO2.

French nuclear output has fallen by 28pc since 2015 and is now at the lowest level in 30 years. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/18/frances-nuclear-meltdown-has-big-implications-britain/

QrizB

It would be good to know how many of the currently-idle nuclear plants the French plan to repair, and how many have had their end-of-life brought forward. I can't easily find this reported (I probably could with a bit more digging).

The last three paras of that article are more positive (about electricity in general, not French nuke plants):

The global nuclear industry is in ferment and it is likely that the whole EPR misadventure - the Concorde of our time - will be obsolete before the 2020s are over.

In the meantime, we should keep rolling out our offshore wind turbines, storing some energy in cryogenic compressed air, and building the infrastructure to produce green hydrogen and ammonia from excess wind in the future. 

Many readers dislike wind, but don’t be distracted by five-year-old cost data and subsidy arguments that no longer hold. Technology and scale is making offshore wind extremely cheap. It is where the UK’s competitive advantage currently lies.

michaels

JKenH said:

France's nuclear meltdown has big implications for Britain

France’s nuclear industry is in slow-motion meltdown. A fifth of the country’s 56 reactors are currently shut, mostly because of corrosion and welding problems in the safety injection system.

The scale of outages this winter has reached the point where it is tightening Europe’s interlinked energy market, adding to the extreme pressure on electricity, gas and coal prices. 

It comes at the moment of peak seasonal demand, during the worst global gas shock since the Second World War. The French power network is firing up its old coal plants. These emit 62 times as much CO2.

French nuclear output has fallen by 28pc since 2015 and is now at the lowest level in 30 years. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/18/frances-nuclear-meltdown-has-big-implications-britain/

Lets hope it is mild and windy then!!!

Verdigris

I notice the French interconnector is exporting, this evening, unusually.

We're importing on all the others, though.

JKenH

Death warmed up: How Britain’s milder winters have ‘saved’ half a million lives

Half a million fewer people died in England and Wales as a result of cold weather as the climate warmed over the past 20 years, latest data from the Office for National Statistics has suggested.

Cold weather can trigger respiratory and heart conditions, worsen dementia symptoms and depression, cause lethal injuries from slips, trips and falls, and increase car accidents.

The ONS study found that the biggest impact on mortality declines had come from falls in respiratory deaths, with 336,882 fewer deaths in the 20-year period compared to previous years.

Research has consistently shown that cold weather is far more lethal than hot weather. A 2015 study in The Lancet – looking at 384 locations in 13 countries, including the UK, Australia, the US and Spain – found that cold weather causes 17 times as many deaths as warm weather.

Out of 74 million deaths, 7.7 per cent were attributable to weather conditions, but 7.2 per cent were because of the cold and just 0.46 due to warm days.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/17/two-decades-warm-british-winters-results-half-million-fewer/

JKenH

Are we heading for $300 for a barrel of oil?

Fossil fuels are yesterday's energy source, yet remain the lifeblood of a thriving economy

The problem is particularly acute in Europe, where the fracking revolution that has provided the US with plentiful domestic supply is either banned or discouraged. Climate change goals have meanwhile starved more traditional sources of fossil fuel supply, such as the North Sea, of the capital needed for further development.

The lack of foresight is breathtaking. Yesterday's fuel they may be, but for now, fossil fuels remain the very lifeblood of a thriving economy.

Despite all the starry-eyed talk of an accelerating energy transition, we are still a long way from the promised land of boundless and cheap green energy; for now, the world remains overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels for transport, heating and baseload electricity generation - and will remain so for years to come.

Traditional sources of energy are being dialled down before green grids are ready to take their place.

What we are seeing is a massive, politically destabilising failure in energy policy, for which the bottom half of the economic ladder will pay a heavy price in lost disposable income.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/18/heading-300-barrel-oil/

JKenH

China warned of $20 trillion GDP hit from green energy shift 

China will suffer a hit of around $20 trillion (£15 trillion) to its GDP by 2050 as the world shifts to clean sources of energy, analysts have said.

A report by Wood Mackenzie predicted China will feel more than a quarter of the total $75 trillion – or 2pc – impact on the global economy over the next 30 years. The US will suffer around 12pc, while Europe and India will account for 11pc and 7pc respectively.

The report found that efforts to invest in technology like solar and wind farms will cause a loss of jobs and tax revenues in fossil fuel production in the short term.

However, the economic benefits of the transition and limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degree Celsius should start to show after 2035 and the GDP hit will be recouped before the end of the century, the report said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/20/ftse-100-markets-live-news-inflation-pound-euro-rates/

JKenH

International Grid Interconnections and Energy Security

The pros and cons of interconnectors set out in detail 

https://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/publications/energy/chapter8.pdf

JKenH

Relying on interconnectors for security of supply carries risks

This article from 2018 highlights a number of potential risks from relying on interconnectors at times of system stress.

However, project developers should be aware of a changing tone about the contribution of interconnectors to system security. This change is welcome, and policy-makers should take note – assumptions to date that interconnectors are unambiguously positive for security of supply are not supported by the data, and therefore a conservative approach should be taken in assessing their contribution.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6071905/the-alternative-green-energy-thread/p72

Edit: more on the Aurora report referred to in the above article.

The focus of the study is not whether interconnectors should be built or not but rather how much they can be relied upon when supply margins are tight.

The report says interconnectors offer multiple potential benefits to the power grid: providing an additional layer of security; reducing emissions by facilitating the integration of wind and solar power into the energy system; and lowering costs for consumers if power can be generated cheaper abroad.

However, it also warns interconnectors can create extra uncertainty for policy-makers attempting to understand and manage the energy system.

Informed by advice from National Grid’s system operator, the secretary of state for business and energy determines how much generation capacity is needed to “keep the lights on” during winter peaks, and therefore how much should be procured in capacity market auctions. These decisions are based on a number of assumptions, including how much electricity different sources are likely to provide during system stress events.

The extent to which they can be relied upon is reflected in their capacity market de-rating factors – a measure of expected availability which is generally set in line with historical performance. Participants in the capacity market bid, and are paid, according to their de-rated capacity.

The report raises a number of concerns over the de-rating factors for interconnectors, firstly, that the historic performance of interconnectors is inadequate to justify the current ratings. It says individual interconnectors underperformed their de-rating factors between 30 and 99% of the time during winter peaks from 2015 to 2018.

It also points out that interconnectors can make a negative contribution to security of supply, exacerbating peak demand in Britain when power prices are higher elsewhere, as happened during the winter of 2016 when nuclear outages drove exports to France. It says these phenomena are not properly accounted for in the current de-rating methodology.

https://networks.online/gas/over-reliance-on-interconnectors-could-risk-security-of-supply/

JKenH

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver