Renew Extra Weekly

In an interesting article in the Ecologist, Gareth Dale argues that the rising cost of plundering nature presents major problems for the continued expansion of capitalism. For example, he says the ‘energy return on energy invested’ (EROI) for fossil-fuel extraction is plummeting: ‘In plain English, ever more energy is consumed in squeezing each drop of oil from the bowels of the earth’. He notes that a recent study has found that, at present, over 15% of the oil extracted was being use to extract more oil and that this will rise as easily accessed reserves deplete.  It’s the same for nuclear – as high grade ore reserves deplete, the energy cost of mining/processing uranium rise, with EROI ratios falling from 15:1 as now, to maybe 5:1 or less over time.  Meantime the EROIs for renewables are mostly higher and improving- e.g. solar was poor in the early days, but is now at around 25:1, wind is around 50:1 on good sites, and may get to 80:1 offshore, hydro is at around 200:1. These EROIs

The UK energy industry is in something of a mess. Small power companies are crashing, the big ones seem locked into ever rising costs. How did it get this way? We need to look back a bit at recent UK history to understand what has happened.  The newly nationalised UK power sector had expanded after the second world war, with large 2GW coal fired plants becoming the industry standard, and new ones being added, year by year, as demand for power from the coal plants seemed to continually rise. But then, in the late 1970’s, it stopped rising, and new plant orders halted. The industry, and the big power construction companies like Parsons and Clarke Chapman in Newcastle, never recovered from the loss of what had seemed to be an automatic 2GW p.a. forward ordering programme.  The market was changing, and new technologies were also emerging- gas fired combined cycle turbines and new nuclear plants. The Thatcher government elected in 1979 was keen on the latter, but in the event was only able

A study by the UK Energy Networks Association (ENA) claims that production and storage of green hydrogen is a key to a sustainable energy future since it enables seasonal variations in renewable energy supply and demand to be balanced out. Moreover, it claims that this would dramatically reduce the need for so much excess generation capacity- by up to 76%.     It says ‘a net-zero energy system that is largely based on wind but includes no green hydrogen storage could be a viable solution for the warmer months from a system resilience perspective, but in colder months the amount of wind capacity required to meet demand and maintain resilience would be extremely high and therefore less efficient. Our analysis indicates that 500-600GW of installed wind capacity would be required to deliver a resilient energy system without green hydrogen storage’.  By contrast ‘Green hydrogen can be produced at times when renewable supply exceeds demand and unlike electricity it can be stored and dischar