Economy First: Britain Puts Decarbonisation On Hold
Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, 16 August 2010
The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead.
Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition’s first energy bill to be published this year.
Their criticism of the government’s commitment to green issues follows news last week that nature reserves could be sold off as countryside protection measures also bear the brunt of budget cuts in the Department for Environment.
Introducing a so-called “environmental performance standard” (EPS) for power companies would have restricted greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas plants and encouraged companies wishing to build to use more efficient technology.
The introduction of an EPS was personally championed by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg when in opposition; their opposition to Kingsnorth became something of a cause célèbre – and even features in the coalition agreement – but was opposed by energy companies and Tory backbenchers.
The chief executive at one coal-plant operating company warned that the UK’s renewable energy technology – which would be used to help new plants meet the target – was too undeveloped to make the EPS feasible.
Now government sources confirm they will not be bringing forward legislation in the autumn and will instead spend the summer working on “the larger picture”. They will open a consultation on the idea in the autumn with the results being presented to parliament as a white paper in the new year.
Green campaigners believe this is noncommittal for a policy both parts of the coalition said could be implemented immediately when in opposition.
They believe a delay in the introduction of the standard until next year – with a few years for the legislation to pass through the house and for it to be set up – raises the possibility of new coal-fire power stations slipping through the system.
Greenpeace energy campaigner, Joss Garman, said: “David Cameron made the introduction of new rules to stop the most polluting power stations one of his flagship green policies, and Nick Clegg helped ensure it was a key part of the coalition agreement.
“Both Lib Dem and Conservative MPs voted for the introduction of such a measure just a few months ago, and if they U-turn on this and fail to put this measure into their new energy law, how can they claim to be the greenest government ever?”
The energy company Peel Power has already come forward with a proposal in Scotland to build a largely unabated coal plant.
The government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said if the UK is to meet its climate targets it needs to decarbonise the whole power sector by 2030.
If the EPS is abandoned it would almost certainly reopen the debate about what the industry needs to change and encourage utilities to push forward with their original plans for a whole new fleet of dirty coal stations in the UK (the first to be built here for 30 years).
The consequences would be that the battle of Kingsnorth could be refought.
WUWT readers may recall the Dr. Jim Hansen went to Britain to defend vandals of this station. Story here. My reaction here.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. This is from the telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/toyota/7928827/Toyota-Prius-Plug-in-review.html
They are going to pay people to buy the plug in prius. By my calculation it creates twice as much co2 on electric as it does on petrol. (0.53kg co2 per kwh from defra figures, 5kwh battery 12 mile range on battery =124g/km whereas on petrol it is supposed to give 59g/km). That is without loss in charging or allowing for the energy to produce the battery. They are still nuts.
Icarus-Shale Gas, Pebble Bed Nuclear,Thorium Nuclear, what part of civilization do you
Not like?
Or is it a fear of Healthy, happy Dark Skinned Children?…
“CARBON CREDITS HERE!! GET YER RED-HOT CARBON CREDITS!! BEST PRICE YET, YOU’LL NEVER GET ANOTHER DEAL LIKE THIS!!”
larry says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:25 pm
In spanish we say something like this:
“When God wants you to lose yourself he just makes you lose your common sense”
Henry chance says:
“Did I bump into you looking for the in-organic food aisle?”
That was me, Henry. I was looking in the garden section for a bottle of malathion, vintage Dow ’86, if possible. I find that a dash of malathion on my corn-fed beef steak adds just the right tangy flavor. With a side of DDT for my mashed potatoes, and a spritz of Alar on my salad… Heaven!
☺
It is good to see reality filtering through to government. I live in the UK and was extremely worried that the renewable policies of the previous Labour government would, if carried through, have extremely dire consequences for the UK – no industry, no business and widespread starvation. Something like a cold Zimbabwe!
This gives some hope that the future will not be so bleak.
Now I would like to hear the government’s cancellation of the project to spend 150 billion on wind turbines at sea, and the cancellation of the 7 billion a year to subsidise small scale energy production [With the costs simply passed on to the consumer].
Finally, I would like to hear the cancellation of all subsidies for renewables. If it needs a subsidy it isn’t green : As was pointed out it takes a lot of energy to produce a wind turbine, solar cells take a lot of energy to produce and create large amounts of toxic chemicals, as do rare earths used in batteries.
I would be happy about large grants for R&D in to cost effective renewables – I want truly green products. Most renewables at the moment are ineffective and are really just ways of making rich people richer. [And poor people poorer]
It’s encouraging to see a return to real environmental concerns in the UK again. The biggest pollutant we’ve had for years is spleen grease. Finally, it looks like something may be done to tackle it.
Any sane person would readily recognise that Britain has no choice. At our high latitutes, Solar is not efficient and becomes even less efficient when the need for power is most, ie., winters and/or evenning times.
Wind power is even more rediculous. See the interesting article in the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1303688/More-half-Britains-wind-farms-built-wind.html) discussing the poor siting of most wind farms! Not only has there been poor siting but wind is far too unreliable to be used for any significant contribution towards the nation’ s power needs. Last winter during the cold snap which lasted for at least 3 weeks (coldest winter in the UK for 30 years) there was all but no wind such that wind generators were producing no more than between 3% to 8% of their rated output. The average was probably less than 5% rated output. If the UK had been reliant upon wind power, there would have been power cuts for probably 22.5 hours a day for 3 weeks. This would have meant that UK homes would have been without heating for 22.5 hours per day for 3 weeks (even gas and oil heating require electricity for ignition and running circulating pumps etc) such that the death toll would have been horrendous.
A government cannot pursue an energy policy which would result in millions of its people dying every 30 years when a cold winter sets in.
For the UK, the only “green” energy solution that could have legs is tidal/wave power. Apart from that possibility (which is at least 20 years away) nuclear, coal and gas are the only viable options.
>>Andrew
>>Sadly our Scottish politicians are hell bent on carbon capture
>>technology, regardless of how expensive, in-efficient and totally
>>unproven it is.
What I fear most about Carbon Capture, apart from the cost, is a blow-out.
Can you imagine these geeks filling a subterranean void with CO2, under very high pressure under the North Sea, and then getting a Gulf of Mexico-style blowout. Never mind a few oil-soaked pelicans, this would result in an undulating mass of poisonous gas creeping across the North Sea and engulfing any east coast town (anyone on the rig would already be dead, and no support vessel or helicopter could get close, to shut the blowout down).
Millions of people may well die.
Look at what happened at lake Nyos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Has anyone thought about what they are doing here? Or is this just the Green way of reducing populations, without letting on?
.
>>Peter
>>That is the same David Cameron who … installed a small wind
>>turbine on top of his house in London (which would have supplied
>>60W, if I remember correctly). It’s a sort of a relief, in this case,
>>to find out that he’s probably just another unprincipled politician
>>rather than a CAGW ideologue.
Not necessarily. He may well be a principled pipe-dream politician who has just come down to earth with a great thud.
It has been reported that the small windelec generators he installed, only average 7w – just enough for a small low-energy bulb. His great dream of powering London with personal windelecs probably just went ‘phut !!’, like a blown fuse.
The pipe-dream is probably fading fast, and he is grasping for reality.
Let’s hope he finds it, and soon.
.
>>Philip
>>I hate to agree with Jeremy Clarkson about anything, but
>>on electric cars he is absolutely right (“Sizzling sandals, this
>>is one hot eco-chariot”, last week). An electric car is only viable
>>from an emissions viewpoint if the electricity that it uses is
>>generated by renewable sources.
Some important things, NOT said about electric vehicles.
a. When using coal or oil for electrical generation, electric cars are more polluting than a good diesel car. My estimates of efficiencies are:
Petrol 22% 27mpg
Diesel 37% 45mpg
Battery 31% 35mpg
Hydrogen 12% 14mpg
(Imperial gallons. European cars – urban and country driving).
Electric cars just relocate their pollution from the towns to the countryside – so you eat the pollution, instead of breathing it.
b. If we all went to electric vehicles, we would have to triple the number of power stations. Yes, that is how much energy is used in transport.
c. Electric vehicles are only cheaper to run (in Europe) because the electricity is not taxed. If the same taxes were applied, as is levied on fuel, they would be more expensive than diesel cars to run. Electric vehicle users are just tax dodgers, not environmentalists.
d. Electric vehicles are much less efficient when it is cold (presuming you want a heater in the car). Then they become less efficient than petrol cars. (Modern electric motors are way too efficient to heat a car with waste energy.)
e. I will think about e. There are more issues here….
.
Gary Pearse says:
“Coal is the only solar energy ….. I wish we could just stop apologizing and explaining for this industry and let this group shout their lungs out….”
GeoFlynx – They would more likely cough their lungs out! “Rates of black lung are on the rise, and have almost doubled in the last 10 years.”(Wiki) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalworker's_pneumoconiosis
“”” chris y says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
George E. Smith- “I do not eat organic foods, because it contains carbon. You’d be surprised how many organic farm vendors have ensured me that their produce is certified carbon free.”
Brilliant!
I have a bumper sticker on my 13-year-old Ford Explorer- “This vehicle is powered by Hydrogen-loaded carbon nanorods.” A few folks were surprised that the hydrogen economy had already arrived… “””
Well Chris I like yours much better than mine. But I once got my A*** in the ringer by suggesting that molecular links were actually like rods; and nobody liked my CO2 molecule layout.
But yes California is mandated under AB-32 to reduce the Carbon content of their fuels by 33% by 2020 or somesuch future date.
So if we guessesd that gasoline might be mostly C8H18 (although it isn’t) we would have a typical gasoline H/C ratio of 2.25 and the mandate would perhaps require us to use something more like C8H27; and I don’t know how you mechanize that. Well you need to get to a 3.375 H/C ratio, and you can get to 4.0 with pure methane; so perhaps some methane/ethane mix is required; sounds like natural gas to me ? of course you can imagine what a lousy Octane rating that has; so we probably have to go down to compression ratios of 4-5 so it doesn’t knock
Now I am sure that the law AB-32 does not think far enough ahead as to require that reduced carbon content on a per BTU or Joule basis; after all it was written and voted on by lawyers; not combustion chemists.
I’d like to push for including H2O in the list of dangerous GHG toxic pollutants that the EPA has to regulate for our health and well being.
“”” GeoFlynx says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:52 am
Gary Pearse says:
“Coal is the only solar energy ….. I wish we could just stop apologizing and explaining for this industry and let this group shout their lungs out….”
GeoFlynx – They would more likely cough their lungs out! “Rates of black lung are on the rise, and have almost doubled in the last 10 years.”(Wiki) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalworker‘s_pneumoconiosis “””
Blame it on environmentalists who won’t let them extract the coal in any safe manner. Of course modern day silicon wafer fab workers operate all day in bubble suits so they are not exhaling toxic pollutants to kill the silicon wafers. Clean room dust is the most expensive pollutant in the universe and someone estimated its value(cost) at something like $64B per kg; but that was maybe 20 years ago so I think you can call that $64T per kg today. The cost of course is the value of the lost computer, and memory chips due to particulate contaminants. I’m told that if you ever smoked, or lived with someone who ever smoked, that you cannot get a job in a fab clean room; because your lungs exhale tobacco particles for the rest of your life.
@ur momisugly George: I’m told that if you ever smoked, or lived with someone who ever smoked, that you cannot get a job in a fab clean room; because your lungs exhale tobacco particles for the rest of your life.
The above statement is not true for modern automated Fabs
It was announced this week that “green” energy policies would add £50 per annum to the average electricity bill and that the coalition government plans to cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
All this while we still have 30% of generation from our coal fired power stations and more than 15 % from our aging nuclear plant. Once the coal fired stations are closed by EU diktat during the next 5 years, the aging nuclear are phased out and the likes of Kingsnorth and the new nuclear plant remain unbuilt, we can expect electricity prices to more than double and to have widespread brownouts.
When this happens and the winter fuel allowance disappears altogether, how many freezing pensioners do you think will wish to continue voting for the coalition?
If Cameron et al are rowing back a little from the asinine Ed Miliband and Chris Huhne energy policies, is it perhaps that this prospect is beginning to exercise their tiny brains?
Personally I do not believe it. Chris Huhne is way too far down the Swanee ever to row back.
I fear for this country. The Energy Minister (didn’t get his name – not Chris Huhne) was on telly this morning, next to a nice new gas-fired power station, exhuding confidence that nuclear power stations would come on-stream within a quite ridiculous timescale – and that ‘renewables’ had ‘a part to play’.
They are going to get such a wake-up call any time soon – my prediction (has been ever since it was obvious that the Labour loons were kow-towing to the green goons) is that there will be humiliating power cuts during the Olympics…
You read it here first…