Energy For a Changing World: A Credible European Energy Strategy for the 21st Century
Posted by Euan Mearns on February 24, 2008 - 10:44pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: alex salmond, bio fuels, brian wilson, carbon sequestration, energy efficiency, european commission, hydrogen fuel cells, peter vis, tritium [list all tags]
On Friday 22nd February, I attended the above conference in Aberdeen. With presentations from the EU Commission, The European Parliament, Scottish politicians and leading academics, this was a high profile event. There follows an account of the key issues raised by the various speakers together with my own observations and opinions on these matters.
Peter Vis
Peter is a member of the cabinet of Andris Piebalgs who is European Commissioner for Energy. He has particular responsibility for climate change targets, renewable energy and bio-fuels.....
Peter provided an overview of the EU framework for staged targets in CO2 reductions and reported on the progress being made by various countries in meeting these targets. I gather the UK is not doing so well. The core of EU energy policy centres on reducing CO2 emissions combined with attention to energy security. On paper they are admirable goals.
However, do actions match the rhetoric? Peter conceded that bio-fuels had recently received some bad press and I believe he said that the EU was intent on rehabilitating this tarnished image and would proceed with existing targets for bio-fuel production.
I believe he also said that bio-fuels have the capacity to reduce CO2 emissions by 80%. Somewhat misleading I believe? It may be the case that Brazilian sugar cane ethanol with eroei (energy return on energy invested) about 7, may deliver around 86% CO2 reduction. However, with temperate latitude bio-fuels where eroei may range from 1.2 to 2.5 the CO2 reductions are much lower – roughly 17% and 60% respectively (assuming that fossil fuels provide the energy of production). And so the key question is this. Are these reductions in CO2 worth the cost of changing land use, soil depletion and the threat of famine caused by converting our food supply into liquid fuels?
No doubt new enzymes and cellulosic ethanol may address some of these issues. However, why not promote the simplest and most energy efficient route of putting renewable electricity in a battery in an electric car instead?
Professor Jim McDonald Chairman of the Energy Technology Partnership
Professor McDonald gave an overview of energy research groups in Scotland focussing on Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Hydrogen fuel cell research and CO2 sequestration were mentioned and since neither is to my mind an energy efficient way of dealing with energy decline these priorities leave me with a sense of frustration.
I hasten to add that using CO2 in miscible gas flooding of hydrocarbon reservoirs is a completely different matter and should be prioritised since the incremental increase in oil recovery adds to our national and energy security. There is a trade off between burying some CO2 at the expense of producing more fossil fuel energy that when combusted will produce more CO2. I sincerely hope therefore that a way is found to revive the currently dormant BP Miller – Boddam scheme.
In the discussion session I made the point that energy efficiency needs to be applied to energy production as well as energy use and Professor McDonald endorsed that point of view. Personally I would like to see energy efficiency as the guiding beacon of all Scottish and EU based energy initiatives.
Alyn Smith MEP
Whilst Alyn represents the Scottish National Party (SNP) at the European Parliament he dedicated part of his speech to criticising the administrative mess that the SNP government recently inherited at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh citing the ability of small interest groups to block progress in new energy development projects.
Alyn is a full member of The Agriculture and Rural Development Committee of the European Parliament and is a substitute member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee.
Alyn provided details of truly vast sums of money available for energy research and development projects within the EU and invited anyone or organisation looking for advice or assistance on such matters to contact him or his office.
I sensed a genuine desire to help so if you are looking for EU funding contact Alyn here.
Malcolm Webb CEO UK Oil & Gas
Malcolm observed that the European Oil and Gas industry accounts for most of the primary energy production within the EU, is the main provider of energy security and yet receives little attention within the EU energy strategy.
A curious paradox indeed which I suspect is related in part to declining oil production that will shortly be followed by gas and the need to replace these historic energy resources with something new.
However, I happen to agree with Malcolm that sustaining indigenous oil and gas production within the UK and EU should be a high priority and I personally would like to see the burden of taxation shifted away from the producers and on to the consumers. In this way the incentive to consume is minimised and the incentive to explore and produce is maximised. That is the path to energy security.
Very difficult to sell this to the electorate I know.
Jason Ormiston CEO Scottish Renewables
Jason provided an overview of the progress made in renewable energy developments within Scotland that was laced with a sense of frustration at the slow pace of development.
Those who have pursued and promoted renewable energy developments in Scotland are to be applauded. The reasons for the slow pace of development need to be identified and cleared away. I sense the new SNP administration is on the job.
Rt Honourable Brian Wilson, former UK Energy Minister
Now retired from politics, Brian Wilson is one of the UKs most experienced and knowledgeable politicians on energy matters.
Good will and good intentions were on prominent display at this conference and Brian rather laconically observed that this had been the case for decades and voiced a sense of frustration at the slow pace of progress in developing Scotland’s non fossil fuel based energy economy. He observed a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. “We are in the hands of destiny”.
In the discussion session I pointed out that the actual response of the UK to declining gas production had been to build pipeline links to Norway and 100 bcm per annum infrastructure for importing LNG. When the LNG cargoes do not arrive we will wish we’d done something different.
I share Brian’s sense of scepticism.
First Minister Alex Salmond
Alex Salmond is an economist, leader of The Scottish National Party and First Minister of the Scottish Parliament where he leads a minority administration with great skill. Throughout his political career Alex has worked tirelessly towards the goal of gaining full independence for Scotland.
Unfortunately I had to leave to pick up kids from school and missed the days keynote speaker. I gather he announced a new Green Energy institute would be built in Aberdeen – maybe I need to prepare a CV – I guess there is a first time for everything.
Euan Mearns BSc PhD
Editor The Oil Drum Europe
euan dot mearns at btinternet dot com
End note
The first question of the day came from a rather nervous student, who had just submitted his PhD, who asked why a space program was not part of the EU energy policy. He went on to explain that Planet Earth is short of 3He which is more abundant on The Moon. Sustainability of the human race lay at the core of this question which I imagine was lost on the majority of speakers and delegates. He went on to explain how 3He may be used as fuel in nuclear fusion reactors.
Brian Wilson mentioned the vision of those who built Scotland's Hydro dams in the post-war years from which so much benefit has flowed. We once again require vision of this sort that stretches beyond where the next contract or research grant is coming from. I'd offer this student a job.
Here in the US, like a lot of places, we are suffering from from a massive debt financed "investment" in consumption, and the general trend in political circles is to discuss various ways of encouraging ongoing consumption, and to tax energy producers.
Hello Euan & WT,
"Very difficult to sell this to the electorate I know."
Yep, the investment in ongoing consumption, as opposed to conservation, is the crux of the matter IMO. Thus my constant harping that widespread Peak Outreach Programs, to provide full public saturation and acknowlegement of the challenges ahead, is the best path forward to POP the MPP bubble and promote paradigm shift.
The funds required to get everyone up to speed would be miniscule in comparison to the funding required for the new postPeak infrastructure, yet the offset savings to the fast reduction of obstructionist BAU, NIMBYism, Denial, and potential violence would be huge.
Of course, this is just my speculation.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Jeffrey - the US more than anywhere else would benefit from significantly higher taxes on gasoline - as you are well aware. This would reduce consumption (to EU per capita levels?), raise tax revenues, lower the trade deficit, help balance your books, improve energy security, lower CO2 emissions, elevate your countries image abroad and delay an energy crisis.
But the fact is that average Americans place the right to drive a gas guzzler to the mall above all these benefits. If this were not so then Hillary and Barack and John would all be promoting this higher fuel tax policy.
Euan:
Good grief! It's running out, remember. How can maximizing exploration and production be the path to energy security?
Tax the heck out of both consumers and producers, I say. If there are purposes for which fossil fuels are rather difficult to replace, you want to conserve production for many decades hence. That means keeping producers on a very short leash and not listening to special pleading from oil interests.
In the long run, the oil and gas industry is headed toward serving niche applications only (or extinction). I think it would be wise to keep that in mind now.
Do you think higher taxation will have any affect on the economy? I think it would send inflation on an afterburner climb to a flame-out.
Isn't taxation now, mostly what the market can bear?
IMO, all higher taxation will do is open the gates to economic hell a lot wider.
Lowering taxation would probably have a wild effect too, akin to an injection of speed. The trouble is after the initial high, another injection is needed or the low can debilitate.
Tax the heck out of oil and gas production and consumption (coal too). I'm not saying we generally raise taxes across the board. In fact, it might make sense to lower income tax rates and raise taxes on non-renewable forms of energy so that the overall level of taxation remained the same.
You just described what the provincial government of British Columbia has proposed, and they intend to start this year.
The ball is rolling.
You tax fuel, you tax everything! Even several times over.
Transport
Services
Tourism
Manufacturing
Food, production, wholesale and retail.
Commuters
And so on. I'm sure you can think of many more.
If you raise taxes severely on fuel, be prepared for the probable immediate consequences.
The reasons why 'vision' paid off post WW2 may not apply today. The period 1945-1965 gave increasing returns with few visible negatives to rapid exploitation of soil, water and air. There were technological advances and the recent military mindset meant everybody was on the same team. Today it's cool not to make any effort or sacrifice.
Euan,
From the Scottish Renewables link I see that wind is pretty similar to hydro in Scotland and it dominates total wind in the UK. In 2006 renewables were 4.2% of UK generation, about 40 GW typically. I don't know the breakdown of UK use of electricity, but it would seem to me that Scotland, taken on its own, must have a greater percentage of renewable generation, 15%? Was this figure discussed at the meeting?
Thanks,
Chris
It would also be interesting to hear if the Trans-Med idea for integrated wind and concentrating mirror solar is still considered an option:
http://www.trecers.net/
This visionary program holds out the promise of improving the European energy situation and future, and bringing into the modern age the whole of North Africa. It could be a truly revolutionary step forward, and a vision for Europe for the 21st century.
RC
Chris - I noticed that when I first went to this site. I'm guessing that the wind figure is installed capacity so you probably need to multiply by 0.35 load factor to get actual capacity. I'll email these guys to ask.
And yes, Scotland benefits from an extensive network of large hydro schemes which makes it much easier for us to achieve renewables targets. These large hydro schemes have done a huge amount of environmental damage - drowned valleys, some of the concrete dams are plain ugly, many rivers have been diverted and so on. A price worth paying? In an energy declining world I'd say yes.
We have one new large hydro scheme being built at present in a remote area - so it is still possible to do this. Personally I'd like to see more large hydro built - a trade off between energy security for humans and the welfare of salmon - and I'm a keen fisherman.
Euan,
One way to do hydro so that fish are preserved is to build run of the river plants. This means that power is produced when the river flows rather than stored, but this also means that you can build your storage in a place that is less environmentally sensitive. This is partly because the extra altitude in a for-the-purpose pumped storage site means less water is needed for the same power capacity. You have Ben Cruachen and Foyers as examples.
When considering hydro power, it seems to me that the effects on the downstream and upstream ecosystem needs to be considered. Removing predator species such as salmon can have a big impact on the way things go in the surrounding ocean, for example. This may, in turn, affect carbon uptake by the ecosystem. one wants to know if these effects are comparable in scale to offsets in fossil fuel use. In the US, our hydro projects are often accompanied by irrigation and increased nitrogen runoff which tends to put a damper on carbon sequestration through the formation of sea shells. Changing the way farming is done can help, but absent such efforts hydro may have a larger net carbon impact through increased farming. It kind of depends upon the potential of the watershed and its esturary to sequester carbon compared to farming elsewhere without hydro, all balanced against fossil fuel use displacement.
Nationalism is Scotland looks like it might have an effect on how UK emissions reductions are counted. This seems like an interesting topic to explore.
Chris
If you do that, you lose the benefit of storage in your main hydro plants and have to build it separately. That is going to add cost to the system, and you are going to have trouble building pumped storage systems with capacity to buffer seasonal variations.
If conventional hydro must be ruled out because of environmental impact, the main energy storage will have to come from supplies which are naturally harvested in storable form. For this reason, we should be putting a heavy emphasis on R&D in e.g. direct-carbon fuel cells able to burn biochar; a stockpile of biochar is a compact buffer of energy and storable for decades.
Direct carbon fuel cells are interesting in that they have potential for very high efficiency. But, I am beginning to think of biochar a too valuable to burn because its micro structures seem to be quite good at buffering nitrogen. Buffering nitrogen seems to me to be key to land use changes that can help to restore the carbon sequestration potential of coastal waters while at the same time sequestering carbon in soil. I also feel that while one can get some parasitic energy production from making biochar, the inefficiency of rooted plants at collecting solar energy makes solar PV and wind power look much more attractive as energy sources. The electrification of transportation leads to about 0.5 days of storage total power consumption if batteries are used because transportation grade batteries are of such high quality that they are still useful after they have partially degraded. If the compressed air method of transportation becomes popular, then the air tanks and engines might also see a second life as stationary storage with the heat from compressing air being used for heating water and the cooling from use of the engines having application in refridgeration. Potentially, this could lead to even more storage than going with batteries and even greater overall system efficiency in the aftermarket application. So, just from converting transportation we will see substantial storage which should allow renewable penetration up to 70% or more.
The big advantage of standard hydro is that it can cover for the emergency shut down of a nuclear power plant because it is both large and responsive. This advantage seems to be disappearing in some places as decadal scale changes in precipitation reduce the availabilty of hydro power and the flow rate of rivers used to cool nuclear power plants. Further, I've been thinking in the last week about the sustainability of using biochar for sequestration, worrying about the ability of terra preta to regenerate itself. Could there be a problem with soils becoming carbon sinks that will continue to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration below 280 ppm because, once started, they continue to accumulate carbon on their own? We may want to make estimates of how much terra preta surface area should be created. In that context, your picture of retaining biochar as energy storage for decades seems a little like Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dream. I wonder if there is a place for a strategic biochar reserve at some point in the future. This would clearly be a distributed reserve rather than centralized. I think, though, that as wind and solar begin to become our dominant energy sources, it may turn out that liquid hydrocarbon reserves will be produced using carbon dioxide and water as feedstocks wih less disturbance of natural ecosystems just because we are substantially more efficient than rooted plants at doing this. With Lake Mead projected to go dry within 14 years or so, rethinking the usefulness of large scale hydro as energy storage is probably in order.
Chris
Chris - you or EP are maybe good people to ask a couple of questions. What % of annual N hemisphere vegetation growth is agricultural? So what is the practical limit of "pumping down" CO2 by say converting to char x% of all agri waste?
And how does spreading all this char into soil affect the oxidation state of the soil? Will filling your soil with char not create strongly reducing conditions as the char will eventually start to oxidise - using all available oxygen - creating a "stagnant pond"?
I'd just pile it up for barbecuing the last camel.
I don't know what fraction of growth is agricultural, but one can project from The Billion-Ton Vision that some 300+ million tons/yr of carbon (equivalent of 1.1 billion tons CO2) is available from various non-food plant matter already produced in the USA alone, and it may be possible to increase this substantially (1.3 billion dry tons @ 45% carbon is 585 million tons carbon, equivalent to ~2.1 billion tons CO2).
Note that there are several versions of "The Billion-Ton Vision" on the web, with different covers. I'm not sure how the contents differ; I'm citing the version linked from GCC (which also lists the authors prominently).
Almost not at all; the stuff appears to be stable on a scale of thousands of years. Normal soil carbon is lost far more easily.
Hi Euan,
I'm working on your first question now. I'll give you the estimates from the Climate Code Red report (on p. 58), these are worldwide I think. Citing Marris in Nature News 2006 442 624 they give 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon per year: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/full/442624a.html with a citation there to:
Lehmann, J., Gaunt, J. & Rondon, M. Mitigation Adapt.Strateg. Global Change 11, 403–427 doi:10.1007/s11027-005-9006-5 (2006). http://www.springerlink.com/content/etm7526m07672103/
This is more than we currently emit annually.
For crop wastes, another estimate they give is 1 billion tonnes per year from here: http://planetwork.net/climate/emergency.html
but this estimate does not seem be well supported.
On your second question, soils oxidize mostly through microbial action. One usually wants as much carbon in soil as possible because it grows plants very well, but agricultural activity provides oxygen to the soil and so the carbon decays and you need to add more. Grasslands continue to build up carbon through their continuing root formation.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/5805/1598
This difference is the reason why biofuels produce more emissions that fossil fuels. If you need to disturb previously untilled soils because biofuel crops are displacing food crops, then all that soil carbon decays and enters the atmosphere. The thing about biochar is that it does not seem to be eaten much by microbes so that it remains in the soil without decaying as quickly as other biomass (manure, compost, dead roots etc.). This appears to also set up an ecology in the soil where carbon will be built up in deeper layers at least in the Amazon.
The amount of air in soil is dependent on its porosity. Biochar should add to this since it retains some of the structure of the original plant. This is why it buffers nitrogen and retains water. Since it is not itself decomposing much, it should not be creating anaerobic conditions though I think this could occur if the land converts to wetlands.
Not a full answer, but I'm still learning myself. One of the co-chairs of our EcoAction committee works with Danny Day so I'll be picking his brain as I go along.
I thought camels were better for milk and blood than for barbecue?
Chris
Euan, I guess the student was referring to helium-3, 3He, and not tritium. Tritium is very unstable and does not accumulate on the Moon, but 3He is stable and can be found in the solar wind. It is trapped in moon rocks. It could be the source of a new fusion process, easier than D+T fusion. See here for instance.
Thank you Gilles. Indeed the student was talking about 3He and I've corrected the text - hope this is right now.
Fusion involving 3-He looks much harder to develop as an energy source than DT fusion. If this somehow turns out not to be true, there are easier ways of getting 3-He than going to the moon for it.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
The proponents of helium-3 for fusion want to use it as a fuel because it produces few neutrons(the main nuclear reaction is aneutronic).
They are less forth-comming on why neutrons are such a big deal however. So what if the reactor becomes weakly radioactive from neutron activation and you need fairly heavy shielding and a bit of remote handling? This is small potatoes.
Any D-3He reactor is going to have a fair amount of neutron production from D+D -> 3He+n. The neutron is only 2.45 MeV compared to 14.7 MeV from D-T fusion, but it's far from aneutronic.
I once calculated the amount of lunar soil that has to be processed to get a gram of He-3 and it was in the million tonnes... I don't understand why this pipedream is being pushed over again when there is so much easier way - produce Tritium via irradiation in fast breeders and wait for it to decay - in 14 years a gram of T will produce 1/2 grams of He-3.
Compared to going to the moon this should be piece of cake. But even so I'm at loss why we need to do it, given that this reaction is so much harder and requires 80 times higher power densities than D-T.
Going to the moon for He-3 is an example of a scientific "possibilities" becoming detached from fundamental economics...
What is the EROEI on Lunar He-3? My guess is it is several orders of magnitude worse than corn ethanol.
More like one tonne, I think. If you made the same mistake I did, you assumed helium blowing out of the sun and being caught in moondust would have the same isotopic composition as helium on Earth. I learned better.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
I re-found the source I used for lunar He-3 concentration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
0.01 ppm means that roughly 100 mln.grams. (100 tonnes) of soil need to be processed for a gram of He-3. I think I was off in my memories and I was calculating kilograms not grams - this doesn't change that the idea we need to process 100 thousand tonnes of soil to get a kilogram of He-3 is simply too crazy.
IIRC in the same calculation it was claimed we need 30 tonnes of He/year to power the world by He-D fusion, thus we need 3 bln.tonnes of regolyth processed. If the first 5cm. of regolyth is processed, this translates (at 2.8 g/cm^3) to a bit more than 21.4 thousand square kilometers of Moon surface for 30 tonnes of He a year. How possible would this be?
[edited because I noticed I was off 3 decimal digits in my original calculations]
The craziness is not there, it's in not acknowledging that no-one knows how to use the stuff as fuel.
I'm not sure exactly what 3-He enthusiasts have in mind for it, but I seem to recall two 3-He nuclei can do this,
2 (3-He) ---> 2 (1-H) + 4-He
6.0320586 2.01565008 4.0026032
where the numbers are molar masses in grams. Mass reduction 0.01380532 g/mol, 0.00228866 grams per left-side gram, so energy yield 205.694 GJ per left-side gram. If that would sustain itself, it would make regolith that can yield 0.01 ppm 3-He about as good as the tarsands.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
3He + 2H -> 4He + 1H + .02 AMU as energy
They'll also get some neutrons via 2H + 2H -> 3He + n
They used to say that it was because D-T fusion produces more neutrons that can irradiate the walls of the reactor, but the ITER will use the neutrons to breed more tritium from lithium. So basically, this is a joke. It hasn't really been taken seriously since the `90s, and future plans are on DT fusion, DD fusion, or fast neutron reactors. But the oil drum still likes to poke fun at it, which I find annoying.
But you can't use lithium as the wall of the plasma chamber, and neutrons even at fission energies cause damage to metals. If the engineering problems of the "first wall" have been solved, it is news to me and you're holding out. This gives you two options:
All - thanks very much for all the input here. Is it safe to surmise that no one thinks mining 3He on the moon is a good idea?
Euan
Did anynone at the conference have the idea it is time to set aside - by legislation - some UK oil and gas fields for the sole purpose of serving as an energy input into all those projects which are needed
(1) to prepare us for ever declining oil production (e.g. rail electrification)
(2) to de-carbonize our economy
What I fear is that when finally the penny drops on understanding the double challenge of peak oil and global warming, all these projects will get stuck in diesel shortages.
Westexas, is it possible to introduce special retention leases for that purpose?
LOL
Matt - not too long ago the UK had a state-owned company called British Gas which had a monopoly on domestic gas supplies but also got involved in oil and gas exploration and production. I'm quoting from memory from a time when I didn't pay too much attention to these things. But I believe British Gas played roll as swing producer within the UK gas market - helping to provide for peak winter demand. In particular the large Morecambe Bay gas field was conserved for this purpose.
Upon privatisation, British Gas got broken into a number of pieces. The oil producing assets became Enterprise Oil (since taken over by Shell). Most of the gas producing assets went to BG Group - who are fast becoming a major force in the international oil industry (see Tupi). The Morecambe gas field went with Centrica - who are the utility that took over the domestic gas sales business.
There followed the liberalisation of the UK gas market with many gas producers selling gas to a number of utilities. The age of energy efficiency (hahahahhahha) was born.
This climaxed in the UK exporting gas for a number of years which hastened the day that we needed to import gas which was 2004. By 2020 we will need to import about 80% of our gas.
The moral of the story is that the UK is set on a course of liberal free markets that can conjure energy out of nothing. Profit and growth is all that matters - and to be candid I do my best to sample the gravy while it is there.
The dependence of the UK upon imported energy is growing rapidly with every year that passes. The notion that one day we may not have sufficient energy to build alternative infrastructure is alien to the "minds" of those that rule us.
To be a bit more serious. We will have enough energy to expand renewables and it will come down to prioritisation of resources which may mean rationing. You have to assume that agriculture will be top of the priority pile and I'd imagine that the primary energy industries may come next.
Ok. But it's still a worry. And that's why it should be made clear to all that if you have a production decline of, say, 30% by 2020 the available fuel for discretionary gas guzzling in the cities will decline by much more than 30% because there are so many much more important uses for fuels which we have to keep at current or even increasing levels (sustainable energy projects) for as long as possible. We'll have MPs coming under political pressure from constituents to provide sufficient quotas on one hand but clashing with National or State requirements on the other hand.
It is vital that the electorate be educated to understand these future conflicts.
When you do such calcs, you'll quickly find that no hybrid cars, alternative fuels or engine technologies can fill that gap. In the Australian context I have estimated that Capital city motorists will have only 1/5th of current fuel supplies by 2020, assuming the above 30%. That requires a transport system which is a magnitude more efficient than private cars. It can only be electric rail (or trolley buses in hilly areas)
Matt,
care to share you fag packet scribblings with us -I'm interested to see how you got the 1/5 figure. Also any views on air-travel which I am guessing is even more likely to suffer unless Richard Branson gets to use his new alternative bio-fuel, I don't know if you saw that on TV, it was something like 'Virgin on Nuts'...
Nick.