Coal good, kingsnorth bad

What really gets my goat is the way that "environmental" pressure groups randomly pick on their subject - what they will campaign for, or against.

Take for example heathrow - runways don't emit, nor do they enable extra flights (it's all about planes and economics) - yet they're campaigning against the runway.

Kingsnorth gets it in the neck because that could actually save the world - yet the underground gasification plant to be built in Fife has been ignored - even though that will generate emissions that cannot be sequestered.
So has the Hatfield gasification plant.

It takes the piss.

Coal seems to be good, whilst Kingsnorth is bad. Who are these people who are leading the campaign? I've almost given up blogging because I think they have won and I don't believe we will see our old power stations replaced with more efficient modern ones.

It's really depressing.

Europe fights back

Europe has now proposed to spend €1.25bn on carbon capture and storage.

The plan includes monday for Longannet, Kingsnorth, Tilbury and Hatfield - an IGCC power plant.

Will this be enough? I don't know.
Does this make the compentition pointless? I don't think so.

Not very helpful this morning am I.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

CCS in texas?

NRG energy have just formed an agreement with the environmental defence fund and the Texas clean air cities coalition to limit the CO2 produced as they increase the size of an existing power station by building a new coal powered boiler.

Under the terms of the agreement they will have to offset or sequester 50% of the carbon generated by the new unit.
The agreement mentions several ways in which this could be done:

Agricultural or forestry sequestration

Retiring older, less efficient generation assets

Bringing new wind or solar generation online

Postcombustion carbon capture and storage technology (at a different power station).

At first glance this could be a road map for kingsnorth - except of course that Eon (who as you know own kingsnorth) are already doing (or in the case of carbon capture and storage are into the last round of the governemnts competition and if they win they will do) all of the above, and extra.

It's nice to know that we're further ahead than the americans, however I can't imagine any NGO doing a deal with Eon over kingsnorth.
Everyone seems to have latched onto the proposal, and don't seem as though they want to budge - regardless of the benefits which could be traded with Eon for their tacet approval of the plant.

Seems a shame.

Kingsnorth Climate Camp

As must be obvious the climate camp has just opened for business, pitched upon the site of the proposed power station.

They say that (unlike last year) they will be there for weeks - although I suspect that they will still be there when construction starts, employing Swapy style tactics to make the build project as expensive as possible.

Protest is a good thing, it keeps people on their toes.
Protests can go too far though, and judging by the Eon press releases this could go that way.
I hope, much like the organisers must, this does not happen.

The environmental committee

The clue is in the title - it's an environmental committee, not an energy committee.

Their most striking remark is that "Coal should be seen as the last resort, even with the promise of CCS " - BBC News.

Their argument can be boiled down to this:
Coal emits twice as much CO2 as gas
Unless coal can be guarenteed to emit 1/5 the mass of CO2 of gas we shouldn't risk building it.

I sympathise with the argument.

They havn't considered the advantage of having diversified fossil connected to the grid - a system which can help us to maintain the grid at 50Hz (which renewables cannot), and the advantages of fuel security.

I've been told that if we mandate CCS (and this reports reccomends setting a date by which time CCS must be fitted - the royal society, a seperate body, mention 2020) companies will build gas rather than coal - afterall it's not the energy companies job to keep the lights from going out at the lowest possible cost.

Longleaf power station

The BBC have just picked up on Longleaf power station which is planned in Georgia, US.

It appears that is because no emissions limits were set for CO2. This is probably because the US didn't (until this ruling) recognise CO2 as being a polutant gas (actually it's not a pollutant - it occurs naturally, it is an undesirable emission though).

This complete mess of course can't happen in the UK. Our committments to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS) and carbon capture and storage mean that we have effectively set CO2 emission caps.

Kingsnorth (and the others which will follow) still seem to be okay.

UK Carbon capture and storage 2011 competition

Details were announced today of the governments carbon capture and storage competition.

The 4 choices that they have chosen are of interest:

BP - and what might be the proposed gasification plant similar to the shelved version at Peterhead,
Scottish Power - and that's all we know,
Peel power - What I think is a new refuse derived fuel plant, which I've not heard of before now,
Eon - Kingsnorth.

My hope? Eon.
Which one will get it? I might digest this before I make that call.