Co-firing and the renewables obligation

Carbon capture and storage is interesting, yes, but the co-firing of biomass is what particularly interests me, what get's me out of bed in the morning.

So when I stumbled across the government's response to the latest consultation regarding banding of the renewables obligation I thought that I would give it a read.

It contains confirmation of what I thought I knew, which is nice.

The Renewables Obligation (RO) requires electrical supply companies to sell to their customers (that's you, me, and our employers) a minimum percentage of "renewable" electricity. Handily the RO tells you how you can do this with a big long list. I won't bore you, but it contains all you'd expect - wind, wave, solar, geothermal and of course co-firing of biomass.

Now originally co-firing of biomass (with either coal or gas) was due to be written out of the renewables obligation from 2016. Madness. This has now changed so that it will be supported, possibly until 2037 (although with so many recent policy changes it may not last all that time).

There was also a cap put on the system - so that co-firing could not be used by a supplier for more than 10% of their obligation - meaning they had to invest in wind and wave for the remaining 90%.
This makes sense, it stabilises the RO.
This cap has been raised to 12.5% of the suppliers obligation - so whilst wind, wave (etc.) can be used to make up 100% of the suppliers obligation (if the suppliers wish it), wind and wave have to make up at least 87.5% of the electrical mix.

This has all now changed.

The government has realised that different technologies cost different amounts of money (offshore wind is more expensive than onshore wind!). From the spring (or whenever parliament enacts the legislation) different technologies will receive different levels of support.
The co-firing of regular biomass (agricultural waste) will be halved in value - so twice as much will have to be burnt for the same level of support.
Burning energy crops in dedicated plants (so not with coal or gas) will be worth twice as much - so half the electricity can be generated in this manner for the same level of support.

This is why so many new dedicated biomass plants have recently been announced.

On the whole this will reduce the support paid to coal fired power stations - or encourage them to burn more and more biomass.

Time will tell.

Tennessee coal sludge spill

I've avoided talking about the Tennessee coal sludge spill for a while - but since nothing else is happening, I should probably give it my attention.

After 40 years of hard work, freezing temperatures and very heavy rain in very short periods, one of the retaining walls in a coal ash slurry pond has gave way, causing a large coal slurry landslide. Two other ponds were not affected, and are apparently receiving the material as it is cleaned up.

1) This is a nationalised company.
2) I don't understand why the material is mixed with water to start with - it needs containing if this happens and may permit any water soluble metals to leech out.
3) We don't do it like that over hear - rather keep it dry so that it can't wash anywhere. I've seen in the past that it's been pumped back down abandoned mine shafts, or piled into abandoned quarry's. A lot is also sold to the construction industry (think breeze blocks and concrete).
4) There is a concern about leeching of metals from the fly ash - I've seen a probe at a power station monitoring the acidity of the ground below the oldest part of a fly-ash tip. I'm not sure of the results but I don't believe it was that bad.

The metals we're worried about are naturally occurring - they occur in the plants themselves. Plants concentrate them from soils into their roots / cells. As coalification takes place the trees are squeezed turning the plants into rocks and forcing out (amongst other things) oxygen and, in the very oldest coals, hydrogen. This concentrating effect can turn what was once around 2% ash (in the wood) to perhaps 15% ash (in the coal). Of course burning off the carbon / tars in the coal leaves the ash behind.
So these metals do occur naturally - and have been collected naturally (up until the coal was burnt).

I do have great sympathy for those people affected, and I'm glad no one was badly hurt. I still don't understand why they would use such a system.

EUETS and the price of electricity

A report on the link between the price of electricity and carbon has just been published.

It concludes what we approximately already know - that the creation of a trading scheme has increased the electricity price, and that electricity companies have been making windfall profits on the back of the scheme.

The report says that there are two ways around this:

Windfall taxes (on the carbon dioxide based windfall profits)

Actioning of the allowances in the first place.

I suspect that actioning will take place in the third phase of the scheme - so there is no call of the windfall taxes (however popular this will be with the trade unions).

I've only skimmed through the report (not read it properly), but there seems also to be another useful nugget of information:
without emission trading combined cycle gas turbine power stations are more expensive than coal
with emissions trading combined cycle gas turbine power stations are cheaper than coal
...based on a 2004 fuel price (and probably carbon price).

That's a little bit like sticking your finger in the air and saying "it will snow next week", but it hints that coal can be economic in a low carbon economy.

The end of cheap gas

Putin yesterday spoke at a meeting of gas producing nations in Russia describing how "the era of cheap energy resources, of cheap gas, is of course coming to an end".

A few thoughts:

The market, not Putin, sets the price. Unless Putin can manipulate the market (for example by forming a price fixing cartel, like Opec), this is just bluster.

The gas market is dominated by the oil market - the price of gas is linked to the price of oil:

The price of oil, whilst dropping, is cronically unstable. This suggests the price of gas is cronically unstable.

The UK weren't invited - not even as observers (like the norweigens). This is probably because we're running out of natural gas, rather than our inability to get on with the russians.

Why am I blogging about this?

Well, as we saw last week the price of electricity is set by the price of gas.
That probably means more expensive electricity.

It also might make gas less profitable - encouraging the use of coal.

Time will tell.

Blackouts

Ed Milliband yesterday refused to rule out a blanket ban on coal power stations.

There's good reasons for this - when assessed against the conditions imposed upon electricity generators by the government.

Probably the largest though is security of supply. Yes - I don't want global warming, and yes - if it happens - it will be hugely expensive.
Can you imagine how expensive it will be if we don't have electricity?

The national grid yesterday warned of regular rolling blackouts. This is no myth - everyone is talking about the energy gap.

Just a quick graphic to show how large the problem is (taken from the RWE factbook (it's easy to find on the web).

The blue shows how much electricity is being generated (read it with the vertical axis on the left) whilst the grey line shows how much is spare (used when plants are offline being serviced, or when peak demand rises above long term projections). That can be read with the vertical axis on the right.
As you can see we'll run out of electricity just in time for the opening ceremony of the 2012 olympic games.

Ofcourse this is with no new build - and remember that renewables can be expected to fill some of this gap - but I believe the timescales involved (when compared against the timescales for windpower grid connections) mean that coal and nuclear (on existing sites with current grid connections) must play a role - right Mr. Miliband?

The "kingsnorth" defence

Sometime ago six members of Greenpeace invaded kingsnorth power station. Apparently they shut it down.
If they did so they not only incurred Eon one hell of a lot of costs, but they probably also increased UK CO2 emissions as other power stations were run beyond their efficient design point to compensate for the loss of Kingsnorth.

Of course they claim to have saved UK emissions.

This was the central plank of their defence at their trial.

They successfully defended themselves based upon the fact that they genuinely believed they were protecting property by their actions.
Of course they were not - most of the emissions from Kingsnorth (which I think only accounts for 0.03% of global emissions anyway) ends up dissolved in the sea / absorbed into plants which has no effect upon property.

The government is now planning on taking away this legal defence - and they badly need to.

We need Kingsnorth if we are to stop global warming (the Eon face off explains why).
The camp for climate change have just set asside the neccersary money to rent a property for 6 months very near the kingsnorth site - they say for direct action (interestingly they apologised to members recently when one of their lawyers described them as a peaceful organisation - they want to make it clear they are not).

If we want to stop climate change we need to keep these people out. The law must be changed.

Climate outcome "depends on coal"

The BBC reported yesterday that our climate outcome depends on not burning coal in power stations without carbon capture and storage.

Well, clearly.

Let's look at some figures.



These are stabalisation scenarios plotted against the carbon remaining in fossil fuels. Which ever way you look at it - there's a problem (data from the IPCC).

The BBC is reporting that there might be only 662G Tonnes of Carbon - well who cares. If you still add up the oil, gas (and a smaller coal) bar we're still way over the stabailisation scenario bars on the right.

It's game over.

So when they say "The group found it was possible [to limit climate change to 2DegC], but only with a prompt moratorium on new coal use that does not capture CO2, and a phase out of existing coal emissions by 2030" I find it hopeful - because there is this get-out-of-jail-free card called "carbon capture and storage".

This is why carbon capture and storage is so desperately important.

Pricing electricity

Since it appears to be a slow news day I thought that I would explain how RWE appear to be pricing new coal stations (and so far they have announced that they intend to replace Tilbury and Blyth).

Again this is taken from their factbook.



The doesn't show the price of electricity the plants produce, but the cost of running that plant to generate electricity.
Renewables are regarded as "must run" - not because they are cheap, but because they have no running cost (so their capital and the cost of maintenance - which has to be done regardless of how much they generate, set the cost of the electricity they generate).
Nuclear is next - the cost of nuclear is primarily set by the cost of capital to build the thing; fuel is required infrequently and is inexpensive compared with the up-front capital cost.
Then we have coal, closed cycle gas turbines (which uses the waste heat from the exit of the gas turbine to raise steam which is then fed through another turbine), oil (which I think is used in a similar way to coal) and open cycle gas turbines (as closed cycle gas turbines, but without the steam plant on the back end).

A few thoughts spring to mind:
1) This is in winter with an expensive gas price. I suspect CCGT will be cheaper than coal in the summer (but coal isn't normally run in the summer anyway).
2) This list is in order of decreasing capital, increasing fuel costs.
3) RWE have said in the past that adding carbon capture and storage to coal will double its generation cost. This figure doesn't include carbon capture and storage, so costs can be expected to increase.
4) The price of gas and the price of carbon have only been guessed at. These are really subjective - we all know that the price of wholesale gas can quadruple overnight.

So there you go - people say that coal is cheaper than gas. Well, maybe - but that depends on the carbon and gas price.
All we can say is that the price of coal with carbon capture and storage is likely to be more stable than the price of gas.

The grid code

I'm not sure if I've yet published a post explaining the grid code - so here goes.

Our grid is alternating current, with a frequency of 50Hz. This is done as it then becomes very easy to step up and down the voltages to transmit it accross the country at high efficiencies.

The easiest way of keeping the grid at 50Hz is to turn over a turbine 50 times a second. Ofcourse the turbine can be powered in many different ways - by wind, water, gas or steam.
The drag on the turbine from the generator must equal the power being applied to the turbine by the wind, water, gas, steam - this ensures that the grid is kept at 50Hz. Tollerances are on the grid of +/- 0.5Hz - to ensure the safety of electrical equipment.

This sounds very easy - but it must be remembered that the drag on the turbine is constantly changing as people switch things on and off. The grid ramps up and down once a day as everyone wakes up.

The power applied to the turbines must also ramp up and down once a day at the same time as the electrical demand.

Of course occasionally someone in eastenders gets shot, or we loose a football match - and a few thousand kettles are switched on. The power required when these grid surges happen can be huge:
These surges also always come very rapidly.

Now, when these surges (or other events happen) the national grid calls for more energy - yes, partly from stored water resevoirs, but in the first instance from fossil.

Coal power stations (along with gas) have to be able to increase their demand by 10% within 10s and hold it for half an hour:


...and that's the rub - as more renewables come onto the grid this instability is going to increase. Renewables and nuclear can't load balance in this way - they just run - it's not possible to get the wind to blow a bit faster just because a football match is on.

This is one of the reasons why we will keep fossil (such as coal) on the grid.

Financing CCS

Carbon capture and storage from coal is expensive - there is no doubt here.

It is, however, probably cheaper than the only alternative (and no - wind / renewables are not alternatives since they cannot comply with the grid code) - gas.

So it's good news that the EU have decided how to financially support carbon capture and storage.

I can imagine a few people saying that "this is a government policy which will support an unpopular technology that wouldn't otherwise happen". They are ofcourse right - but the money is coming from the generators themselves (via the price of carbon).

Hang on a moment. This sounds familiar - where have I heard it before?

Oh yes - wind. That very popular technology (so popular that 5% of planning requests are granted the first time around) that receives money from the generators via the renewables obligation.

Tripartite electricity production

There's more to generating electricity than just wiring a bicycle up to a washing machine.

With the scale required to generate the shear volume of electricity this country needs we (as a nation) need large, expensive, power stations. That means we need good ideas about how to invest the large sums required in the kit to ensure that we get the right stuff.
After all - once it's there no one is going to want to pay to change it for many, many years.

That's why the governments requirements for electricity generation (placed upon the generating companies) are so important. They are:

Ending fuel poverty

Ensuring security of supply

Complying with climate change requirements
......within a competitive market.

That's three requirements superimposed upon the need for a competitive market.

I've just read an article in the Independent about the need for the UK to have a joined up energy policy. Couldn't agree with it more.

Interestingly they came to same conclusion as I did (perhaps I wouldn't have linked to them if they didn't?). We need Kingsnorth - obviously with conditions - but we need it badly.

Carbon capture and cash

Carbon capture and storage has turned into a bit of a thorny issue in Poznan at the moment - it's inclusion within CDM is opposed by Brazil, Jamaica, Venezuela and some pacific islands, whilst it's supported by Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

It looks to me as though the developing nations are fundamentally worried about how much money they will receive.
Firstly of all I believe that they are worried Carbon Capture and Storage will be so effective it will disrupt the carbon market - this means less income for them.
Secondarily they are worried about the technology and the legacy that it leaves - let them "implement CO2 storage in their own territories if they claim it to be so safe?"

Well okay, that's being done.

There is also a concern about the public liability. My understanding is that any inclusion of CCS within the mechanism would see western companies pay cash to the developing nations to implement CCS. After 100 years the reservoir will have to be transferred to the host nation to look after - and their worried about any future leakage - private profit, public legacy.

So I think this is the deal - they see CCS as something which will stop 'aid' payments, rather than something which can save the planet.

Faced with this I ask the obvious question - how the hell do you get them to stop using coal because it emits CO2?

You won't.

The CCS competition

The governments carbon capture and storage competition today took an interesting step with RWE purchasing Peel Energy - one of the three prequalifiers left in the competition (BP has pulled out).

This leaves Eon (Kingsnorth), RWE (Tilbury, but perhaps Blyth) and Iberdrola / Scottish and Southern (Longannet) - three massive, multi-national, companies.

The competition is now going to be fierce.

Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband yesterday gave a speech at the Energy Futures Lab, here at Imperial College.

I didn't manage to press him about Kingsnorth, but he certainly was frank about the problems facing the UK electricity generation sector.
I believe that his over-riding concern is that the lights have to stay on (not guaranteed in this day and age where 1/3 of our power stations are being shut down). He also spent a long time talking about carbon capture and storage - he certainly understands the need and potential for that.

I know it's very dull for me to say that he gave a good speech, and that I think he's doing a good job - but genuinely, I do.

...and I think that he will approve kingsnorth.

Kingsnorth shutdown

On the 28th November someone managed to enter Eon's Kingsnorth power station, and switch off one of it's four turbines.

Not only is that pretty incredible, but it's also pretty crazy.

A few thoughts:
1) The complexity of the operation means that it was an inside job. No question. You don't climb an electric fence without first knowing that it's switched off. You can't find the control panel without first knowing where it is and how to unlock the box which (I'm assuming) contains it.
2) Where does all the steam go? These turbines are operating with steam pouring into them with huge temperatures and pressures. I would guess the only way to shut them down (without turning the boiler off) would be to vent the steam somewhere else - presumably outside. I'm assuming the steam went down a designated run-off to an emergency vent in a restricted area, but if anyone had been near that vent they would have been killed. End of. It's a testament to safety at Kingsnorth that this didn't happen.
3) On the 10-17th November the UK would have only had 1GW of spare electricity before many people would have suffered blackouts (this took out 0.5GW). This shut-down took place on the 28th November, close enough to this date to concern me about how much spare generating plant was available.

The irony is that it is the other coal and gas fired power stations which would have borne the brunt of the blip in the grid caused by this trip - so by tripping Kingsnorth the protester has increased UK CO2 emissions.

Ho hum.

Planning

At the recent Green tariffs vs greenwash lecture at the IMechE (slides and video - real and windows formats are available) Juliet Davenport pointed out some of the more interesting points in the planning system.

5% of windfarms go through on their first application
People who sit on planning committees have to be experts on everything - and just aren't. By example look at the agenda for the Kingsnorth planning application. In the same meeting there is a request for a new power station, a request to build a new housing estate and a request to lengthen a pole by 2.5m.
Seriously - how can the planning system really cope with such a varied demmand on it?

I don't think it is.

Yes, ultimately the government does have the final say on coal fired power stations, but it will be influenced by the local planners.

Is that really what we want?

Power station life extension

I was recently told (and it makes a lot of sense I guess) that more than just one power station will be undergoing life extension work.

It's obvious really, not quite sure why I didn't see it.

The European large combustion plant directive requires either plants to shut down, or fit sulphur capture technology. Some plants are shutting, some are investing millions in fitting the sulphur capture technology.

Why would these plants (which are complying and fitting the technology) close?

It's obvious - they won't. Rather a bit of work will be done to keep them running for the next, well, who knows how long.
As far as I can see this means the following plants will have life extension work completed:

Installation	Installed capacity (MWe)	Number of boilers	Capacity opted in (MW)	Capacity opted out (MW)
Drax	3,960	6	3,960	0
Eggborough	2,000	4	2,000	0
Cottam	2,000	4	2,000	0
Ferrybridge	2,000	4	1,000	1,000
Fiddlers Ferry	2,000	4	2,000	0
Ratcliffe	2,000	4	2,000	0
Rugeley	1,000	2	1,000	0
West Burton	2,000	4	2,000	0
Longannet	2,304	4	2,304	0
Aberthaw	1,500	3	1,500	0
Kilroot	520	2	520	0
Uskmouth	393	3	393	0

This represents 65% of our current installed coal and oil generation capacity - the rest will close.

That's quite a bit then!

Lies and lies and lies

The website "no new coal" is reporting the 30 000 could be made homeless by Kingsnorth.

Pardon?

I'm not sure if these people quite understand how many emissions any new Kingsnorth will be responsible for (they certainly don't realise it will be responsible for 20% less than the current power station).

Let's have a look.

The UK is responsible for around 3.5% of global emissions.
The electricity sector is responsible for around 35% of UK emissions.
Perhaps 30% is generated by coal (over the course of a year, although Coal is mainly used in the winter as the price of gas rises) and 40-45% is generated by gas.
Coal emits CO2 at just over twice the rate that gas does, so it's responsible for just 60% of UK electrical emissions - or 0.8% of global CO2 emissions.

Meanwhile there are, of course, more than one coal fired power station in the UK - currently 20. A new Kingsnorth will be at least 20% more efficient than these current stations. This means a new Kingsnorth, per year, will approximately be responsible for 0.03% of global emissions.

Okay this is a back of the envelope calculation done at 8am, but all the same - 0.03% of global emissions - and remember that China still has a long way to go in expanding it's coal fired fleet.

Update: I've just had another think about this. No new coal is claiming that 30 000 will be turned into refugees by 0.03% of emissions. Well this suggests that 100 million people worldwide are going to loose their homes because of global warming. The worlds population is 6600 million (give or take). This means that one in 66 is going to loose their house from global warming - according to these figures.

I still just don't believe them.

Another thing - I don't believe that penalties should fall equally across all carbon emitters. We need steel and electricity to do anything. Rather those trips to the shops where people drive rather than cycle or walk should be hit the most. Double count those with refugees rather than making a political statement about a commodity that we all need...

...and which generates around 0.03% of global emissions.

Underground coal gasification

Professional Engineering, the magazine from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, has just produced an excellent report on underground coal gasification (they also ran a great one on Carbon Capture and Storage).

Underground coal gasification injects water and oxygen into deep, unmineable, coal seems where the coal is part burnt to form carbon mon-oxide, hydrogen and methane. This mix is pumped to the surface where it is possible to clean up, (I think the carbon monoxide is reacted with more water to produce more hydrogen and carbon dioxide) and separate the gas. The carbon di-oxide goes back underground to safe long-term storage, whilst the hydrogen goes either to be burnt in a turbine, or to fuel the hydrogen economy.

Now you might think that the UK is running out of coal - well sort of. We might be getting towards the end of the easily extractable stuff, where you can get a man to.
Of course you can always drill to these other places - such as under the north sea, and perform underground coal gasification there.
This gives us another 300 years of hydrogen production.

Further this isn't a new technology - it's been around for years (I know that the Soviets spent a lot of time working on it, and that a recent (small) project in South Africa went quite well).

Will it happen? PE has a great quote "Partly to blame is the dirty, unfashionable, image of coal, which as seen energy firms and governments opt for gas and, increasingly, nuclear power stations."

China's electricity consumption

We've all heard about China's electricity consumption.

Here are some figures for you - taken from a recent seminar from the Sparks network.

In 2006 alone China installed 5/4 of the UK entire power generation capacity - most of which (unlike us) were coal fired.

Today china accounts for 40% of world coal use.

Coal will be used to supply between 50 - 90% of Chinese electricity - depending on how much solar is used and whether you believe the IEA (90% in 2030) or the Chinese (50% in 2020).

By 2050 the Chinese economy will be 70% larger than the American Economy.

China has at least 100 - 150 years of coal left. Note that Russia and the USA both have larger reserves.

These were drawn from the following presentations:
Energy and Electricity in China
Carbon capture and storage in China

10 energy "myths"

I think that the author of this guardian article understands what he is talking about - certainly bits of his article make sense!

"Finding a way to roll out CO2 capture is the single most important research challenge the world faces today. The current leader, the Swedish power company Vattenfall, is using an innovative technology that burns the coal in pure oxygen rather than air, producing pure carbon dioxide from its chimneys, rather than expensively separating the CO2 from other exhaust gases. It hopes to be operating huge coal-fired power stations with minimal CO2 emissions by 2020".

(Just remember that here in the UK we're really not that far behind - we've almost started to opporate a similar, larger, rig (see slide 19 - Phase II involves a rig which is larger than Vanttenfall's).

I'm not sure that I agree with him, when he describes how "the most efficient power stations are big" - he's making a sweeping generalisation. Yes, fuel cells are remakably efficient, and yes if embedded into a house you will be able to use the waste heat from them.
What happens if you can't use all the heat though - your efficiency drops.
Equally he doesn't mention the cost of these systems, rather argueing for a blank cheque from government. They are expensive, and they run on an expensive fuel (natural gas).

Equally his proposal for wind & solar power (huge electrical grids) will help and will reduce the problems associated with grid intermittancy. I can only dream up a number (in the hundreds of billions probably - especially for sub-sea power cables) for the cost of the system.
Equally it will mean integrating the UK's market into the european grid - and I'm not sure how easy that will be to do. I'm sure it's possible though (probably also another night-time market for all that cheap french nuclear power!).

Having said that, the more I read the article, the better I like it. It actually looks quite well researched - and my above problem is probably only there because the article has been edited for size.

PANiC Stations

A new day, a new Greenpeace sponsored NIMBY organisation.



I'm loosing count now of many branches Greenpeace either has or sponsors.

The latest offering is at Blyth power station up in Northumberland. I still can't figure out what the protesters want to achieve. If they're successful in their aims of preventing the replacement of Blyth all RWE will do is re-furbish it, carrying on at the current (lower than optimal) efficiency. That means more CO2 - at the request of the protesters.

Barmy.

P.S. Love the name - reminds me of how people choose project names in academia.

The cost of climate change

Apparently (and I didn't realise this) the Stern report used a surprisingly low discount rate (an internal interest rate in investment decisions) which may have made the result seem rather cheap.

Increasing the discount rate (the rate at which you can borrow money) increases the price of the investments - the value of the benefits will remain the same.

It appears that an appendix to the governments Climate Change Bill has re-done this work, and come up with a different answer.

This different answer suggests that the bill will cost anywhere up to £205 000 000 000. Of course this will bring benefits - judged to be £110 000 000 000 (by 2050 I guess).

That's one hell of a lot of cash.

Two obvious questions:
1) How do you put a financial value on the Greenland icecap, blue whales and mountain glaciers. I suspect no price has been given - rather this will only be from a UK perspective, and the UK doesn't have these things.
2) What if the UK is alone in reducing emissions? Whilst unlikely we'd still loose the Greenland ice cap, blue whales and mountain glaciers - oh, and half of our economy as everyone fled abroad where business didn't have to pay for the £205 billion.

This is why I favour carbon capture and storage, because it is a technology which can be pushed abroad (and hey, maybe even sold abroad!!!) making it less likely that the UK will act alone. My full argument on UK global leadership is online.

Efficiency and CCS

Another member of my group at Imperial College, has just sent me her opinion of the refit of a british coal powerstation.

She says "Seems like a pretty sensible decision from an Eon perspective - not least given how much hassle they're getting around Kingsnorth etc?!

On the point about sub-crit plant, there are reasons to worry about them. From a climate change perspective they aren't necessarily a big problem as long as they can be retrofitted with CCS. What matters is the %C from fossil fuels that ends up in the ground, not the efficiency with which you burn the coal. Of course, you can make different arguments if you come with different perspectives.

Ratcliffe-on-soar isn't the easiest site ever but I'm pretty sure that at least some of the units can be retrofitted (based on DTI project 407). People have complained about likely low efficiencies of retrofits making them impossible. They may have a point but the argument is probably overstated for various reasons".

She's right ofcourse - being good engineers we should worry about the efficiency, but in this day and age, we also need to worry about the carbon emitted to atmosphere.

Coal emissions

The hotter you can make steam, the more efficient your power station will run. It's simple thermodynamics - the hotter the steam gets, the more energy it has which can be transferred to your turbines for the same amount of coal burnt.

Unfortunately it's somewhat difficult to find a pipe (to run your steam through) which can accept being put in the flame of the boiler - at around 1400DegC (possibly up to 1700DegC / beyond).

Generally the more nickel you put into your steel (and nickel is expensive) the better things get (although I should say that I'm not a metallurgist).

Comtes 700 is a research project designed to create a power station that can run with a steam cycle at 700DegC - which is plenty hot!
It's operating efficiency would be 50, 55% I believe - approximately equivalent to a combined cycle gas turbine plant.
I believe its gCO2 / KWh emissions will be in the region of 600g / KWh - obviously these can be brought down by adding biomass, but I don't believe that they will be able to be brought below the 500g / KWh mark, although 550g / KWh is possibly feasible.

Adding carbon capture to the plant will obviously decrease it's efficiency, but probably only to around 40%.
Let's remember that adding carbon capture to a combined cycle gas turbine will do something similar to its efficiency.

Shot in the foot

I've just found out that a major energy company has decided not to replace their ageing coal power station - rather their going to extend it's life, for the next 20 years.

The parts have already been ordered, it's guarenteed to happen.

This is bad news. Whilst it's a cheaper alternative (prices for a new coal fired power station start at a little over a billion, whilst this is just over a third of that) it's less efficient.
Todays (20th November 2008) best available technology means CO2 emissions of around 700g/KWh, around 150g/KWh less than the UK fleet average.
The relevant power station could have been replaced with this.

Two obvious villans spring to mind:
1) The cost / credit crunch. The CEO of Eon explained at the weekend just what pressures his company is under - which suggests that this company will also be under these pressures.
2) The 'green' crusaiders. They won't accept this critascicm, but looking at what people have done to Eon where they've tried to replace an old power station [Kingsnorth] with one fitted with best available technology [Kingsnorth], and after seeing the backlash they've encountered for trying to reduce their CO2 emissions, you can't blame this company for not putting their staff through the grief.

This process doesn't need planning permission, section 6 approval or to be in the public eye. It means the power station isn't new, so doesn't need to comply with 500g/KWh emission limits.

It's a work around, and I blame it 50:50, bankers, 'green' groups.

Energy security

What price should be put on energy security? I would most happily put quite a large price!

Others disagree - the trouble is they matter - they're the people who sign off the infrastructure.

The UK does have very little gas storage. It's very expensive - gas has to essentially be contained in old gas fields and is much more expensive than oil (which requires steel tanks) or coal (which requires a big field).

Jim Watson is arguing today in the guardian that we need to increase our gas storage in this country - and I think he's right. Energy security is an issue and needs to be looked at.

I disagree, however, that this would solve the energy security problem. There is more to energy security than just having power - if it's too expensive for me to buy then it's exactly the same to me as not having any.
Diversification can solve this. If the price of gas rises greatly less gas is used in electrical generation, more coal is used. The opposite happens when the price of gas falls.
It keeps my electrical bills down.

The final argument is a limit on electrical generation emissions of 500g/KWh. This is designed simply to ban coal - it serves no other purpose.
I would also ask what the point is in this cap - after all we operate in a fixed carbon market at the moment where a scalable cap already exists.

I don't understand the difference. Why is this not merely an opportunity for people to flex their green credentials?

The US of A

We're used to mocking our brethren across the pond - it's part of the British way of life. I used to do exactly the same thing.
I spent a month in Pittsburgh over this past summer, and started to understand a little of the American way of thinking - and it is very different from our own.

I would have to say that it's been pretty well summed up (at least by my reckoning) in this behind the plug / CNN video.

Essentially Ohio and Pennsylvania are battleground states - meaning that both candidates need to win the same states to win the white house. This means that the candidates will pander to the voters in these states, and that means promising coal.

How is this relevant to us?

Who do you think is going to have a bigger impact in Ohio and Pennsylvania - out of state anti-coal 'green' groups, local residents, the president? Probably the latter two, and they do want to see new coal power stations built; either their jobs depend on it, or it's a promise they have to keep.
We all live in the same atmosphere, so these power stations are going to emit the same CO2 into the atmosphere.

This is why I favour new coal - because with other countries building the stuff a greenhouse gas control strategy that excludes coal can't be sold to the rest of the world.
If we're serious about selling low carbon strategies to the rest of the world we have to stick a carbon capture and storage plant onto a domestic coal fired power station. When other countries see what has been done, and that it can be done, they are far more likely to go for it.

That is why I support Kingsnorth.

Globalisation

We've all heard of globalisation. Ofcourse it also affects energy as well - so when Wulf Bernotat (chief executive of Eon) says that "We operate on a worldwide scale, so it is normal that we want to invest where conditions are right so that we can make a good return... principally you go where you can get the best possible conditions" we should probably sit up and take notice.

He's hinting that, with Eon making a loss on its retail arm in the UK this year, Eon may pull out of the UK in favour of investing elsewhere - after all with the global credit crunch they do only have finite resources.

It's a really good interview, published in the Sunday Times, and well worth a read.

“You have old nuclear plants, old coal, expensive gas, a need to invest in renewables to reach unrealistic targets, and a slow [planning] process. Doesn’t that sound like a problem to you?”..

Yeah, it does.

CO2 in America

Remember the Simpsons Movie - where the EPA put Springfield under a big dome?

Well, they're taking over the world again, but in a much, much better way.

The EPA (or a body internal to it) has decided that it should think about regulating CO2 emissions - possibly only from coal, but possibly across the entire nation.

This is a fantastic thing (almost). The great thing is that it could bring the US in line with the EU, where CO2 emissions are capped and cannot (regardless of what is done) legally exceed the cap.
The bad news is that it will delay the certification process for new coal fired power stations over there for a year or two.

Perversely this bad news could be good news for the UK - if no one in the US can build a new coal power station the prices for a power station in the UK could fall, not only making Kingsnorth more likely, but lowering the cost of our electricity bills.

Life seems to me to always be one step forwards and two steps back, but today, much like the day Obama was elected, life seems to have forgotten about stepping back - at least for the UK.

Eon

Kingsnorth raises passions - that's certain.

Yesterday it was revealed that Eon have pulled out of recruitement fairs nationwide after more protesters than students showed up - at least that's the theory which is bounding about. Green groups are naturally claiming victory (that's what they do best), but personally I think that it's pretty sad.

What they've really done is reduced the choice that students have - really I would be surprised if that many people did go to the stalls, and created the feeling that Eon is under attack.

That's a shame, because they are doing an awful lot of work to reduce the CO2 intensity of the electricity which they provide. Seen the "wind of change" adverts?

Wind power is never going to replace fossil - even with the proposed European super grid which could increase the stability of electric grids as the proportion of wind power within them is increased.

Fossil gives us the option of gas or coal. I've heard that gas is four times the price of coal. Which would you rather purchase?

A final argument: if Eon can't recruit they'll have a stills shortage in all areas, not just coal (they'll internally adjust) and wind will also suffer.
Why would 'green' groups do that?

Ocean acidification

I wanted to come back to ocean acidification. It's a problem that probably doesn't receive as much coverage in the media as global warming does.
Possibly (since we're not fish) it's not quite as scary!

I was told (at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium meeting) that the shells of some sea creatures will start dissolving pretty soon unless something is done about it.
This came from a marine biologist at Plymouth University (Carol Turley perhaps?). She's published an article online about ocean acidification.

Very simply the argument is some of this excess CO2 in the atmosphere will dissolve in the worlds oceans and lower it's pH. This weak acid will dissolve the shells of some sea creatures (such as snails) meaning that, not only (when they die and sink to the bottom) is a large carbon pump lost, but that other species (such as pacific salmon, whales) will loose their food.

It's not a happy thought.

Worse still is that this is a very rapid effect (unlike global warming we'll see it in our lifetimes). I've seen a respected estimate of 2030 as to when this will start becoming a problem.

This does, I suppose, fit quite nicely as to when we must also stop emitting CO2 to prevent danagerous climate change (if not already too late).

What can we do about it?

Well, we have to stop emitting CO2. The emission of other greenhouse gasses (whilst unacceptable for global warming) are okay as far as ocean acification goes.

Best way to stop emitting CO2?

Carbon capture and storage.

Carbon

Carbon dioxide is a commodity that can be bought or sold like anything else. It has a price, which is set by the market. If there are too many emission allowances on the market the price falls.
The price has, over the last few days, been falling. I assume that this is because of the economic downturn - after all not as many people are going to buy cement or steel if the construction industry is bankrupt. This means less production at these plants and so more emission allowances on the market.

This, ofcourse, affects the power generation sector.

Fossil power stations emit CO2. Gas power stations emit a little over half of what a coal power station will emit for the same electrical output (7/11ths or something like that - not sure really). When the third phase of the EU emission tradeing scheme starts companies will have to buy all of their allowances on the market - and if you know how this affects the price of electricity from coal (when compared to gas) you're doing better than me. It could still be cheaper - but this depends on the price of gas (to which the price of carbon is also connected).

It's all rather complicated.

Two things are for sure:
A higher carbon price makes coal more expensive, but drives generators further towards carbon capture and storage.
A more stable carbon price gives greater confidence to investors, making it more likely that they will get their money back if they invest in carbon capture and storage.

So, generally, a weaker carbon price is bad news.

The problem is that these decisions need to be taken today (see the BBC blackout article published today to understand the scale of the problem).
From where we stand today I'd invest in coal - at least to replace the plants which are being shut down. After all it's a cheaper fuel (although the capital cost is high) and with CCS it can have lower CO2 emissions than gas (where CCS is more expensive - so less likely).

The UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium

The UK Carbon Caputre and Storage Consortium (UKCCSC) had their final meeting yesterday at the Insitution of Mechanical Engineers. Malcolm Wicks even showed up.

On the whole it was a very pleasent experience, with some mixed messages to take away:
1) By about 2100 the Southern and Artic Oceans will be so acidic (from all the CO2 dissolving in them) that any crustacians living in them will disolve.
2) The science now says that we really should be committed to an 80% reduction by 2050, with several reduction deadlines along the way.
3) China (probably amongst other nations) is feeling bullied into emission reductions and is still talking about efficiency improvements (probably for local air quality and to ease the pressure of supply) rather than CCS for large emission reductions
4) The electrical supply situation is a bit tight this week, with there only being 1GW spare on the grid. Go on there greenpeace, trip a coal fired power station and see what happens, I challenge you.

CCS competition

Interesting.

BP have just announced that they have pulled out of the governments CCS competition - leaving just three competitors (Kingsnorth [Eon], Longannet [Scottish & Southern], Peel power) in the mix.

What's even more interesting is that RWE are trying to force a judicial review to get their power stations back into the competition.

The competition does take a long time, and it's interesting to try and work out what could be fitted with CCS (by the competition) within the relevant timescales.

The answer is perhaps Blyth (or so I've heard), a proposed RWE power station in Northumberland; the competition is dragging so much that investement decisions have to be made prior to the outcome.
Whilst CCS can of course be retrofitted the companies just may not wish to go down this route.

Of course the EU's ban on coal fired power stations may just stop everything.

Protest

Protest is a democratic right, one which must be protected if this country isn't going to go to the dogs. Whilst there is always the scope for the protesters to turn against democracy we have to assume that it is a remote possability.

We also have to assume that the government will do little more than take note of the protests - if government policy was just dictated by protesters we'd live in a very poor society indeed, with no planning beyond the immediate term.

So here's the thing - how do you police protests at power stations?

Power stations, by their nature are strategic assets of national importance. Turn them off and large swathes of the country can easily be blacked out with the local economy shutting down for a few hours. Continue the theme with regular blackouts and people will start loosing their jobs. Not pretty.
It's little surprise, therefore, that the police have been accussed of being heavy handed - after all they need to protect millions of people against the posibility that there are a few nutters in the croud who are there just to cause disruption.

Yes, people are entitled to peaceful protest - but you have to realise that with so many people seemingly willing to cross the moral line the police do have little choice but to assume that everyone out to cause as much trouble as possible - even if the demonstration is billed as peaceful.

Sadly, that includes kids.

A new coal fired power station

According to Reuters construction is due to begin on a new 600MW ultra super critical coal fired power station.

The ultra super critical refers to the steam temperature and pressure - ie very high temperatures and pressures.
This increases the efficiency of the plant - so it will emit less CO2 than it did previously.

This increase in efficiency is not enough to justify its presence - the potential for CCS retrofit must exist. I've not looked into whether (or not) it does.

Completion is scheduled for 2012. This will also be a baseload plant (guarenteed to run all the time) which means that it does a job which renewables cannot do.
Nuclear, however, could.

Obama

As the whole waking world must know Barack Obama has been elected as the 44th President of the United States.

Awsome.

His victory speech is inspiring stuff.

What does he plan on coal?

Well, according to his website, the democrats will deploy five full scale carbon capture and storage enable plants.
This is in addition to implementing an 80% emission reduction program by 2050.

That's great news.

Even better news is the 1 million plug in hybrids that are sought.

I have to say that this morning, I'm feeling rather pleased.

Students saying no

According to the the coal hole students at Imperial recently protested to Eon at a recruitment event.

I also heard this - after reading Felix (the student newspaper of Imperial College). It took place whilst I was in Nepal, otherwise I may have gone down to ask Eon for a job - and been there whilst the 'protest' took place.

I can't find the story on Felixonline, but I gather that it was a sort of hippy-love-in-fest, with a guitar playing fellow running the show.
Somewhat sadly for the legitimacy of the protest the guitar playing fellow wasn't a student, and was promptly removed by security.

Or so I'm told.

Coal in the UK

Some patient soul has put together a map of all current and proposed power stations and coal mines.

They must have the patience of a saint.

Sadly they've not included the research centre's (and there are quite a number of them), so it's not quite a complete list of all the UK jobs that depend on coal - a close second though!

Feed in tarriff's

Whilst I've been away a lot of interesting things have been happening - mainly centered around the creation of DECC (although that website still needs a bit of work!).

Included within the changes being proposed is the inclusion of feed in tarriffs. Here electricity suppliers are told that, for every MWh of electricity they generate, they will receive a fixed subsidy (in addition to the revenue they receive from the generated electricity).
The current scheme is more complicated and as such cannot give a clear price as to the level of subsidy which it will provide.

Generally I think that feed in tarriffs are seen as more efficient (at getting renewables created) than ROCs. They may also be cheaper.

So far the statement by Miliband on an amendment to include feed in tarriffs requires that such tarriffs will only apply to the smallest (probably domestic) generators.

Extending this concept, sweeping the renewables obligation away and replacing it with a system of feed in tarriffs may be a good idea, increasing the rate at which renewables are deployed in the country, but it may destroy any investor confidence which still exists.

Nepal

I've just spent the last three weeks kayaking in Nepal. It's been great fun, and a bit of an eye opener.

Nepal is a third world country, and is not as well off as India. It felt as though tourism keeps the country going. I know that there have been some political problems there recently, but I have to say that we only encountered friendship (unless money was involved when people generally did anything to get as much as possible).
I'd love to go back.

Nepal generates some of its power with hydroelectric dams. Since the monsoon has just about ended there is still plenty of water in the rivers and the dams are generating plenty of juice. As the season progresses they will generate less and less.
I'm not sure if Nepal has any back-up generation - I guess that it must.

I do know that it is reliant upon India for much of its electricity. I know this because in one particular town (Dumre) the electricity clicked off every evening between around 6 and 9pm.
When we asked why we were told "India". Essentially India reduces the electricity it sends to Nepal during these hours - it needs it for its own population. Nepal reacts the only way in which it can, by cutting people off.
The larger buildings had their own generators, but most people just lit candles.

This, of course, is just after the monsoon, when the dams are generating at near their maximum capacity. Things can only get worse.

How does this relate to coal? Directly, it doesn't.

It does suggest to me though that the need in Nepal for electricity is greater than the need to reduce emissions (after all Nepal is a developing nation and must be permitted to increase its emissions).
Given the option (which may not exist for coal since they only have small coal [lignite] deposits) I would expect them to build a power station whenever possible.

What I'm saying is this - coal can be part of the problem or part of the solution. If we, as rich western nations, take no action and leave it all to the poorer countries in the world it will probably become part of the problem.

That is why I support Kingsnorth.

It's passed...

Okay, that £8 billion? It's passed. It's there to be taken.

wow.

Also being reported is that all power generators will have to pay for all carbon credits in the third phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme - but that was likely, and to an extent forseeable.

The cap of 500g/kwhr is also in - applicable from 2015.

I'm not sure if this is law quite yet - some negociation to be done perhaps.

£8 billion for CCS?

Apparently the EU is meeting today to discuss a £8 billion subsidy to help get CCS off the ground.

This is needed - not for new R&D, but to bridge the difference between the cost of the running the plant and the income from the avoided carbon.

As the article says once the technology has been implemented at a few plants the costs will fall - so, if passed, this shouldn't be seen as an on going committment from the EU.
It would be a good thing.

Swings and roundabouts though. The greens have found a way of banning coal, and are trying to tack it on to this legislation. "A second amendment... would ban any power plant that emits more than 500g of carbon dioxide per kWh of electricity generated".
This will not only have the effect of stopping un-abated coal, but will stop all coal (there will be uncertainty over the reliability, at least to begin with, of the capture plant. If it stops working you will have to stop the power station - this means an uneconomic plant, so why build it?).
Simply everything will be replaced with gas, which falls under this threashold, has a low cost and is reliable.

Ed Miliband

I didn't realise this, but Ed Miliband's consituency contains the Hatfield Colliery. This means that he understands coal generation.

That's really all I ask. If he votes down Kingsnorth then, asside from being dissapointed, I will at least know that he understands how coal fired power stations work.

Ed Miliband has been campaigning for the re-opening of Hatfield pit as part of Clean Coal Power Station.

I hope and believe there is increasing recognition in government of the role that coal can play in our future energy mix.

Climate change and Energy Department

The BBC is reporting the the government is combining policy for climate change and energy security into a new department - removing powers from BERR and DEFRA.
Ed Miliband is to head it up. His big brother is against kingsnorth, so it will be interesting to see what his views are.

Not a good day for Kingsnorth I'm thinking.

The sunday times

I've just read an article online from the Sunday times - very good!

It explains the work which is being done on carbon capture and storage better than I can!

The company in question is Doosan Babcock, who are doing an awful lot of work at the moment on oxycoal combustion.

Capture ready

I was recently told that some coal fired power stations in the states were willing to make themselves carbon capture ready (CCR) - ie. position themselves (when built) so that they have at least the option of fitting carbon capture and storage to them further down the line.

If they're not capture ready CCS will never happen on them, so that's a good thing.

Essentially the biggest thing to be done is to ensure that they've got lots of land next door to build the capture plant on, although the possiblity to take off steam in the turbines also, I'm told, has to be considered (although this can be done later).
A route for the Carbon Dioxide out also has to be considered.

Plants in India are also doing the same thing.

What was surprising is that the plants in America insisted on it being called something else - not 'capture ready'. Essentially "green" groups have smeered the name so much that the plants can't now publicise it.

I think that's sad - where "green" pressure groups are campainging so strongly against 90% emission reductions that they almost don't happen.

Another coal fired power station

Germany is to build another new coal fired power station. This is part of a series of new or expanded power stations which are being built.

The power station is being built by the same people who started the oxy-combustion rig in Schwartze Pumpe.

The reason for this? Back in 2000 the then german government decided to phase out all of their nuclear power stations.

With this set in law the current government must comply, which gives them a problem.

The only technical solution they can find is to build / expand 26 coal fired power stations - which of course the greens hate.

There's irony there somewhere.

Another dedicated biomass power station

I'm starting to loose count of the number of biomass stations which are either being proposed or built - especially recently.

The latest offereing from RWE will be for a 75MW unit. Still pretty small on the scale of thing things - the size of a couple of wind farms.

There is a good reason why so many new dedicated biomass power stations are being built at the moment - the government is changing the way in which renewable obligation certificates are distributed in April. This will mean that biomass burnt on its own will be worth three times the amount of biomass burnt with coal.
Of course the cost will be substantially more as well!

This is probably a step in the right dirrection. Excellent.

Mixed messages

You tell me what the government is thinking. I'd love to know.

I think they're on the right track - Hutton was heard to announce that "No coal plus no nuclear equals no lights. No power. No future.". Equally Lord Smith (head of the environment agency) said that "we need to ensure that they [Coal fired power stations] are part of a solution to the challenges of climate change".

Excellent - and probably correct. I don't want to rely on russian gas for 75% of my electricity either.

Where I start having issues is where Lord Smith continues.
"Any new coal power station to be built should have a consent that requires that it helps demonstrate the technology... such a consent should be strictly time-limited and only renewed if carbon capture and storage is fully deployed".

This does worry me. It shouldn't - CCS will work, at a power station sized scale.
The trouble is that I can't pin-point when (only that it will be commercially ready within the next 10 years) and I'm worred that we're going to need to replace more than one power station (when really we only need one to demonstrate the technology) before we can fit them with CCS - the technology not quite being ready on time.
Effectively we might steer ourselves into a technology gap which we doesn't have to be there.

I'm more than happy to say "by 2020".

Part of the problem is the differences in costs between the CCS plant and the income from the avoided carbon. So it's really good to see Lord Smith say that "a funding mechanism will be urgently needed to support this [CCS]development".

Mixed messages. Yes, we need CCS and coal. The government recognise that.

I'm just worred we're heading towards a technology gap that even James Hansen recognises doesn't need to be there.

A CCS roadmap

I was recently at the Coal Research Forum biannual conference. It's a pleasent affair - three good meals a day, interesting presentations and a chance to sit in the bar and chat with other people from around the country.

The opening presentation was given by Dr. Mike Farley from Doosan Babcock - they're the people who build the power stations and are also looking to build capture plants.
Part of his presentation included a roadmap for CCS.
Unlike the road map for the middle east these are so close to completion that they are more of a historical document!
Two of his slides are below.



Amine capture roadmap



Oxycoal combustion roadmap


I like to see things like this. It cheers me up. It suggests that the UK can take a global lead on a technology that is seen by the IEA as providing a 19% drop in global CO2 emissions.

Another good bit of news from today is the press release from RWE, announcing that the capture demonstration unit on their combustion test facility is nearly ready. Not exactly power station sized, yet - but a vital link in the chain.

The looming energy gap

The Fellsassociates (whoever they are) have just published another (in quite a long line now) of reports detailing how we should move ahead to a low carbon economy.
There are some big names amoungst the authors, including one from Imperial who I have heard of.

Largely I think that they are correct. What is interesting to note is that they are NOT calling for a scrapping of renewables (etc. etc. etc.), rather restating what is already known - local generation is inefficient, the renewables obligation is really really expensive, we're going to have to rely on fossil to make up the ballance of the electricity generated for a long time yet, our power stations are closing down.

The position they are taking is one of pragamtism. You can't have a low carbon economy without nuclear. A severn barrage, whilst very expensive and having a strong negative impact on wildlife in the estuary, will generate a lot of electricity very reliably with few emissions.

Someone has finally stood up and said it - "Wind currently has a nameplate capacity of 2546MW from 2032 turbines, which actually delivers an average production of 635MW... If the initiative is left to the market, without radical government rethinking, we will get more of the same – gas-fired stations, with their dependency on imported fuel, and unreliable, highly subsided wind".

We're not arguing against wind mind - it has it's place. We just want to see more than just wind.

Yet another pressure group

It's a new week, which means that a new pressure group has formed against coal.

Yorkshire against new coal appear to be made up of around 9 people (including the person taking the photo).

It's all very depressing. What's more depressing is the chap on the left of the photo - he looks as though he isn't ever going to accept that he is wrong. It isn't possible to negociate with him.

The kingsnorth six

Well, apparently it's now legal to disrupt electricity generation, provided ofcourse it emits CO2 - and you believe that by stopping it you will save the planet.

Okay - well if that works for power stations, how about cars?

If I were to go around letting down all the tyres on every car that I found (and obviously putting a big sign on it saying so) I would walk free, right? After all they're machines that cause global warming.
Well obviously it doesn't stop there - probably 80% of our trains, all our shipping, all our aircraft, every gas single central heating system will stop.
Ofcourse with 80% of the UKs electricity system being switched off there won't be enough electricity to go around - which should account for everything else being turned off.

Greenpeace have succeeded - it is now legal to shut down the UK.

I remember (just) a Sun headline "will the last person left please turn off the lights?". Not true anymore. We're all still here, and they're being turned off.

I'm upset.

Vatenfall starts!

This is a big deal.

The worlds first carbon and capture power station will be switched on today in Germany - hopefully it will work!

Naturally the green groups are bashing it as irrelevant, and complaining about the number of coal power stations which are being built in germany (around 10 I believe).

Either they don't understand Carbon Capture and Storage, or their keen for us to have global warming, I can't decide.
Germany is only building new coal power stations anyway as the green groups managed to prevent new nuclear build - making CCS (which the greens are also blocking) more important.
It's strange how green groups couldn't have done anything more harmful to the enviroment, isn't it!

What is a resource?

Fossil fuels? Uranium? Land? Carbon dioxide?

Probably all four.

When we generate electricity we need to balance these against each other.

This means that understandably people can be as against wind power as they are against coal power.

I realise that we need all forms of power to keep this country going - which brings its own challenges of intermitency, as shown in this article by the scotsman.

Of course we could use gas, rather than coal - but it needs to be fossil.

I like the way that WWF argue that we don't need to plan for the worst possible scenario.

Hang on - actually we do.

Moron.

CCS in Norway - 2014

Reuters is reporting that Statoil (from Norway) is looking to expend on their Sleipner experience (which has been sequestering carbon under the north sea since 1990) and fit CCS to a power station.

Details are, quite frankly, sketchy - but it looks like they will start sometime between 2010 and 2014, with an amine capture system being fitted to the oil refinery and attached CHP plant.

The Democratic National Convention

As we all probably know the Democratic National Convention (DNC) has been going on in the states for some time now.

It's being attended by a few people from a America's Power - an industrial pressure group who are lobbying candidates and generally keeping an eye on what is being said.

They were delighted to hear that new coal power stations (with carbon capture and storage) were mentioned in a speech by Jay Rockefeller, a Senator from West Virginina (lots of coal over there - it's one state over from the coal research centre I was recently at).

"We need a leader who will re-establish America as an energy superpower by pursuing every resource at our disposal: alternative fuels, drilling and our most abundant domestic resource, tomorrow's clean coal".

Yep, that's the American way.

Carbon Capture Ready consultation

I was asked to put together a response to question 15 of the governments CCS consultation.

Here's what I wrote - it's not exactly brief.

What might be the impact of the potential costs of CCR [carbon capture ready] for 100% biomass power plants and so the implications for their future build? Should the Government explore excluding 100% Biomass schemes from the proposed Article 32?

The implication of a CCR requirement is that the plant will, one day, be required to fit CCS technology.
As a fuel biomass contains more hydrogen and oxygen than coal – meaning that it contains much less carbon (perhaps only 45% for Switchgrass whereas a bituminous coal may contain 85% carbon). Equally the calorific value of biomass is normally lower than that for coal. BCURA report a calorific value of approx 34 Mj/Kg for Pittsburgh No. 8 (daf basis), whilst Bridgeman et al (2007) report a value of around 17 Mj/kg for switchgrass.
This suggests that the flue gas coming from a 100% biomass plant is likely (on a constant energy out basis) to not only be of substantially greater volume (perhaps twice the volume) but also to be of lower CO2 intensity. Both these factors will combine to make CCS with amines more difficult and expensive.
As such it is likely that the cost associated with any CCS (and therefore by extension CCR) requirement for 100% biomass plants would be – when compared against the cost of the plant – greater for a biomass plant than for a coal fired plant.

This suggests that power generation companies may choose to spend their capital by investing in co-firing facilities (where the small biomass component will have a marginal effect on the CO2 stream) rather than dedicated biomass plants.
This decision will of course be influenced by many other parameters (including the RO) upon which I don’t feel qualified to comment.

I know of 5 reasonably sized proposed / existing 100% biomass plants in the UK. Lockerbie (44MW, Eon), Ely (38MW, EPR), Sheffield (Proposed 25MW, Eon), Bristol (Proposed 150MW, Eon), Port Talbot (Consented / Under construction 350MW, Prenergy Power).
I would suggest that to date there is no conclusive evidence as to the optimum size of a 100% biomass power station (largely it depends on what fuel can be made to be available). As such any requirement for 100% biomass plants to be CCR (and by extension for future CCS) may have the effect of limiting the size of such plants to sub 300MW.
As such it is probably desirable for the government to investigate excluding 100% biomass plants from the mandatory CCR requirement.

This assumes that 100% biomass plants continue to be seen as carbon neutral whereas they should probably be seen as low carbon (especially the Port Talbot and Bristol 100% biomass plants which may emit large quantities of green house gasses in the transport of their fuel from North America).

Energy windfall taxes

Compass (direction for the democratic left) has made the headlines today by calling for a windfall tax on energy compaines.

They argue that with the rising cost of oil these companies are making extra un-earned profits, to which the state is as enititled to as the companies are.

I'm not sure that I agree. If you tax a multi-national too heavily you risk driving their investment abroad.
Equally something does need to be done about insulating the homes of the worst off.

It comes down to the conflict for investment - does the government know what to do with it better than the energy companies - and believe me, there are some large financial calls on the electricity generators at the moment.

CCS - ready when?

Getting CCS ready for commercial use is a complex affair - it's never been tried before at the scale required on power stations.

This is something which requires money - and if this money is not available the whole project can be set back.

Theage has just published something suggesting that CCS won't be in a position to contribute to the countries energy mix before 2020.
That's possible.

We shouldn't forget though that this applies to economies as a whole, and that to get it this far we need to apply the technology to individual power stations - which means CCS will be used well before this date.
For example, if we could get two learning cycles in before this date we're likely to assist in strenghening this deadline.
http://www.co2storage.org.uk/Publications/UKCCS/Gibbins08.pdf

Largely this is happening - amine capture (which is regarded as the most promising type of CCS in the short term) is being demonstrated with RWEnpower at Didcott, and then Aberthaw by around 2010.
I would guess that the governments CCS competition winner would also use this technology.

So;

CCS by 2020? Yes, of course.

CCS capturing 90% of the emissions of a power station by 2020? Probably a policital rather than a technical challenge.

CCS in in all of the countrys power stations by 2020? Possibly not.

Price rises

Implementing low carbon electrical systems costs money - as does the need to fix the looming energy gap (as power stations reach the end of their lives and need to be decomissioned with new ones built to replace them).

Eon's biomass Bristol biomass press release was surprisingly candid about the investment program that they are undergoing, which struck me as odd at the time.

I now realise that they were warning the general population about forthcoming price rises - which were announced yesterday.

Two things stike me:

The price of gas is rising by more than the price of electricity. This suggests that we would do better to minimise our dependence upon gas within electrical generation (actually this is probably too simplistic since the price they can charge is set by the market, and is only marginally driven by costs - this can be seen by Scottish & Southern putting up their prices immediately after Eon announced their price rises).

We really now have a choice between cheap fuel and renewable energy - we can't have cheap renewable energy. I would hope that we would keep piling on down the renewable energy path as hard as we can - after all, if a rich nation isn't going to do it, how can we expect a poor nation to?

There really is only one way out of this problem - and a recent Friends of the Earth press release has hit the nail right on the head.

Biomass in Bristol

Eon have just announced that they intend to build a 150MW power station in bristol - powered by biomass.

The fuel for this station, much like the one proposed for Port Talbot, will probably come from places such as Canada, or perhaps Scandinavia.

The proposed bristol plant is pretty small - using 1.2 million tonnes of fuel year. That's still such a large amount that you wouldn't consider shipping the fuel in by road - so the vast bulk of it is going to have to come in by ship.
This is the problem with such stations - fueling them is very difficult. Coal moves from a point source (mine) to a point source (power station), whilst wood moves from a distributed source (many different forrests, one cannot provide enough fuel) to a point source (power station).
I don't want to argue that coal is more sustainable than biomass, but it does have the advantage that it doesn't tend to move around the country quite as much - creating less noise polution and generally not getting in peoples way as they try to get to work.
That's got to be seen as a benefit.

Interestingly I've also just noticed a protest site for the Port Talbot development. Largely their concerns are baseless - for example they are trying to smear the development by refering to Chenobyl, and complaining about an extra 17 HGV's a day leaving from a large industrial estate and docks complex.
Rather this is a classic case of NIMBY (not in my backyard!), where people with access to the internet, and who don't really understand what they're talking about, can try and sway the general population.

The difference between that and this blog?
I understand what I'm talking about.

Coal is clean...

...but it wasn't always like this.

I think that part of the problem with public acceptance of coal today is the association within people minds of how it was used in the past. Take for example this recent news story from the BBC.
They quite rightly talk about the heavy emissions from coal which have ended up in the artic - before moving on to talk about how the game has been changed, the emissions have been cleaned up, and the problem of increased heavy metal emissions (from what is know as BAT - best available technology plants) has largely gone away.

Such emissions are relavtively easy to clean up, since most metals are contained within the smoke from the boiler - by collecting most of the particles which are in the smoke the metal emissions are drastically reduced.

A good example of this mindset is when I recently flew back from the United States - I had some coal samples with me which I couldn't take on board the plance, since they are a "fuel".
Fine, but by the time the samples would have started to do anything the cardboard box and plastic bags they were wrapped in would have been turned to ash.
As would all the clothes of everyone on board.

So it comes down to public perception - as you read the article do you think that coal is a dangerous technology, or one that has cleaned up its act (at least inside the EU) sufficiently well to be included in todays energy mix?

Aussie tax payer to pay for CCS?

According to the the Age the Australian Federal Climate Change Minister is proposing that the tax payer support the cost of carbon capture and storage (probably just the demonstration) as the technology is so much in the public interest.

This is exactly what is needed over here - if we want things to happen.

Now of course this doesn't guarentee it, but this is certainly a step in the right dirrection.

Britains shrinking coastline

I don't live near the coast, my home is not under threat.

I can't afford to live near the coast, or buy a house.

This is why I'm quite pleased to see that the government has finally realised that we can't protect the entire coastline.

What grates is that Lord Smith doesn't take the view that I do.
I can't decide whether or not he understands the problem. I'd like to say that he doesn't, and that he's not spouting short-termism.

Coal power stations take years and years to build. That's the problem.

If we sat back until CCS was technically ready to go there would be (at least) a 6 year lag time between when the power station could go, and when it is ready to go.

With coal power stations being shut down now there is a need to replace them now - or we'll just build gas fired plants in their place, and the UK will move away from Coal and CCS.

As a concequence we'll have higher CO2 emissions (more emissions from gas than abated coal) and we'll loose the chance to be a global leader on this technology.

Another sequestration project

The folks down in New Mexico are doing some more sequestration work.
Actually 31 000 tonnes isn't very much, and I suspect that it's only being done to get the methane out, rather than to lock the CO2 away.

If it didn't demonstrate the technology (which I supose it does) I wouldn't be much of a fan.

As expected

It sounds like the kingsnorth climate camp is going to turn into a climate village - the protesters are talking about not leaving.

I think that's harsh on the farmer who's land they've taken.

They'll laugh at me and say "bigger issues exist" and wheel out their scientists to say that they're right.

Here's the thing - I've just noticed that their scientists say that their wrong.
Takes James Hansen - NASA guy who knows about global warming.
He's been advocating biomass and CCS as a method of generating power and taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

He knows that you need to big source of carbon to make the CCS (and hence carbon negative electricity) efficient - i.e. a coal fired power station co-firing biomass, right?
Provided (e.g.) 11% of the carbon going into the boiler is from the biomass whilst (e.g.) 90% of the carbon dioxide is captured from the boiler you generate carbon negative electricity.

Presidential electoral pledges

With the candidates for the presidency announcing their energy policies I thought that I might take a quick peek.

What surprised me was what Mr. Obama was proposing - an 80% reduction in America's CO2 emissions by 2050.

Wow.

What surprised me more is that McCain is also talking about reductions - and this time with interim targets. He's only talking about 60% by 2050. All the same, the extra interim targets could make this the better plan - which makes a bigger difference to global warming (imagine if all of Obama's 80% reduction came in 2049...).

He's also talking about investing in CCS, electric vehicles and smart meters.

Now, I suspect that Obama would do the same thing - he's just not yet published enough details for us to work out the details.

So, in summary, if either the Democrats or Republicans get into the White House, and keep their promises, the world could become a very different place.