Renew Extra Weekly

‘The human species should as far as possible retreat from the natural world and live in high density urban settings’, enabled by high technology such as nuclear power, nuclear being well suited since it is a high density energy source. So says Prof Bill Nuttall in the conclusions to the second edition of his book on the supposed  ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ - see my last post . Backing the ‘ ecomodernist ’ agenda, he says ‘Humanity should learn to resist the temptation to live in harmony with nature, but should give all the other species with which we share this planet, space to do their own thing free from the risks of environmental collapse that the last ten generations of human beings have brought to the planet’.  Many greens are batting on a very different wicket- one in which people and their technologies are diffused across the planet, this being enabled by low-impact decentralised renewable energy technologies like PV solar and wind. Some large wild areas would be retain...

Open University Professor Bill Nuttall’s updated version of  his 2005 ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ book makes a case for nuclear power as low carbon and reliable, although, as the promotional blurb says, it accepts that ‘in recent years it has struggled to play a strong role in global plans for electricity generation in the 21st century’.  The new book also accepts that the much-hyped renaissance didn’t in the event happen- with Fukushima blowing it off course.  However, the blurb says that now ‘many of those involved with nuclear power and environmental agencies see controlled expansion of nuclear plants as the most environmentally friendly way of meeting growing energy demands’. This is a book for them. It's certainly optimistic: ‘Various countries are starting to announce plans for new nuclear plants, either to replace those being decommissioned, to provide additional power or to contribute to the decarbonisation of especially challenging industrial activities. In the 2020s m...

In ‘Europe’s Green Experiment: A costly failure in unilateral climate policy’,  Dr John Constable, the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Director of Energy, offers a contrarian view of EU energy and climate policy. It’s almost like a mirror image, inverting many accepted views. For example it claims that renewables are getting more costly and that renewable energy equipment manufacturing ‘has no future in the EU’.  It says that ‘up until 2005 the EU’s energy consumption was on a rising trend, but it has now fallen by over 10% on the 2006 peak, and is now back at levels last seen in the 1990s’. That evidently is a Bad Thing. Worse still, the UK is ‘even more severely affected, with consumption falling by about 30% on its peak in the early 2000s and is now at levels last seen in the 1950s’. It’s Bad since it is claimed that all this is ‘the direct result of the extremely high climate policy costs of adopting thermodynamically inferior renewable generation’. The programme has ce...

As the new annual REN21 global review illustrates, renewables are booming most places, supplying 28% of global electricity, with PV solar especially lifting off fast, including, at last, in Australia and, crucially, Africa, north and south .  In all, there’s over 1TW of PV in place globally. The scale and reach of some of the new projects planned is very dramatic. For example, there is a proposal for a 20GW PV array in north Australia which would  send power to Singapore . Meanwhile, wind also continues to boom, offshore especially, with ever larger, taller devices, as well as floating units . There are some huge projects planned. For example, up to 20GW of offshore wind has been proposed by Denmark for islands off NE Europe , including 10GW linked to an artificial ‘hydrogen island’ in the North Sea, on its part of the Dogger Bank. Denmark also plans two other offshore wind-based energy islands for the North Sea and Baltic Sea with the potential for some hydrogen production...

To reach Net Zero, the UK will need a lot of renewables, with the National Grid Electricity System Operator (NG ESO) looking to wind and solar power, which currently make up 43% of GB energy supply, rising to at least 66% across all of its new scenarios by 2030. But, given the variability of these sources, in its latest Future Energy Scenarios study, it says that  ‘flexibility solutions will be required at greater levels than present today’. It notes that ‘increasingly peak demand will not be the only driver of system stress - it will be driven as much by peaks & troughs of electricity supply as by peak demand’, and ‘electrification of other sectors will increase the scale of electricity flexibility needed’.   So it predicts that  ‘large amounts of flexibility with duration of a few hours will be needed to match supply and demand within day. This includes up to 35 GW of electricity storage with an average discharge duration of less than 4 hours by 2050.’ In addi...

The Rocky Mountain Institute’s Dr Amory Lovins has produced yet another devasting review of nuclear power , this one ostensibly being about the prospects for it in the USA- which he sees as very poor. But it also offers provocative insights into why he thinks nuclear is not going to fly anywhere- whereas renewables can and will.  Indeed he says they are romping ahead, leaving nuclear in decay.   He says that there are  ‘at least six countries in 2019 already generating 100%-renewable power, 12 exceeding Sweden’s [operationally] carbon-free 97.9%, and 20 surpassing France’s 90.5%’ while ‘careful choreography has lately met annual national electricity demand with 97% renewables (79% without hydro) in Scotland in 2020, 79% in Denmark (with 0.06% hydro) in 2019, 66% in Portugal in 2018 (42% without hydro), 52% in Germany (with 3.3% hydro) in 2020, and 46% in Spain in 2016 and 2020 (27/33% without hydro), all according to official national statistics. None of these nation...

In a new article, energy guru Vaclav Smil offers some sobering views on the global energy  and climate Future: ‘even though the supply of new renewables (wind, solar, new biofuels) rose impressively - about fiftyfold  during the first 20 years of the 21st century- the world’s dependence on fossil carbon declined only marginally, from 87% to 85% of the total supply.’ So he says ‘to conclude that we will be able to achieve decarbonization anytime soon, effectively, and on the required scale runs against all past evidence’. The latest edition of BPs annual review of global energy statistics makes for similarly gloomy reading, although the figures are slightly better.  It says that ‘fossil fuels accounted for 82% of primary energy use last year, down from 83% in 2019 & 85% five years ago’ . But with global primary energy use expanding by a giant 5.8% in 2021, it’s still a grim tale, renewable expansion (an annual growth rate of 15%) being the only good story- though, ev...