Renew Extra Weekly

Hydrogen is being talked up as a new clean zero carbon fuel. When you burn it you mainly just get water. But although the planet has a lot of it, in the form of sea/river water and fossil hydrocarbons, it’s hard to separate pure hydrogen gas out. The chemical processing of hydrocarbons is expensive and releases carbon dioxide gas, while the electrolysis of water is clean but not a very efficient use of power.  However it has recently become clear that there may be a substantial natural geological hydrogen resource underground which might be extractable easily and cheaply. The most recent discovery is the largest so far.  Gas measurements taken at a bubbling pool almost 1km underground in a chromium-ore mine in Albania found 84% was pure hydrogen. It was estimated that the mine as a whole was releasing about 200 tonnes of hydrogen annually. There had been some explosions there in the past.   The Albanian find may be the largest so far, but, as Hydrogen Insight has re...

The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain’, but things seem to be going a bit amiss with nuclear finance. Basically, not many want to fund new nuclear projects any more, as costs and delays escalate along with political sensitivities.  For example, China’s CGN has halted funding for UK’s part-built Hinkley Point C European Pressurised-water Reactor. CGN may yet restart payments, but, if not, its developer, the French company EDF, will have to fund the completion of the plant alone. Some portrayed CGNs withdrawal from Hinkley as due to China being ‘miffed’ by its exclusion from the Sizewell project. The UK government had earlier taken over CGN’s initial stake in EDF proposed next project, Sizewell C, after concerns about over-reliance on Chinese funding. That would not have gone down well in China. But it was also claimed that CGN was upset by the large Hinkley overrun costs and delays. Well maybe that’s ...

A new report by a retired nuclear expert for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) says there are ‘intrinsic concerns for commercial fusion’, as currently being explored by the large scale ITER device being built in France. It says issues included:                             • excessive cost compared to fission, because of its enormous size and complexity; • low operational availability due to the necessity to frequently replace components damaged by neutron irradiation; • scarcity of tritium fuel, requiring regeneration in operations and probably supplies for start-up from a fleet of fission reactors. The GWPF report ‘Nuclear fusion- should we bother?’ goes on to look in detail at the issues ITER and the mainstream approach face. It is pretty damning. As the author Dr John Carr says in the press release ‘there is a litany of technical difficulties, from degradation of materials due to radiation damage, to...

 The head of the independent government watch dog, the National Audit Office (NAO) has called on the government to rethink how it monitors compliance with its biomass sustainability regime, because it says, at present, the assurances do not provide confidence that the environmental requirements have been met. Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said ‘government has been unable to demonstrate its current assurances are adequate to provide confidence in this regard … Government must review the assurance arrangements for these schemes, including ensuring that it has provided adequate resources to give it assurance over the billions of pounds involved.’ So far energy companies have received around £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood products, mostly imported wood pellets, to make electricity, with biomass in all supplying around 10% of the UK’s power.  However, many environmental groups have opposed this approach arguing that it is not environmentally sustainable. It ...

A new briefing note from POST, the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, looks at green skills, employment and education. It says that Green skills can be defined as ‘the knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a society which reduces the impact of human activity on the environment’. But it notes that several other definitions exist, with some focused on technical skills for jobs that play a major role in reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (e.g., heat pump installation). Other definitions are broader, and include enabling skills and attitudes, such as public engagement and systems thinking. POST says that ‘the lack of a consistent definition can make it challenging to analyse the supply & demand for different skills in the UK workforce,’ but ‘evidence suggests that developing green skills will be achieved mainly by up-skilling the current workforce’, though ‘all components of the education system will play a ro...

The UK government has said it plans to quadruple its nuclear capacity by 2050 to 24GW- see my last post. That is pretty ambitious. Approval will be given for one or two new plants every five years from 2030 to 2044, and backing given to another large-scale plant in addition to Hinkley C & the planned Sizewell C. So that’s a third large multi GW plant- maybe at Wylfa (in North Wales), or Moorside (in Cumbria).  However, although none yet exist, small modular reactors (500MW or less) might be seen as providing a way to top up- there could a lot of them. To make that more credible, UK Planning rules are to be relaxed for small nuclear reactors. As Utility Week reported ‘the government is keen to relax planning rules to allow nuclear power stations to be built on more sites than are currently permitted’ . According to the government’s new Civil Nuclear Roadmap to 2050, it says ‘having more freedom over siting for new nuclear plants is required for the rollout of small and advanc...

 A major Clever energy study led by negawatt has found that Europe, including Norway, Switzerland and the UK, can reach climate neutrality by 2045, based on a demand-first ‘sufficiency’ approach, with renewables supplying all the reduced energy needs by 2050. And all with no nuclear and no CCS. Green Hydrogen plays a key role in decarbonising industry as does materials recycling.  The Clever scenario is obviously interesting, showing the gains that can be achieved by demand side changes and a sufficiency approach, but that should no longer be in doubt, with, for example, the scenarios produced for 149 countries globally by Jacobson at al, showed how energy use can be cut by 54.4%.   If all that looks too optimistic, take a look at the actual progress made so far in Germany. A new report from energy think-tank Agora Energiewende says that German greenhouse gas emissions are now at their lowest point in around 70 years, as Europe's largest economy has managed to reduc...