Facts on Energy: Maximum Decarbonisation Results from Replacing Coal with Gas, Then Gas with Nuclear. NO Alternatives Required.
We have far better way to save the Climate with no subsidies required than massively subsidised alternatives that, on the simple physics, cannot.
Since I last posted we found a lot of shale gas under the UK that will give us a few decades to switch generation to sustainable zero carbon nuclear energy using the half the CO2 clean combustion of affordable methane, particularly as nuclear also got MUCH cheaper as the Chinese entered the market with safe and proven PWR technology at under half what AREVA/EDF were bluffing to get.
But the really interesting thing is the amount of dcarbonisation you can get replacing coal onsite with half the COs per unit energy gas. By far a better use of gas than supporting wind farms to gain their massive subsidies with MUCH less decarbonising , leaving a rusting environmental legacy of pointless windmills and their infrastructure when their fossil backup has gone.
If you are worried about climate change, then replacing gas with CCGT gas directly on grid connected sites, then replacing all fossil with proven nuclear ditto is the way to deliver man made CO2 from generation reduction fastest, cheapest, most adequately, securely and sustainably.
Here are the facts as I just set them out for my own energy group.
40% CO2 Reduction is Possible with Gas Replacing Coal on Site Alone, NO Compulsory Energy Poverty Required
Gas accounts for roughly 30% of electricity generation output and coal 40% (DECC DUKES 2012 data). Nuclear and renewables are the other 30%, 2/3 of which was nuclear in 2012.
But as page 2 of the DECC 2012 stats show the input energy level of the Gas burnt was 200TWh and for Coal 400 TWh.
So If 4/6 = 67%% of our fossil fired CO2 emitting electrical energy generation is from burning coal and 2/6 = 33% from burning gas. So 2:1 coal to gas. But gas emits half the CO2 of coal per unit enrgybecause more than half the energy comes from creating water by burning the hydrogen in CH4, so that makes the current coal:gas proportion of CO2 emissions 4:1. 80/20.
So coal accounts for c.80% of UK fossil generation CO2 emissions, never mind the heavy metals and radio nuclides, etc.
If gas is used to completely replace existing coal we could more than halve this 80% to 40% - because gas burning produces less than half the CO2 per unit energy.
This simple switch in fuel plus modest CCGT CAPEX investment can achieve a c.40% reduction in the UK's CO2 emissions from electricity generation - entirely unsubsidised. CCGT can easily be built on existing grid connected coal fired sites with minimal new grid infrastructure required, as at Didcot B. No expensive and environmentally damaging alternatives are required.
But energy policy has legislated to pay massive subsidies added to our bills to wind farms that instead tie up this uniquely clean and capable replacement for coal to power the gas fired generation essential to "backup" wind farms 100% duplicative generation capacity when the wind doesn't blow - and so wind farms can push reliable unsubsidised base load energy off the grid at 2 or 3 times the price when it does blow, 20 -30% of the time.
So wind farms divert our gas supply, which could be reducing our CO2 emissions by 40% by directly replacing coal unsubsidised, to channel subsidies to what can only deliver at best 20% the CO2 emissions reduction, at 2 or 3 times the price. Illogical, Captain.
Finally, if the gas is burnt to replace coal in CCGT technology it is 50% more thermally efficient than using it for backup in Open Cycle Technology, so will last 33% longer.
At the end of fossil only nuclear is intense enough to power a developed economy of course, and phoney "alternatives" are largely obsolete without their fossil fuelled hosts. Nuclear is cheap, adequate, controllable, sustainable and zero carbon, needs no backup or offset. Like fossil, it just works. We have a few decades we need to explain the facts on safety of modern nuclear technology to a population that has been educated by a largely sensationalist and ignorant media with little grasp of the real technology, intent on creating hysteria and fear over what is in absolute fact the safest base load energy generation there is, sustainable indefinitely.
Alternatives are a woefully weak and variable energy source, agrarian economy power levels quite inadequate to supply the doubled then trebled electrical energy needs for heating and transport in a developed economy when fossil's gone (DECC estimates), even with even more massively expensive storage. And anyway, we simply don't have the geography to build much pumped storage , and storing woefully inadequate and expensively generated energy makes it even more expensive - 1 hydro scheme's worth - and not much less woefully inadequate. Purely assertive and innumerate delusion - and utterly unnecessary to best deliver policy's objectives.
We simply don't need any of it to do the best job of decarbonising generation with our money.
The more alternatives and renewables we subsidise, the less decarbonisation we realise versus building the better direct use of gas and nuclear, the more £Billions pa we waste on subsidies, the worse all the other measurements of energy policy become, and the more our energy supply, hence GDP, hence developed economic status, becomes reliant on what ultimately can't work.
All justified on a simple and direct legalised deception that subsidies are an effective way to decarbonise electrical energy supply. No they are not, on the clear facts. QED
We are being defrauded by law on the bais of a clearly p fraudulent assertion that subsidies accelearte decarbonistion of supply, when in fact they inhibit it being done better for free. Only the politicians and civil servants friends and lobbyists profit.
The Sub Prime Economics of Energy Policy: Pay the Most to What Works the Worst - by law. Basically a Legalised protection racket, or a State sponsored Snake Oil business.
If you doubt this, check the data I mention and the emessions facts, and prove it yourself. To see CCGT at work replacing coal, visit this image of DIDCOT B, it is quite dramatic in terms of CCGT's efficiency, resource use and environmental impact.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1976309/Didcot%20A%20and%20B%20copy.png
Since I last posted we found a lot of shale gas under the UK that will give us a few decades to switch generation to sustainable zero carbon nuclear energy using the half the CO2 clean combustion of affordable methane, particularly as nuclear also got MUCH cheaper as the Chinese entered the market with safe and proven PWR technology at under half what AREVA/EDF were bluffing to get.
But the really interesting thing is the amount of dcarbonisation you can get replacing coal onsite with half the COs per unit energy gas. By far a better use of gas than supporting wind farms to gain their massive subsidies with MUCH less decarbonising , leaving a rusting environmental legacy of pointless windmills and their infrastructure when their fossil backup has gone.
If you are worried about climate change, then replacing gas with CCGT gas directly on grid connected sites, then replacing all fossil with proven nuclear ditto is the way to deliver man made CO2 from generation reduction fastest, cheapest, most adequately, securely and sustainably.
Here are the facts as I just set them out for my own energy group.
40% CO2 Reduction is Possible with Gas Replacing Coal on Site Alone, NO Compulsory Energy Poverty Required
Gas accounts for roughly 30% of electricity generation output and coal 40% (DECC DUKES 2012 data). Nuclear and renewables are the other 30%, 2/3 of which was nuclear in 2012.
But as page 2 of the DECC 2012 stats show the input energy level of the Gas burnt was 200TWh and for Coal 400 TWh.
So If 4/6 = 67%% of our fossil fired CO2 emitting electrical energy generation is from burning coal and 2/6 = 33% from burning gas. So 2:1 coal to gas. But gas emits half the CO2 of coal per unit enrgybecause more than half the energy comes from creating water by burning the hydrogen in CH4, so that makes the current coal:gas proportion of CO2 emissions 4:1. 80/20.
So coal accounts for c.80% of UK fossil generation CO2 emissions, never mind the heavy metals and radio nuclides, etc.
If gas is used to completely replace existing coal we could more than halve this 80% to 40% - because gas burning produces less than half the CO2 per unit energy.
This simple switch in fuel plus modest CCGT CAPEX investment can achieve a c.40% reduction in the UK's CO2 emissions from electricity generation - entirely unsubsidised. CCGT can easily be built on existing grid connected coal fired sites with minimal new grid infrastructure required, as at Didcot B. No expensive and environmentally damaging alternatives are required.
But energy policy has legislated to pay massive subsidies added to our bills to wind farms that instead tie up this uniquely clean and capable replacement for coal to power the gas fired generation essential to "backup" wind farms 100% duplicative generation capacity when the wind doesn't blow - and so wind farms can push reliable unsubsidised base load energy off the grid at 2 or 3 times the price when it does blow, 20 -30% of the time.
So wind farms divert our gas supply, which could be reducing our CO2 emissions by 40% by directly replacing coal unsubsidised, to channel subsidies to what can only deliver at best 20% the CO2 emissions reduction, at 2 or 3 times the price. Illogical, Captain.
Finally, if the gas is burnt to replace coal in CCGT technology it is 50% more thermally efficient than using it for backup in Open Cycle Technology, so will last 33% longer.
At the end of fossil only nuclear is intense enough to power a developed economy of course, and phoney "alternatives" are largely obsolete without their fossil fuelled hosts. Nuclear is cheap, adequate, controllable, sustainable and zero carbon, needs no backup or offset. Like fossil, it just works. We have a few decades we need to explain the facts on safety of modern nuclear technology to a population that has been educated by a largely sensationalist and ignorant media with little grasp of the real technology, intent on creating hysteria and fear over what is in absolute fact the safest base load energy generation there is, sustainable indefinitely.
Alternatives are a woefully weak and variable energy source, agrarian economy power levels quite inadequate to supply the doubled then trebled electrical energy needs for heating and transport in a developed economy when fossil's gone (DECC estimates), even with even more massively expensive storage. And anyway, we simply don't have the geography to build much pumped storage , and storing woefully inadequate and expensively generated energy makes it even more expensive - 1 hydro scheme's worth - and not much less woefully inadequate. Purely assertive and innumerate delusion - and utterly unnecessary to best deliver policy's objectives.
We simply don't need any of it to do the best job of decarbonising generation with our money.
The more alternatives and renewables we subsidise, the less decarbonisation we realise versus building the better direct use of gas and nuclear, the more £Billions pa we waste on subsidies, the worse all the other measurements of energy policy become, and the more our energy supply, hence GDP, hence developed economic status, becomes reliant on what ultimately can't work.
All justified on a simple and direct legalised deception that subsidies are an effective way to decarbonise electrical energy supply. No they are not, on the clear facts. QED
We are being defrauded by law on the bais of a clearly p fraudulent assertion that subsidies accelearte decarbonistion of supply, when in fact they inhibit it being done better for free. Only the politicians and civil servants friends and lobbyists profit.
The Sub Prime Economics of Energy Policy: Pay the Most to What Works the Worst - by law. Basically a Legalised protection racket, or a State sponsored Snake Oil business.
If you doubt this, check the data I mention and the emessions facts, and prove it yourself. To see CCGT at work replacing coal, visit this image of DIDCOT B, it is quite dramatic in terms of CCGT's efficiency, resource use and environmental impact.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1976309/Didcot%20A%20and%20B%20copy.png
posted by Brian Catt at
7:38 AM
0 Comments
