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Will any of this plug at affordable cost, the UK energy gap between 2010 and 2015, the latter being the earliest date when any new nuclear stations could be on line, even with an abridged planning process?
I am glad to see that the environmentally disastrous, concrete-guzzling monster of the Severn Barrage has not found favour, though another study into it is planned, presumably as a sop to the Welsh Assembly which seems to support it.
Will this actually get through Parliament as the Libs, Conservatives and it seems quite a number of Labour MPs, don't agree with it?
If so, will the nuclear stations really get a go-ahead soon? Pushing ahead with them in face of strong public opposition could lose Labour the next election especially if, as seems likely, there's a recession looming or in progress. Will private energy companies want to take the risk of nuclear
There is always the gas interconnector, assuming it makes it from Russia right through Europe, and an electricity interconnector from France. Plus there is LNG shipping. I imagine the gap will be mostly met in the form of demand destruction from ruinously expensive power bills. Expect energy-intensive business to close left right and centre.
As for the elections, once power shortages kick in, Labour will be out the door. But neither party has much in the way of options- the Tory faux tree-hugging is so transparent it's embarrassing.
My bet would be: in the face of shortages planned decomissioning of the nukes will be delayed, first "temporary" and then for indefinate time. The rest should (or they hope to) be covered with electricity imports and with demand destruction caused by the skyrocketing prices and the inevitable recession kicking in.
Anything else, even a single month of rationing will be equivelent to a long-term political death for the party in power.
Tidal power is predictable. A double pond scheme with one pond filled at high tide and one emptied at enables the generation to match demand peak, effectively combining generation capacity with storage. With this and as much other renewable capacity as we can build we can up the renewable share
To get an idea of how great a resource the Severn is, consider that the 1998 single barrage scheme would produce 17TWhr per year. The largest of the lagoon systems favoured by Friends of the Earth would generate 24TWhr per year. This is equivalent to the output of 2150 of the very largest 3MW 100m diameter offshore turbines at a 30% load factor for the barrage and 3030 of them for the lagoon system. For the 200kW 24m diameter turbines common onshore operating at 25% load factor the figures are 39000 turbines for the barrage and 54800 for the lagoons.
Using Sanyo's best 200W 1.18m² solar photovoltaic panels at 10% load factor you would need 97 million panels for the barrage and 154 million panels for the lagoons.
There are drawbacks and environmental costs on all energy schemes. The lagoon scheme has lower environmental costs but uses much more ballast or concrete. If we turn down every new scheme because there are some disadvantages we will be left with the default option. Conventional oil will peak and decline. For a couple of decades a frenzy or development of filthy alternatives such as tar sands, oil shale, Venezuelan super heavy oil and coal to liquid conversion will struggle to fill the gap before that fails but not before pumping enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to ensure climatic disaster. We will be left in an economic and environmental calamity.
We desperately need tidal power and the Severn is the second best site in the world.
It also strikes me that we should take a look at all the other estuarys that lend themselves to this sort of thing.
My father (a Cornishman) tells the story of the Hayle tidal gates which used to be operated in order to flush the shipping channel clear.
It wouldn't be in the same order of magnitude as the Severn, but the key to this problem is "Every little bit helps"! (Not Tesco's)
I heard a caller on Radio 4 yesterday deride the initiative to replace all our filament light bulbs with energy saving ones as "A drop in the ocean" - but until the greater population wake up to doing the 'little things', they wont be in a position to decide coherently about the big things.
Off on a tangent for a moment, another caller on the Radio 4 program spoke about the scourge of mobile phone chargers and how people leave them switched on all the time (and only charge their phone for 2 hours every 3 days.
It seems to me the logical answer is to have a push-switch on the charger which 'clicks' out after the recommended charging period is up. A bit like those stairwell lights you find in communal areas. (You have 20 seconds to climb the stairs or you are plunged into darkness.)
That way, the phone owner can leave it plugged in & 'switched on' forever , it won't draw any current until someone hits the button - and then only for xx hours.
Then I got to thinking - how about making a that into a plug facility for all applicances. In the same way as you can get different rated fuses, you could buy a '1 hour' plug for your kids playstation, or a 2 hour plug for the TV.
Get me the patent office or Alan Sugar - someone...
You could arrange the switching by an extra contact ring on the jack or the mechanical act of pushing it in. It would add a little to the cost and up to now there has been no incentive for manufacturers to incur this cost. One of the good things in this report is the promise of cutting down on standby current. I hope they include phone chargers in the list.
A retrograde step in this regard has been the spread of cordless phones for land lines. Old fashioned handsets used no power at all when they were not being used. Cordless phones keep the wireless link powered up all the time.
Time to consider again the ancient conundrum, is the light still on in the fridge when I close the door? :-)