Renew Extra Weekly

There has of late been a lot of promotion of the idea of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) of a few tens or hundreds of megawatts, which it is claimed will be cheaper than conventional gigawatt scaled plants since they can benefit from economies of mass production in factories. Much has been promised for SMRs, including the delivery of power at £40-60/MWh , but there is still some way to go before any project actually goes ahead and we can see if the promises hold up in practice.    In the past, the nuclear industry had tried to improve the economics of nuclear plants by going for larger plants, without too much success: the on-site construction costs have escalated. However, it is not clear if small plants will have any more success. Scaling down does not necessarily reduce complexity, and, given the need to ensure safety, it is that which may drive costs most. Nevertheless, developers are trying their luck, with many proposals for devices emerging around the world.  In fac...

A report by the Tyndall centre says that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology cannot meet the urgent need to reduce climate emissions - it is not a viable option for the rapid emissions cuts required in energy over the crucial years to 2030. It notes that there are no operational CCS plants in the UK today and significant deployment is not expected until at least the next decade. The report, commissioned by Friends of the Earth Scotland and Global Witness, notes that globally, there are just 26 CCS plants in operation, with 81% of carbon captured globally to date being used to extract more oil via the process of Enhanced Oil Recovery(EOR).  So that is adding to emissions. Overall it says the technology has in any case consistently failed to deliver on projections, with several schemes initiated and ultimately abandoned: the two £1bn CCS competitions run by successive UK Governments over a period of 8 years failed to produce a demonstration scheme.  In the UK Governments...

The European Commission has approved €2.9 billion (£2.5bn) of public investment in a research project for batteries. The so-called European Battery Innovation project will cover the whole batteries’ ecosystem from the extraction of raw materials, design and manufacturing of battery cells and packs and the recycling and disposal in a circular economy.  It is clear that batteries are going to be in increasing demand, for power system backup and also vehicle use, so it is good to see that the environmental and resource implications are being looked at. But they can be severe and may constrain the extent to which electric vehicle use can expand.  For example, in terms of resources, it has been claimed that to replace all UK-based vehicles with electric vehicles (LGVs & HGVs excluded), even using the most resource-frugal batteries, ‘would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate, at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,50...

The wind power story gets better and better, with more and more capacity being installed around the world, costs continuing to fall and larger more efficient and powerful turbines being developed. GE claims that a single spin of its giant 13 MW Haliade-X turbine could power a typical home for two days. And a new wind analysis raises power density estimates- there’s more power available from wind turbines than we thought for both on shore and offshore machines.  On shore wind has its attractions (it’s nearer loads and easier to install), and there is now over 620 GW of on-shore capacity in use globally, but offshore wind-speeds are usually higher and more consistent, so that capacity factors can reach 50% or more. With visual intrusion issues avoided, going offshore also means that larger turbines are possible, with 13- 14MW units soon and then maybe moving up to vast 20MW units.  Offshore is clearly where the big wind resource is, and it is being exploited rapidly, with over...

There is a lot of energy in the seas, as we remember each Winter when storms do major damage. We are learning how to harvest some of it. Wave and tidal power are often grouped together, although they are based on very different energy sources. Waves are created by the motion of winds over the seas, so waves are really stored wind energy, whereas tides are due to the gravitational pull of the moon and the lesser pull of the more remote sun on the sea.  Wave and tidal power have both been seen as promising sources of renewable energy , but so far progress has been limited, especially in the case of wave energy. It has proved hard to extract power form the sometimes very chaotic interface between air and water.  There have been some spectacular prototype wave system failures during storms and the technology is still struggling to get to scale around the world.   However, there is still much enthusiasm and hope for the future, as well as some success, especially with sm...

Carbon dioxide removal systems, taking carbon dioxide gas out of the atmosphere, are touted as techno-fixes for global warming, but in practice they can sometimes put more green house gases into the air net than they take out, a recent study claims.  Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is perhaps the most familiar of the carbon removal options. With CCS, the CO2 produced by coal- or gas-fired power stations is collected and then stored, although, so far, most of the few systems that have been built simply use it for enhanced oil recovery (EOR)- squeezing more oil out of near empty oil wells. In that case, when the oil is burnt, you get more CO2 back again. Some Direct Air Capture (DAC) systems have been built with a storage option, but the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is much lower than that in power station exhausts, and DAC use a lot of energy to extract CO2 from it: so we are no further forward if this is fossil energy, and not much further forward if this is renewable energ...

Heat pumps run like refrigerators in reverse. Instead of pumping heat out of sealed box, they pump heat from outside a building into it. And crucially they use electricity to do this very efficiently, much more so that just by using the electricity direct for heating.   The UK government is keen for all home owners to move over to using heat pumps. However, only 0.8% of UK homes have a heat pump at present. Last year just 30,000 heat pumps were installed in Britain. In contrast, according to Andrew Warren from the British Energy Efficiency Federation, around 1.6 million new condensing gas boilers were put in. We are going the wrong way. According to the Committee on Climate Change, 19 million heat pumps will need to be installed by 2050 to reach net zero emissions, and hybrid heat pumps (with gas boiler back up) will need to be widely used by 2035. But the UK Energy Research Centre recently suggested that, on its current trajectory, it will take the UK 700 years to transition ...