November, it seems, is the month for energy meetings in London (or perhaps it is only now that I'm starting to get invited). Over the last two weeks I have attended the final meeting on the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium, a Policy Exchange seminar on Combined Heat and Power, a Deutsche Bank meeting on Low Carbon Cities and finally the Royal Society discussion meeting – Towards a Low Carbon Future.
I could go on to write an essay about each, as there were a number of thought provoking presentations, but instead I'm going to crudely sum up what I thought were the overarching common lessons to be learned.
1) It is an absolutely critical time for low carbon research and despite the financial crisis (see below) we must double our efforts (see caveat in point 3 below).
2) Unfortunately it appears to be the case that the credit crunch has set back progress in low carbon technologies because credit is harder to come by and more expensive. However, it is anticipated that the sector will emerge leaner and fitter and will, because of a positive and (hopefully) long term policy framework, be a sound long term investment for the future. In other words, when cash is available again, the low carbon sector will look like a safe bet.
3) The need for speedy deployment of low carbon measures is no excuse for doing things sloppily or making elementary mistakes because projects were ill thought through. An excellent example was cited by Tadj Oreszczyn at the Royal Society meeting. In a domestic retrofit project a team was dispatched to improve the insulation of dwellings, and they did a good job reducing heat loss resulting in a 14% improvement. Once the dwelling was well insulated, a second team was brought in to upgrade to a more efficient central heating system. Measurements of the building heat loss after this operation showed that now the building was actually 1% worse than before any measures were applied. Why? Because the central heating team had drilled holes throughout the building allowing heat loss.
There's going to a cold snap this weekend, however, unlike previous years, there don't appear to be the fears over gas supplies to the UK. There are several reasons, but a key fact is that the recession is driving down energy demand (people are making less stuff). Coupled with this is the fact that gas prices, whilst falling, are doing so at a slower rate than coal and thus it is expected that power companies will switch to coal over winter. Obviously this will have knock on effects to carbon emissions.
Whilst gas supplies do not seem to be a danger this year, it has been argued that an electricity shortage is just around the corner and could be a real problem by 2015. The BBC surveyed a number of energy experts and the majority expressed concerns that the closure of coal fired power plants due the to the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive. The directive aims to reduce acidification, ground level ozone and particles throughout Europe by controlling emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and dust (particulate matter (PM)) from large combustion plants (LCPs) in power stations. The result of the directive is that a number of coal and oil fired power plants will close around 2015 and there is uncertainty about replacement capacity to fill the gap. Curiously, when I was working at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we were more worried about the period around 2023, where all but one of the UK nuclear power plants is due to close. Perhaps we were thinking too far ahead!
The ambition for a significant EU demonstration programme of coal fired power plants designed to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide is in danger of being curtailed. France has proposed to scale back the programme budget, which aims to demonstrate 10-12 CCS plants in Europe by 2015, from €10 billion to between €2 and 4 billion.
Finally, amidst all the fears and efforts on global warming, it appears that we are heading, in 10,000 years or so, for an ice age. However, don't panic, as the event will probably be averted because of the global warming we are committed to. Even if global warming has been completely negated, then we will have accrued rather large reserves of CO2 trapped underground that could be released to warm things up a bit (I'm joking here, although perhaps I may be being foolish to assume someone wouldn't consider this).
Friday 21 November 2008
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Congratulations to Barack Obama
Congratulations to Barack Obama! I don't know about any other NERN members but I stayed up until the early hours of the morning awaiting with glassy eyed fascination the result of Ohio!
This week I attended the Euro-CASE annual conference 'How can the EU meet its 2020 renewables targets?' at the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier this week (3rd November). In case you haven’t heard of it, Euro-CASE is a non-profit-making organisation of national academies from 21 European countries. I was going to summarise the key points of the meeting here, but thankfully Alok Jha of the Guardian has beaten me to it. Lord Browne made a point that stood out for me. He stated that there needs to be a level playing field for all technologies in terms of pricing in the externalities (e.g. carbon emissions), removing regulatory and planning barriers and the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies.
UKERC has been in the news once again this week. I managed a personal first and was quoted in the Times Higher Education Supplement in an article about the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative. I think that this betters my personal previous best quote on the front page of The Sun (not this one (different Jeff Hardy) but rather this one)! UKERC’s Research Director, Jim Skea, was quoted in Nature discussing the approval of the UK Climate Change Bill.
In the news this week, there was a slight theme on electronic equipment. It seems that companies are wooing consumers at technology shows with their green gadgets. Examples of green gadgets include wireless smart meters, electric scooters and bamboo laptops. All very exciting I’m sure, but one question that springs to mind is “what happens to the gadgets that you replace?” Fortunately, BusinessWeek has examined the issue in their article the dirty secret of recycling electronics. The volume of E-waste is expected to surge next year in the US and also the UK as people switch from analogue to digital TV. A portion of this electrical and electronic equipment ends up being exported (in some cases illegally) to Asia and elsewhere where the valuable parts are recycled and where the rest is dumped allowing metals and chemicals to leach into the environment. I remember back in my days as a green chemist at the University of York we were interested in whether the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) would lead to the application of green product design (where products are designed with recycling and the environment in mind). It’s probably still a little too early to be able to tell whether green product design is taking hold or not.
Solar photovoltaic records once again have been tumbling! A new breed of organic dye sensitised solar cells (so called Grätzel cells) has achieved 10% efficiency. This doesn’t sound so impressive when compared to the 40.8% record of silicon PV but bear in mind that the advantage of the organic cells is that they are significantly less expensive than there silicon cousins. Not content with one record breaking achievement the PV scientists have pushed on and broken a second record. This time a coating for a silicon PV cell has been developed that boosts the absorption of sunlight from a typical 67% to a whopping 96%. The invention also means that PV arrays can now absorb sunlight from angles meaning that there in no longer a need for any automated system that follows the sun. If you’ll excuse the pun, the future is certainly looking bright for solar power.
This week I attended the Euro-CASE annual conference 'How can the EU meet its 2020 renewables targets?' at the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier this week (3rd November). In case you haven’t heard of it, Euro-CASE is a non-profit-making organisation of national academies from 21 European countries. I was going to summarise the key points of the meeting here, but thankfully Alok Jha of the Guardian has beaten me to it. Lord Browne made a point that stood out for me. He stated that there needs to be a level playing field for all technologies in terms of pricing in the externalities (e.g. carbon emissions), removing regulatory and planning barriers and the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies.
UKERC has been in the news once again this week. I managed a personal first and was quoted in the Times Higher Education Supplement in an article about the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative. I think that this betters my personal previous best quote on the front page of The Sun (not this one (different Jeff Hardy) but rather this one)! UKERC’s Research Director, Jim Skea, was quoted in Nature discussing the approval of the UK Climate Change Bill.
In the news this week, there was a slight theme on electronic equipment. It seems that companies are wooing consumers at technology shows with their green gadgets. Examples of green gadgets include wireless smart meters, electric scooters and bamboo laptops. All very exciting I’m sure, but one question that springs to mind is “what happens to the gadgets that you replace?” Fortunately, BusinessWeek has examined the issue in their article the dirty secret of recycling electronics. The volume of E-waste is expected to surge next year in the US and also the UK as people switch from analogue to digital TV. A portion of this electrical and electronic equipment ends up being exported (in some cases illegally) to Asia and elsewhere where the valuable parts are recycled and where the rest is dumped allowing metals and chemicals to leach into the environment. I remember back in my days as a green chemist at the University of York we were interested in whether the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) would lead to the application of green product design (where products are designed with recycling and the environment in mind). It’s probably still a little too early to be able to tell whether green product design is taking hold or not.
Solar photovoltaic records once again have been tumbling! A new breed of organic dye sensitised solar cells (so called Grätzel cells) has achieved 10% efficiency. This doesn’t sound so impressive when compared to the 40.8% record of silicon PV but bear in mind that the advantage of the organic cells is that they are significantly less expensive than there silicon cousins. Not content with one record breaking achievement the PV scientists have pushed on and broken a second record. This time a coating for a silicon PV cell has been developed that boosts the absorption of sunlight from a typical 67% to a whopping 96%. The invention also means that PV arrays can now absorb sunlight from angles meaning that there in no longer a need for any automated system that follows the sun. If you’ll excuse the pun, the future is certainly looking bright for solar power.
Diary of a travelling network manager
This week I've been out and about a fair bit so I thought I would bore you with extracts from my travel diary.
On Tuesday (28 October) I was at the open meeting of the Defra Science Advisory Council which was really quite interesting. In essence the Council basically has a normal meeting in public – it put me in mind of the filming of a quiz show in front of a studio audience or something similar. Whilst the agenda was not particularly energy heavy, there were some useful snippets to be gleaned from Professor Bob Watson (Chief Scientist at Defra) and Professor John Beddington (Government Chief Scientist). Bob Watson confirmed that the Defra functions relating to climate change mitigation will be moving to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), however, all function relating to climate change adaption and emissions from agriculture remain in Defra. Forestry was a little less clear as it appears DECC will have the lead on international forestry policy (relating to climate change) but Defra will have UK forestry responsibilities. It was also noted that the Department for Transport (DfT) will retain responsibility for emissions from transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government responsibility for emissions from buildings. It is likely that DECC will eventually appoint their own Chief Scientist, but in the interim, that role will be shared between Bob Watson and Professor Brian Collins (DfT).
On Tuesday (28 October) I was at the open meeting of the Defra Science Advisory Council which was really quite interesting. In essence the Council basically has a normal meeting in public – it put me in mind of the filming of a quiz show in front of a studio audience or something similar. Whilst the agenda was not particularly energy heavy, there were some useful snippets to be gleaned from Professor Bob Watson (Chief Scientist at Defra) and Professor John Beddington (Government Chief Scientist). Bob Watson confirmed that the Defra functions relating to climate change mitigation will be moving to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), however, all function relating to climate change adaption and emissions from agriculture remain in Defra. Forestry was a little less clear as it appears DECC will have the lead on international forestry policy (relating to climate change) but Defra will have UK forestry responsibilities. It was also noted that the Department for Transport (DfT) will retain responsibility for emissions from transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government responsibility for emissions from buildings. It is likely that DECC will eventually appoint their own Chief Scientist, but in the interim, that role will be shared between Bob Watson and Professor Brian Collins (DfT).
On Thursday (30 October) I was at a UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) workshop on a UK Energy Excellence Mapping Tool that they are seeking to develop. In essence UKTI is seeking to develop a website that fulfils several functions:
It will act as a marketing platform for promoting interest in UK energy capability.
It will provide evidence of this capability through carefully constructed case studies.
It will offer a comprehensive map of the UK energy industry linking to key companies and organisations in a structured manner, searchable by carefully chosen key words.
It will offer the opportunity for raising awareness within the UK energy community of technology advances which could be transferred to other sectors.
The process is very much in its scoping stage, but if it ultimately matches its aspirations then it will be a very useful resource. One of our interests is whether the UKERC Energy Research Atlas could be exploited within the UKTI website. If anyone is interested in further information about this project please let me know.
Elsewhere this week it was very pleasing to see praise for UKERCs dissemination activities from the Government this week in their response to the House of Commons IUSS Committee Renewable Electricity-Generation Technologies report. The response stated that "all [ESRCs] award holders are required to ensure dissemination and engagement with appropriate bodies and groups, examples include the UK Energy Research Centre which regularly produces and disseminates technology and policy assessments."
UKERC in the news
UKERC has had a rather good week for being quoted or featured in things. We got six mentions in the House of Lords European Union Committee report 'The EU's Target for Renewable Energy: 20% by 2020', which was published today (Friday 24 October). The Committee was interested in what we had to say on energy efficiency, renewable power, wave and solar energy, the Severn barrage and intermittency issues. A couple of special mentions are deserved here, Professor David Infield (UKERC and University of Strathclyde) was instrumental in putting the UKERC submission together and Dr Rob Gross (UKERC and Imperial College) was Special Advisor to the Committee. The report has been picked up by the popular media and featured on the BBC news website.
Congratulations to Professor Paul Ekins (UKERC and Kings College London) who came 51st in the The Independent on Sundays' list of Britain's top 100 environmentalists. Within the list Paul rubs shoulders with the likes of the Sir Stuart Rose, KT Tunstall, Professor Bob Watson and the Queen.
To complete the success story UKERC's Executive Director, John Loughhead, has been quoted in New Scientist on their feature Graduate Special: Best of Britain and also in The Guardian commenting the world's largest algal biofuel project which will be sited in the UK.
In this week's news, which you can examine on the slightly redesigned NERN news pages, there were a couple of excellent articles that caught my attention. Fred Pearce has scribed an excellent diatribe about the great green swindle in which he outs companies that are making exaggerated or absurd claims about their green credentials. New Scientist has a really interesting piece why the financial system is like an ecosystem. The article suggests that the current way in which the system is treated is too simple because it treats the economic world as a series of simple, largely separate transaction-based markets; in reality the system is far more complex system of interrelating networks. It is proposed that insights could be gained by studying complex systems such as electricity networks or eco-systems such as a pond or swamp. Perhaps there are lessons that could be learned from the work UKERC is conducting within our Energy 2050 project.
Three scientific breakthroughs have caught the eye this week. Tropical Cyclones, which may perhaps become more frequent, or stronger, with climate change, are also responsible, to some extent, for burying away greenhouse gases. Basically the storms are responsible for washing vegetation and soils into the sea where they sink to the bottom, locking carbon away. Its one of those pieces of research that's quite obvious when you think about it, but one which you had probably never thought about until now. CIP Technologies has claimed that they have increased the efficiency of thermal PV by a third to 12% and have aspirations for a device that is 15% efficient. Finally, Carbon Sciences have announced a new technology to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline. Their process avoids the necessity to use molecular hydrogen, which is rather energy intensive to make, and instead uses hydrogen atoms formed through a biocatalytic process that mimics processes that occur in all living organisms.
As a football fan I was interested to see that Ethical Consumer magazine has ranked football teams, not according to sporting success, but environmental friendliness. Manchester City came top (and I'm sure they are happy to be the top of at least one table) whilst my team, Liverpool, worryingly finished behind Manchester United and Arsenal – I hope that's not a sign for the season ahead!
Congratulations to Professor Paul Ekins (UKERC and Kings College London) who came 51st in the The Independent on Sundays' list of Britain's top 100 environmentalists. Within the list Paul rubs shoulders with the likes of the Sir Stuart Rose, KT Tunstall, Professor Bob Watson and the Queen.
To complete the success story UKERC's Executive Director, John Loughhead, has been quoted in New Scientist on their feature Graduate Special: Best of Britain and also in The Guardian commenting the world's largest algal biofuel project which will be sited in the UK.
In this week's news, which you can examine on the slightly redesigned NERN news pages, there were a couple of excellent articles that caught my attention. Fred Pearce has scribed an excellent diatribe about the great green swindle in which he outs companies that are making exaggerated or absurd claims about their green credentials. New Scientist has a really interesting piece why the financial system is like an ecosystem. The article suggests that the current way in which the system is treated is too simple because it treats the economic world as a series of simple, largely separate transaction-based markets; in reality the system is far more complex system of interrelating networks. It is proposed that insights could be gained by studying complex systems such as electricity networks or eco-systems such as a pond or swamp. Perhaps there are lessons that could be learned from the work UKERC is conducting within our Energy 2050 project.
Three scientific breakthroughs have caught the eye this week. Tropical Cyclones, which may perhaps become more frequent, or stronger, with climate change, are also responsible, to some extent, for burying away greenhouse gases. Basically the storms are responsible for washing vegetation and soils into the sea where they sink to the bottom, locking carbon away. Its one of those pieces of research that's quite obvious when you think about it, but one which you had probably never thought about until now. CIP Technologies has claimed that they have increased the efficiency of thermal PV by a third to 12% and have aspirations for a device that is 15% efficient. Finally, Carbon Sciences have announced a new technology to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline. Their process avoids the necessity to use molecular hydrogen, which is rather energy intensive to make, and instead uses hydrogen atoms formed through a biocatalytic process that mimics processes that occur in all living organisms.
As a football fan I was interested to see that Ethical Consumer magazine has ranked football teams, not according to sporting success, but environmental friendliness. Manchester City came top (and I'm sure they are happy to be the top of at least one table) whilst my team, Liverpool, worryingly finished behind Manchester United and Arsenal – I hope that's not a sign for the season ahead!
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