Tax relief on sustainability

[NT]

The Olduvai Prediction


"Moreover, no renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels"


This is pretty blind. Biggest of all in the short term is nuclear. Nuclear is not about to 'peak,' nor is there any need to stop using it on environmental grounds. Its not renewable, we might only have 1000 years of fuel left to go, but thats not a problem.

Its also 100% practical. We already see countries today using nuke as their main source of generation, so theres nothing uncertain about it, its already done.

Then in the medium term, we can expect nuclear to be eclipsed by renewables. As tech progress continues, the cost of renewable energies falls steadily lower and lower. We will see a point in the not too distant where renewables become cheaper than oil, coal, gas & nuke, and at this point we can float as many solar panels on the sea as needed to supply the electricity people choose to buy, or grow as much oily algae, or whatever the cost barrier breakthrough technology is.

Then on the other side of the coin, there is energy efficiency. Again technology development continues apace, and a given standard of living takes less and less energy as the years go by. For example if we compare todays new products to say the 70s, cars are more efficient, houses are cavity insulated and double glazed, electrical appliances have come a long way in terms of both manufacturing energy and energy consumption. And so on. And theres plenty more progress to be made. And it is being made, piece by piece.


> Prepare to be surprised, or even staggered:
> Die Off and the Olduvai Theory

I'm surprised by how basic its errors are.

The Olduvai theory is not even a theory. It is simply a prediction by someone that doesnt understand the subject. Nor apparently what a theory is.


NT

 

[gsport george]

...Nuclear is not about to 'peak,' nor is there any need to stop using it on environmental grounds....

Its also 100% practical. ...... theres nothing uncertain about it......

.....compare todays new products to say the 70s, cars are more efficient .....

Nuclear is hardly green. Building and running new nuclear power stations uses huge amounts of oil and concrete and the true costs both financial and of energy involved in decommissioning and long term safety are still a huge unknown.
Also if Nuclear was adopted on a significantly larger scale the fuel does become a major issue. The amounts of high grade Uranium in the world are steadily decreasing and the costs and energy required to mine and refine it are going up, as is the price obviously.

Germany has pollution and safety issues with old Uranium mines and if a country like Germany has problems then you can bet countries like Khazakstan will too.

Sweden has undertaken to become free of oil imports by 2015 and WITHOUT building any more Nuclear power plants and continuing to decommission their existing ones. So far they are well on track to succeed.
Whilst they may struggle with this it is a brave move to at least TRY.


Are cars really more fuel efficient than in the 70's? I would be interested to see some evidence of that.

Given that the average car is getting bigger and heavier, carrying less people on average, and spending more time stuck in traffic any slight increase in pure fuel efficiency in terms of kg km / litre is massively overwhelmed in real terms...

George

 

[NT]

Nuclear is the only one of the major power sources that is green. The same old false argument is used against it, that it takes energ and materials to build nukes, to get the fuel, and then to decommission them. The same is true for all power sources, this is not a downside of nuke. For any power source, total power supplied equals power produced minus these power inputs.

The fact that the 'greens' have been so anti nuke does not make them ungreen. They are the only major player not to chuck out a vast amount of greenhouse gases. Other than hydro, which simply is not available in most places, as well as having its own issues.

There is a vast amount of fuel available. We are simply picking the cheapest options today. Spent fuel storage is just one more cost and energy input. Vitrified fuel does not leach, and can be stored underground without it going anywhere, polluting anything or going bang. Nukes are not perfect, but they do look a prime option right now, with much smaller issues than the other major players.


NT

 

[gsport george]

^^^ I think we must agree to disagree...

Since we have never fully decommisioned a nuclear power station it is hard to see how much this will truely "cost".

Personally my measure of "greenness" includes emissions other than CO2 and other "greenhouse" gasses. Nuclear is continually lauded as "safe" yet there hasnt been one year since commercial generation started when there hasnt been at least one "incident" in the world where radioactive matter or radiation was released accidentally.

Pro-Nuclear people will always ring their hands and tell you that 3 mile island and chernobyl and all the leaks from Windscale and Selafield were unfortunate and could never happen again etc... then another one happens.... The risk may be very low, but the stake is ridiculous...

 

[Penners]

if everyone had a thatched roof then 10% (?? complete guess - put your own figure here) of the population would have to be thatchers so as to be able to keep a roof over everyone's head. This 10% of the population would be using resources just like everyone else which would have to be factored into any energy comparison with modern materials.

So, MdB, by your logic, if we all needed thatchers to roof our houses, this would cause a boom in the birth rate to provide all those thatchers?

Sorry... not logical. The roofers exist already - most of them using other materials.

The fact is, we all need roofs. The material those roofers put on top of our houses is largely irrelevant to the number of roofers. However, thatch demands less energy than, say, concrete tiles, because it is a natural un-manufactured material.

 

[MdB]

if everyone had a thatched roof then 10% (?? complete guess - put your own figure here) of the population would have to be thatchers so as to be able to keep a roof over everyone's head. This 10% of the population would be using resources just like everyone else which would have to be factored into any energy comparison with modern materials.

So, MdB, by your logic, if we all needed thatchers to roof our houses, this would cause a boom in the birth rate to provide all those thatchers?

All those additional thatched roofs will require lots of additional thatchers (all using energy themselves) due to the manpower required in building them. So yes, if everyone else is to continue as before we will need additional babies to become thatchers.

Sorry... not logical. The roofers exist already - most of them using other materials.

The number of thatchers that exist at the moment are the right number to thatch the number of thatched roofs we have at the moment (a small percentage). If every house is to have a thatched roof then we will need additional thatchers (and lots of them). This will be more than roofers they will replace.

The fact is, we all need roofs. The material those roofers put on top of our houses is largely irrelevant to the number of roofers.

I'm not a roofer but that can't be right. A thatched roof requires far more manpower than other types of roof. They also need to be replaced at regular intervals. If we changed from modern roofs to thatch, we will need a lot more roofers overall.

However, thatch demands less energy than, say, concrete tiles, because it is a natural un-manufactured material.

I agree that it is likely that thatch requires less energy to produce compared to concrete tiles. However, to put the thatch in place requires far more manpower over the lifetime of the roof and this manpower uses energy also. Overall, concrete tiles will require less energy. I don't like this conclusion but it appears to be correct. This brings us back to the "money == energy" statement. If something costs a lot of money then a lot of energy has gone into producing that something.

 

[biffvernon]

Not all energy is equal. Energy provided when fuels release carbon dioxide is what we need to avoid. Vegetarian thatchers need less fuel than meat eaters as the shorter foodchain is less wasteful. Wind trubines and thatched cottages look prettier than concrete tiles and coal-fired power staions. A thatched coal-fired power station would look very silly. A wind turbine does not need a roof at all.

 

[Nemesis]

They still ain't pretty...

 

[Penners]

A thatched coal-fired power station would look very silly.

I'd like empirical evidence of that! Isn't "silly" simply a subjective reflection of what we're used to?

 

[Penners]

They still ain't pretty...

I disagree - to me they're elegant and beautiful...

...so which of us is correct?




(Silly Penners - the woman is of course!)

 

[wobs]

Carrier bags


Yes, its long been known they're greener than paper bags. Except by the greenies The better ones are the plastic bags that disintegrate, theyre minimal energy input, they dont litter the environment long term, and they can be reused.


NT

Actually Ikea has tried paper bags and abandoned it because the transport issues were probitive. They took up far more space in the lorries to supply the shops than plastic bags.

What the greens push for, and that I do, is reuse bags. Plastic or cloth or .....

 

[MdB]

They still ain't pretty...

I disagree - to me they're elegant and beautiful...

I live within a mile of a wind farm and I think they are great. Far, far better than having a coil / oil / nuclear power station nearby and I don't have a problem with their looks either.

 

[NT]

^^^ I think we must agree to disagree...

Since we have never fully decommisioned a nuclear power station it is hard to see how much this will truely "cost".

Personally my measure of "greenness" includes emissions other than CO2 and other "greenhouse" gasses. Nuclear is continually lauded as "safe" yet there hasnt been one year since commercial generation started when there hasnt been at least one "incident" in the world where radioactive matter or radiation was released accidentally.

Pro-Nuclear people will always ring their hands and tell you that 3 mile island and chernobyl and all the leaks from Windscale and Selafield were unfortunate and could never happen again etc... then another one happens.... The risk may be very low, but the stake is ridiculous...

These things sound to me more emotional than reason based.

Firstly there is nothing in the world that wont go wrong, so of course we'll see incidents, with whatever ebnergy source we choose. None of the major power generation players have a clean record, but nuke is the one thats killed the least, its the safest. (Other than hydro, which isnt an option for us)

We know what the stake is, its another chernobyl. We also know how many died in that incident, and that most of those deaths were inflicted more by odd russian policies than by the reactor itself. We also know that any modern nuke plant with containment (which chernobyl bizarrely lacked) would cause less severe worst case problems that chernobyl. No-one in their right mind will build a Chernobyl type plant today.

We also know the number of deaths is less than has been lost in other power gen technologies. Nuke is only different in that distant past beliefs, now disproven, were that a meltdown could trigger a holocaut like scenario. Today we know it wont and didnt, and we can put nuke on a similar footing to any other power source in that respect. Its time to stop the hysteria now, we do know better.

The idea that one can not work out decomission cost sounds fishy to me. Certainly the cost is higher with nuke, but its just part of the total cost, and its the total cost that counts, not which bit is spent on what.


NT

 

[gsport george]

Nuclear may have caused less "deaths" than "the other major players" but it has also been around for a lot less time.

We have no idea of how many extra cases of Lukemia etc it will cause. You dont have to die to be hurt by Nuclear. I also suspect that Nuclear has the highest third party injury rate of any of the energy sources, it simply isnt provable.

We have also had some horrific "near misses" such as the lorry containing nuclear waste which travelled from Lees to Cumbria without a vital safety plug in place.... Luckily the beam of radiation emitted faced straight down, if it had faced outwards it would undoubtedly have caused a huge number of deaths and injuries.

Most of our current nuclear reactors have mysterious cracks in the cores, we continue to use them because we simply cant repair them. These are all unexpected events that shake both what little faith I have in the industry and the cost estimates.

Nuclear has a had a "playing field" vastly tilted in it's favour, costs of things like insurance (which other energy providers have to allow for) are covered by governments (us) and not included in the cost per kWh...

Meanwhile wave power (for example) has to contend with a ridiculous level of bureaucracy that attempts to undermine the figures for their costs. Scrap iron used for ballast being costed at £4000/ton etc.... and all because the Nuclear lobby has a lot of political clout.

The issue of carbon neutrality is also by no means certain.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/nuclear_energy.php

Nuclear has had EVERY opportunity to prove itself over the last 50 years and has done pretty poorly.

Renewables on the other hand have had virtually zero support.

G.

 

[Nemesis]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Northumberland's unspoilt countryside I feel should remain so, especially where it affects the setting of important listed structures.

 

[wobs]

Given 10p/kWh prices there will be huge improvements in efficiency and a stampeed to develop Solar, Wave, Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels and the storage technology needed to help balance them.

George

None of which will remove the need for nuclear.

Solar, wave, and wind are all intermittent supplies, and as such are designed for a different type of supply. Nuclear, as I'm sure you'll know is designed to provide a baseload supply.

As an intermittent supply, they can only operate in conjunction with other types of generation if you want a constant affordable supply.

The total energy cost of nuclear is about the same as wind. This includes fuel production, and decommissioning. Solar actually comes out higher than wind or nuclear if you use traditional PV panels.

The idea that you can have more than 20% of your electricity from an intermittent supply is a falacy for this country. We know what we need, we have the geography to dispose of the waste (which will remain more radioactive than the uranium that was in the ground originally for about 500years, not 1000s), and we are planning to join with France to share expertise. It is perfectly feasible to run new nuclear plants as commercial sites rather than defence funded experiments which is what they have been in the past, and thereby make them run efficiently and safely.

If we don't go down this route, we'll either have to go down the coal option (a rather deadly option), or gas - and we we've already squandered our gas reserves, so not really a go-er.

Myself and the majority of pro-nuclear people I know do not object to wind turbines, its just they can't deliver the sort of supply we need alone. Nor can wave/tidal or solar, or a combination of all 3.

As for geothermal - its been tried, but not really the large scale opportunity we need in the right places. There is a government report on the technical difficulties behind this BTW.

Biofuel - for electrical generation, a bit tricky find enough land in the UK to grow sufficient quantities. Especially if we go down the biodeisel route for cars.

PS. There's been reports in Canada that intermittent supplies have caused instability in the power network. If we don't learn from that, what do we deserve?

 

[wobs]

Nuclear may have caused less "deaths" than "the other major players" but it has also been around for a lot less time.

We have no idea of how many extra cases of Lukemia etc it will cause. You dont have to die to be hurt by Nuclear. I also suspect that Nuclear has the highest third party injury rate of any of the energy sources, it simply isnt provable.
G.

We now know a great deal about low level radiation, and the lack of any radiation if you live near a nuclear plant other natural background levels ( a friend of mine has seen the stats on this for Sellafield)

If you want risk, how about the amount of uranium released by coal fired power stations. As someone who lives down wind of Drax, that and the particulates from it is a far greater risk than any nuclear power station.

Nuclear power has been around many years. Infact Drax is younger than many nukes. France has done very well from nuclear power and is in a very good postion to capitalise on its expansion in other countries.

Also, here's a little mind experiment for you:
If the government decided to put solar panels on every roof, how many people do you think will die or be seriously injured from roof falls? Compare that to the energy that nuclear could produce, and the amount of injuries it would produce. You'll find solar is rather more dangerous per unit of energy!

 

[gsport george]

You totally missed where I said "and the storage technology needed to help balance them".

Solar works best on a microgeneration basis.

Sure CURRENT solar PV is relatively expensive, but these costs have been steadily falling for 30 years (in a time when the predicted costs of Nuclear have been steadily climbing). And Solar is ideal for use AT the point of use so there are virtually no transmission losses.

Probably 90% of the homes in this country burn some form of fuel to provide heat. The high value heat from these fuel sources could easily be harnessed for micro generation of electricity.

Energy can also be stored, either as kinetic energy in flywheels or used to create hydrogen for these micro generation plants.

Yes solar generation is intermittent, but it is fairly predictable, and broadly matches the load. Wave power is relatively steady and tidal is absolutely predictable.

Geothermal may well have been rubbished by some bull government report, but that doesnt stop it providing the majority of power to Iceland and significant power to places like San Fransisco.

The new batch of Nuclear Powerplants will take at least 5-10 years to come online, by then, Nano Solar will be producing cheaper cleaner electricity and the expensive plants will be a white elephant for our children...

We can do SO much better than this, but no government likes the idea of the death of the energy "industry" to be replaced by individual energy independence....

G.

 

[Penners]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Northumberland's unspoilt countryside I feel should remain so, especially where it affects the setting of important listed structures.

Nem - is that photo that you posted genuine?

It looks strangely (and badly) Photoshopped to me. The masts of the nearest turbines appear to be translucent!

 

[Nemesis]

It's a mock up of what it will look like! Actually - probably worse as they are giant ones.