Fracking get a move on

Matt Ridley issues a clarion call for the UK to start fracking:

As part of today’s Autumn Statement, George Osborne is expected to approve the building of 30 gas-fired power stations, simplify the regulatory process for fracking and provide tax breaks for shale gas production in Lancashire as early as next year. This is good news for Lancashire, for the British economy, for manufacturing firms and for the global environment. To do anything else would risk economic self-harm.

Amen to that.

Balderdash, dishonesty and woo

There is much excitement this morning about a Cambridge Econometrics report on windfarms. The headline finding is this (according to the Independent):

British economy would be £20bn-a-year better off with focus on wind power, says think tank

There is a parallel article here at Greenpeace's Energy Desk, which is perhaps surprisingly slightly more honest than the Independent. For example we learn from Greenpeace that:

Based on the government's own price assumptions, and the rising cost of carbon, the report found the cost of power from offshore wind would be within 1% of the cost of power from unabated gas power.

Click to read more ...

Crunch time for UK fracking

There was lots of action on the UK shale gas front over the weekend. The Telegraph carried an interview with the head of Cuadrilla who was keen to press ahead, but warned against delay:

We have proven that there is gas and that it will flow. In the three years we have been doing tests, they have drilled 60,000 wells in the US. We don't have infinite patience and our investors don't have infinite patience.

The suggestion that George Osborne is going to offer tax breaks to shale gas developments was also surprising. Given that oil and gas fields pay a supertax on top of corporation tax this probably makes sense.

Commenting favourably on the interview, shale gas expert Nick Grealy revealed that he has had early information about the results of the forthcoming estimates of the UK's shale gas resource.

Total UK resource estimate will be confirmed by DECC scientists, not Cuadrilla posturing. I've seen the logs: MONSTROUS

It's gas

The news this morning is that the government seem to have plunked once and for all for a gas dominated future. The Energy Secretary Ed Davey has said this morning that we are going to need a lot of unabated gas fired generation.

They're not saying that they're abandoning renewables of course, but it seems clear that the shale gas revolution is indeed going be central to the UK's energy future.

A wildly expensive policy of promoting windfarms is going to be increasingly hard to justify.

The madness of dim George

Some spotty teenagers have occupied a gas-fired power station, according to the Guardian.

Around 20 climate change protesters have seriously disrupted operations at one of the UK's new generation of gas-fired power stations at West Burton in Nottinghamshire.

Police have made five arrests but climbing parties from the campaign group No Dash for Gas successfully scaled two 91m (300ft) concrete cooling towers overnight, securing themselves on ledges with supplies for a week.

This foolishness has been welcomed by, among others, George Monbiot.

The problem is that the shortfall in energy supply will be taken up by coal. Which produces more greenhouse emissions than gas.

They're not the sharpest tools in the box these greens, are they?

Chinese whispers

Last week, Dan Byles MP asked energy minister John Hayes about shale gas - his question was very specific and received a reasonable response.

Dan Byles: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what recent estimate he has made of the potential size of domestic UK shale gas reserves; and if he will make a statement. [123150]

Mr Hayes: A British Geological Survey study in 2010 estimated that if UK shales were similar to those in the USA they could yield some 150 billion cubic metres of gas, equivalent to roughly two years of UK demand.

Click to read more ...

A glimmer of common sense

…Owen Patterson, the new Environment Minister, spoke at a fringe event last night, where he showed himself more than capable of rhetoric.

Click to read more ...

Charles Clover's strange gas number

Charles Clover, writing in the Sunday Times (paywalled) seems to have a different understanding of the UK's shale resource to me:

Despite Tory hopes, the most optimistic estimates suggest there will be only enough shale gas — home-fracked or imported — to satisfy 15% of demand in a decade’s time, and we are likely to  need that for industry and to heat our homes, not to generate electricity. The Tory frackers should reflect that it is their own rural Nimbys who are likely to ensure fracking moves more slowly on this crowded island than in the US.

This report from a year or two ago seems to suggest something very different.

He's right about the nimbies though.

Ouch

The defence of windfarms put forward by Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall, which was discussed a couple of days ago, has now had a response from Gordon Hughes. Hughes is less than impressed with the two greens' table manners:

A final note on civility. After my GWPF report on the economics of wind power, Mark Lynas contacted me by email with a substantial number of requests for elucidation and additional data. I replied promptly and at considerable length. He is entitled to take a different view of the evidence and to reach different conclusions about the impact of further investment in wind power on future emissions of CO2. However, it is neither courteous nor constructive in the broader context to create a straw man that is supposed to represent my position when I have provided detailed analysis and arguments that are clearly different. It is an elementary precept of both journalism and academic enquiry to check whether the views presented are accurate. No attempt has been made to carry out such checks in this case.

He seems even less impressed with their analysis of the electricity grid:

[T]he Goodall-Lynas evidence is incomplete. It relies upon data about the plants which are supplying electricity to the grid. It takes no account of the CO2 emissions of plants that are operating as spinning reserve. For simplicity, let us suppose that all spinning reserve is provided by gas combined cycle plants (CCGTs). If changes in wind output are balanced by changes in the level of spinning reserve, then the total amount of gas that is burned – and, thus, CO2 emissions – is completely independent of change in wind output. In terms of the Goodall-Lynas evidence, higher levels of wind generation displace gas generation one-for-one. But, there is absolutely no saving in CO2 emissions because the gas plants carry on running as before but they are just feeding less electricity into the grid. The reason for the error is that their figures take no account of what is happening in the parts of the electricity system that they have ignored.

There's much more in this vein. Read the whole thing - it will cheer you up no end.

Mutant meme

The Confederation of British Industry has long been the smarter-suited twin brother of the Labour party, voicing endless calls for corporate welfare and cushy government contracts in parallel with the socialists' demands for "benefits" and jobs for the boys.

John Cridland, the latest man to head the organisation, is perhaps greener tinged than many of his predecessors and his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference touched on some of these areas. Although much of it involved the usual calls for investment (see "corporate welfare and cushy government contracts" above) he also found time to repeat that rather strange meme about the impact of shale gas in the UK:

New build can't be 100 per cent nuclear and renewables. To close the supply gap in time we will need some gas. Gas can be built relatively quickly and cheaply, and has roughly half the carbon emissions of coal. Even the government's carbon watchdog, the Committee on Climate Change, recognises the need for some new gas to be built between now and 2020.

But we know the new build can't be 100 per cent gas either. Too much gas would bust our carbon budgets. But even if you forgot about carbon momentarily, look at European gas price projections. They all disagree on the number, but they all agree on the direction: up! European shale will help, but not on a US scale.

As I've pointed out before, it is said that European shale will not affect gas prices as they have in the US essentially because of government policy decisions. Whether UK gas prices come down is therefore simply a question of whether Ed Davey actually gives two hoots about poor people in the UK.

Material World on gas and climate models

The  BBC's  Material World programme today looked at the climate models. The show featured Brian Hoskins and Corinne Le Quere. An excerpt of the show is below.

There are some interesting comments from these climate scientists about the credibility of economic models as well as on the impact of slow warming (not much) as opposed to extreme events (much more).

Material World excerpt

Lean over the top

Geoffrey Lean's latest article has an air of panic about it as it becomes increasingly clear that his battle to prevent the shale gas revolution is being lost. Accusing the Conservatives of insanity, he goes on to launch a barrage of disinformation on the new energy source:

But what about shale gas, which has seen prices plummet in the US? I was one of the first British journalists, back in January 2010, to report on its “game-changing” potential, but I must admit it seems to have been overhyped. The US cost crash arose from a glut of wells coming on stream as the economy flatlined: prices are now increasing and are expected to double within three years.

Click to read more ...

Shale momentum

The momentum behind the shale gas revolution is beginning to look almost inexorable. The Institute of Directors has now come out with a report backing the large-scale exploitation of this resource:

A new report from the Institute of Directors (IoD) reveals the huge potential of Britain’s shale gas reserves, calculating the job creation, decarbonisation and economic benefits of exploiting the shale gas on our doorstep.

Britain’s Shale Gas Potential, the latest report in the IoD’s Infrastructure for Business series, explores the extent of UK shale gas, the practical and policy implications of fracking and the lessons that can be learned from the US’s experience opening up their reserves. New polling of IoD members shows that British business leaders support developing a UK shale gas industry.

Is it now only Ed Davey and the environmentalist staff at DECC who stand in the way of wholesale change?

Jo Nova on the fossil fuel "subsidies"

Jo Nova has done an indepth analysis of the "fossil fuels are subsidised" argument, knowingly and misleadingly promoted by environmentalists and their political friends around the world.

Groups like Greenpeace and The Australian Conservation Foundation argue that really, Governments are helping fossil fuel companies far more than green ones. But while governments rewrite national economies to help “green” companies, about half of the help for fossil fuels is simply that the government didn’t take as much off them as it could. The net flow of money is still from Big-Fossil-Energy towards Big-Government. It takes a special kind of grand entitlement to call that a subsidy.

A must-read.

Wind produces more CO2 than gas - the numbers

Ever since Gordon Hughes' report noted that wind power was more likely to produce more carbon dioxide emissions than gas, I have been looking for the figures behind the claim. In the comments, someone has now posted some details that seem to meet the bill. Although these are not Hughes' own numbers -they were submitted in evidence to Parliament by an engineer -  I assume they are similar.

[A]s wind rarely produces more than 25% of its faceplate capacity it needs 75% backup - which due to the necessity of fast response times needs OCGT generation (CCGT can respond quickly but the heat-exchanger systems upon which their increased efficiency relies, cannot - so CCGT behaves like OCGT under these circumstances). CCGT produces 0.4 tonnes of CO2 per MWh, OCGT produces 0.6 tonnes. Thus 0.6 tonnes x 75% = 0.45 tonnes. Conclusion: Wind + OCGT backup produces more 0.05 tonnes of CO2 per MWh than continuous CCGT.

Now, where does the alternative view - the one proclaimed by Grantham Institute man Robert Gross - come from?

Update on Aug 19, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Tim Worstall has picked up on this post. There is an interesting exchange in the comments.