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Letter to Menzies Campbell |
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Written by Paul Spare
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Wednesday, 03 October 2007 |
Sir Menzies,
LIBDEMS ENERGY POLICY – UNWORKABLE
Please excuse this unsolicited approach, as we have never previously
been in contact. However, the statements below should clarify why I
have felt compelled to write.
I have become progressively more alarmed in recent months by Liberal
Democratic Party statements on UK energy supplies. There was a
campaign in the summer, with several political parties attempting to
leapfrog one another with ever more implausible claims about renewable
power. I was finally motivated by the ill-thought out statement from
your party conference that UK energy could be carbon neutral by 2050
whilst rejecting nuclear power. I have prepared this document in
response to that proposal, to present some technical analysis of the
idea.
The Liberal Democrats' ten-point plan to tackle climate change,
announced at the recent conference, contained the following particular
statements:
The Autumn Conference today backed proposals to make Britain carbon neutral by 2050...
3. Bring forward environmentally sustainable technologies by:
a) Setting a target for 30 per cent of the UK’s electricity to come
from clean, non-carbon emitting sources by 2020, rising to 100 per cent
by 2050, providing new incentives for renewable energy sources and
small-scale micro-generation through guaranteed prices (‘feed-in
tariffs’).
b) Providing new incentives for renewable heat technologies.
c) Promoting transitional technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
d) Rejecting a new generation of nuclear power stations.
e) Working to introduce mandatory UK/EU average vehicle emissions
targets of 120g CO2 /km by 2015, 95g/km by 2020, and zero carbon for
all new cars by 2040.
f ) Increasing the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation to require at
least 10 per cent of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from
renewable sources by 2015.
I have restricted my investigation of the implications to the
statements in a) and f). From this data, one is forced to conclude
that :-
• The schemes are inconsistent with engineering reality.
• Will cause generators and consumers to incur massive avoidable costs for electricity.
• Will cause massive environmental damage across many sectors.
• Will make the grid system inoperable and seriously damage our industrial society.
• Will require massive tracts of agricultural land that should be reserved for food.
Explanation
As a general point, we must never forget that energy supply is not an
abstract intellectual pursuit or a branch of metaphysics. It is a
practical discipline that supports our advanced industrial society, the
success of which will determine whether or not the UK continues to have
reliable water/sewage treatment; heating for homes, schools and
hospitals and productive industries to support millions of
non-producers such as pensioners. Any new energy policy must be totally
consistent with engineering reality, or it is worthless and will bring
blackouts, unemployment and poverty to the UK population.
You clearly have been most grievously misled about the potential of
renewables. Renewable energy supplies may be 'low carbon', but the
various power sources monitored by the DTi are not all equal or
acceptable in a zero-carbon future. It appears to have been concealed
(although the data is available in DTi statistics) that the bulk of
current 'renewables ' output is attributable to landfill gas, large
hydro and waste incineration that would not be acceptable in a
zero-carbon electricity future. The acceptable renewables (solar, wind,
tidal etc) that are about 100 times less carbon intense than fossil
fuels, produce only 1 – 2% of our electricity. To satisfy current
demand, the Liberal Democratic Party scheme would require the
acceptable renewables to increase by 50 times, but that is only the tip
of the iceberg.
With compound electricity growth at 1 – 1.5 % per year, consumption
will have doubled by 2050. Renewables output would therefore have to
increase 100 fold. Only wind power can be developed quickly, so this
can be used to illustrate the challenge. The present stock of 1200
wind turbines would have to be increased to…100 x 1200 ie 120,000.
Solar and wave plants are starting from a negligible level and would
have to be multiplied even more. There are other equally dramatic
implications if the rest of the energy supply is to be de-carbonised.
Minority role of electricity
The annual DTi review of energy consumption in the UK states that the
total amount of electricity consumed in 2004 was 395 TWh. Only a small
percentage the energy used in the UK is used as electricity. The rest
is used in the form of natural gas, coal or petroleum products.
Replacing he aggregate supplies such as petroleum, coal, domestic
heating gas and nuclear electricity will require an extra 2300 TWh of
energy. That is total electricity consumption would have to increase
by seven times current levels (depends on the options developed). That
would require another 720,000 turbines!! There are also other
unpleasant consequences.
If all energy is to be carbon-neutral, the consumption of natural gas
for domestic heating would be banned. The average home uses about five
times as much energy in the form of gas is it does in the form of
electricity. Therefore to substitute electricity for the natural gas
that we now use for domestic heating will involve the upgrading of the
wiring system in almost every house. This is in addition to the cost of
the new electric heating system to replace the boiler. Also, per unit
of useful heat, electricity is about five times as expensive as gas.
There are consequently three massive extra costs resulting from your
policy – not the type of economic statistics to attract voters. Will
there a sufficient number of electricians and plumbers to undertake the
work?
The seven fold increase in electricity will mean that High Voltage grid
transmission and distribution networks would also have to be
strengthened and multiplied massively. The cost and complication of
such an exercise would have to be paid for from electricity bills.
These exercises will involve costs of billions of pounds. The planning
and appeals process would overwhelm the legal system for years. Have
the Liberal Democratic Party factored any of these extra costs into
this green future?
There is the next the effect on the cascading arrangement of the grid
and distribution networks. Like all industrial powers, the grid takes
the supplies from 100 large power stations and using a system like the
branches of a tree, distributes power from the centre to the lower
voltage outer parts of the network. With the proposed concentration of
renewable power to the north and west, there would be a complete
change, with massive flows from the outer parts of the system to the
centre, rather than the reverse. This would necessitate the redesign
of the HV grid system with perhaps a tenfold increase in the capacity
of the north-south inter-connectors. The Beauly-Denny controversy
would be repeated with every expansion plan. How many billions have
been allowed for to prepare for this new equipment?
Intermittency
There are further massive problems with intermittency that have to be
accommodated, with large cost implications. Wind and wave power
produce full output only 25% of the time and solar systems only 10% (up
to 18 hours of darkness in January). Even tidal plants produce a
varying output. It would therefore be necessary to maintain backup
supplies using fossil fuels or nuclear power to ensure that there are
no blackouts. Such plant would have to be manned and paid for, but
would operate only part of the time and hence be faced with under
recovery of costs. All the fossil-fuelled power stations would
require100% CO2 recovery. How many billions have been allowed for
pipelines and tankers to prepare for this new equipment? How many years
of waste can the North Sea absorb? Would we permit our European
neighbours to use this disposal route for CO2 ? If large battery
systems were to be used how costly would these be and what toxic
chemicals would they introduce into the environment?
Uncontrollable power
There are also the diurnal and seasonal demand peaks to be
accommodated. Conventional plants are utilised under sophisticated
control to match the changes in demand to the supply electricity with
99.98% security. Wind and waves are outside our control. (Wave systems
are also dependent upon the vagaries of the wind.) There will be very
destructive forces from wind and wave machines if they are working at
peak output as we approach a dip in demand in the early hours. They
are not amenable to the progressive adjustment that keeps our
electricity system frequency balanced. They cannot be turned off/on
like conventional power plants. There would be damaging bursts of
power as strong gales pass over wind farms, with no way to absorb the
huge currents generated. These would cause irreparable damage to
sensitive equipment such as computers, medical equipment and
telecommunications that are so vital to an advanced economy.
Liquid fuels
We use tens of millions of oil products for transport. If diesel and
gasoline now used as vehicle fuels are replaced by electricity (or
hydrogen from electricity) in this zero-carbon world, it would require
a completely new distribution system for powering our vehicles –
distributing either extra electricity or hydrogen. How many billions
have been allowed for to pay for this changeover? What are the
potential dangers from the hydrogen storage systems?
Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation to require at least 10 % of fuel sold on UK forecourts
To achieve the suggested 10% contribution of bioethanol in light
vehicle fuel, we will need 5 – 5.6 million tonnes of barley/wheat.
NFU/DEFRA statistics state that average production of barley in the UK
between 2000-04 was about 6 million tonnes, ie 5.5 tonnes per hectare
from an average area of 1.112 million hectares.
That implies a proportion not far short of 100% of the harvest would
have to be dedicated to fuel production. That is almost exactly twice
the quantity that is exported. We will therefore either have to plant
another one million hectares ie an area about the size of four English
counties, or the people who received the 2.5 million tons of wheat
exports will see their food supply disappear. In the first case, other
valuable food crops would have to be replaced, necessitating more food
imports with all the consequential food miles. But an area larger than
four counties would be needed to reflect the towns, villages, moors and
forests that exist already.
There will also be millions of extra vehicle journeys as huge
quantities of feedstock are transported from rural areas to refineries.
Summary
The consequences of the zero- carbon policy can be seen to be both
economically and environmentally destructive and the idea should be
abandoned immediately. If this U turn would appear too embarrassing,
then recruit some engineers and physicists to examine the idea and
report back to you so that a change in policy would at least appear to
be supported by reasoned analysis.
I remain your obedient servant,
P H Spare
I should explain that I am a retired Chartered Mechanical Engineer and
have worked all my professional life in the energy sector - both public
and private.
PS I have enclosed a copy of a briefing note produced by SONE
(Supporters of Nuclear Energy) that examines the problems and practical
drawbacks of introducing Micro-generation into a reliable, integrated
electrical supply system. It is sometimes offered as a partial
renewable solution to future supply problems, but can cause large
reverse power flows in the distribution network in response to changes
in the weather.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 17 October 2007 )
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