Bishop Hill Green costs you more
Dec 28, 2011 Energy: costs Energy: gas The Guardian is highlighting DECC's energy costs calculator, a system developed by its chief scientific adviser, Prof David Mackay. The outlook, it appears is bleak.
Every person in Britain will need to pay about £5,000 a year between now and 2050 on rebuilding and using the nation's entire energy system, according to government figures. But the cost of developing clean and sustainable electricity, heating and transport will be very similar to replacing today's ageing and polluting power stations, the analysis finds.
The calculator itself is here. I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly, but it looks to me as if you have to have carbon capture and storage if you want to have gas-fired energy generation. If that's correct then I think it's fair to say that the calculator is a waste of time.
Bishop Hill
The No Hot Air site, which I believe is much better informed on these matters than I, has more on MacKay's handling of the shale gas question.
(H/T J Heath in the comments)
Reader Comments (249)
CCS is a non-starter. It simply isn't economic and only delays the CO2 reaching the atmosphere. However, certain Big Oil companies love the idea because it:
1) increases hydrocarbon usage (greater profit) - energy to extract & means of growing demand without AGW problem & transportation to CCS site & injection
2) provides technology licensing revenue (new profit)
3) indefinite downhole and surface monitoring revenue (new profit)
4) potential unlimited scrubbing of atmosphere (new profit)
5) in some cases CO2 could be used to flush hydrocarbons to increase recovery as it is stored (new profit)
It's interesting that the model seems to require CCS, an unproven technology, but doesn't let you choose say Thorium reactors.
BH
Agreed re CCS. Anything predicated on CCS is hand-waving in engineering terms.
Anything predicated on renewables displacing coal for baseload is similarly implausible and will fail both as a generation technology and a pathway to decarbonisation.
Nuclear is the only technology which might plausibly achieve the stated aim of decarbonisation and the unstated but absolute requirement of meeting the projected increase in baseload demand.
Don Pablo de la Sierra Dec 28, 2011 at 7:43 PM
Hey! That was my idea!
Not that long ago I asked on BH why, if CO2 traps heat like a flypaper traps bluebottles, we bother with useless argon in double glazing.
You've got to love the whole concept of this 'officially' sanctioned "calculator."
Yes. As it turns out 2 + 2 = 5 after all!
Now that they have something for numbers they just need something to 'calculate' the 'correct' thoughts to go with them. Skeptics could quickly and simply find out just exactly how wrong they are.
I'm not against thorium at all. But I don't understand the excitement. It is abundant, but it's not as if Uranium is in short supply. The other putative benefits relate to weapons-proliferation, minimal waste, and the possibility of sub-critical reactors. But I don't see the point of pandering to scare-mongers about nuclear any more than climate change... And you can get most of those benefits out of uranium if they're that important, too. I'm more excited by fusion-fission hybrid reactors than by just another element.
Martin A
SHHHH! I'll cut you in for 10%!
For all those brilliant post-modern physicists with degrees in 'Natural Philosophy', Dr. Phillip Bratby got his Ph.D in real physics from the Sheffield University. His undergraduate degree is a first class honours degree in physics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology (London University).
You all appear extremely foolish in your attempts to denigrate him.
Thorium is a 'goer'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
Meanwhile, CCS depends more on lucky geology than on engineering.
@Ben Pile
I have a slight disagreement with your figures, but I think we're in the right ball-park:
The capacity factor of a modern nuclear power station should be at least 90%, hence you have over-estimated the number and costs of the power stations needed. £10,000 per person, i.e. 2 years.
I think that you have under-estimated the cost of the fuel by a large amount. But the cost of the fuel is part of the price of using the energy, i.e. not a capital cost, just the usual energy bill.
I agree that my record is far better than Huhne's and I will accept the role of Secretary of State for Energy. (I will definitely scrap The Climate Change part of the DECC and will give it to the newly set up National Museum of White Elephants, together with wind turbines and solar panels). Funny that you should mention the job, as before the last election I suggested to a friend that I would do that job if he became PM.
If it hadn't been for post-war politics and the defence industry, the chances are that in a competitive market, thorium would have won out over uranium as the fissile fuel. Cheaper, cleaner, safer, not bomb material.
Don Pablo de la Sierra Dec 28, 2011 at 9:51 PM
And he spent half a lifetime doing thermal transfer calculations in nuclear reactors or whatever.
So what? What does he know about anything?
Now if he had a certificate for a social science degree saying 'Natural Philosophy' on it, then we could state to take him seriously.
@ Philip -- none of the figures are mine; they're all from the Pathways Calculator. I just did my own sums from their estimates. The costs of nuclear are all on sheet II.a of the Excel book offered at the DECC link. I was suspicious of the ungenerous 60% load factor for nuclear too.
Looking back, I missed the costs for enrichment and disposal, however at £2m per Twh.
Dec 28, 2011 at 9:38 PM | mydogsgotnonose
"it's over and you have lost"
Unfortunately, what you so aptly call this new Lysenkoism, like the old Lysenkoism, will not go away as rapidly as we might hope. Because it is Lysenkoism, with very powerful political backing, huge vested interests, plenty of well established manufactured consent, ongoing relentless propaganda, and no end of useful idiots.
With luck economic realities will sink the AGW agenda, and that is already causing many people who once just accepted the story to begin to question it now. The lack or warming is a bit of a problem but since they have already shifted to 'climate change,' climate disruption,' and 'extreme weather,' reality is now almost beside the point.
Why do people insist on using Excel workbooks for this sort of thing? You just end up with an unmanagable set of sheets where it is difficult if not impossible to make major changes (like adding Thorium). All those Functions in cells, I won't sleep tonight thinking about it.
PS another job for Harry Readme I think!
. . . if he had a certificate for a social science degree saying 'Natural Philosophy' on it
Some of you are showing your ignorance I am afraid. Natural Philosophy is the name traditionally used in Scottish Universities for Physics. The one year physics course I did was the same as anyone else's, but because it counted as part of an Arts degree it was put down as Natural Philosophy.
I am surprised that anyone posting on an (allegedly) scientific Scottish blog should not know that.
Thank you E. Getty. But I am a scientist who as worked in renewables and areas like CCS for 40 years' post PhD, and I am VERY annoyed at the corruption of science by the carbon traders using the soft establishment Marxists as a front. I'll also add that one of the Mafia which owns one of the windmill companies destroyed my company as part of the fascist politics.it's a grudge match.
As you say, economic realities count: that means educating our establishment about the fake IPCC science. There are many other ramifications. If you look today at the DT, you'll find an article by Hannan stating that unless Clegg publicly declares he will not go for the EU Commissioner job, he is effectively a traitor.
This is a very big game: the EU state is supposed to be funded by raping our population by windmills and carbon trading with the insiders getting rich.
Philip Bratby
The historical context is a massive problem. It continues to distort public perceptions of nuclear energy. Agreed.
But.. uranium doesn't become 'bomb material' in the standard fuel cycle and thorium isn't fissile.
Scots Renewables
"I am surprised that anyone posting on an (allegedly) scientific Scottish blog should not know that."
Well, there you go. There I was thinking that this blog was on the World Wide Web discussing global issues. We live and learn every day.
mydogsgotnonose
I hear you, and share your 'annoyance' - to put it mildly. But I am sad to report that I have concluded that this kind of massive agenda using bogus 'science' as leverage will not be defeated by logical argument or valid scientific arguments. Too many historical precedents suggest otherwise.
That said, valid scientific arguments will certainly help erode the support for this, at least among those who are not vested in this 'cause' or totally duped. And I must say that your summary of the state of the science, which you have posted several times here, is a powerful one that I hope is broadcast as widely as possible.
Yet, as you note, that information has been known for some time now yet carefully ignored. Now that the gravy train is seizing up I would guess that information like that will be taken more seriously by the decision makers.
But it is a massive case of Lysenkoism, which has been cultivated for decades, and I suspect that it will take much longer than we might hope to see the end of it. The puppet masters want more power and money, no matter what that will take. And they are professional liars.
So good luck with your efforts. Hope I don't too sound depressing. I am actually more hopeful now than I have been for years. But I think there is still a very long battle ahead.
Scots Renewables
Defend your title, sir ;-)
Let's talk about intermittence and slew, and the absolute requirement for very fast ramp-up compensation. OCGT or pumped hydro? If the former, what about emissions - this is spinning reserve. If the latter, where, when and at what (currently un-accounted) cost? And it's lossy, too. Never forget that.
I imagine that we all know that natural philosphy is the traditional name for physics.
Is it fair to assume that A-level maths was a pre-requisite for your physics option?
E. Getty: you don't know that through the past 20 years, I have developed a particular reputation for detecting political bullshit, at tremendous personal hurt.
The WASP Establishment [of which I am not a member] is fully aware of the dangers and as they have centuries of experience of combating crime.
Expect a series of measures to remove from the criminals their expected proceeds.
mydosgotnonose
I hope so!
If the growing number of "solar jockeys" are correct in their projections for the next few decades we are about witness problems far beyond the comprehension of our spin based political so called "leaders" who appear to have developed a collective global rebuttal of their responsibility to carry out any due diligence.
Now we watch, we have collectively, globally, backed two horses in a three horse race. If the solar jockeys are wrong and we warm or stay status we have a result, but if they are right and we find ourselves short of food and energy then...
You've gotta ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?"
mydogsgotnonose
The thing is: how do we account for the cooling from 50Ma - present? The Cenozoic cooling is apparently inexplicable except in terms of a reduced atmospheric forcing. Solar evolution, solar variability and Earth orbital dynamics individually or collectively do no provide energetically sufficient alternatives. CO2 is an obvious and energetically sufficient atmospheric forcing. It cannot easily be dismissed at this stage.
------
Hansen & Sato (2011) Paleoclimate implications for Human-Made Climate Change:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968.pdf
Tripati et al. (2009) Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years:
http://atripati.bol.ucla.edu/23.pdf
Thinking back fondly to secondary school (and the delectable Mrs Robertson, see post passim) the physics textbooks were called Nat Phil 'O' and Nat Phil '5': there were no 'A' levels in Scotland unless you went out of your way to get one.
Which added to the hilarity when attending undergraduate physics classes at the age of 17, having not bothered with a sixth year at school. :-(
mydogsgotnonose: I'm not being at all disingenuous.
I have a post-graduate education in Chemistry with some decent Physics on the way. I understand the physical concepts involved and am heartily sick of people saying the CO2 warming is "impossible" based on the Laws of Thermodynamics.
The Laws of Thermodynamics say nothing about the rate of energy transfer in a complex system. If a hot body is insulated then it will cool slower than if it is not. CO2 back-scatter prevents heat escaping the earth as quickly as it might. because some otherwise escaping radiation is not allowed to escape. It insulates. (Yes, I know that does not technically mean CO2 is "warming", but that's how we all talk. We talk about a blanket "warming" a bed without having to get all technical about it only slowing the cooling.)
Putting your fingers in your ears and going "you can't get heat going from cold to hot" on and on like a stuck record is silly. No-one says it does. Get over it. There is a Dunning-Kruger effect, and you appear to be suffering from it. Do you really think all the world's Nobel prize winning physicists can get this wrong? Really?
Note: I don't think CO2 does actually warm the world to any large degree, because I think CO2 is both a thin and a leaky blanket, but that's separate from your argument.
BBD: I do not claim to be an expert, only a reasonable competent scientist,
The cooling is cloud area and cloud albedo driven via phytoplankton biofeedback.
Joining the conversation late (due to partying and panto-ing commitments), I have to agree with PB questioning about how CO2 can absorb so much heat. I have asked this question on other sites, to be told: "Well, it does!" I love that sort of information, especially as I usually have to get it through a barrage of insults and condecension, often in the same answer.
NASA tells us that, without an atmosphere, the Earth's surface would be 0F (-18C); because of the greenhouse effect of the gasses of the atmosphere, the temperature is a more comfortable C.15C. That seems reasonable to me; what isn't obvious is how a concentration of 0.03% of a gas can have the effect it is reported to have. So, what if there was NO CO2? A common answer is: "The temperature would be 0F (-18C)." Now, we are getting into the realms of the ridiculous, especially as there are other acknowledged "greenhouse" gasses; obviously, many are of the opinion that there is really only one GHG.
The more I explore, the more I learn, the more I accept that the Earth's atmosphere might be warming, and that this warming is just part of a cycle that the Earth goes through over the millenia. However, the stronger becomes my opinion that the whole climate change farrago is total and utter tosh, hijacked by politicians wanting to gain yet more control over us, big business eager to milk us in more devious ways, and academics hungry for cash and kudos.
@RR
It does seem a tall order unless you accept the circular argument that CO2 causes warming (undefined) and therefore more CO2 causes more warming (undefined).
mydogsgotnonose
On what evidence?
woodentop
Niet Comrade, all you need is:-
politicians wanting to gain yet more control over us, big business eager to milk us in more devious ways, and academics hungry for cash and kudos.
h/t RR
BBD,
You appear to want to discuss wind turbines. I thought this discussion was (ostensibly) about the DECC's energy costs calculator. Happy to discuss these issues with you ad infinitum - but in a more appropriate place.
BBD & Scots Renewables
May I respectfully that if you “want to discuss wind turbines” that this maybe the idea vessel:-
The Evert Marijtje
http://www.evertoffshore.co.uk/
Scots Renewables
Such a shame. I was looking forward to a nuts-and-bolts chat about the role of renewables as a baseload capacity provider in coming decades.
This isn't off topic at all. Supply/demand modulates cost.
The only renewable currently under development that can provide real 24/7 baseload capacity is tidal - but it has a long way to go before it is producing significant amounts of power.
I do not see the fact that standalone wind and solar cannot provide base load is a reason for condemning them out of hand. Storage and smart grids are both areas of massive R&D at the moment. I also accept that the current grid is incapable of handling the quantity of renewables planned and that there is a certain amount of cart before horse.
One thing I am not prepared to discuss with the sceptic lobby is the flat cost of renewables, as you are not prepared to factor in the costs associated with the failure to decarbonise our economy. If you do not believe that there is a problem then there is no way that we can discuss cost in any meaningful way - and I am sure you are rational enough to be able to see my POV on this.
(I will however happily dispute untruths, such as the current myth that it is renewable subsidies that are responsible for the bulk of the recent increase in gas and electricity bills)
Scots Renewables
I'm not a sceptic. This should be evident from Dec 28, 2011 at 11:41 PM.
The policy requirement is two-fold: decarbonise and meet increased baseload demand. The money is finite. Time is finite. We don't have enough of either to indulge renewables advocacy. Including tidal fantasies. Your maintenance cost estimates per GW?
And you skipped over this:
Let's talk about intermittence and slew, and the absolute requirement for very fast ramp-up compensation. OCGT or pumped hydro? If the former, what about emissions - this is spinning reserve. If the latter, where, when and at what (currently un-accounted) cost? And it's lossy, too. Never forget that.
Why?
Scots Renewables
Okay, I'll bite. Let me get out a wee dram of uisce bheatha (I'm Irish, not Scots) and I'll sip on it thoughtfully as you explain just why the cost of electricity has gone up. I'm sure we all could use a good laugh.
Scots Renewables
Oh, and I would just LOVE to hear how you see we get around the storage problem. Electricity, as you apparently have already learned, does not keep unless it is stored in some other form of energy, be it chemical, thermal, or mechanical. I have spent a number of years selling SCADA systems to the US power utilities and I am very familiar with all the approaches and why nobody wants the storage system in their back yards. Perhaps you will propose to make Loch Ness a pump storage facility. I am sure Nessie may have something to say about that, but she's just a grouchy old plesiosaur --- oops I forgot, she's also an endangered species, isn't she?
Well anyhow, just how are you going to solve the storage problem? Really want to hear that.
Meanwhile, while everyone one is having so much fun with DECC's energy costs calculator and earnestly discussing renewables, China announces the construction of the world's biggest coal fired plant, fueled by megatonnes of delicious Australian coal -
How could this be so? I'm not a huge fan of their political system but maybe there's a clue here.
"Some of you are showing your ignorance I am afraid. Natural Philosophy is the name traditionally used in Scottish Universities for Physics. The one year physics course I did was the same as anyone else's, but because it counted as part of an Arts degree it was put down as Natural Philosophy."
It is likely that we all (including those of us on this side of the pond) have had physics. If you want to speak to ignorance, I don't think the issue is your one-year physics course, or whether it's called Natural Philosophy or anything else. I think the issue is that many here have a teensy bit more academic (read PhD) and practical (read engineering) experience than you do, and maybe you should just take into consideration what they have to say.
Or otherwise demonstrate that your one year in "Natural Philosophy" gives you some transcendent insight that others may have missed.
BBD Dec 28, 2011 at 10:37 PM
I said
You said
I knew I shouldn't have tried to make it simple and not talk about fissionable and fertile materials. Agree, thorium isn't fissile and obviously only some isotopes of uranium are (and plutonium).
I think that uranium became the nuclear fuel of choice because the USA had the enrichment technology and needed enriched uranium for submarines, hence the highly enriched uranium fuelled PWR for compactness and long life. Enriched uranium was a bomb material, but plutonium became the material of choice and didn't need enriched uranium in order to produce it.
To BBD and Radical Rodent: The evidence of incorrect optical physics in the climate models is rain clouds go dark underneath/higher albedo contrary to what is predicted by Sagan's aerosol optical physics. In 2004 NASA claimed this is extra reflection from the higher surface area of small droplets. No professional scientist could ever accept that but it is widely believed in climate science and apparently taught; I think it was deliberate deception to keep imaginary 'cloud albedo effect' cooling in AR4.
To indoctrinate students with incorrect science is unforgivable which is why climate science and environmental science courses need urgent inspection by professional physicists and chemists to weed out incorrect science.
3.5% fall in cloud albedo explains the warming currently attributed to GHGs from the last glacial maximum to the pre pre-industrial period. Post industrial warming is mainly solar, now reversing and recently the melting of Arctic ice, now reversing, which causes the same reduction of cloud albedo as gets us out of the ice ages. N. Atlantic OHC is now falling fast: GHG-AGW cannot explain that although there may be some; I suspect it is controlled to net zero..
We have lived through probably the most outrageous scientific fraud in history and those those who have behaved unprofessionally need to be identified and dealt with appropriately.
To Mooloo: 11 45 pm.
Climate science going back to Fourier assumes that all IR absorbed by GHGs is thermalised. They are wrong. The law of Equipartition of Energy means that you cannot have extra occupation of the IR density of states without temperature increase [~5% of CO2 molecules are thermally excited to that energy at room temperature]. If another molecule emits an identical photon before there is a collision and energy transfer from the newly excited molecule, all that has happened is that there has been an increased optical path length.
What you have done is to claim D-K to pass on to me your scientific ignorance. Climate science is full of partly educated people who wallow in mutual ignorance and have set out to insult any scientist who questions it. Read up sufficient statistical thermodynamics that you are educated, In 1993, Will Happer, one of the few present scientists who does know the stuff I was taught 45 years' ago, refused to prostitute his science for Gore.
The IR physics is now being researched. Because CO2 IR bands are saturated near to the Earth's surface, there may be at present slightly negative net incremental CO2 climate sensitivity. It's the phenomenon of self-absorption.
[snip - DNFTT}
Probably the biggest mistake was Nurse in last February's 'Horizon' programme claiming that man-made CO2 emissions are 23,300% higher than reality, 5 times this if you accept Murray Salby's work. And then we had Steve Jones, another biologist so equally as easily conned about the physics, writing that the BBC should censor people who point out the the climate science emperor has no clothes.
Mooloo
"CO2 back-scatter prevents heat escaping the earth as quickly as it might. because some otherwise escaping radiation is not allowed to escape."
A Level physics in 1966 covered this thus;
Greenhouse gasses are semi-transparent to IR. Incoming IR is partially absorbed before re-radiating in all directions including outwards from the planet. Outgoing IR is partially absorbed before re-radiating in all directions including inwards to the planet. The effect is to increase the residency time of IR energy that does enter the planet-atmosphere system.
The question is therefore whether the net effect is positive, neutral or negative? The second question being: is the response linear at all concentrations? And the third (the money) question: why do observations show an inordinate response to small changes in concentration?
BTW, if the blanket analogy is to be used (thin and leaky or not) then you would have to imagine yourself starving and suffering from hypothermia, wrapped in one in front of a roaring camp-fire that dies down then re-ignites on a sinusoidal cycle. A bit tortuous (no pun intended) to my thinking.
Let me see, Nicholas Stern takes the worst case scenarios of AR4 and examines the economic consequences of these all occurring. He then produces a report telling us that doing nothing will cost £5000/person/annum if we do nothing. Hence Mackay tells us that if we pay the £5000/person/annum to reduce CO2 levels it's OK because we'd have to pay that anyway if we did nothing.
But what would we have to pay if we planned our energy strategy around the fact that CO2 emissions are having a minimal impact on temperature and availed ourselves of the trillions of tons of shale gas available to us while we perfected nuclear energy production?