By Paul Homewood
I have previously looked at the potential costs of the Climate Change Act, for instance here. But now I want to look at its potential impact on energy supply.
Let’s start with the basic targets that have been set for emissions reduction. The Act commits to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels, by 2050. Five Year Carbon Budgets are set to plan in more detail how this is to be achieved, and currently these are in force for up to 2027.
Although the First Budget for 2008-12 already shows a saving of 23%, most of this occurred long before the Act, partly because of a mass switch from coal to gas fired electricity during the 1990’s, and partly because of the decline of manufacturing in the UK. The Fourth Budget demands a further reduction of 35% from 2008-12 levels.
In this post, I will be concentrating on electricity generation. I will be looking at the implications for heating and transport in a future post. Let’s then look at how the UK’s power is generated at the moment.
UK Electricity Generation – 2012
| TWh | |
| Coal | 143 |
| Oil | 4 |
| Gas | 100 |
| Nuclear | 71 |
| Hydro | 5 |
| Wind | 19 |
| Solar | 1 |
| Bio | 15 |
| Others | 5 |
| Total | 363 |
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-section-5-energy-trends
It is worthwhile noting at this stage that, although CO2 emissions have been going down since 1990, electricity supply has been going up. Since 1990, demand for power has increased by 44 TWh, or 14%. All of the increase has been from domestic consumers, as the use of labour saving devices, computers and electronic equipment have soared. As population is forecast to increase substantially in coming decades, it seems highly unlikely that demand for electricity won’t continue to grow, despite government hopes for energy saving.
However, leaving this “little” problem aside, let’s look at how the power generation sector might look by 2030, based on government scenarios.
[A note here – the government have made clear that there are various scenarios, and they are not committed to any particular one. Therefore their, and my, numbers are by necessity ballpark. All my calculations, though, are based on the government’s own assumptions]
For the latest Fourth Carbon Budget, the government has set several targets of what needs to happen by 2027. There are also certain changes, which have already been set in motion. In summary:-
- Approximately half of the coal fired capacity will have closed by 2015, because of the Large Combustion Plants Directive. Given the governments’ stated objective of reducing emissions in 2023-27 period to 16% of 2009 levels, it seems highly unlikely there will be any scope for coal fired generation by 2027, (unless with CCS).
- The above also applies to oil.
- Out of the nine nuclear power stations currently operating, only one, Sizewell B, is scheduled to still be operational after 2030. The others are all due to shut by 2023, or earlier.
- The planned switch from conventional heating and transport, into “low carbon” alternatives,(i.e. electric cars, heat pumps etc) will significantly increase demand for electricity. The Committee on Climate Change estimates an increase of 30% between 2020 and 2030. This would imply an increase from 363 TWh to 472 TWh p.a.
- The demand for low carbon heat, in particular, will mainly impact at times of peak demand, i.e. winter months and daytime hours. By 2050, DECC have estimated we may need as much as double today’s electricity capacity to deal with peak demand.
- Government plans assume that Carbon Storage, CCS, could provide 10GW by 2030, about a quarter of current supply. However, the technology for this still has not got off the ground, and planned pilot projects have not yet materialised. It is therefore extremely unsafe to rely on this technology.
- Plans also assume that 15GW of nuclear capacity will come on stream, which represents about ten reactors. The government is currently in negotiations with EDF to build two of these, but these have been bogged down for sometime now. There is no guarantee that they will be successful, or whether the price will be affordable. Given the long lead time in building nuclear, it looks increasingly unlikely whether all ten reactors can be built, on satisfactory terms, in time for the Fourth Carbon Budget.
- Gas produces about half the CO2 as coal does, so currently contributes about 25% of emissions. The Carbon Plan aims for a reduction in emissions from total electricity generation of between 75% and 84%. In other words, based on the lower number, gas can continue to contribute its current level of 100TWh. On the higher target, it would need to be reduced to to 74TWh.
So, taking account of these factors, I have laid out below how the UK’s electricity supply arrangements might look by 2030. There are two scenarios:-
1) BEST – based on the government’s key assumptions.
2) LIKELY – what I would regard as the most likely outcome, and certainly the only one that could safely be used for planning purposes.
Projected UK Electricity Generation TWh – 2030
| BEST | LIKELY | |
| Coal | 0 | 0 |
| Oil | 0 | 0 |
| Gas | 100 | 100 |
| Nuclear | 131 | 50 |
| Hydro | 5 | 5 |
| Bio | 30 | 30 |
| Others | 5 | 5 |
| CCS | 80 | 0 |
| Sub Total | 351 | 190 |
| Balance To Fill | 121 | 282 |
| TOTAL REQUIRED | 472 | 472 |
So even under the best case, there is a hole of 121 TWh to fill, about a third of the electricity currently generated, and logically this can only come from wind/solar.
Solar can be ignored, as it makes such a small contribution currently, and simply is not reliable. But what about wind?
To produce 121 TWh from wind, even on the best scenario, would be a sixfold increase on current levels, an increase of 102 TWh. In the last three years, wind generation has increased by 3TWh per year, so at this rate, it would take 34 years to build up to 121 TWh. On the “most likely case”, we would need an extra 16TWh added each year, something that appears to be totally unrealistic.
Then, of course, there is the question of backup capacity. Wind often operates at less than 10% of it’s nameplate capacity, so, in practice, most of the 121 TWh, (or 282 TWh), will need to be matched by an equivalent amount of backup capacity. In other words, gas.
Unless we are prepared for the spare capacity on the grid to be cut to dangerous levels, there would need to be at least a doubling of gas capacity, all to be left idly spinning when the wind blows. And all of this assumes the best case.
Under the most likely scenario, we appear to be entering La La Land. Energy from wind would need to multiply 19-fold, and all in the space of 10 years or so. And to back it up, we would need to quadruple the current capacity of gas fired power stations.
Generators will not be prepared to put down this capacity without being generously paid for the privilege, and the Energy Bill includes provision for a Capacity Market mechanism, which will offer compensation to suppliers, to be paid for by consumers. Whether even that will be enough to procure the long term investment required remains doubtful.
Either way, consumers can look forward to massively increased bills and energy rationing.
References
1) Electricity Statistics from DECC
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-section-5-energy-trends
2) The Carbon Plan
3) Committee on Climate Change Executive Summary
http://archive.theccc.org.uk/aws2/4th%20Budget/4th-Budget_Exec%20Summary.pdf
I forgot to add in my above, that wind energy is a totally harebrained scheme. Solar varies even more (capacity factor at 52 deg North is 10%), so guess what I think of that…
Albert Stienstra says: June 14, 2013 at 3:00 pm
But the gas plants will not be running at constant rated output with maximum efficiency, but at continuously varying output with (much)lower efficiencies, to cope with wind energy variations. As a result the gas consumption (and CO2 emissions) will be greater than when the wind energy is discontinued.
___________________________________
Yes.
It is a little-mentioned fact that gas power being used as wind backup cannot be used as combined heat units (your hot water supply would be up and down like a whore’s draws).
This means that a wind+gas system will actually output more CO2 than a gas only system. But the addition of wind will make the combined system four times as expensive. So the Greens want to quadruple the price of electricity while outputting more CO2.
Great Green Economics strikes again.
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Perhaps the best review I have read of this problem and the futility of current government energy policy is this one : Limitations of Renewable Energy by Leo Smith – an electrical engineer. It is recommended reading.
He writes:
“In short dispatchable power requirements add to the cost of electricity. And intermittent
renewable energy adds to that dispatch requirement. The marketing of renewable energy completely ignores this, comparing intermittent un-dispatchable power with reliable dispatchable power, on an averaged basis, to arrive at costs that simply bear no relation to the overall cost of supplying reliable dispatched ‘renewable’ power to the grid. This is in essence fraudulent – the costs are taken off the balance sheet of ‘renewable energy’, deliberately, and in the end, appear on the costs of the suppliers of the dispatch – namely the grid operators and the operators of the plant that is required to provide that dispatch, instead. All of which, one way or another is paid for by the consumer.”
It occurs to me that the strategy of covering the UK in windmills will actually turn out to be quite successful at reducing co2 output. Since the resultant increase in the cost of energy will drive businesses out of the UK and since many households will no longer be able to afford to heat their homes or have hot water a reduction in UK co2 output will no doubt be achieved.
This reduction will be achieved at unprecedented cost to the economy, peoples living standards, health and social cohesion. Had the money been spent on efficiency measures instead, the reverse could have been true. We could have provided better quality, warmer schools which consumed less energy. We could have subsidised heat pumps for those houses and buildings where such devices were appropriate. We could have improved transport infrastructure leading to reduced journey times and reduced fuel consumption. We could have actually done something about getting fast broadband to everyone.
Best of all we could have pumped money into clean safe next generation nuclear power stations that extract energy from the waste fuel of earlier generation nuclear plants, thus removing the serious danger of multi thousand year pollution of nuclear waste storage, we could have developed super safe thorium reactors. We might even have been able to get ecat to play a part.
All these measures would produce a significant reduction in energy requirement whilst preserving peoples livelihoods health, living standards and sense of belonging and participation in society.
Sadly our politicians are seemingly incapable of viewing the tapestry of life in a holistic or three dimensional manner, instead they only see a flat lifeless two dimensional or even a one dimensional view of the interwoven complexities of peoples lives, energy and the economy.
I can only see two solutions to the problem of politically closed minds; either the people of the UK will turn, somewhat uncharacteristically, to ever increasing violence, or we will be saved by a prolonged, steady, perhaps severe drop in temperatures thus finally waking the politicians feeble minds to the reality that they have allowed themselves to be lied to about the reality of co2 and it’s role and effects on food supply and temperatures.
Command and control power economies with 5 year plans out the yingyang what could possibly go wrong?
Can someone please explain to me how the UK can expect to cut GHGs e.g. CO2 by 80% by 2050 without massively INCREASING our electrical capacity?
We currently have about 75 GW of electrical capacity and this represents just 20% of our energy use. As an engineer I can see that we could replace gas fired home central heating with electrical powered heating but by my reckoning this would need another 150 GW of electrical power. In 30 to 40 years we might be able to move to electrically powered cars [if we can improve batteries] but aircraft and shipping will remain powered by fossil fuel. So if we move half our transport to electrical power [cars & vans] we should need to add a further 75 GW. To have a chance of achieving the 2008 Climate Act cut of 80% I think we would need about 300 GW of carbon free electricity. I offset population growth/demand with efficiencies to be made.
I have worked on half a dozen power stations and they take a long time to build but our DECC doesn’t even seem to have a plan. We could build 100 ‘Hinkley C’ nuclear power stations by 2080 but we seem to be having trouble building just one! To get a reliable 300 GW from wind turbines we would have to go off shore [ we don’t have enough land for so many] and even with an ambitious load factor of 30% we should need to install 1,000 GW [cost £3,200 bn] to get 300 GW and also some CCGT’s with CCS as ‘back-up’ for windless days.[ if CCS is ever proved feasible]
We might just be able to cover our maximum demand by building lots of power stations but what do we do with the excess power at times of low demand? Or when the wind blows strongly??
I suggest we need realist to head the DECC; someone with maths or physics and not a PPE. We have had three of them [PPE’s] and they don’t deliver.
None of the “plans” stand up to serious analysis. There is no doubt we will burn everything we can get to. Nobody considers how dependent the alternatives are on fossil fuels or how the inefficiency of alternatives can drive up the amount of fossil fuel needed to run the economy. They don’t care because political objectives drive the plans not science.
I’m not a fan of lynch mobs but that seems to be what Britain is budgeting its energy for.
A question for Paul Homewood
There was a UK commitment to decarbonization which failed in the House of Commons about two weeks ago. How does that bill relate to what you discuss here?
Tonight wind is deliver1ng a princely 20MW. And there isn’t a watt of solar on the grid. Yuss ffolks. the entire wind fleet of the United Kingdom is just about capable of getting one train out of Paddington station. There may even be enough to get it to Bristol
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
The wind is obviously not always blowing somewhere, tonight.
DECC has been raped by the Liberal Demo-rat eco-heads who refuse to believe the truth, that renewable energy will never be – can never be, a serious contender. ( http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limitations.pdf ) .
They will push on regardless like a WWI battalion going over the top to reach ‘30% renewable targets by 2020’. totally ignoring the fact that that figure is fudged by allowing imported canadian wood to generate 750MW, chucking what hydro we have in the mix, smothering the world in wind farms and expensive solar panels to reach a political target that will ultimately be utterly and completely meaningless, result in no emissions savings at all, whilst the nation as a whole bears the brunt of this lemming like rush for national annihilation.
As the lights go out in Whitehall and in Buckingham palace there wont even be enough electricity to transmit the Queens second restatement of her querulous plaint after the banking crisis :
“Why did no one see this coming?”.
Fear not, help is at hand ! Has nobody else heard of cold fusion ? If you have a business in Sweden you can now have a 1 mW cold fusion generator on trial. 6kW in = 100kW out.
Cold fusion will blow wind turbines out of the water (or off the hilltops !) and eventually most households & businesses will go off-grid.