Energy myths
- From: Dave Smith <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 02:51:51 -0800 (PST)
I found these comments on 'green' terchnologies interesting. At the
end of the article 'biochar' is mentioned -- I hadn't heard of that
before.
The 10 big energy myths
There has never been a more important time to invest in green
technologies, yet many of us believe these efforts are doomed to
failure. What nonsense, writes Chris Goodall
Chris Goodall guardian.co.uk,
Thursday November 27 2008
Myth 1: solar power is too expensive to be of much use
In reality, today's bulky and expensive solar panels capture only 10%
or so of the sun's energy, but rapid innovation in the US means that
the next generation of panels will be much thinner, capture far more
of the energy in the sun's light and cost a fraction of what they do
today. They may not even be made of silicon. First Solar, the largest
manufacturer of thin panels, claims that its products will generate
electricity in sunny countries as cheaply as large power stations by
2012.
Other companies are investigating even more efficient ways of
capturing the sun's energy, for example the use of long parabolic
mirrors to focus light on to a thin tube carrying a liquid, which gets
hot enough to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity. Spanish
and German companies are installing large-scale solar power plants of
this type in North Africa, Spain and the south-west of America; on hot
summer afternoons in California, solar power stations are probably
already financially competitive with coal. Europe, meanwhile, could
get most of its electricity from plants in the Sahara desert. We would
need new long-distance power transmission but the technology for
providing this is advancing fast, and the countries of North Africa
would get a valuable new source of income.
Myth 2: wind power is too unreliable
Actually, during some periods earlier this year the wind provided
almost 40% of Spanish power. Parts of northern Germany generate more
electricity from wind than they actually need. Northern Scotland,
blessed with some of the best wind speeds in Europe, could easily
generate 10% or even 15% of the UK's electricity needs at a cost that
would comfortably match today's fossil fuel prices.
The intermittency of wind power does mean that we would need to run
our electricity grids in a very different way. To provide the most
reliable electricity, Europe needs to build better connections between
regions and countries; those generating a surplus of wind energy
should be able to export it easily to places where the air is still.
The UK must invest in transmission cables, probably offshore, that
bring Scottish wind-generated electricity to the power-hungry south-
east and then continue on to Holland and France. The electricity
distribution system must be Europe-wide if we are to get the maximum
security of supply.
We will also need to invest in energy storage. At the moment we do
this by
pumping water uphill at times of surplus and letting it flow back down
the mountain when power is scarce. Other countries are talking of
developing "smart grids" that provide users with incentives to consume
less electricity when wind speeds are low. Wind power is financially
viable today in many countries, and it will become cheaper as turbines
continue to grow in size, and manufacturers drive down costs. Some
projections see more than 30% of the world's electricity eventually
coming from the wind. Turbine manufacture and installation are also
set to become major sources of employment, with one trade body
predicting that the sector will generate 2m jobs worldwide by 2020.
Myth 3: marine energy is a dead-end
The thin channel of water between the north-east tip of Scotland and
Orkney contains some of the most concentrated tidal power in the
world. The energy from the peak flows may well be greater than the
electricity needs of London. Similarly, the waves off the Atlantic
coasts of Spain and Portugal are strong, consistent and able to
provide a substantial fraction of the region's power. Designing and
building machines that can survive the harsh conditions of fast-
flowing ocean waters has been challenging and the past decades have
seen repeated disappointments here and abroad. This year we have seen
the installation of the first tidal turbine to be successfully
connected to the UK electricity grid in Strangford Lough, Northern
Ireland, and the first group of large-scale wave power generators 5km
off the coast of Portugal, constructed by a Scottish company.
But even though the UK shares with Canada, South Africa and parts of
South America some of the best marine energy resources in the world,
financial support has been trifling. The London opera houses have had
more taxpayer money than the British marine power industry over the
past few years. Danish support for wind power helped that country
establish worldwide leadership in the building of turbines; the UK
could do the same with wave and tidal power.
Myth 4: nuclear power is cheaper than other low-carbon sources of
electricity
If we believe that the world energy and environmental crises are as
severe as is said, nuclear power stations must be considered as a
possible option. But although the disposal of waste and the
proliferation of nuclear weapons are profoundly important issues, the
most severe problem may be the high and unpredictable cost of nuclear
plants.
The new nuclear power station on the island of Olkiluoto in western
Finland is a clear example. Electricity production was originally
supposed to start this year, but the latest news is that the power
station will not start generating until 2012. The impact on the cost
of the project has been dramatic. When the contracts were signed, the
plant was supposed to cost €3bn (£2.5bn). The final cost is likely to
be more than twice this figure and the construction process is fast
turning into a nightmare. A second new plant in Normandy appears to be
experiencing similar problems. In the US, power companies are backing
away from nuclear because of fears over uncontrollable costs.
Unless we can find a new way to build nuclear power stations, it looks
as though CO2 capture at coal-fired plants will be a cheaper way of
producing low-carbon electricity. A sustained research effort around
the world might also mean that cost-effective carbon capture is
available before the next generation of nuclear plants is ready, and
that it will be possible to fit carbon-capture equipment on existing
coal-fired power stations. Finding a way to roll out CO2 capture is
the single most important research challenge the world faces today.
The current leader, the Swedish power company Vattenfall, is using an
innovative technology that burns the coal in pure oxygen rather than
air, producing pure carbon dioxide from its chimneys, rather than
expensively separating the CO2 from other exhaust gases. It hopes to
be operating huge coal-fired power stations with minimal CO2 emissions
by 2020.
Myth 5: electric cars are slow and ugly
We tend to think that electric cars are all like the G Wiz vehicle,
with a limited range, poor acceleration and an unprepossessing
appearance. Actually, we are already very close to developing electric
cars that match the performance of petrol vehicles. The Tesla electric
sports car, sold in America but designed by Lotus in Norfolk, amazes
all those who experience its awesome acceleration. With a price tag of
more than $100,000, late 2008 probably wasn't a good time to launch a
luxury electric car, but the Tesla has demonstrated to everybody that
electric cars can be exciting and desirable. The crucial advance in
electric car technology has been in batteries: the latest lithium
batteries - similar to the ones in your laptop - can provide large
amounts of power for acceleration and a long enough range for almost
all journeys.
Batteries still need to become cheaper and quicker to charge, but the
UK's largest manufacturer of electric vehicles says that advances are
happening faster than ever before. Its urban delivery van has a range
of over 100 miles, accelerates to 70mph and has running costs of just
over 1p per mile. The cost of the diesel equivalent is probably 20
times as much. Denmark and Israel have committed to develop the full
infrastructure for a switch to an all-electric car fleet. Danish cars
will be powered by the spare electricity from the copious resources of
wind power; the Israelis will provide solar power harvested from the
desert.
Myth 6: biofuels are always destructive to the environment
Making some of our motor fuel from food has been an almost unmitigated
disaster. It has caused hunger and increased the rate of forest loss,
as farmers have sought extra land on which to grow their crops.
However the failure of the first generation of biofuels should not
mean that we should reject the use of biological materials forever.
Within a few years we will be able to turn agricultural wastes into
liquid fuels by splitting cellulose, the most abundant molecule in
plants and trees, into simple hydrocarbons. Chemists have struggled to
find a way of breaking down this tough compound cheaply, but huge
amounts of new capital have flowed into US companies that are working
on making a petrol substitute from low-value agricultural wastes. In
the lead is Range Fuels, a business funded by the venture capitalist
Vinod Khosla, which is now building its first commercial cellulose
cracking plant in Georgia using waste wood from managed forests as its
feedstock.
We shouldn't be under any illusion that making petrol from cellulose
is a solution to all the problems of the first generation of biofuels.
Although cellulose is abundant, our voracious needs for liquid fuel
mean we will have to devote a significant fraction of the world's land
to growing the grasses and wood we need for cellulose refineries.
Managing cellulose production so that it doesn't reduce the amount of
food produced is one of the most important issues we face.
Myth 7: climate change means we need more organic agriculture
The uncomfortable reality is that we already struggle to feed six
billion people. Population numbers will rise to more than nine billion
by 2050. Although food production is increasing slowly, the growth
rate in agricultural productivity is likely to decline below
population increases within a few years. The richer half of the
world's population will also be eating more meat. Since animals need
large amounts of land for every unit of meat they produce, this
further threatens food production for the poor. So we need to ensure
that as much food as possible is produced on the limited resources of
good farmland. Most studies show that yields under organic cultivation
are little more than half what can be achieved elsewhere. Unless this
figure can be hugely improved, the implication is clear: the world
cannot feed its people and produce huge amounts of cellulose for fuels
if large acreages are converted to organic cultivation.
Myth 8: zero carbon homes are the best way of dealing with greenhouse
gas emissions from buildings
Buildings are responsible for about half the world's emissions;
domestic housing is the most important single source of greenhouse
gases. The UK's insistence that all new homes are "zero carbon" by
2016 sounds like a good idea, but there are two problems. In most
countries, only about 1% of the housing stock is newly built each
year. Tighter building regulations have no effect on the remaining
99%. Second, making a building genuinely zero carbon is extremely
expensive. The few prototype UK homes that have recently reached this
standard have cost twice as much as conventional houses.
Just focusing on new homes and demanding that housebuilders meet
extremely high targets is not the right way to cut emissions. Instead,
we should take a lesson from Germany. A mixture of subsidies, cheap
loans and exhortation is succeeding in getting hundreds of thousands
of older properties eco-renovated each year to very impressive
standards and at reasonable cost. German renovators are learning
lessons from the PassivHaus movement, which has focused not on
reducing carbon emissions to zero, but on using painstaking methods to
cut emissions to 10 or 20% of conventional levels, at a manageable
cost, in both renovations and new homes. The PassivHaus pioneers have
focused on improving insulation, providing far better air-tightness
and warming incoming air in winter, with the hotter stale air
extracted from the house. Careful attention to detail in both design
and building work has produced unexpectedly large cuts in total energy
use. The small extra price paid by householders is easily outweighed
by the savings in electricity and gas. Rather than demanding totally
carbon-neutral housing, the UK should push a massive programme of eco-
renovation and cost-effective techniques for new construction.
Myth 9: the most efficient power stations are big
Large, modern gas-fired power stations can turn about 60% of the
energy in fuel into electricity. The rest is lost as waste heat.
Even though 5-10% of the electricity will be lost in transmission to
the user, efficiency has still been far better than small-scale local
generation of power. This is changing fast.
New types of tiny combined heat and power plants are able to turn
about half the energy in fuel into electricity, almost matching the
efficiency of huge generators. These are now small enough to be easily
installed in ordinary homes. Not only will they generate electricity
but the surplus heat can be used to heat the house, meaning that all
the energy in gas is productively used. Some types of air conditioning
can even use the heat to power their chillers in summer.
We think that microgeneration means wind turbines or solar panels on
the roof, but efficient combined heat and power plants are a far
better prospect for the UK and elsewhere. Within a few years, we will
see these small power plants, perhaps using cellulose-based renewable
fuels and not just gas, in many buildings. Korea is leading the way by
heavily subsidising the early installation of fuel cells at office
buildings and other large electricity users.
Myth 10: all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech
The advanced economies are obsessed with finding hi-tech solutions to
reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these are expensive and may
create as many problems as they solve. Nuclear power is a good
example. But it may be cheaper and more effective to look for simple
solutions that reduce emissions, or even extract existing carbon
dioxide from the air. There are many viable proposals to do this
cheaply around the world, which also often help feed the world's
poorest people. One outstanding example is to use a substance known as
biochar to sequester carbon and increase food yields at the same time.
Biochar is an astonishing idea. Burning agricultural wastes in the
absence of air leaves a charcoal composed of almost pure carbon, which
can then be crushed and dug into the soil. Biochar is extremely stable
and the carbon will stay in the soil unchanged for hundreds of years.
The original agricultural wastes had captured CO2 from the air through
the photosynthesis process; biochar is a low-tech way of sequestering
carbon, effectively for ever. As importantly, biochar improves
fertility in a wide variety of tropical soils. Beneficial micro-
organisms seem to crowd into the pores of the small pieces of crushed
charcoal. A network of practical engineers around the tropical world
is developing the simple stoves needed to make the charcoal. A few
million dollars of support would allow their research to benefit
hundreds of millions of small farmers at the same time as extracting
large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.
• Chris Goodall's new book, Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, is
published by Profile books, priced £9.99.
.
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