There is (and has been) considerable talk centred around the ‘Transition’ in energy. This is a multi-faceted subject but the intention appears to be to move completely away from fossil fuels and replace with ‘Renewables’. The rationale for this is the much-touted, (science is settled) claim that the carbon dioxide emitted by our use of fossil fuels is of sufficient concern that it will (via its participation with other Greenhouse Gases), lead to an unacceptable increase in global temperatures. I will return to some of the questionable assumptions about this phenomenon in other posts however, the alternative to fossil fuels (so-called renewables) is not without challenges of its own and I want to discuss these in more detail so that the implications for electricity supply (worldwide but especially in Guernsey) can be understood.
the UK now has the second highest price for industrial electricity in Europe (only Germany in higher) – and remains one of the most expensive places for domestic electricity worldwide (with the possible exception of Sark).
There are essentially 3 downsides to the use of renewables as a reliable alternative to fossil fuels insofar as any electrical grid is concerned. These are:
- Renewables are intermittent
- Renewables are not enegy-dense
- Renewables (at scale) require subsidy
Renewables are intermittent or energy dense
If we exclude hydro, which is not a universally available source of alternative power, we are primarily taking about Wind and Solar (which currently only represent about 3% of worldwide energy today). Clearly, solar cannot provide any power when the sun is not shining – such as at night. Similarly, wind from turbines (windmills), whether on or offshore will have periods of calm (the Germans refer to this as ‘dunkelflaute’) when little or no wind is blowing – or alternatively, when winds reach speeds which could threaten the turbine structures – they have to be shut down for protection. The production of electricity is what is termed ‘evanescent’ – which is to say that as soon as it is produced – it has to be used UNLESS it can be stored to be drawn on later. Now, from a domestic perspective it certainly is possible to store electricity and increasingly commonly – by charging the battery in an electric vehicle – sometimes, by first saving it in a special household battery rather than directly, such as a Tesla Box. However, whilst that is absolutely fine for storing for or directly into your car – it is a whole different challenge to store the sort of energy needed to power a national (or even our) grid.
There is currently, no commercially priced battery system which can provide enough power for a national grid for more than a few minutes. Self-evidently then, you have to incorporate some means of sustaining the ‘baseload’ of the grid to kick in when renewable energy is simply not available. Nuclear could certainly provide an alternative since it is always on, emits negligible CO2 and is both energy dense and cost-effective. This is one of the reasons that France relies heavily on Nuclear power – but that is not common in most other places. So, the only viable, alternative means of maintaining baseload is using fossil fuels. Now, some optimism exists (not something I happen to share), for the incorporation of Hydrogen into a storage solution in the future.
But Hydrogen is not in itself a naturally-occurring energy source (it does in tiny amounts only), so it is a by-product of an additional process, the most common being ‘steam reformation’ in which methane (another Greenhouse Gas), under pressure acts as a catalyst to produce Hydrogen, (and carbon monoxide plus a small amount of CO2). The obvious downside here is that you are using a fossil fuel (methane) to generate the Hydrogen and of course adding a further step in the energy process to obtain the Hydrogen, which begs the question ‘why not just use the methane in the first place’? Furthermore, each time you use an energy source to provide a further energy source, you lose energy density.
But it is rather more complicated altogether. That is because managing and maintaining a steady state electricity supply is massively complex, just a few miliseconds of interruption can cause havoc, sometimes leading to automatic shutdown to protect the generators. With natural gas or maybe oil or diesel, the necessary steady state is predictable. When you start to introduce off/on additional load coming from wind and solar – maintaining that regularity becomes very challenging. Furthermore, you are having to maintain the fossil-fuel based system always on or ‘at the ready’ when (for example) the weather turns cloudy or the wind just drops in the location you have your turbines. That weather pattern is not uncommon which is why you cannot get the same density of energy from wind and solar per unit installed – it is intermittent. It too then begs the question ‘if you have to run the fossil fuel based system all the time just on standby – what is the point of introducing renewables’?
Renewables require subsidy
Well, the necessity (or even the rationale) to drive in a head-long rush to attempt to remove fossil fuels is not the purpose of this post, but if you have read the foregoing, you will see that if you are choosing to some extent at least to duplicate what you already have in your current fossil grid with additional input input from wind and solar – then the unit cost of producing electricity simply has to go up. This is not cheap. In fact, insofar as wind power is concerned (on or offshore), in order to de-risk the massive investment in building a wind farm, Governments offer a ‘contract for difference’ (in the UK this is a form of guaranteed price for 15 years).
Simply put, this is a mechanism in which the price to be paid (a strike price) establishes whether there is a top up coming to the developer based on the current price for electricity or the developer is paying back to the Government, because a higher spot price exists at the time. It is necessary to have this degree of future uncertainty ‘baked in’ for long enough (eg 15 years in the UK), so that the aforementioned upfront costs are recovered sufficiently to make the developer a profit on their investment and it is the UK consumer who picks up the tab. So much so in fact that the UK now has the second highest price for industrial electricity in Europe (only Germany in higher) – and remains one of the most expensive places for domestic electricity worldwide (with the possible exception of Sark).
With the intended target of a Net Zero ‘world’ by 2050, this trajectory of higher electricity under the use of increased renewables shows no sign of delivering cheaper prices. In fact, because wind turbines are likely only good for about 25 years – then you have a constant recycle of build and replace – so costs are inevitably going to remain high. Similarly, solar panels have about a 10 year lifecycle, but both begin to reduce their efficiency (output ability) as they age, which is similar to the battery in an electric car (normally only guaranteed for 8 years or so).
The actual wind and the actual sunlight are of course ‘free’! However, be aware that the rise and rise of AI in data centres are consuming vast quantities of electricity and whilst that might not yet be an issue locally, the cloud software you are enjoying (normally on subscription), will likely be originating from one of these massive, power-hungry data centres. Their increased power usage has to be recovered somewhere…. And finally, in the same vein – the drive to have everything become electric, requires vast investment in upgrading the grids – guess who is going to pay for that?
Add comment