Renew On Line 116 Jul-Aug 2015
Bimonthly roundup of news and
views on renewable energy
For a PDF version with figures,
charts and pictures: https//renewnatta.wordpress.com
1.
UK Developments
New scenarios overview
New scenarios overview
The Energy
Technologies Institute (ETI) has produced two indicative low carbon energy
scenarios for the UK. In its Patchwork pathways there is 75 GW of wind, nuclear stays at
the 16 GW ‘replacement’ level. PV is at 28 GW, Tidal 10 GW and Wave 4 GW - by 2050. In Clockwork nuclear is at 40 GW.
The ETI’s
decentral Patchwork
pathways has some similarities with the Thousand Flower pathway to 2050 explored in ‘Distributing
Power: A transition to a civic energy future’, a report on research
by the EPSRC-funded Realising Transition Pathways Research Consortium of 9 UK universities. However, it puts much more
emphasis on (mainly) local biogas-fired CHP/district heating (44 GW) and only
has 30 GW of wind and 16 GW of PV, while nuclear falls to 5 GW. Around 50% of
electricity use is met by distributed and low carbon sources, which also supply
60% of heat. There is little CCS, no extra storage but more grid
inter-connectors to help with grid flexibility. Devolved governments, municipal
authorities, co-ops and communities play a major role on the supply side,
consumers play a key role in demand management. A big job for all the
local-level actors: the report lays out ways in which it might be carried out -
so as to get the UK to near zero carbon by 2050. http://www.realisingtransitionpathways.org.uk/realisingtransitionpathways/news/distributing_power.html
Hopefully
some of this will feed into DEFRA’s SPLICE project, which aims to look at the impacts of
2050 low carbon futures: http://www.lwec.org.uk/sustainable-pathways-low-carbon-energy
UK
renewables hit 19% and overtake nuclear
The output from
the UK’s 24 GW of renewables, at 64.4 TWh - 19.2% of electricity supply -
overtook that from the UK’s troubled nuclear fleet at 63.8 TW in 2014. Wind
provided 31.6 TWh, 9.4% of UK electricity, solar 3.9 TWh (1.2%), hydro 5.9 TWh
(1.8%) and bioenergy 22.9 TWh (6.8%). Emissions fell 8.4%, from 2013 levels,
though partly due to a warm year. And Scottish renewables supplied the
equivalent of 49.6 % of Scotland’s electricity use… www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/416310/PN_March_15.pdf
Technology
Wind Roaring ahead, at over 12 GW supplying
32 TWh p.a.
That may miss
the output from smaller un-metered projects - which survey tries to remedy: http://euanmearns.com/untangling-uk-wind-power-production But at the big scale, offshore wind thrives, with the GIB investing
£236m in the 400 MW Rampion project off the Sussex coast, though there are
post-election uncertainties ahead for on-shore wind… despite it being the cheapest new
renewable, adding £906m in revenue to the UK economy in 2014. See later.
Solar The UK installs more PV than other EU countries.
The UK beat all
comers last year, and there was a last minute flurry of 2 GW of large solar
farm projects aiming to
beat the April deadline for the
end of Renewables Obligation support
for projects
over 5 MW. That will no doubt now tail off, though the UK will still have more
utility-scale solar than Spain, Italy and France and possibly Germany. Though
less than the US, India and China: see http://wiki-solar.org/region/countries/index.html But over 5 GW of PV in all.
The Green
Deal been struggling to
get going but has seen renewed growth driven by PV which now accounts for around a third of
measures installed under Green Deal finance, with boilers and solid wall
insulation the next most popular. However the
Solar Trade Association says poor grid links and access are
limiting PV growth: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/10/uk-electricity-grid-renewable-energy-solar-trade-association
Renewable
Heat Incentive slows
RHI
take up has fallen 39%,
mainly in small biomass boilers.
Battery bonus Batteries may help domestic PV projects boom.
Jeremy
Leggett’s Winning the Carbon War web site says: ‘The world’s largest private bank
predicts that by 2020 it will be possible to have a solar roof, an electric
vehicle and a domestic battery bank, powering everything you need in a home, with
mouth-watering economics. That energy-trio purchase will be able to pay for
itself within six to eight years, while giving a 7% pre-tax annual return on
investment. Such household economics, UBS concludes, will change the face of
the energy industry.’ www.jeremyleggett.net/download-page/
Also see: http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/2162036/comparison-grid-connected-and-grid-houses
Good
Energy is
already testing this idea out:
www.goodenergy.co.uk/blog/new-developments-in-home-energy-storage And the advent of cheaper
batteries, like Tesla’s Powerwall, could make it viable for day-to-night
time domestic use: batteries are no use for summer-to-winter storage, so in
winter you may need other inputs than PV. It’s not on sale in the UK yet, but Tesla’s 7 kWh
wall mounted unit will retail at $3000 in the US, the 10 kWh unit at $3500-
installation and inverters are extra. The Tesla Li-ion unit is not unique e.g.
see this German unit: www.photovoltaik4all.de/speicher/sma/3359/lg-chem-resu-6.4ex-lithium-ionen-speicher
It’s
seen as a breakthrough,‘another
nail in the coffin of conventional utilities’, since it will help decentral power to lift off, said
Prof. Catherine Mitchell, University of Exeter. She added ‘Storage offers
the ability to extend both the displacement of fossil fuels and reduction of
prices beyond peaks - making it even worse for companies whose business models
are based on fossil fuels and peak pricing profits’. The Ecologist said it could also finish off nuclear: www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2852623/mayday_mayday_teslas_battery_just_killed_fossil_and_nuclear_power.html
They
quoted 2c/kWh cost, though
that ignores invertor/installation costs. Perhaps more importantly, Tesla is also
working on utility scale systems for grid balancing and short-term ramp
protection, with 100 kWh battery blocks grouped to scale from 500 kWh to 10
MWh+. They say ‘these systems are capable of 2hr or 4hr continuous net
discharge power using grid tied bi-directional inverters’. www.teslamotors.com/presskit/teslaenergy
For some
excellent images: http://insideevs.com/tesla-reveals-battery-storage-solution-missing-piece/
Tesla
got widely covered in the media - good PR for decentral power. This may also
help: www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/pitch-to-rich/new-things/energy-local/
*There are
fire risks with Lithium-Ion Batteries, and safer Aluminium-Ion units may yet
win out : www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2838775/the_new_battery_that_could_power_the_renewable_revolution.html
Storage
is
included, along with renewables (PV especially) and smart grids, as target
areas identified in the proposed new $150bn 10 year Global Apollo R&D programme
fronted by Sir David King: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/special/Global_Apollo_Programme_Report.pdf
More in the
next Renew.
Tidal
lagoon - splashing
out?
The proposed Swansea
tidal lagoon project,
sometimes referred to as being 240 MW, but which might be up to 320 GW, will be
expensive - £1bn. It has got promises of £400m so far from private investors
and more may be forthcoming, but to attract that the developers say they would
need a £168/MWh CfD strike price, which is higher than offshore wind is now
getting, although subsequent (larger) lagoons, like the ~2.5 GW scheme proposed
for Cardiff Bay, would be cheaper, and could be roughly competitive with on
land wind - and Hinkley. However as a ‘First of a Kind’ (FOAK) scheme, the
Swansea project will be costly and that will invite invidious comparisons. It
already has. As the last Renew noted, the Citizens Advice Bureau has come up
with a sharp critique: it wasn’t worth spending so much for uncertain cost
reductions later - essentially FOAK-off! Egged on by the promotion of the
scheme in the Budget announcement, as an example of the sort of thing the
(late) coalition government might back, the Telegraph’s reliably contrarian
columnist Christopher Brooker then weighed in with a damning put-down, under a
headline asking if it was ‘the craziest ‘green’
project ever’. He quoted 495,000 MWh a year as the expected output and
calculated that this meant ‘the average output would be just 57 MW’. Not much for £1bn.
That
calculation assumes a load factor of only18%, which seems low, especially if
pumped storage is included. But, on IRENA estimates, by 2020 some tidal stream
projects may be cheaper. And, arguably, apart from proving the (quite well
established) proposed aggregate/ sand-filled geotextile bag lagoon-wall
construction technique, there will be little potential for learning. Each site
is unique, and the turbines are fairly standard.
If all went well, it would be a very visible green
energy symbol. But is it the best ‘flagship’ new renewable project to push? Some say
no: https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/should-britain-bother-with-tidal-lagoons/
Energy Storage - an uncertain future?
The Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology has a new POSTNote on energy
storage. It says there’s uncertainty about the future need
for storage outside the transport sector, but in some scenarios it could help,
the Low Carbon Innovation Co-ordination Group offering as an example a scenario
with 9 GW of grid-connected electricity storage by 2020 and 27 GW in 2050, with consumers saving £4bn
cumulative by 2050.
Compressed
Air Energy Storage (CAES) came out well. POST noted National Grid’s view that
‘new CAES would cover its costs by providing one balancing service, while other
technologies need further cost reductions’. However small single schemes were not so
good. POST noted a Bloomberg study view that ‘providing single balancing
services is not profitable for storage, but that providing multiple balancing
services may be profitable’.
So
what happens next? POST notes that ‘the 2013 Energy Act established the Capacity Market,
which offers regular payment to organisations that can guarantee to supply
electricity when required. The market offers a potential source of revenue to
electricity storage alongside markets that are organised by National Grid to
ensure the second-by-second balance between electricity supply and demand.
Competition for the limited Capacity Market revenue is via an annual auction,
which does not favour any particular technology. The first auction took place
in December 2014. Existing electricity storage accounted for 5% of the total
capacity awarded; no new storage projects received support. In addition to the
main auction, an additional ‘transitional’ auction will run in 2015 and 2016 to
help smaller (<50 MW) localised generation, electricity storage and demand-side
response to build capacity. The Electricity Storage Network says that it is
unlikely that the additional auctions will incentivise new storage construction
because of the short one-year contracts and competition from small
diesel-fuelled generation units.’ So it’s not going to be fast.
Policy overview
After the election a quick round up
‘The
Government’s ambition remains to move to a competitive price discovery process
for all technologies as soon as possible. Eventually, we will have a technology
neutral auction in place for all low carbon generation.’ From DECC, just before the
election close down:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-the-investment-secured-in-low-carbon-energy-since-2010
In reality renewables are
competing with each other for CfDs, but Hinkley didn’t - its CfD was
uncontested. And the Tory manifesto opposed the cheapest option, on-land wind farms: it said they
were ‘unable by themselves to provide the firm capacity a stable energy
system requires’. And with the
Tories now in power alone, and DECC now Lib Dem free, we can expect other
policy changes. They are unlikely to include any of the more radical approaches
to energy policy, governance, and even elections, that emerged during the
election campaign. Like Labour, IGov at
Exeter University had called for a new more open independent energy regulation
agency, and quite liked coalitions: http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/igov/new-thinking-first-past-the-post-politics-is-a-major-barrier-in-gb-to-a-legitimate-long-term-energy-policy-framework/#_ftn1
A dead
option for now! Similarly
for the Greens’ radical policy, with very ambitious renewable targets: 42 GW of
offshore wind by 2020 (in 5 years time!) 60 GW by 2030, plus 25 GW of PV by
2020, all in a £35bn 5 year programme, plus 42 GW of community power. Wild
stuff! http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/14/is-the-green-partys-climate-change-plan-realistic
But, along with
the Lib Dems ‘60% from
renewables by 2030’, that may set a maximal benchmark. Though it was trumped by
Ecotricity,
who in their own Manifesto called for
80% renewable electricity by 2030, with ‘quantitative greening’: http://socsi.in/j7lNE. But the Green’s claim that wind creates
12 times more jobs than nuclear for the same cost, and PV 360 times more, was very wide of the mark! And their personal carbon quotas? A dodgy idea some
say - the rich could buy themselves out and a black market in dirty power could
emerge. Instead we can now expect a focus on renewable cost cutting, limits to
on-land wind and more battles over solar farms. Plus a last ditch effort to get
funding for Hinkley agreed and a big push on shale gas, with Amber Rudd the new Secretary of State of Energy and
Climate Change, replacing Ed Davey. Her first task was to block on-shore wind:
see below for more.
Wind
cuts ‘We will
remove all subsidy for on-shore wind’ David Cameron
Around 7GW in all is to be halted under the
governments new plan. But some projects can’t be stopped: 15 new on-shore wind
farms (near 750 MW in all), were awarded contracts under the first full round
of the new Contracts for a Difference (CfD) support system, which is taking
over from the existing Renewables Obligation (RO) fully from 2017, with large solar farms already
having been blocked from using the RO. But from April next year (if the plans
go ahead) that will also apply to new onshore wind projects- no more RO. However
there are over 5 GW of projects in the pipeline with planning permission, and
there will be a ‘grace’ period for some of them, so some may get RO contracts.
But it seems none will be eligible for contracts in the next CfD round, under
the new policy. Similarly for the 7 GW or so of other on shore wind projects
still in the pipeline, without planning permission. Most of them are below 50
MW - so they will still be decided by local planners as now: www.bdb-law.co.uk/blogs/planning-act-2008/631-onshore-wind-to-come-out-of-planning-act
Many may
get the planning go ahead: 3.8 GW are in Scotland, which jealously guards its
devolved planning powers, and is pro-wind! But Westminster may stop them
getting RO or CfD support. Though the new Select Committee chair is to be from
the SNP, which may
liven up Westminster politics! www.gov.uk/government/news/changes-to-onshore-wind-subsidies-protect-investment-and-get-the-best-deal-for-bill-payers www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm150622/debtext/150622-0001.htm#1506227000002
Overview: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/11685222/Should-the-sun-now-set-on-onshore-wind.html
Solar cuts PV being blocked by central government
Solar cuts PV being blocked by central government
PV has been struggling to get subsidy-free,
despite, you could say, the government efforts to slow it: www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/41794/uk-progress-towards-subsidy-free-solar-and-the-impact-of-policy-stability/ e.g. the 49MW solar farm proposed on a disused airfield in
Wiltshire that has some Science Museum displays. It had got strong local
support and was passed by the local planers, but was then called in by DCLA.
Hopefully Greg Clark, the replacement for Eric Pickles there, will be better! Although
in May new Farming Minister George Eustice reportedly said , at the Devon
County Show, that
solar panels were ‘trashing the countryside in Cornwall’. But going on the offensive, there’s a ‘let us buy
local power’ campaign: www.1010uk.org/ourpower
Red,
green, Amber?
The Reds and the
Greens failed to win power.
She’s pro-fracking
and pro-nuclear,
but what will Amber do about renewables?
The new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, has a track record of support for local
solar (see below), but will no doubt stick with the Tories opposition of large solar
farms and has already
indicated that she will ensure that legislation is introduced ‘next year’ to
end subsidies for onshore wind, while giving local opposition more reign: www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2408908/government-to-ban-onshore-wind-subsidies-from-may-2016-says-amber-rudd
There may be problems If the UK is to meet its legally binding EU requirement to get 15% of
UK energy from renewables by 2020, something may have to expand to make up the
reduced solar and wind input. DECC says there will be enough on-shore wind
still coming through. But if not, since on shore wind is the cheapest renewable
and big solar is also getting cheap, that will cost more. However there is a
cap on spending, set under the Levy Control Framework (LCF), which already looks likely to be
breached - see below. Will it be expanded, or will renewables get an overall
cut? If so, the (untrue) claim that they and nuclear were getting equal
treatment will look even weaker, and the EU may reneg on it’s agreement to the
generous Hinkley CfD. Quite a minefield, with Brexit lurking too!
The plan to let local
views determine whether
onshore wind projects went ahead may also backfire. Public opinion (even Tory!)
is still pro on-shore wind: http://renews.biz/88622/tory-voters-back-onshore/.
Ministers may yet
regret allowing locals to have the final say - previously ministers decided on
projects over 50 MW. Though there are few new ones planned, so maybe there will
be no big changes. Tim Yeo MP, past Tory chair of Energy & Climate Change
Select Committee told Cameron: ‘There are some parts of the UK where they
seem to be happy with onshore wind. If people are happy to see some wind
turbines in their area, and the cost of subsiding those is significantly lower
than the subsidy we are offering for offshore wind, I would urge him to let the
local view prevail.’ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/11465812/Onshore-wind-farm-ban-will-raise-energy-prices-Tory-MP-Tim-Yeo-warns.html
LCF Crisis
Some of the levies related to renewables fall under the ‘Levy Control
Framework’. This was agreed between DECC and HM Treasury in 2010. The LCF cap
has been set at £4.3bn in 2014/15, rising to £7.6bn in 2020/21 The Policy
Exchange says that the LCF cap ‘was exceeded in all of the last three financial
years’ with the bulk of this overspend relating to the small scale Feed-in
Tariff (mainly used for domestic PV) which it says ‘exceeded its original
budget by 100% (or £450 million) in the last financial year’. Looking forward to 2020 it notes that
DECC (in its Annual Energy Statement) suggest that the remaining budget amounts
to £1 bn p.a. in 2020/21. However, the Policy Exchange says, DECC has
significantly underestimated the cost of existing policies, given that ‘the
outlook for wholesale electricity prices has reduced substantially over the
past year as a result of falling commodity prices. This increases the subsidy
payable to renewables projects under the new ‘Contract for Difference’ subsidy
model.’ Under the CfD, projects are topped up from the market price to a
pre-agreed ‘strike price’ so, perversely, it costs more if prices fall. Of
course, you might blame the haste to find a way to insulate Hinkley from market
competition for this! But the Policy Exchange seems more concerned about
knocking solar. It says ‘DECC is vastly underestimating the cost of the
small scale Feed-in Tariff - which appears to be growing out of control. DECC
assumes that the cost of the scheme will increase by around £60m per annum to
2020, but the cost of the scheme has been growing at £160 million per annum to
date. Solar PV has been deploying at an unprecedented rate. DECC’s assumptions
as to the future cost of the scheme appear to be based on wishful thinking
rather than hard evidence.’
It also has a go at offshore wind, but has to admit the problem is that they
have turned out to perform better than expected: ‘it appears that DECC has
systematically underestimated the subsidy payable to new offshore wind farms.
DECC assumes a ‘load factor’ (a measure of energy output per unit of capacity)
for new projects of 38%, based on the current fleet average. However, recent
improvements in technology mean that the new generation of offshore wind farms
being built over the next few years is likely to achieve much higher load
factors - e.g. potentially 45%+. The higher the load factor and output of the
project, the greater the subsidy payable under the current mechanism. This
overspend has not been factored into DECC’s budget calculations.’ The right of centre Policy Exchange
clearly thinks the whole thing is a shambles and claims that the entire budget remaining under the Levy Control
Framework (assuming no further changes in policy) may have already been spoken
for: ‘DECC may have already committed the entire budget out to 2020, which
will make it difficult or impossible to proceed with any additional projects,
unless actions are taken to stem the rise in other costs’. They could be (partly) right. More cash
is needed!
https://greener-cheaper.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/12/dear-energy-secretary-im-afraid-to-tell-you-there-is-no-money
But for REF it’s easy - it’s all too much: www.breitbart.com/london/2015/05/20/insult-and-injury-for-turbine-blighted-communities-britain-to-massively-overshoot-renewable-energy-targets/
Energy
saving
Despite all the new
gadgets we are using less energy
UK energy consumers are using 10% less
energy than 5 years ago, even though the economy is growing and we are using
more gadgets, with the link between energy use and growth apparently now
broken. This seem to be partly due to the take up of more energy efficient
consumer devices - a new A-rated fridge-freezer uses 73% less energy, compared
with its 20-year-old counterpart, according to
trade association AMDEA. That leads to about £100 p.a. off a
household energy bill: www.t2c.org.uk/chilling/new-case-study-of-20-yr-old-fridge/ And the adoption of low energy lamps has
meant that consumers used 29% less electricity for lighting in 2013 than in
2008. A report from the Committee on Climate Change said household bills would
have increased by an extra £165 between 2004-2013 if the energy savings had not
been made. It said gas use for heat and hot water had declined more than a
quarter since 2004 for a typical household, reflecting improvements in boiler
efficiency and pipe insulation, while the number of homes with loft and cavity
wall insulation is up from 39% in 2004 to 67% in 2013. The recession has also
led to behavioural change - turning off radiators in unused rooms. DECC’s statistics (Dukes),
says consumption of all energy in 2013 was the lowest since 1985 after
adjusting for temperature, and energy intensity - the amount of energy per unit
of wealth created - fell by 70% between 1970 and 2013 in the industrial sector.
That may be because the UK has exported high energy manufacturing activities
and switched more to service/retail, but even there energy use has fallen by
55%. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30518649 Good news.
But worryingly smart grid DSM is opposed by 40% of UK consumers:
Energy for
Homes ETI
wants heat networks
The ETI’s commitment to
heat networks, a key part of their new energy scenarios (see above), shows
through in their report by Jeff Douglas Decarbonising Heat for UK Homes. This
has smart heat networks, with CHP and heat stores, offering some balancing and
being a less disruptive option than in-house heat pumps in urban/suburban
areas. The report stressed the need for a system-wide approach. Interestingly,
while it supports some upgrades, it says the ETI’s ‘Optimising Thermal
Efficiency of Existing Housing’ project, had concluded that a basic ‘Retrofix’
package of measures could achieve CO2 savings of around 33% at costs ranging
from £7,500 to £21,000 per building. A more extensive ‘Retroplus’ package could
it suggested reduce CO2 by around 45% for between £15,000 and £31,000 per
dwelling. But, it says, even with this scale of national investment (several
hundred billion), ‘the emissions savings across the UK house archetypes are
somewhat lower than half the desired 80% target’. And it sees its heat network
approach as being more effective, at least in some locations, accounting for
near half of heat by 2050 - electricity supplies the rest. Though, on current
plans, with gas heating being phased out, local electricity grids will have to
be upgraded to feed domestic heat pumps. Heat networks might avoid the need for
some of that! http://theeti.cmail20.com/t/j-l-ddjhol-otiukhuju-k/ CCS ETI’s parallel report on Carbon Capture and Storage was perhaps less welcome.
It warned that any delay to the roll-out of
CCS ‘increases costs
through the need to deploy higher cost technologies to cut emissions, and
failing to deploy CCS at all could double the annual cost of carbon abatement
by 2050’. It looks to a 10 GW CCS sector by 2030. www.eti.co.uk/carbon-capture-and-storage-building-the-uk-carbon-capture-and-storage-sector-by-2030/ However, it’s not clear what other options
will be ‘higher cost’. Nuclear maybe (though ETI backs that). But surely not
renewables, which are getting cheaper daily, while CCS remains a long shot and
everyone accepts it will be costly, at least at first. Then again, if by 2030
we had 10 GW of CCS, plus more renewables, we wouldn’t need nukes. The UK Green Alliance has come out in favour of CCS, arguing
that it will get cheaper. But they don’t mention CCS with biomass (BECCS),
which offers a carbon
negative bonus, making CCS
more attractive.
http://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2015/03/25/why-using-ccs-for-industry-as-well-as-power-makes-sense/ and for the
full thing http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/resources/Decarbonising_British_Industry.pdf
Scottish power exports
and imports
There have been claims that Scotland will have to import more power from England since
it’s renewables (now near meeting 50% of annual power demand) were not able to
meet peak demand reliably and a coal backup plant was being closed. www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/labour-attacks-scottish-ministers-over-increased-reliance-on-english-ener.121280737 This seems overstated. The Scottish Government
pointed out that: ‘Scotland
is a substantial and reliable exporter of electricity, with well over a quarter
of all power generation exported in 2013… Around 90% of the time electricity
flows from Scotland south to England, with it flowing in the opposite direction
only 10% of the time.’
With more renewables on the Scottish grid, there will be times when much of
this will be green power - by 2020, assuming
that the 8.7 GW of consented wind farms are built, Scotland will surpass its
100% renewables pledge by nearly 20%. So at times it will have more than it needs, and only occasionally (low
wind) should it have to import power from England or via inter-connectors from
continental Europe. It is true that the closure of the 2.4 GW Longannet coal
fired plant, and uncertainties about the future of the two old nuclear plants,
could increase the extent of that, at peak demand times, unless other balancing
measures are adopted. But some are, including CHP/DH plants, which can vary
their power/heat output ratios to meet varying demand. Demand-side management
can also help by shifting peaks. So can storage and there are new pumped hydro
projects planned. However there’s nothing wrong with importing power when
needed, or with exporting excess power; the UK energy system needs to be
planned as a whole, and that would be true even if Scotland went
independent. This type of grid
balancing could be the cheapest option, though adding a few small gas plants
might be an even cheaper short-term option, perhaps using AD biogas or
wind-to-gas longer term. WWF’s Pathways
to Power says that, with
expanded renewables and smart-grid demand management, by 2030 Scotland won’t
need any nuclear, or any extra fossil backup, apart from the already planned 340 MW of gas-fired CCS at Peterhead, and it could still export power to more
than balance any imports: http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/pathwaystopower.pdf A bold approach. Imports
and grid balancing do imply more and better grids and more
connections in remote areas, but the new design T-shaped grid pylons are now
being installed: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32225276
Welsh tidal power The proposed Swansea Tidal Lagoon (see
above) is not the only tidal option for Wales and may not be the best. Load
factors for tidal stream devices are expected to be higher (36%) than for
barrages or lagoons (23%), and some tidal current turbine device teams have
reported higher load factors, with rotor pitch regulation. Sadly the Skerries
MCT project off Anglesey is not live at present (though MCT has now been taken
over by Atlantis, so that may change), but Tidal Energy Ltd is testing their
DeltaStream device off St Davids and Minesto is to test their Tidal Kite off
Anglesey. Large local economic/job benefits are
predicted: www.marineenergypembrokeshire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Marine-Energy-in-Wales-Investment-Jobs-Supply-Chain-2015-s.pdf Capacity Market nasty diesels
About 22% of
the UK’s short-term
operating reserve (STOR) is made up of small diesel sets, used very
occasionally for grid backup. The recent Capacity market auction awarded 121
small open-cycle gas turbines and reciprocating engines contracts for being
available to meet shortfalls - about 2 GW in all, out of the 50 GW of
contracted backup capacity, most of which was CCGT. This raised green hackles
at the time, but then that’s what you get with competition - the cheapest
options, not the cleanest options. The Guardian missed that point: www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/06/uk-energy-bill-subsidies-driving-boom-in-polluting-diesel-farms
Negative emissions
The Smith School
of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University, says that the best
bio-options for CO2 cuts are planting trees and improving soil quality to
sequester more CO2 i.e. afforestation, planting trees where there were none before, and biochar, soil improvement by burying a layer of charcoal made
from biomass. Between now and 2050, these were the ‘most promising’ options, it says,
better than BECCS (Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), or direct
air capture (via chemical absorption from the atmosphere).
Looking back..
Oxford Prof. Dieter Helm’s chapter on energy
policy in ‘The Coalition Effect 2010-2015’ (Seldon & Finn, CUP) is a stout
defence of free market views, blaming Lib Dem-led DECC (or was it Milliband
earlier?) for losing them! Either way, it’s not very edifying. Though he is
right that the EMR, CfD, Green Deal and so on are not fit for purpose. But then
what should be the purpose?
Avoiding public expenditure seems to be the aim by enlisting the private
sectors’ help. That has limits. They too adopt market-based views. Thus BP once relabeled itself as ‘Beyond Petroleum’, in a fit of
wider strategic thinking, but then, as markets tightened, backed away from
renewables, to focus mainly on oil again: www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/16/bp-dropped-green-energy-projects-worth-billions-to-focus-on-fossil-fuels
*Here is a
quick look back at how governments have fared in the past
- and at Rudd’s track record . Energy governance: a brief UK renewable
history
Although there
had been some isolated experiments with wind turbines in the 1950’s, the
development of renewables in the UK only really started on a significant scale in 1974, in the
wake of the OPEC oil crisis. The
then Labour Government set up an Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU), based
at Harwell, which was contracted to work for the newly established Department
of Energy. ETSU produced
a number of influential reports, as did various Select Committees. However there were some oddities. The
Select Committee on Science and Technology (Session 1976-77) ‘saw little
present potential for the use of wind power for electricity generation. The
assessment prepared by ETSU identified a limited scope for the generation of
electricity on most favoured hilltop sites, at costs possibly competitive with
fossil fuels.’
Wave energy
attracted more support. John
Moore, then an Energy Minister, claimed, at the opening of a wave energy test
tank at Southampton in 1980, that ‘whatever other problems our wave energy
researchers may face, lack of Government support will not be among them’. However in 1982 the wave energy programme
was all but wound up, after a critical review, in response to the new
Conservative government’s policy of overall funding cuts.
Interest in the
Severn Tidal Barrage remained strong.
ETSU’s 1982 ‘Strategic Review of Renewable Energy Technologies’,
concluded that ‘the Severn Barrage generally has the best economic prospects
of all the renewable sources, bettered only by on-shore wind power on the
latter’s lower cost. In general, tidal power is roughly on a par with nuclear
power in the benefit/cost ratios which it produces.’
Clearly that did
not pan out - it was wind power that succeeded, first overseas and then,
belatedly, in the UK. But PV solar was still hardly even talked about.
ETSU was
subsequently privatised and in 1992 the Department of Energy was abolished, the
bulk of its work being absorbed into the Department of Trade and Industry. The
Select Committee on Energy was also therefore wound up, but not before issuing
a very critical report, in which it commented ‘it is difficult to regard the
history of renewable R & D funding in the UK as other than a history of
volte faces, premature judgements and plain errors’.
23 years on, can
we say any better about the record of the Department of Energy’s eventual
replacement, the Department of Energy and Climate Change?
It
did try. But fell foul of coalition politics. Now free of that, here we go
again… See below.
The
above quotes are from NATTA’s 1997 ‘Renewables Past, Present and Future, PDF available
Amber Rudd
Some
quotes from the new Energy & Climate Change Secretary: ‘I look forward
to the day when a British city has a heat network to rival Copenhagen. If we
are serious about tackling climate change, that’s what we need to see happen.’ (Carbon
Connect Heat conference, Jan 2015)
‘I believe
that the solar industry is on the up, and between our incentives and your
dynamism, we will see real progress towards putting control in the hands of
energy consumers and turning our buildings into power stations. (Solar Energy UK Conference, Oct 2014)
‘Community
energy projects represent a huge opportunity for people to bring about change
in their local areas. The sector has the potential to deliver as much as 3GW’. (PRASEG, July 2014)
..
and forward What the public think now
Public
support falls slightly
78% of the UK public back renewable energy DECC has found. But this is less
than earlier. Support was at 79%, 82% and 80% respectively in 2012, 2013 and
2014. 81% now backed solar compared to 85% in 2014 and 2013. 74% backed wave
and tidal, down from 77% in 2014 and 2013, while offshore wind was supported by
73% compared to 77% in 2014 and 76% in 2013. Support for onshore wind was also
down to 65% and biomass had the lowest support at 63%, up from 60% in 2014 but
down on the 64% in 2012. Opinion polls do give variable results…
While local views
on wind farms will allegedly now drive policy,
under the Tories Manifesto commitment, as backed by new Minister Andrea
Leadsom, it seems that the local planning
system will henceforth be unable to oppose proposals for local nuclear waste
dumps: www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/05/law-changed-so-nuclear-waste-dumps-can-be-forced-on-local-communities
Nuclear news
Nuclear
- ‘more
research needed’
Hinkley may be stalled (see below) but the Lords
Select Committee on Science and Technology has been looking to the future and
at ‘Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities’. It noted that ‘to meet the UK’s
legally binding target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990
levels by 2050 it is likely that between 20 and 38 GW of nuclear power will be
needed’, and it backed
more attention being paid to more advanced Generation IV reactor and fuel cycle options, including
breeders (as opposed to Gen III - the current range of upgraded PWR/BWR
reactors). That’s despite the fact that ‘many witnesses, including the
Government, took the view that up to 2050, the majority of nuclear electricity
supply, regardless of the quantity, is likely to be through Generation III
nuclear plant rather than Generation IV (because of the relatively early stage
of development of Generation IV technology) and that uranium would not be a
limiting resource over this period. They argued therefore that R&D
capabilities and associated expertise in advanced reactor systems and fuel
recycling need not be a primary consideration up to the middle of the century.’
The Lords were evidently
much more sympathetic to the view expressed by Dame Sue Ion that ‘Government attention to these
issues has been, and continues to be, woefully inadequate’. And they especially welcomed and shared
Prof. David MacKay’s
views that, if the UK wants to keep the option of an increased nuclear energy capacity open in the future, it must be more actively involved in Gen. IV R&D- so as to gain ‘a seat at the table’. It would also ‘enable the UK to act
as intelligent customer and regulator’ and help with ‘the training and maintenance of the
research base needed for both Generation III and IV’.
The Lords said
he ‘appeared to have a more considered and far-sighted view than that of the
Government’. He had
commented: ‘I think there is widespread agreement around Europe and the
world that, to keep options open, energy research should always adopt a
considerably wider approach than the energy policy of any particular day. Even
if UK nuclear power were to be provided by Generation II and III reactors only
for the next 40 years, there is still a case for supporting Generation IV
research because it is a very good way to spin out other benefits. It is a way
to develop and retain experts and educators who can serve the role of advisers
and inspectors and who have expertise in other countries’ reactors, so that
when accidents occur in other countries we can give good advice to the Foreign
Office. All of those roles: educators, advisers, inspectors and teachers, are
needed by a Generation III programme today, so I think there are compelling
arguments for involvement in advanced research along the lines of the
Generation IV programme.’
What about the zero
nuclear option? That was
quite quickly dispatched. Though some of its
scenarios
included ‘low nuclear’, Katherine Randall, DECCs 2050 Pathways
Team Leader, told them
that ‘while it is possible, technically... to generate a pathway that does
not use nuclear’, it is
not desirable, because excluding nuclear would put significantly more pressure
on supply and the use of other technologies, some of which, such as CCS, were
unproven. It would also require ‘a great deal more effort... on the demand
side’ which has so far
proven to be difficult and a ‘significant effort on balancing’ the grid system. Instead, the Lords say,
more nuclear R&D is needed: ‘Without
an increase in funding for fission research in the order of £20-50 m a year,
the Government’s intention that nuclear should play a part in meeting the
UK’s future energy needs simply lacks credibility’.
* During the
Lords debate on the generic ‘justification’ for Hitachi’s ABWR, Baroness
Worthington noted that ‘nuclear
has a massively beneficial impact on health in terms of lives saved from
avoiding air pollution’.
But that’s also true of renewables. An odd omission from an ex-FoE energy
campaigner. By contrast, see the show-stopper analysis from Prof. Keith
Barnham on CO2 looking at
full nuclear cycle emissions:
*The UK Office
for Nuclear Regulations,
has ruled that the radiation evacuation zone for Sellafield must be raised from
2km to 6-7km. The zone at Fukushima was and is 20km.
Hinkley We still
await EDF s’ investment decision. In Sept? Oct?
The
Chinese companies who might back the project evidently refused to invest unless
the French government promised to cover their share of any cost over runs. The
Chinese also wanted EDF to hand over the Bradwell site in Essex, so they could
build a reactor there later. With EDF & Areva’s finances in a mess, their
bargaining position is weak. The reactor pressure vessel fault found at
Flamanville (poor steel quality) could be the last straw... it may have to be
abandoned.
2.
Global news and developments NREL’s ‘2013 Renewable Energy Data Book’ says that cumulative global renewable electricity capacity grew by 108% from 2000 to 2013 (from 748 GW to 1,560 GW), and renewables accounted for 23% of all electricity generation worldwide (5,095 TWh) in 2013:
• Wind and solar have been the fastest growing
renewable electricity options worldwide.
Wind grew 18 times and solar by a
factor of 68 between 2000 and
2013.
•In 2013, China led the world in
cumulative total renewable electricity installed capacity, as well as
cumulative wind (91 GW*) and hydro capacity. Germany led the world in
cumulative PV installed capacity (36 GW). The USA led the world in geothermal
(3.8 GW) and biomass capacity (14.7 GW).
http://lists.nrel.gov/t/121386/420842/100198/0/
*now115 GW. In his state of the union
address in January, Obama said the US led the
word in wind. Well, in output, re China, but not in capacity.
Fossil
futures - leave
it in the ground
University College London research published in the journal Nature,
assuming cost effective climate policies would use the cheapest fossil fuels
first, identifies which fossil resources will have to be left in the ground if
the average global temperatures rise is
to stay below 2C. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/full/517150a.html
It found that, globally, 82%
of today’s coal reserves must be left underground, hitting major coal producing
nations like the US, Australia and Russia, hard: more than 90% of their coal
reserves would have to be left unused. The figure China and India was 66%. 50%
of global gas reserves must also remain unburned, hitting the
Middle East and Russia hard, although the US and EU can exploit 90% or more of
their gas reserves (including some US shale gas) to replace coal and provide
local power to their large cities. A third of global oil
would have to be left unused and all of Canada’s oil sands after 2020, as well
as oil/gas from the Arctic: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/07/much-worlds-fossil-fuel-reserve-must-stay-buried-prevent-climate-change-study-says Tragically
though, we are not heading that way - indeed with gas, oil and, relatively,
coal market prices falling, we are mostly going the opposite way. But
it’s not all bad news: the fall in oil prices won’t have much impact on
renewables says Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/edfenergyexchange/2015/01/05/why-falling-oil-prices-dont-hurt-demand-for-renewable-energy/ And
PV prices are still falling - see below.
www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/mar/16/keep-it-in-the-ground-guardian-climate-change-campaign And for a positive upgrade:
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/opinion/sunday/divestment-campaigns.html?ref=opinion
Renewable Integration
round the world
US energy expert Eric
Martinot, now based in Beijing, is
these days focusing on power grid integration and balancing of renewables - see
his coverage of Germany, California, Denmark: www.martinot.info/renewables2050/2015/448 And China: www.martinot.info/renewables2050/2014/464
IEA-RETD has also produced a RE-Integration report, a study
by Mott MacDonald’s of the
challenges of integrating
variable renewables energy (VRE) into the electricity grids. It looks, via case studies, at typical country specific factors shaping the choice of integration options, the applicability and effectiveness
of policy measures and draws general lessons for countries with similar underlying characteristics. It
says ‘Interconnected countries can
pool flexible resource by coupling markets and co-operating on
reserve/balancing, isolated countries need to make the most of internal
flexibility’, while ‘countries with low interconnection and internal
flexibility have the greatest
challenge’. http://iea-retd.org/re-integration
In the IEA’s 2
Degree Scenario (2DS), fossil fuel primary energy use halves to ~40% in 2050,
mainly via efficiency, renewables and a bit of nuclear. But we must move
faster: www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/ETP2015SUM.pdf
IRENA’s Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014, concludes that they are all becoming competitive
with fossil-fired plants, even without subsidy.
*IRENA has also produced an
easy access global and national data base on renewables from which to create
customized charts/graphs, REsource, at www.irena.org/resource.
PV
solar price falls continue
|
It’s similar elsewhere in the EU - PV cost a lot initially,
but the market built by the FiTs got prices down. Compare that to the
continuing subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuel, with a German Budget study
noting that ‘up to now subsidies for the renewable energies have amounted to
€54 bn. To compare, from 1970 to 2012 subsidies for hard coal amounted to €177
bn, for brown coal at €65 bn and for nuclear energy at €187 bn.’ And as elsewhere, the rising cost of energy has mainly been due to
fuel cost rises not to renewable support.
However the PV boom has an effect on other
sources. In Germany, power use has been falling since 2007 and so the growth of
PV and wind has put pressure on fossil plants: ‘the construction of new
renewable power plants decreases not only the relative market fraction of the
four big power suppliers in Germany but also it reduces their absolute
turnover’ especially since PV can meet peak demand,
undermining the economics of gas-fired peaking plant. Similar trends will occur
elsewhere as PV and wind expand. There will also be more stress on
transmission, though the report notes that ‘the feed-in of solar electricity
takes place predominantly in a decentralized manner and hardly makes any
demands on an expansion of the German national transmission network’.
Finally there’s the variability issue. PV
output varies, but so does wind. The report says ‘Due to the particular
climate in Germany, high solar irradiance and high wind strength have a
negative correlation’ so they can often compensate
for each other. In which case, ‘a balanced mix of solar and wind capacity is
markedly superior to the one-sided expansion that would be brought about
through the introduction of a competitive incentive model’ i.e. the contract auctions market being introduced in Germany, the
UK and soon across the EU. And it notes that though nuclear & coal plants
aren’t much use at balancing variable PV, during heat waves, when cold cooling
water is scarce, PV reduces the load on the fossil and nuclear plants. Overall
a good selling job on PV in Germany and elsewhere e.g. the US. Florida should
take note:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/12/whats-really-at-stake-in-the-florida-solar-battle
EUNews EU 2030 Renewables target
If the European Commission had not decided to avoid imposing national renewable
energy targets for 2030, what would they have looked like? A clue can be found
in ‘Implementing the EU 2030 Climate and
Energy Framework - a closer look at Renewables and opportunities for an Energy
Union’, an EC/Intelligent Energy backed Towards 2030-dialogue Issue Paper produced by a group of EU research groups. Within
the overall EU Renewable energy target for 2030 set at 27%, it develops some
indicative benchmarks as left, adopting the same methodology used when the EC
set national target for 2020. Cheeky! The UK gets a weak 23%. The report said: ‘Moderate dedicated support for renewables is
required to reach the 2030 target of
27% renewables’. That’s surely the least we should aim for.
More
integration The EU’s new Energy
Union proposals seek to ensure grid and market links are made to back up its
27% by 2030 renewable energy target and improve energy security: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4497_en.htm
EU
Renewable costs The Council of
European Energy Regulators ‘Status Review of Renewable and Energy Efficiency
Support Schemes in Europe in 2012 and 2013’ looks at the relative extra average costs in €/MWh of supporting
renewables in EU countries in 2013.
www.ceer.eu/portal/page/portal/EER_HOME/EER_PUBLICATIONS/CEER_PAPERS/Electricity/Tab4/C14-SDE-44-03_Status%20Review%20on%20RES%20Support%20Schemes_15-Jan-2015.pdf Partly due to location and support schemes cost vary – but FiTs
are usually cheaper/MWh than the competitive contracts/grant/ certificate
trading systems mostly used in Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden & UK (UK has
a FiT for some PV). But some like Germany pay more to get more capacity.
French/Cz PV gets the most, while in Estonia all get the same level of support.
A
big source of the surge of Denmark’s wind production came from the addition of
around 100 new offshore wind turbines. The current aim is to get 50% of
Denmarks power from renewables by 2020, but the Danish Ministry of Climate,
Energy and Building believes that the country could actually get 71% of its
electricity from renewable sources by 2020, by expanding wind power and
converting more heat pumps and power plants to use biomass. By 2020 coal
consumption will be more than halved. The aim is to be fossil free by 2050. www.kebmin.dk/en/news/baseline-projection-2014-the-transition-to-a-green-danish-energy-system-is-accelerating
German overview - new model says 80% is
possible
The Fraunhofer Institute
for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg has developed the Renewable Energy Model-Deutschland, or REMod-D, a computer simulation that models an
all-sector future energy system for Germany, matching supply and demand on an
hourly basis over a full year, tested using real data from 2011 and 2012. Eicke
Weber, the institute’s director and a professor of physics at Freiburg
University, told the New York Times that it showed that ‘it is
economically to our advantage to move as quickly as possible to a system of 80%
renewable energy. Our researchers have shown that the cost of this
transformation of the entire energy system - not just electricity - would be
the same as today’s system to run; but the needed investments would cost less
than what would be saved by spending far less on fossil fuels. Our estimate is
that the changeover will cost about 500 billion euros. However, between now and
2050 we will realize savings of between €600 billion and €1,000 billion. These
are savings on the total energy system, including fossil fuels and the
distribution system.’ Specifically
the researchers put the cumulative investment over the next 35 years for all
major renewable energy sources required by this system at €470 billion. But
this would save €660 billion in avoided fuel costs, at constant fossil fuel
prices. If fossil fuel prices rose by 1 percent per year during this period,
then the avoided fuel cost would be €830 billion. And if fossil fuel prices
rose by 2% per year, the avoided cost would be €1,045 billion. Weber added ‘To go beyond 80% would cost a lot more. But the
low-hanging fruit is to start with an 80% renewable energy system. The faster
you add renewable energy to the grid, the faster you reach the crossover point
where the savings become greater than the costs. We estimate that Germany could
reach that point as soon as 2025.’ Hans-Martin
Henning, one of the research team, noted ‘we
would need 150 GW of PV, about 120 GW of onshore wind, about 30 GW of offshore
wind, and an electric capacity of 60 would supply all the residual GW of CHP
that electricity needs of
the system’. The power system would
incorporate substantial storage capacity to handle the fluctuations of supply
& demand. This could he said take the form of about eight million batteries
connected to home PV systems and a
doubling of pumped storage capacity. Heat storage would be split among
about 150 large-scale centralized storage plants and about seven million home storage units. Finally, about
33 GW of electrolytic plants would produce hydrogen or methane fuel for
transportation. ‘Altogether, this
system uses 78% renewable energy, and has a much higher overall efficiency than
today’s system.’ And it would be
possible to achieve balancing: ‘there
are many hours when renewables are not sufficient to meet demand, but even more
hours when we have too much renewable energy’. www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/business/energy-environment/plan-outlines-low-carbon-future-for-germany-energy.html But,
there is no shortage of implementation issues. e.g. some local groups don’t
like the supergrid links proposed to shunt power from the
north to the south: www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/world/europe/germans-balk-at-plan-for-wind-power-lines.html? Old energy goes broke As
energy prices fall, E.ON has reported a €3.4bn loss, and RWE a 45% profit fall.
Both are now greening up. RWE is investing €1bn in wind…
German Energy costs
Under Energiewende, energy prices have continued to fall,
with prices in Germany down by a fifth in January, due to record
wind production, and with prices being lower in Germany than other major
markets in Europe, though
wind has also cut prices in France
PV in Germany
The Fraunhofer
Institute’s report ‘Recent
Facts about PV in Germany’ has some useful data and analysis. It notes that,
with costs falling, albeit from a high level, ‘the EEG feed-in tariff for PV power is [being] reduced more
rapidly than that for any other renewable energy source. Newly installed,
large-scale plants have already achieved grid parity in 2011 for domestic consumers. Since then, the feed-in tariff has continued to drop well below
the gross domestic
electricity price. Since the beginning of 2012, newly installed, small rooftop
installations also have achieved grid parity.’. And also, in 2013, for many
industrial customers too.
However, consumers using self-generated power won’t be doing so well under the
new EEG arrangements. They have to pay the fixed cost of their grid connection
even when they are not using it, and from August 2014,‘a fraction of the EEG surcharge is.. imposed on
the self-consumed electricity from newly installed systems larger than 10 kWp’.
What next? Under the new
reduced FiT system, capacity growth will slow, and so will the fall off of cost
and the linked FiT price degression: ‘the
smaller the amount of new and increasingly cheap PV installations annually, the
slower the average EEG feed-in tariff will decrease’. And after 2020, ‘the feed-in tariff will gradually expire for the oldest plants, as
their 20-year payment period begins to expire’. Nevertheless, the report concluded ‘these plants will continue to supply power at
levelized costs that undercut those of all other fossil fuel and renewable
energy sources. At present, old installations are currently bringing up the
average value of the feed-in tariff; from 2020 on, however, they are likely to
cut costs.’ Even so, for now, ‘as a result of the extreme drop in the feed-in
tariff, along with the increasing amount of limitations dictating the
construction of new systems and grid feed-in over the past few years, the
number of new PV installations in Germany substantially declined by 55% in
2013. In the same year, new installations increased worldwide by almost
20%’.
And it gets worse: ‘The already radical reduction in feed-in
rates, the additional degressions agreed upon and the phase out of the EEG
feed-in tariff for new PV systems at a threshold of 52 GW installed capacity
ensures that total remunerations paid for PV are limited to €10-11 bn p.a.
Based on the existing EEG, a further expansion of PV will increase the total
remunerations
paid only a moderate amount. (The) additional measures to throttle the expansion of PV will not affect a decrease in the total remuneration. Such a
measure would, however, cause a slowdown in the construction of very
inexpensive PV systems.’
Fossil
fuel is loosing out in all its markets- e.g
in
USA www.power-eng.com/articles/2014/12/u-s-coal-losing-power-business-dominance-but-not-going-away.html
Coal warning www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/insurers-face-huge-fossil-fuel-losses-warns-bank-of-england-10083752.html
Even in Australia it’s no longer safe: Solar and wind energy got strong support from the Australian public, with 80% putting them among their top three energy choices in a
poll for the Australia Institute. By contrast, coal and coal seam gas were
chosen by 35% and 38% of those polled as being among the best three future
energy sources. And yet the Australian government seems wedded to coal as the
way ahead and in denial over climate change. Globally -a new mood http://worldbioenergy.org/content/wba-lima-initiative-climate-and-energy-2035
Energy
Storage: goodbye to gas turbines? The energy
storage debate rumbles on. Some claim that storage units will take over peak load grid-power
matching from gas turbines. The US Energy Strategies Group says ‘the costs for multi-hour energy storage are about to undergo a steep decline over the next 2 to 3 years. This cost trend will disrupt the economic rationale for
gas-fired simple cycle combustion turbines (CTs) in favor of flexible zero
emissions energy storage. This will be especially true for storage assets owned
and operated by vertical utilities and distributed near utility substations.
Simple cycle gas-fired CTs have been a workhorse utility asset for adding new peaker capacity for decades.
But times and technologies change, and the power grid’s long love affair with
gas-fired CTs is about to be challenged by multi-hour energy storage. Flow
batteries that utilize a liquid electrolyte are especially cost-effective
because the energy they store can be easily and inexpensively increased just by
adding more electrolytes. CTs cost from $670 per installed kilowatt to more
than twice that much for CT’s located in urban areas. But the economics of
peaking capacity must also reflect the benefits side of the cost/ benefit
equation. Distributed storage assets can deliver both regional (transmission)
and local (distribution) level energy balancing services using the same storage
asset. This means the locational value and capacity use factor for distributed
storage can be significantly higher compared to CTs operated on a central station basis.’Well, storage may get cheaper, but its widespread use assumes there is surplus power to store at the right time, that peaks can’t be met
more economically by importing power on supergrids and that smart grid demand side
management doesn’t reduce (delay) peaks more economically. Though if storage
doesn’t turn out to be the dominant option, it may have a role at the
local/regional level, balancing local renewables. For example, the Strategy
Group says ‘Lower cost solar PV and
its rising penetration in all market segments will have a profoundly disruptive
effect on utility operations and the utility cost-of-service business model.
This has already started to happen. Storage offers a way for utilities to
replace lost revenues premised on margins from kilowatt-hour energy sales by
placing energy storage into the rate based and earning low-risk regulated
returns.’ www.energystrategiesgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Guide-to-Procurement-of-New-Peaking-Capacity-Energy-Storage-or-Combustion-Turbines_Chet-Lyons_Energy-Strategies-Group.pdf Also see:www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/10/from-ashes-to-energy-1-billion-alevo-battery-factory-surges-one-the-scene Wind for e-cars cheaper than oil says investment bank Kepler ChevreuxIt calculates that $100bn invested in onshore wind to power electric vehicles, would actually produce 4 times more energy per dollar invested than $100bn invested in oil to power gasoline vehicles by 2020 and 6 times more by 2035, assuming a drop in wind capital-costs and a rise in oil prices. But perverse subsidies for oil remain and may slow the transition: http://social.windenergyupdate.com/operations-maintenance/taxing-proposition-onshore-wind-be-6-times-cheaper-oil-transportation-2035
…and e-fuel even better? With e-diesel made from air, water & green electricity Audi’s Sunfire plant in Dresden produces e-diesel using CO2 from the air and hydrogen made by the electrolysis of water using green electricity. The gasses are reacted together at 220C and 25 bar to produce synthetic liquid hydrocarbon compounds, which can be converted to diesel. www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/audi-e-fuels-243 And GM/Nissan recycle old EV batteries for home power use.
Global-roundup
CSP in Africa Aora Solar is to build a hybrid CSP plant in Ethiopia.
Its ‘Tulip’ CHP Concentrating Solar power unit will produce 100 kW of power and 170 kW of heat, running not only on solar radiation but on almost any gaseous or liquid fuel, including biogas, biodiesel, and natural gas, enabling a variety of operational modes and ensuring 24/7 power supply. Namibia is also looking to CSP and there is good CSP potential in Nigeria and Zimbabwe: http://social.csptoday.com/markets/sub-saharan-africa-csp-market-watch
India 100 GW of PV by 2022 http://ceew.in/pdf/ceew-policy-brief-tapping-every-ray-of-the-sun-12dec14.pdf California aims for 50%renewables by 2030.. Governor of California Edmund G Brown has proposed an ambitious goal to source
50% of the state’s electricity from renewables by 2030, and cut energy use in
buildings by 50%. He said: ‘We are on track to meet our 2020 goal of
one-third of our electricity from renewable energy. We lead the nation in
energy efficiency, cleaner cars and energy storage.’
..but still no
US offshore wind
US offshore wind is a long time coming. Two US utilities have cancelled their power
purchase agreements with the 468 MW Cape Wind offshore wind farm, claiming it had failed to meet
its milestones. Cape Wind said for ‘over
more than a decade’, the Alliance to
Protect Nantucket Sound,
a local group opposing the project, had ‘systematically
engaged in a pattern of behaviour calculated to delay the development and
financing of Cape Wind’s offshore wind facility’. www.windpoweroffshore.com/article/1328234/cape-wind-threatened-utilities-ppas
Big Solar
farm Google
and Scatec are to build a huge 104 MW PV array in Utah
US
renewables: 50% of electricity by 2030
The
International Renewable Energy Agency’s new report on the US, in
its REmap 2030 series, says it can increase the use of renewable in its
energy mix from 7.5% in 2010 to 27% by 2030 (the same as the EUs target), and in the
power sector alone to almost 50% (it’s under 15% now). Wind would dominate in the
power sector. But in REmap
2030, 55% of all renewable energy in the US would be in the form of
non-electricity energy use, i.e. bioenergy in solid, liquid or gaseous forms,
or solar thermal or geothermal heat, for heating, cooling and transport applications, with the total
use involving a 3 to 4-fold increase of renewables over 2010 levels. If bio-mass use on the scale envisaged
was constrained, EVs and heat
pumps could play more of a role. The US REmap 2030 scenario would entail a fivefold increase in US
onshore wind capacity, from 63 GW in 2014 to 314 GW by 2030. It also envisages an additional 40 GW of
offshore wind and that by 2030 total installed solar PV capacity could reach
135 GW, compared to 7 GW in 2012. Biomass offers the potential for
an additional 46 GWe of power capacity, taking the total to 84
GW by 2030. There woud also be an additional 18 GW power
generation from geothermal, adding to 6 GW
under current plans.The report says that to reach these levels would need
an annual investment in renewables of $86 bn between now and 2030-$38 bn above
business-as-usual. But IRENA says this will result in annual savings of $30-140
bn by 2030 due to lower health effects and fossil fuel use. www.irena.org/REmap/IRENA_REmap_USA_report_2015.pdf Well it makes a change
from the US EIA’s rather dull projection- of 18% by 2040 under Business as
Usual assumptions!
Hawaii
is
already on the case: it aims for 100% renewables by 2040: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/hawaii-aims-for-100-renewable-energy-by-2040
CCS cut The US
Dept. of Energy has pulled funding for the $1.7bn FutureGen clean coal CCS plant due to project
completion delays.
China has cut it’s wind FiT to slow growth- it had reached
~115 GW by the start of the year. Too fast? http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1328437/china-confirms-cut-onshore-tariff?
Japan looks to 1.45 GW of offshore wind Projects in the NW and SE…
www.windpoweroffshore.com/article/1338775/japan-begins-145gw-wind-study Nuclear News
Dying on its feet?
Nuclear R&D funding has been drying up in most places in the world (see left) and though more money now seems to be available for some new projects (see box below), new plants are facing major problems in the EU: work on the EPR in Finland started in 2005 and it was scheduled to go live in 2009, but that is now not likely until late 2018. The finish date for the Flamanville EPR in France has been put back yet again - to 2017. Its cost has risen x3! And that was before faults were found in the steel pressure vessel: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11546271/New-UK-nuclear-plants-under-threat-as-serious-anomaly-with-model-found-in-France.html In the USA many new plant proposals have been abandoned and several existing plants closed early - Vermont Yankee being the latest. Elsewhere it may be different. China’s 12th Five Year Plan for 2011-15 called for a ‘small number’ of nuclear projects to be approved each year after full discussion, with, following Fukushima, coastal sites being blocked.But now the government is to resume approvals for coastal plants. It seems they now feel it’s safe. They should read: ‘On the institutional invisibility of nuclear disaster’: www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/CARR/pdf/DPs/DP76-Downer.pdf
More Money The US Dept. of Energy is offering up to $12.5bn in loan guarantee for new nukes It will focus on advanced reactors and projects with ‘evolutionary, state-of-the-art design improvements in the areas of fuel technology, thermal efficiency, modularized construction, safety systems, and standardized design,’ as well as Small Modular Reactors, typically 300 MW or less, and uprate/upgrade projects, using innovative technology to improve existing reactor efficiency/capacity. With a proposed long-term EU investment programme of €315bn, 9 countries are said to be applying for a total of €100 bn investment subsidies for new n-plants/upgrades, including Romania, Poland & the UK. The UK wants €46 bn, Poland €12bn. www.sunwindenergy.com/review/eu-investment-programme-eu-100-billion-nuclear-power
Ireland may consider nuclear www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Ireland-needs-to-consider-nuclear-option-says-minister-05011501.html
EUROfusion
- hope rises eternal, so does the
budget
The European
Commission and the European fusion research labs have a joint programme on
nuclear fusion, ‘EUROfusion’, with a budget of at least €850 m for 2014-18, of which about half
will come from the Euratom Horizon 2020 fusion energy research programme. The
main focus will be scientific and technical support for ITER, the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, being built in France, but EUROfusion
will also ‘address fundamental issues
relating to the next generation fusion demonstration reactor, DEMO, that will be connected to the grid and
provide a blueprint for the deployment of fusion reactors across the world,
enabling fusion to contribute to meeting the world’s growing energy needs after
2050 alongside renewable energy’.
Nuclear
options It’s not clear how fusion plants would be
used: maybe to make hydrogen, rather than electricity - that, as oil declines,
being a more lucrative market. With fission
plants facing
economic/flexibility/reliability issues, maybe some will go for batch hydrogen
production now. Or sell their waste heat, to be more economic.
www.world-nuclear.org/info/Non-Power-Nuclear-Applications/Industry/Nuclear-Process-Heat-for-Industry/ and www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2012/march/nuclear-power-plants-can-produce-hydrogen-to-fuel-the-hydrogen-economy.html Some say that mini-fusion is possible - and soon: Lockheed bravely
say ‘Prototype in 5 years,
defence products in 10, clean power for the world in 20 years’. www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html If real, fission will be dead. But the
Weinberg Foundation says the Molten
Salt Reactor is a ‘revolutionary’ advance for fission: it’s ‘extremely
fuel efficient, generates very little waste, and offers unique passive safety
features. Crucially, the MSR has outstanding load-following capability and will
provide a low-carbon alternative to gas as a flexible source of electricity to
support renewables’: www.the-weinberg-foundation.org But when? At what cost?
Nukes
and Drones
France
worries- shouldn’t we all?
3.
Forum Odds and ends for you to chew
on Comments
welcome!
The UK
Capacity Market - what is it for?
In a fully free-market
system there is no direct commercial incentive for generation companies to
ensure that the lights stay on long-term, by investing in new and/or backup
capacity. Given that some old plants are scheduled for closure and more
reliance on sometimes variable renewables is planned, the UK government has
stepped in to create a new ‘capacity
market’ to try to fill the potential
gap in terms of reserve capacity and grid balancing capacity. Competitive market pressures have meant
that some existing gas fired capacity has been moth-balled, and the new market
is meant to draw on some of that - by offering an extra cash incentive for
making it available for use if needed, the cost of which will be passed on to
consumers by an extra levy on energy prices. It was also thought that this could incentivise investment
in some new projects, including new flexible gas plants, but also energy
storage facilities to help with grid balancing, as well as demand management
projects, aiming to reduce demand peaks.
With maybe 30 GWor more of
renewable expected on the grid by about 2020, and old coal and nuclear plants
being closed, the UK government has adopted a capacity auction approach,
seeking to eventually contract for around 53 GW of capacity to be available.
The first round, earlier this year, led to ~49 GW of capacity being contracted
for reserve/back-up duties from 2018 onwards if required, most of it being
existing or refurbished fossil fired capacity, including 25 GW or so of gas
plant, over 9 GW of coal/biomass plant, and near 8 W of existing nuclear.
This led to criticisms,
although some may have been due to confusions about what the Capacity Market actually aims to do. Some
evidently hoped it would add new, ideally green, capacity rather than
supporting old fossil and nuclear plants. That’s not what has happened, but
some of the plants it has backed will help support the grid given the variable
inputs from renewable plants, so, arguably, it is part of an overall green
energy approach. Though it could have been greener, if more storage and
(especially) demand management was included. And while gas-fired plant can help
balance variable renewables, in terms of short-term variations, nuclear is
pretty irrelevant - it can’t load follow rapidly or regularly. In theory, if
there are long lulls in wind or solar availability or other shortfalls (e.g.
due to longer-term plant or grid failures, or cold spells), then nuclear might
play a role if it was seen as part of the reserve capacity, along with old
occasionally used coal plants. But then that implies that nuclear would also
not be used fully at other times, which would undermine its economics.
Is that what its inclusion
in the capacity market means? Nuclear no longer being seen as baseload, with
the capacity market payments being offered as a compensation for lower average
operation? But that begs the
question of whether it is actually any good in this role. The recent experience
with many nuclear plants being off-line does not make it look like a very
reliable reserve capacity option. Or for that matter much use for baseload. So, either way, why is it getting extra
support? Similarly for the 9 GW or
so of coal and biomass plant that was supported. The suspicion is that, as with
the 7.9 GW of nuclear, the Capacity Market has just been used to as backdoor
way of providing extra finance for it. If extra baseload was needed, why not
support it in the normal way, via the CfD? Plenty of issues to be resolved before the next CfD
round! Though as for CCS, will that ever get CfD backing? See below.
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/389832/Provisional_Results_Report-Ammendment.pdf There will also be a new Capacity Market round soon… Will DSM
get in properly?
* All this market tinkering is set against higher level market manipulation
Oil price/barrel 2000- $10 ; 2010- $147; 2015- $47; 2020- Who
knows?
CCS
Carbon Capture and Storage
seems a long time coming, despite £1bn being available in the UK, but
enthusiasts says globally there are 8 operating full-chain CCS projects (some
running for >10 years) plus 15 in build or advanced
development. And some new technologies may help cut costs, e.g. for amine
capture: www.chemengonline.com/modified-mofs-cut-carbon-capture-costs-half/ and
sandstone storage www.myscience.org/news/2015/study_suggests_method_is_rock_solid_for_storing_carbon_dioxide_deep_underground-2015-imperial
CHPA
becomes ADE
The UK’s long established Combined Heat and Power Association has changed its name to the Association
for Decentralised Energy to better
reflect its wide range of interests - CHP, district heating & cooling, and demand side energy
services. DSM is of course a new
venture, evidently one that is seen to be important: think CHP/DH with large
heat stores being used to balance variable demand and supply. Back in the
1970s, when the CHPA was founded, the focus was mainly the campaign for
city-wide CHP/DH, and after a long lull, that’s beginning to be taken
seriously, with DECC supporting local heat networks. It’s interesting this is
still labeled ‘decentralised’, given that it’s large or at least community
scaled, and possibly based on quite big plants, as opposed to being scaled for
individual homes. But then that would be micro-generation, and there is already
an association for that! The phrase ‘decentralised energy’ also tends to be
associated with smaller-scaled renewable energy systems, in contrast to large-scale
centralised fossil and nuclear units. Sometimes it is also taken to mean
‘off-grid’, usually in the context of small domestic units in remote areas.
While CHP plant usually are not very large, most so far use fossil fuel, and some CHP
units are run independently, supplying heat and power to a factory complex, or
feeding local private wire power networks and local heat mains, as in Woking.
So maybe the term decentralised makes sense. That wider definition is evidently used
by WADE, the US-based World
Alliance for Decentralized Energy,
which covers local renewables as well as CHP/cogen: www.localpower.org But
then there’s distributed power - i.e. a system with smallish plants of any
type linked to grids at the local distribution level, rather than using power sent down long transmissions lines from big central
units. Help!
* Other
changes: after the Solar
Trade Association
left the Renewable Energy Association, the REA set up UK solar and also a UK energy storage initiative. The STA carries on
independently.
Media
biases…
Tom Burke had a go at the FT
for being status quo oriented: http://tomburke.co.uk/2014/12/09/on-turning-good-news-into-bad/ By contrast,
Gossage, Electrical Review’s indispensable gossip column, is
(usually) a welcome relief. A sample: ‘So
far this century, not only is overall energy use down 14%. But per capita
electricity consumption has also already fallen by 10%.’ www.electricalreview.co.uk/features/opinions/10408-gossagegossip Good news, and the sometimes reliable BBC relayed it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30518649 and also www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24823641 Even the often staid UK magazine Prospect managed a mention of this significant
change, by Mike Grubb, in an otherwise dire cheap oil special. For the rest, well you usually know what you will get. Good green coverage often in the Guardian and Independent, but also useful bits in the Telegraph and
even the Times! The Ecologist of
course can be relied on for positive up-beat coverage, e.g: http://bit.ly/1x1PR9r
…and myths ‘There are
some myths that we need to get over: the myth that fracking would be a disaster
for the environment; the myth that GM technology means that we are all going to
be eating fish-flavoured tomatoes; the myth that nuclear power is inherently
unstable and we should not pursue it. Those are myths that we need to confront
if we are going to be a successful science-based country in the future’- so said PM David Cameron. Why didn’t he add the one
about CO2 gas being plant food, so global warming was good for
the planet. Can we make a star on earth? No
need! Dr Gerry Wolff complained to
the BBC about Prof. Brian Coxs claim, in a Horizon programme on fusion, that
renewables couldn’t hack it. Says who? In fact it’s
been claimed that renewables will beat all in 15 years!
Bucks
Fizz…A new energy centre at the independent Buckingham University gets roasted for its alleged fossil fuel and climate
change biases: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-leading-private-university-becoming-a-mouthpiece-for-fossilfuel-industry-10144860.html
EROI
disagreements A paper in the journal Energy
looks once again at energy returned on invested, EROI, with updated material
databases, and updated technical procedures ‘making it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency’ on a uniform mathematical and physical basis. Pump
storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included so that
the efficiency can be compared with an ‘unbuffered’ scenario. The results show
that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are
one order of magnitude more effective than pv solar and wind power. This is a
very different conclusion to those produced by most other studies e.g. see Dan
Harvey’s book Carbon Free Energy
Supply. A key differences that the
new study does not include the energy content of the fuel that
the technology concerned uses in its assessment - just the energy used in its
construction. Hardly surprising then that fossil and nuclear get off lightly
while the renewables lose one of key advantages - no fuel requirement. The
inclusion of energy storage also it says reduces the renewables EROI
remarkably. But it just assumes pumped storage. There are many other grid
balancing options, some of which may be less carbon intense: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213000492 (See the critique at /S03006373).
Another US nuke goes The Vermont
Yankee nuclear plant shut down
earlier this year. It’s the fourth old US nuclear plant to close in two years, following San
Onofre in California, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, and Crystal River in Florida. 42
years old, it needed upgrades to keep it going, but the owners said ‘when we looked at the cost of those improvements
with what we projected as the cost of energy, the decision was that it would be
better to shut the plant down’. Many other US nuclear plants are old,
and progress on new ones is slow. Moody’s Investors Service says 10 old nuclear plants can’t compete
in current markets. Exelon said it will need to charge about 83% more than
wholesale prices to earn a profit at its Ginna New York plant and 5 of its
others plants are at risk. Nuclear is in effect phasing itself out in the US. Will markets be fixed to slow this? www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Market-reforms-needed-to-prevent-US-closures-0801157.html
Elsewhere Old Soviet
era plants are not doing any better.
In the Ukraine, there were two sudden plant shut downs at the end of last year
at the huge 6-plant Zaporozhye complex near the Crimean border: http://rt.com/news/218199-ukraine-nuclear-reactor-shut/ There are plans for new plants in Russia
but that’s going slowly. France still leads globally, with nuclear supplying ~74% of it
electricity, and though that’s to be cut back to 50%, and though the industry
is in financial crisis, there has amazingly been talk of building new plants. Energy Minister Segolene Royal told L’Usine Nouvelle magazine, there was a need to ‘programme the construction of a new generation of
reactors, which will replace old plants when these cannot be renovated
anymore’. Even more amazingly, Japan is
talking of trying to restart enough old reactors to supply 20% of electricity
by 2030, nearly the same as for renewables. But no new plants are likely, and
even if reached, it’s a fall from the pre-Fukushima 29%.
Ditch climate arguments
- to save nukes!
Steve Kidd, once a senior nuclear lobbyist for the World Nuclear Association, has left the WNA and outlined a new policy. His proposed revised strategy is to dump climate arguments (since they was uncertain and also, in practice, just strengthened the case for renewables rather than nuclear) and sell nuclear ‘on grounds of cheapness, reliability and security of supply’. With the costs of new plant construction rising and the reliability and economic viability of many old plants in question, we wish him luck with that! He also had little time for the handful of ex-green ‘turncoats’ who now backed nuclear: not reliable allies. http://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionis-climate-change-the-worst-argument-for-nuclear-4493537/
- to save nukes!
Steve Kidd, once a senior nuclear lobbyist for the World Nuclear Association, has left the WNA and outlined a new policy. His proposed revised strategy is to dump climate arguments (since they was uncertain and also, in practice, just strengthened the case for renewables rather than nuclear) and sell nuclear ‘on grounds of cheapness, reliability and security of supply’. With the costs of new plant construction rising and the reliability and economic viability of many old plants in question, we wish him luck with that! He also had little time for the handful of ex-green ‘turncoats’ who now backed nuclear: not reliable allies. http://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionis-climate-change-the-worst-argument-for-nuclear-4493537/
A big change for the good
– ‘Green energy futures’
Out soon Dave Elliott’s latest Pivot
e-book from Palgrave