I wrote the headline of this article before the latest news about the gas crunch in Europe. I planned to discuss hypothetical scenarios in which renewable power-reliant grids — and people — suffer the effects of too much demand at a time of insufficient supply. However, the scenario is no longer entirely hypothetical.
One item you don't fully bring to the forefront in Europe as compared to most other major economies is Nuclear. Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, India), North America, even eastern and Northern Europe (Russia, Finland, Poland, Hungary) all advocate for nuclear power. Maybe in another 50 years, we will have better technology to produce renewable power, and generally not consume as much power. It's definitely a lofty goal to try to do so. That being said, if we really want to take carbon out of the atmosphere, we should really be building more nuclear power plants. Sure, they have risks. But as your article clearly shows, the alternatives also have their own risks.
Unlike wind and solar, the energy in coal can be stored. It would make sense to retain coal-fired power stations as a 'spinning reserve' (i.e. back-up) but not use them routinely. That way, their emissions are negligible. Given that they already exist, they must be the lowest cost per stored kWh other than hydro. Scrapping them is just a PR exercise.
As Matt has said, nuclear is lowest risk but the old technology should be replaced by rapidly developed thorium molten salt reactors, at least until fusion has been cracked. Technically it can be done but vested interests have prevented it by pulling the wool over politicians' eyes. It looks like the same is about to happen with 'blue' hydrogen.
Kwasi Kwarteng has assured us that we have enough energy capacity to stop the lights going out this winter. He is not going to admit anything else. In a sense he is correct as long as everything stays working and the wind doesn't drop. In reality there is a strong possibility that some 'unforeseen' outage will occur. Recently there has been the damaged Norwegian gas pipeline, simultaneous drop-out of 2 windfarms, and a fire at the interconnector station in Kent. A prudent person would have their fingers crossed or, like me, check that their generator is OK.
“if in agriculture we are purposefully moving towards lower dependency on the weather, why are we at the same time equally purposefully moving towards much greater, even complete, dependence on the weather in energy?”
What a powerful point.
Thanks for ringing the alarm. I hope people are listening.
One item you don't fully bring to the forefront in Europe as compared to most other major economies is Nuclear. Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, India), North America, even eastern and Northern Europe (Russia, Finland, Poland, Hungary) all advocate for nuclear power. Maybe in another 50 years, we will have better technology to produce renewable power, and generally not consume as much power. It's definitely a lofty goal to try to do so. That being said, if we really want to take carbon out of the atmosphere, we should really be building more nuclear power plants. Sure, they have risks. But as your article clearly shows, the alternatives also have their own risks.
Unlike wind and solar, the energy in coal can be stored. It would make sense to retain coal-fired power stations as a 'spinning reserve' (i.e. back-up) but not use them routinely. That way, their emissions are negligible. Given that they already exist, they must be the lowest cost per stored kWh other than hydro. Scrapping them is just a PR exercise.
As Matt has said, nuclear is lowest risk but the old technology should be replaced by rapidly developed thorium molten salt reactors, at least until fusion has been cracked. Technically it can be done but vested interests have prevented it by pulling the wool over politicians' eyes. It looks like the same is about to happen with 'blue' hydrogen.
Kwasi Kwarteng has assured us that we have enough energy capacity to stop the lights going out this winter. He is not going to admit anything else. In a sense he is correct as long as everything stays working and the wind doesn't drop. In reality there is a strong possibility that some 'unforeseen' outage will occur. Recently there has been the damaged Norwegian gas pipeline, simultaneous drop-out of 2 windfarms, and a fire at the interconnector station in Kent. A prudent person would have their fingers crossed or, like me, check that their generator is OK.
“if in agriculture we are purposefully moving towards lower dependency on the weather, why are we at the same time equally purposefully moving towards much greater, even complete, dependence on the weather in energy?”
What a powerful point.
Thanks for ringing the alarm. I hope people are listening.