David Mackay's Sustainable Energy - without the hot air had a big impact on me when I came across it in 2009. It's a refreshing read that cuts through the propaganda and emotional
appeals that much of the popular media discussion on energy consists of.
Estimating both the current energy demands of the UK, Europe and the world, and available energy resources from renewable and non-renewable sources, he illustrates what a realistic future energy plan must look like.
For example, in estimating contributions from wind power, Mackay first works from his own experience of wind speed from riding a bicycle. Using basic physical reasoning on turbines, optimum wind speed and energy conversion, he deduces realistic outputs and compares them to other estimates. The conclusion that follows is that to make a large contribution to the UK's energy demands, the total wind farm area must be the size of Wales.
It can be read online free (how cool is that?!) here.
Hi! Oh great, you actually posted on what we talked about at the computer session.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to find another person who appreciates this book immensely. What he already implies in his book has become clear (to a select few, unfortunately..) in the Netherlands too. Wind power is indeed not a 'green' source of energy, as long as we do not have a 'smart European energy grid' that would be able to cope with the supply and demand problems in electricity. These, we currently tackle by selling energy over the border and varying the amount of electricity produced by gas powerplants, with the result that their efficiency goes down from the regular 46% to 42% (Ummels, 2012). That again obviously leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions per W produced. In total, the windpower installed in the Netherlands has a theoretical capacity of 12 GW, but due to their relative inefficiency, problems implementing them into the power grid and the supply and demand problems/solutions I just mentiond, the annual Dutch carbon dioxide emission rises with 3.6 Mton. While the windpower lobby presents it as follows: we reduce emissions by 'wind park's theoretical capacity multiplied by the carbon dioxide emitted by coal power plants per W produced'. Fraud on a very large scale, which as mentioned earlier, a very select few (want to) understand. The paper by Ummels I'm referring to is in Dutch, but if you're interested I'll see whether there's a translation available.
Final question: MacKay very realistically speaks of nuclear power as a short term solution, which I agree with. What's your take on that?
Thank you for the pointer - it does sound worth a look. If there's an English translation please send it my way.
ReplyDeleteIt is challenging to see how diffuse renewable energy sources can provide reliable power without using appropriate stores or smart grids. Since these steps come with their own costs (monetary, entropic and environmental) it is often under-estimated just how efficient these sources are. That's not to say renewables aren't realistic; I just agree with Mackay's method that the whole energy budget needs to be considered, not simply electricity generation.
On the nuclear question, I haven't seen any strong evidence changing the energy input equation drastically enough to warrant a no-nuclear scenario. Sure, solar panels are maybe 20% more efficient than the estimates, but it's not going to be enough to fundamentally alter the three options - country-sized renewable energy facilities (1), Saharan solar panels (2) or nuclear fission (3).
Given that (1) by itself is politically impossible, and (2) is uncertain, there's going to be some nuclear fission around.
"MacKay very realistically speaks of nuclear power as a short term solution, which I agree with. What's your take on that?"
ReplyDeleteI don't remember seeing that specific argument in Sustainable Energy...and I don't know whether it's true. While nuclear power's going to be (part of) the solution in the medium-to-long term, I wouldn't expect it to do much as a short term solution, because it takes ≈10 years (e.g.) to go from "let's put a nuclear power plant here!" to an operational nuclear power plant.
Meanwhile, on the global warming front, we're already committed to enough warming that more rapid measures are necessary to reduce emissions soon or we run the risk of crashing through the usual 2°C target. (According to the Wikipedia page, 1°C might've made a better target. But by the time we figured that out, we'd already overshot it. Whoops!)