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Jon Excell
No silver bullet for UK energy conundrum
It’s no exaggeration to say that addressing the often conflicting challenges of meeting spiralling demand, reducing emissions and enhancing security of supply represents one of the biggest technical conundrums of the modern age. And, as always, the responsibility for developing the solutions rests with engineers.
Despite the protestations of some energy industry lobbyists, there is no silver bullet. The only way we’ll meet future energy needs is through a mix of technologies on a variety of scales: from domestic wind turbines through to large-scale nuclear plants. Intriguingly though, as our story Here comes the sun illustrates, in the future, ’big power’ won’t necessarily mean coal or nuclear.
Large-scale solar farms have long been discussed, but with the likes of ABB, Siemens and RWE now taking the concept seriously, huge concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, which use mirrors to focus the sun and heat water, might form a significant chunk of generating capacity sooner rather than later. One attraction of CSP is that it produces heat, which can be stored, and therefore gets around the intermittency problems associated with other forms of renewable energy.
Those behind such schemes mount a compelling case. The consortium backing Desertec, a plan to cover 6,000km2 of the Sahara desert with CSP plants, claims that just 0.3 per cent of the surface of the Sahara could generate enough power for the whole of Europe. It’s an intriguing prospect, and, if nothing else, an illustration of how dramatically we’ve failed to make the best use of the resources available to us. In reality, while ’big solar’ may well have a role to play, the prospect of concentrating Europe’s generating capacity in an area not noted for political stability doesn’t exactly tick the ’energy security’ box.
Away from Desertec’s ambitions, it is developments at the other end of the spectrum that are likely to have the biggest impact in the UK. April sees the introduction of the government’s feed-in tariffs, which reward households installing low-carbon generation systems by enabling them to claim payments for the electricity they produce. Steven Harris, head of low-carbon technologies at the Energy Saving Trust believes the tariffs could kick-start a green revolution across Britain’s homes. Read our interview with him here.
The tariffs should also be of significance to the UK’s engineering and technology base. As consumers cotton on to the money-making opportunities, demand for domestic microgeneration technology will rocket. We have the expertise and skills in the UK to capitalise on this nascent market, but not, according to Harris, the supply chain to cope with the government’s targets. It would be a great shame if the UK failed to capitalise on the opportunities presented.
What do you think? Will the feed-in tariffs spark a green revolution throughout Britain’s homes? Are you planning on investing in microgeneration technology yourself? As always, we welcome your comments. And please take a moment to vote in our poll
Readers' comments (3)
Tom | 9 Mar 2010 5:23 pm
The public will no doubt react favourably to the introduction of feed-in tariffs, despite the fact that the range of energy sources, covered by legislation at present, is relatively small, being limited virtually to wind power and solar panels. An urgent change to the legislation is required to include any source form capable of providing feed-in. This will act as a spur to engineers to come up with more imaginative solutions.
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Maurice Shakeshaft | 10 Mar 2010 5:15 pm
Why do commentators persist with Nuclear power as a major option? The long medium and short term risks/dangers and costs should make it a minority sport at best. (I'm being disingenuous, I know.)
We could have done much more with UK coal in the 80s and 90s but we missed the trick then and we could rectify that now. But a better current bet is wave and tidal power. UK is surrounded by seas estuaries and some of the largest tidal swings on the planet. We have an almost unsurpassed marine history. We have already developed most of the wave and tidal technologies to working scale. Why stop now and give it all away as we appear to be doing. We have a sad reputation for doing just that and if UK PLC is to prosper that must change.
Take the decision. Make the investment. Use the excess electricity to produce H2 by electrolysis and feed to power stations as CH4 replacement. Pump up empty gas and oil wells as energy supplies or as demand leveling reservoirs. Be ingenious. Be Engineers.
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J (Warks) | 11 Mar 2010 9:23 am
Don't forget Hydrogen Fusion - strange how long that has taken after the bomb (compared with nuclear fission). Reviewed on Radio 4 "Costing the Earth" last Monday 9pm.
Meantime the sun (huge solar flux) and tide/ocean currents, are the obvious interim, not nearly enough effort and inputs to getting them harnessed. Balmy ideas like parking mirrors in space when we have huge areas of desert here: far more energy falls on those than we can use ..
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