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I wrote (rather poorly) back in October about fusion and its potential positives. In the middle of December, we had a breakthrough of incredible proportions.
For the first time, it took less energy to start fusion and sustain it, than was released in the reaction. This is obviously essential, as if it takes more energy to get the reaction to take place, than is generated you are using electricity not generating it.
I wrote a short time ago about the solar area needed to power the world. As a result, I was fascinated to find this article from a few months ago.
On the vast majority of rooftops, nothing is done with this space. Covering the half of these roofs that face the right way, with solar panels, would be able to power the world.
This would have another advantage. If the whole world was solar powered, and we connected all countries around the world, then batteries could be unnecessary – Europe could power America and Australia during the night, and they could return the favour during our night.
The UK has been very foolish, but greatly increasing the price of Solar. This must be reversed to not put off the Solar roll out.
How can we produce all our electricity through wind and solar? These are the two most wide-spread possibilities in terms of green electricity generation. It has been calculated, that in order to power all UK homes from wind, we need funding of 50 billion.
Now while this number is huge, the British government spent over a trillion pounds last year. This means that the investment required to generate 100% of our power from wind is about 5% of one years spending. This strikes me as incredibly cheap. This investment, would allow about 4 times as many turbines to be added as there currently are.
There would obviously be other costs, such as storing electricity for when the wind is not blowing. The important take away, is that this is negligible. Indeed with debts of over 3000 billion, adding 50 more is not a big step.
More importantly, it is calculated that doing nothing could cost the UK alone trillions of pounds. If we invested this money over the next say 8 years (so that all the money was available by 2030 and all the turbines were up and running by 2035) it becomes quite a small investment in government spending terms (though it is still a large amount of money).
It is estimated that by 2050 climate change could cost the UK up to £20 billion a year. Of course other countries around the world will likely have to pay far more. The UK has the 12th highest electricity use in the world as a country, this means that while each country will need a lot of money to go fully green electricity, it is not necessary to break the bank.
Different countries will have different ways to reach net zero, and we should help and encourage this move – but why dont we start planning the necessary investment, make sure that the UK leads the way in eliminating our electrical carbon footprint?
In the UK (and I am sure in plenty of other countries) as the grid has cleaned, there have been a whole host of firms that have sprung up as a middleman – buying green electricity and providing it to their customers. There is nothing particularly unusual about this – we get our electricity from Octopus on a similar scheme. With many of these firms, they supply the electricity and gas, but often have few holdings themselves.
Octopus is busily investing in all sorts of green electricity generators, but the problem exists that if you do not own any of the electricity generation, then in tough times this can be your undoing.
Now, many of these claim to be fully green, but are not necessarily. The reputable ones match each unit used to a unit of renewable generation that went into the grid (Ofgems renewable energy guarantee of origin REGO). Alongside this, the reputable ones also invest in renewable generation.
So was Bulb as green as it suggested? Well the complaint came from the fact that only 5% of its power came directly from renewable energy projects, the rest was bought on the open markets through the aforementioned REGO. The point is, the electricity grid does not consist of electricity traveling like emails to specific places – it is supplied everywhere jointly by all the producers. This means that provided a supplier is paying for enough green electricity to cover all its customers uses (and has the REGO certificates to prove it) by definition, it is fully green.
Would it be better if the company had some green generation of its own? probably, but provided the scheme works it does not have to. It allows green electrical generation to be used as it is created – by who ever needs it, exactly as our grid is designed.
This problem has arisen because the government allows green electricity and the certificate of it being green to separate people. However, provided the certificates only cover the amount of green electricity that is being created, it is not counted twice it is merely worth more to the creator.
What is wrong with this? If creators of green energy are aware that they can make more money than those burning gas, many will switch. This still does what is needed, and provided green electricity certification is accurate it wont be double counted.
Possibly, the last nail bulbs coffin, was caused by the government setting out plans to make this loophole smaller. These so called pale green energy tariffs – where green energy was not bought directly from a renewable energy project are supposed to be eliminated.
I think the British government needs to be careful here. It is quite possible that in the near future, these providers will not be necessary as all the electricity in the grid will be green. However, for the time being it is worth continuing to offer this premium to green electricity creators and the ability for suppliers to make sure they have covered their promises.
Now in the case of Octopus they are also replanting and rejuvenating a section of the Amazon rainforest to offset any gas emissions. It is currently unfortunately true that it is far cheaper to heat using gas – heat pumps are likely to greatly change this, as they are 300% or greater efficient (in terms of electricity in, and heat out) however for now gas is used. A reforestation scheme can be guaranteed to suck up the carbon it is promised to capture.
Our guaranteed green electricity and offset gas monthly cost is roughly £5 more than the best price on the market, and for us £60 a year to know that our electricity and gas use is not increasing the problems of global warming. Having said that, we are still trying to reduce our use through: Smart devices, added insulation and when we get them installed – solar panels and thermal solar panels. The other advantage with a scheme like this, is it guarantees you a price for you exported electricity – so if you have solar, and are currently not being paid for anything that you export perhaps now is the time to switch. This essentially means that you can use Octopus as a battery.
If you are interested in transferring to this or another Octopus scheme please click on the link. This will give you a £50 credit on your account, as well as on ours – thereby supporting the site, without costing you a penny
Incredible progress has been made over the last couple of decades towards greening our grid. Coal is now supplying a very small percentage of our power, and this is likely to fully disappear in the next few years. Gas is the only remaining fossil fuel on our grid. We mad roughly 28 gigawats of electricity from gas in 2018 (last normal year before epidemic). There are plenty of ways to get this from clean sources
As an example, 1 megawatt of solar panels takes roughly 4 acres, and costs about 1 million pounds. Therefore, 1 gigawatt would take roughly 7 square miles and cost roughly 1 billion. That means to replace 28 gigawatt hours of gas generation with solar, would cost roughly 28 billion. The batteries would cost about 2 billion for a similar quantity. In terms of area, we would need roughly 150 miles, which is roughly 2/3 of all the rooftops of the UK housing stock. If, however, all UK commercial governmental and industrial buildings have their roofs covered in solar panels, this would likely take a great deal of the capacity needed. Even if you assume we need extra for night time power, we can not be talking more than 50 billion.
I am not saying that the government needs to invest this now. However, as gas powerplants do not last more than about 25 years, we can assume that by 2050 all the current ones would be decommissioned. If as each gas powered plant goes offline it was replaced with solar and batteries, the cost would be roughly £1.8 billion a year while a huge cost to many countries, would essentially be a rounding error in the UK.
Currently, the weight of solar panels mean that (along with the cost) it is rare that companies have the money to cover large roofs with solar panels.
A new product developed by a firm in Sunderland may change this. They have developed a light weight alternative which can be stuck in the same place panels would usually go. This method is much cheaper and at least as effective as many flexible panels.
They still have tests to run, but if they are a success, the company aims to start selling it 0.3mm thick solar film in the middle of 2022. This would also easily go on cars and lorries as well. Although the initial aim will be to cover large building, a lorry has roughly 20 square meters of flat roof space – even with relatively poor panels, this should make 20-30kwh a day easily. While an electric lorry will use more than this, over the year, a system like this could make as much as 6megawatt hours, which is certainly not to be sniffed at.
Could this new product move us faster towards gaining significant amounts of our power from solar? I would hope so.
Over the last few years the UK has set itself some impressive goals. Unfortunately there is little joined up thinking about how to actually try to meet some of those goals in question.
Boris Johnson continues to put up impressive targets. At the Cop conference coming up the UK will be asked how it will deliver – this is now what the government has to focus on.
I would be embarrassed to chair a meeting with Boris Johnsons record on climate, but then it would seem that my capacity for embarrassment is higher than his.
The UK is in the lowest 10% of countries in terms of wildlife depletion. It is also last amongst the G7 of developed nations. It is thought that we have about half of our biodiversity left (average world levels in 75%). More alarming, it is thought that long-term 90% is the lowest level biodiversity can reach safely and sustain itself long-term.
It should be noted, that this biodiversity loss in the UK is not a new thing. Indeed, the UK has survived in this state for quite some time.
There is currently a conference going on in Kumning China, which is trying to address this.
Addressing biodiversity loss alongside carbon reduction would be the most sensible. Halting the loss of carbon sinks, is also very good for the wide range of biodiversity that thrive in its ecosystems. Can we move to doing both in tandem?
There are often arguments, that indigenous people need to be removed in order to balance nature back out. It is true that in some wilderness areas, so called indigenous people have moved into wilderness areas within the last 50 years. These people should not be called indigenous or be given rights over the land that their parents seized.
On the other hand, there are tribes in the Amazonian rainforest (as in the Congo and other rainforests) that have lived largely identical lives for 5000 years. Whats more, there is little evidence of damage to the ecosystem throughout the fossil record.
We need to be careful, as we try to protect these wild areas, There is a big difference between modern humans moving into the forest and clearing land for crops, and indigenous people who have lived in harmony with the forest for millenia.
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