Renew Extra Weekly

Drax, a major UK biomass energy company, wants to develop biomass plants with carbon capture and storge (BECCS) on a large scale, but a new report depicts Drax as being caught up a ‘swirl of controversy and increased polarisation’, including starkly diverging views between many of the scientists involved in the biomass area. That certainly seem to be the case, with some NGOs also being bitterly opposed to Drax’s current large scale operations. The report notes that ‘some NGOs now believe that there is no role for unabated bioenergy (i.e. burning biomass without CCS, as currently happens at Drax), and only a very limited role for BECCS at scale. Others acknowledge that there may indeed be a role, but only if certain conditions as to ‘BECCS Done Well’ are strictly complied with’. To explore that possibility, Drax commissioned Forum for the Future to carry out an independent Inquiry into what those conditions for ' BECCS Done Well'  might look like, primarily with a focus on Drax...

The battle over whether nuclear power should be retained in UK energy plans continues, with press reports that the go ahead given by Boris Johnson for the proposed  Sizewell C European Pressurised-water Reactor might be reconsidered given its costs.  However, lobby support for nuclear remain quite strong (there was even a pro-nuclear editorial in the Observer ) and the standard view, that we needed more nuclear, was given a full airing by Baroness Byrony Worthington in Prospect magazine.   She was once an opponent of nuclear, but now says that its problems have been overstated, and that it has a great future, there being many still not fully developed options. For example, she points to high temperature and fast reactors, and the use of thorium and molten salt fuels.  She even managed to be positive on waste: ‘The higher the radioactivity, the quicker it decays to a safe state’. And also on costs: ‘Nuclear power provides power throughout the year and this makes...

Technological innovation can be chaotic and even disastrous at times, as with early attempts at flight .  In the renewable energy field there have been failures, including with some early wave energy systems.  But in general, we have learnt from them, and, for the leading technologies, wind and solar, we have now moved on to steady progress. Some new wind ideas have emerged, most obviously floating offshore systems, but the basic horizontal propellor-type technology dominates so far, with the units getting larger and taller . Nevertheless,  Darius ‘eggbeater’ type vertical axis systems are being looked at again. So too are double-unit vertical axis contra-rotating systems. However, although very varied in design, micro wind designs have generally not been favoured of late, given their lower efficiency, but some novel small wind ideas have still emerged and may yet have niche markets.   Some new PV cell materials are emerging, beyond just crystalline and thin ...