Climate clarity: DECC’s chief scientific advisor wants to set the record straight on the UK’s energy crisis
There are some topics that seem to turn placid engineers into passionate politicians and hard-nosed politicians into expert engineers. At the top of the list are energy and climate-change issues, which, according to David MacKay, have been responsible for fuelling some of the most emotionally charged and misinformed scientific debates of the current decade.
As the chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), MacKay is on a mission to bring some clarity to the haze of misinterpretation and hyperbole surrounding the energy debate. ’A lot of the things that are being held up as part of the “green” solution are just fluff,’ he said. ’My impression is that lobbyists, some governments and some people in industry often say misleading things, either deliberately or academically.’
The issue, believes MacKay, is that many things that allegedly make a difference just don’t add up. He cites the example of the BBC’s advice to unplug mobile-phone chargers when they are not in use. In reality, a typical charger consumes only 0.01kWH a day – equivalent to the energy used by driving a car for one second. ’The debate on energy is fundamentally about numbers,’ he claims. ’But numbers are rarely mentioned.’
“The debate on energy is fundamentally about numbers. But numbers are rarely mentioned”
Walking through the DECC offices, it’s hard to ignore the pictures of huge wind turbines looming over government officials. Last year, the building itself came under fire for being one of the most energy-inefficient government buildings in Whitehall. Now, in an attempt to improve its image, the office boasts smart meters, a new air-conditioning system and more artwork displaying renewable technologies.
MacKay seems as amused as anyone to be at the heart of government machinery that has contributed to the misinformation on climate change. ’I wasn’t trying to become a senior civil servant,’ he said. ’But about five years ago, I started paying attention to the excitement, debate and emotional conversations on the radio about energy and a lot of what I heard just drove me crazy.’
Specialising in human-computer interface research, MacKay worked as a lecturer at Cambridge University for 15 years. What propelled him into the ranks of chief scientific advisor, however, was a book he wrote in his spare time on an altogether different topic. ’Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air’ was published in 2008 and received widespread accolades for its candid approach to the UK’s energy crisis.
’What I wanted to do was to get all the options on the table,’ he said. ’Today’s [UK] energy consumption in all forms is 300GW. That’s 300 Sizewell Bs. The exchange for one nuclear power station is around 2,000 wind turbines, but you have to consider where you would put all those. If people want to be anti-nuclear, that’s fine with me. I don’t mind what solution we end up with, but it has to add up.’
“The calculator is hoped to provide a vivid insight into the compromises that have to be made”
Since joining the DECC in October 2009, MacKay has been developing an online calculator that outlines the possible energy pathways available in the UK. The tool has two sets of sliders – one that affects energy consumption and one that controls energy generation. It is hoped to provide the public with a vivid insight into the compromises that have to be made to achieve an 80 per cent emissions reduction by 2050.
’It’s an engineering-based calculator that says how much energy is being demanded from your choices and how much energy would be supplied on the supply side,’ said MacKay. ’If there is a shortfall, fossil fuels will be used and it computes the emissions from all those choices you make. The goal is to help people have constructive conversations where they can see the space of conceivable plans that do actually add up and will get us to our emissions targets and our security of supply targets and will keep the lights on mid-winter when the wind isn’t blowing.’
MacKay hopes the calculator could help to achieve a consensus among policymakers faced with making quick decisions on long-term plans. ’I’ve seen that happen in the past when people are exposed to interesting facts and numbers,’ he said. ’I imagine people will go in anti-this and pro-that and then come out pro-everything. People change their minds and I hope the calculator is going to help that.’ The outcome, added MacKay, will be less certain, but a numbers approach will help the government and the public to have a ’grown-up’ conversation about energy.
David Mackay biography
Chief scientific advisor for the Department of Energy and Climate Change
Education
1988 Received a BA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge University
1991 Completed a PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology
Career
1992 Returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College
1995 Became a university lecturer in the Department of Physics
2003 Promoted to a Professorship
2003 Wrote a 640-page textbook, entitled ’Information, Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms’
2008 Published ’Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air’
2009 Appointed as chief scientific advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change
Q&A Green debate is lacking energy
What has been wrong with the debates about energy up until now?
You have a lot of people with wishful thinking. They just haven’t been educated with the right numbers and concepts and they believe that if we put up a few solar panels and wind turbines then we’re fine. You also have conversation about replacing nuclear or maybe a bit more nuclear. But if we only talk about replacing, then we’re never going to get off fossil fuels.
So a completely renewables option is out of the question?
The scale of what is required if we only want to live on renewables is really quite large; we’re talking about country-sized areas that need to be used for renewables. Even if we covered the whole country with energy crops for making biofuels or wood to put in power stations, you wouldn’t match the total energy consumption. If you want to match today’s electricity with wind you need wind farms about two-thirds of the size of Wales.
What about those who are anti-renewables and support nuclear?
They’ve also got wishful thinking in that they’ll say ’nuclear is the answer’. That’s wrong too. If you look at the numbers, that’s not really conceivable. And they say a whole load of misleading things such as wind farms don’t work or don’t produce power – yes, they need a subsidy, but they do work.
Is there a particular technology you’re excited about that will help to provide more sustainable energy?
There’s a wacky idea for wind that may come out, which uses kites instead of standard turbines. So if you imagine the three blades of the standard turbine going round, you get rid of the hub and the tower and you have a kite going round in circles as if it’s a single blade of a wind turbine. So it’s sweeping out the same chunk of sky, corresponding to a huge wind turbine. And as the kite goes round, it could be like an aeroplane with propellers on it, as tiny wind turbines on the plane. So it whooshes around at maybe 10 times the speed of the wind and the little propellers will be generators that would generate electricity by slowing the kite down. It’s plausible to me that it could give you a fivefold or greater reduction in the mass of the turbine and thus make it cost much less. Of course, you need smart technology to be able to fly a kite that might be the size of an aircraft. It’s got to fly and not crash ever. So that’s an exciting technology challenge.
What do you expect the outcome of your consultations using your 2050 Pathways to be?
I think when you look carefully, the sort of message you get is that you actually need to build everything that is going to be economic as fast as you possibly can. So I think a sensible outcome of these public consultations is that we build more wind than most people are imagining and more nuclear than most people are imagining. And we go for stronger demand reduction and efficiency measures than people are imagining. A bigger push for public transport and building insulation, and maybe we will be able to get off the fossil fuels.
I read his book “Without Hot Air” earlier this year. I found to to be a refreshingly straightforward view of a complex topic. He did an excellent job of replacing claims and assumptions with simple calculations that outline the problem in an understandable fashion. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topic.
The only way is to stop wasting energy. If you look around you, you see many unnecessary power uses from computers and lights left on to doors that open as you walk passes to floodlighting etc, etc, etc. The whole world has to start thinking – “do we really need to use energy in this way?”. It is not just the current energy use, it is the whole life cycle use including manufacture, installation, maintenance and scrapping.
My interest in the energy used in heating homes and offices. Workspaces are often overheated in winter and overcooled in summer. I have developed the ComfoMeter which shows how far from ideal you are and what you can do to minimise your heating costs. Remember, the average temperature of homes in the UK has risen from 12C in the 1950s to 18C now
It is encouraging that we have a clear-thinking man of numbers as a government advisor. Once you cut through all the political posturing and pressure group vested interests only one thing matters – the numbers have to add up. If they don’t then the lights go out and all the rhetoric in the world won’t stop this happening. We must stop all the posturing and get down to hard numbers. I wish David Mackay well.
I am glad to see someone who knows what he is actually talking about, in such a position.
For far too long politicians have become “alleged experts” in many fields, the environment being one of them. Unfortunately these are full of misinformation and political bias, something that needs removing. Under the previous administration we saw this PR and misinformation used to extort more taxation under a guise acceptable to the British public. It was nothing more than conning the public out of more taxes with little return of them to the environmental sector.
Lying to the public never works, all it does is cause mistrust and the inevitable backlash. What is needed is a coherent and honest policy which everyone understands, then everyone can move forwards in the right direction.
To have ‘green’ transportation and eliminate the petrol/diesel internal combustion engine and replace with the hydrogen fuelled internal combustion engine, fuel cells or battery powered cars we need a massive increase in generating capacity to charge batteries or generate hydrogen at the point of use by electrolysing water. In most cases this charging and electrolysis can be done overnight with ‘off peak economy 7 electricity’ and the reason why industrial size fuel cells are being developed to store ‘off peak economy 7 electricity’ as chemical energy to meet peak demands.
Wind farms are not the answer for 3 reasons:-
1) Wind farms are a major cause of green house warming as they are a major user of concrete – the major cause of CO2 generation and green house warming.
2) Wind farms on land are not the answer as they are only capable of generating power just 20% and unpredictable requiring conventional power stations to remain ‘on steam’ burning fossil fuel 24 /7 to provide power whenever a wind turbine stops turning under load whilst the pressure wave generated has been shown to make people and animals ill downstream.
3) UK plc has to compete on the world market and cannot afford the heavy subsidies to speculators to build wind farms or the high operating subsidies (several pence a Kilowatt Hour) for electricity from wind farms on land. Likewise the hard pressed families in the UK cannot afford to subsidise wind power in the age of austerity we find ourselves in when we cannot as a nation or as families manage. I note here that the per kilowatt hour subsidies are not an issue for a millionaire green like Chris Hune or an overpaid senior civil servant with an index linked final salary pension or a civil service having the tax payer pay their office energy bills BUT it is critical to working families and business that cant pass the costs on.
That said – the case for off shore wind farms is slightly better as they generate electricity about 25% of the time and their pressure waves don’t make animals or humans ill unless sailing by.
Tidal power generated in tidal races and tidal flows generate power 85% of the time and because tidal flow can be predicted the national grid knows years in advance at what times the tides change and hence the exact moments the reversible water turbines cannot turn and the time band either side of high and low tides that the tidal flow is insufficient to turn the water turbines under load.
As an island off the North west coast of Europe with seas connected to the Atlantic ocean we have massive opportunities for tidal flow water turbines around our island that land locked countries and countries around the land locked Baltic and Mediterranean sea don’t have meaning that the ‘one size’ EU solution of wind power is a no-brainer and a non starter here or the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Spain and France.
The answer is simple – 80% plus nuclear power dependency like France supplemented with tidal flow water turbines with off peak energy storage in industrial fuel cells and High/Low hydroelectric power stations in mountain regions were water is pumped from the low lake in the valley to the high lake on the mountain with off peak energy and running generating electric power at peak electrify demand during the day.
Finally – I have worked as a metallurgist and Welding Engineer in the Power Generation business since 1984 and am used to dealing with both high cycle dynamic fatigue and low cycle dynamic fatigue. All Power station equipment comprises rotating parts to drive the generator WHILST thermal energy plants burning fuel to produce steam to drive a generator and gas turbines heating and compressing atmospheric gas to expand and drive a power turbine.
An Industrial gas Turbine with a transonic compressor (blade tips rotating faster than the speed of sound) will be rotating at 18,000 RPM or 1.08 million rotations an hour for a minimum rotor design life of 100,000 hours (11.42 years continuous running) – A dynamic fatigue design life of 108.000 million cycles will probably only have a low cycle dynamic fatigue life rotating parts of 200 to 250 thermal cycles at stop starts to withstand the massive structural stresses when the plant heats up to operating temperature and cools down again.
Steam Turbines are designed to run continuously for 20 years with life extensions to 30 years under dynamic load. Unlike industrial gas turbines and aero engines gas turbines, they were never designed to withstand low cycle thermal fatigue and are being destroyed by being kept steamed up on standby for wind turbines cant produce electricity. Keeping the boilers steamed up isn’t the problem – admitting the steam to the steam turbines to generate electricity causes a low cycle thermal fatigue cycle that is destroying the turbines.
Not only does Wind Power have heavy subsidies to build and operational subsidies to the generator AND have a very high CO2 footprint from the manufacture of the concrete foundations, THEY HARDLY REDUCE FOSSIL FUEL USAGE AS THE CONTROLLERS OF THE NATIONAL GRID HAVE TO KEEP CONVENTIONAL COAL/OIL FIRED POWER STATIONS HAVE TO REMAIN FIRED UP ‘ON STEAM’ TO AVOID POWER CUTS. WORSE STILL, THE STEAM TURBINES IN THE BACK UP FOSSIL FUEL POWER STATIONS HAVE VERY HIGH MAINTENANCE COSTS FOR LOW CYCLE THERMAL FATIGUE AND ARE HAVING THEIR UISEFULL LIVES CURTAILED BY EACH UNNECESSARY OPERATIONAL STOP START.
The cost for the ‘off load’ fossil fuel burnt in the back up fossil fuel plants to keep them steamed up as back up by the National Grid is also borne by UK plc as a hidden Wind Power subsidy by industrial users and families both directly through their electricity bills and through their Tax and Council Tax bills for public sector electricity usage.
Ironically It is the ‘Green’ movements knee jerk opposition to nuclear power that is the main cause of acid rain and the global warming we are seeing now – If the developed world was 80% plus Nuclear Power we would not have a problem and UK plc and the developed world would have affordable energy.
I’ve got a hunch that overheating and overcooling are indeed significant. It would be interesting to see some quantification of the impact on CO2 emissions and fuel costs.
Apologies for writing low cycle dynamic fatigue in my earlier post – the window the posts are written in are far too small to read and edit a post properly.
I should have written Low Cycle Thermal Fatigue instead of low cycle dynamic fatigue.
Low Cycle Thermal Fatigue is the highly destructive fatigue mechanism that occurs with each heating/cooling cycle in the steam turbines of fossil fuel and nuclear power plant and in gas turbine plant used for power generation (also applies to gas turbine plant used for mechanical drive applications and aero-engines).
I have read without hot air which I do believe is a step in the right direction. I am however slightly concerned about the basis for some of the calculations in the book (and maybe in the spreadsheet if they use the same basis).
In the book on the section on heating David Mackay states
“Heaters called air-source heat pumps or ground-source heat pumps can do much better, delivering 3 or 4 units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed.” as well as
“The point is, if you use electricity from an ordinary fossil power station, more than half of the energy from the fossil fuel goes sadly up the cooling tower. Of the energy that gets turned into electricity, about 8% is lost in the transmission system. If you burn the fossil fuel in your home, more of the energy goes directly into making hot air for you.”
If you apply a logical approach to reducing the heating demands for buildings and reduce the heat loss through retrofitting to increase levels of insulation etc then you get to a point where the internal gains from lighting people etc are enough to offset losses even when the outside temperature has dropped quite low. At passivhaus standards in London this could be 2 or 3 degrees outside air temp. Obviously not suitable for all but should be able to get to this point for new build and say a level of 7-10degs for refurbs.
Now if you want to use an air source heat pump instead of a gas boiler you need to remember that once you get below 7 degrees the COP’s of air source heat pumps go downhill until they get to close to 1 ( i.e. 1 kw electricity gives 1 kw of heat). A gas boiler will be working at say 90% efficiency so 1kw of gas gives 0.9kw of heat.
A considerable amount of electricity is produced from fossil fuel powered power stations and my understanding is that only about a third of the energy input gets delivered to the end user. This means to generate the 1 kW of heat about 3kw of fossil fuel needs to be input into the power station.
As such if we are looking at a national level then the air source heat pump seems to use 3 times as much fuel as a gas boiler (when it is required to be used).
Peet, if you are concerned about the basis of any of the calculations in David MacKay’s book, why don’t you email him about it?
‘Without The Hot Air’ was reviewed and commented on by scores of people, myself included, and a few significant mistakes corrected, as David himself notes in the Preface.
Having heard David speak on several occasions, I feel sure that he is conversant with the point you make, and I doubt that he has made a gross error in his estimates, but you may be able to help him elaborate on a point for the next edition (if and when his responsibilities allow him time to write it).
If you read chapter 21, you will see where David writes: ‘Let me spell this out. Heat pumps are superior in efficiency to condensing boilers, even if the heat pumps are powered by electricity from a power station burning natural gas. If you want to heat lots of buildings using natural gas, you could install condensing boilers, which are “90% efficient,” or you could send the same gas to a new gas power station making electricity and install electricity-powered heat pumps in all the buildings; the second solution’s efficiency would be somewhere between 140% and 185%.’ He provides several more pages and references to support this conclusion.
Clearly, heat pumps use electricity, and there are thermal and transmission losses in producing and delivering grid electricity. However, even allowing for these losses, the arithmetic (0.3 x 4.9 > (0.3 + 0.8) > 0.9) shows that a good heat pump will save energy over a CHP system and a gas boiler (which remember also face ‘transmission losses’ to deliver their fuel).
Of course, a ‘bad’ heat pump, i.e. one operating with a low COP, might use any amount of electricity and deliver little or no heat.
You will see that David MacKay writes: ‘In the UK, air temperatures don’t go very far below freezing, so concerns about poor winter-time performance of air-source pumps, which might apply in North America and Scandanavia, probably do not apply in Britain.’, which I think is the point you are making. If you have data to quantify the ‘probably’ more precisely, it might be of interest.
‘Passivhaus’ technologies (which David discusses at length and are compatible with heat pumps) are difficult to retrofit to the existing buildings that make up the vast majority of the UK’s housing stock. The best option solely from an energy perspective would be to knock down and rebuild all the inefficient houses, but this is obviously unacceptable for other reasons.
As I understand it, David MacKay’s point in writing his book was not so much to produce the all-encompassing definitive account of the UK’s energy generation and consumption, but to prompt people to make their own numerical estimates, and thereby reduce the ‘hot air’ (‘twaddle’) that had hitherto enveloped the subject of sustainable energy.
On this basis, if he has expressed a view different to your own, or has made an oversimplification or even an error on one point, he might be interested to hear about it, but it hardly invalidates the overall thesis. The fact that you are now thinking for yourself, undertaking independent research, challenging orthodoxy and reaching your own conclusions about sustainable energy, seems to achieve David’s primary objective in writing the book.
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