OP
calhalla
Totally agree with malcolmsanford that tidal and wind energy are more sensible options for the UK renewable energy options.
It's interesting to do the numbers on PV if cost were no object.
In David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" he calculates that if a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of photovoltaics came down enough so that we could deploy panels all over the countryside, what then is the maximum conceivable production?
If we covered 5% of the UK with 10%-efficient panels, we’d have
10% × 100 W/m2 × 200 m2 per person ≈ 50 kWh/day/person
This equates to about 25% of the 195kWh/day/person that he calculates a UK citizen consumes. It should be made clear this is not only consumption of electricity, but includes energy currently consumed to fly planes, drive cars, farming and so on.
He makes the point that we may be far better off paying for PV in countries with double the insolation and transporting the electricity using power lines.
However I would bet on several new deep coal mines being opened in the UK before we hear news of direct solar power plant being built in Algeria.
Talking about coal, I see two major factors before coal can play a big role in UK energy production again, firstly, within a few years coal will be the major fossil fuel left, and demand will rise dramatically over the current levels, thereby shortening the life of the existing reserve significantly. And then, secondly, the development of technologies that will allow a greater amount of the resource to be effectively recovered.
For the first to occur investors and companies must be assured that when they make an investment, that this will have a market that will allow them to recover that investment and profit from it. Given the current concerns on Greenhouse gases that is a debatable question, and will likely delay investment. And for the second, someone has to encourage people to develop those new ideas, and at present they aren’t.
That's why it is so important to know with some certainty what UK coal reserves actually are.
The table below shows the 1980 the World Coal Study showing 98% of world production at the time. What is interesting is the column that gives the current estimate of reserves from the BP Statistical Review, (2006 ). The interesting number is the dramatic drop in the UK considered reserve. It does not indicate that there has been huge amount of mining over the past 25 years, but rather the constraint of what is currently economically viable. Re-sinking shafts is expensive, and the price is not yet high enough or the market large enough to justify the investment.
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On the plus side reopening coal mines in England would provide feed stock for existing generating infrastructure, provide jobs for immigrant east european miners who will pay tax to pay the pensions of our ageing population and the source of the energy lies within our borders.
With regard to nuclear, the natural uranium equivalent required to operate the 370 GWe nuclear power plants of today is roughly 65,000 tons per year. However during the past 10 years, the world-wide uranium mines extracted, on average, only about 40,000 tons of uranium per year, and the difference had to be compensated for by secondary resources. According to the data from the Red Book 2007 (The Joint NEA/IAEA Group on Uranium familiarly known as the "Red Book" )and the WNA, the remaining civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years. Consequently the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable.The urgency to increase world-wide uranium mining by a large amount is well documented in the current and past Red Book editions and related official declarations. However, the latest uranium mining data indicate that new uranium mines will not be capable to compensate for the diminishing secondary uranium resources, and that it will be difficult to fuel the existing 370 GWe. It seems that either a rather welcome but improbable further large conversion of nuclear weapons into reactor material will happen during the coming years, or fuel supply problems within the next 3-5 years will force a 10-20 GWe reduction of the operational nuclear power capacity.
So nuclear may act as a stopgap during the coming few years, but it will by no means offer a long term solution.
So what is the long term solution? Certainly energy efficiency, where we can make up to a 50% saving on our energy consumption in a very short time, but in the long term we need everything we can get our hands on and we have to make renewables work, in some way, shape, or form.
It's interesting to do the numbers on PV if cost were no object.
In David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" he calculates that if a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of photovoltaics came down enough so that we could deploy panels all over the countryside, what then is the maximum conceivable production?
If we covered 5% of the UK with 10%-efficient panels, we’d have
10% × 100 W/m2 × 200 m2 per person ≈ 50 kWh/day/person
This equates to about 25% of the 195kWh/day/person that he calculates a UK citizen consumes. It should be made clear this is not only consumption of electricity, but includes energy currently consumed to fly planes, drive cars, farming and so on.
He makes the point that we may be far better off paying for PV in countries with double the insolation and transporting the electricity using power lines.
However I would bet on several new deep coal mines being opened in the UK before we hear news of direct solar power plant being built in Algeria.
Talking about coal, I see two major factors before coal can play a big role in UK energy production again, firstly, within a few years coal will be the major fossil fuel left, and demand will rise dramatically over the current levels, thereby shortening the life of the existing reserve significantly. And then, secondly, the development of technologies that will allow a greater amount of the resource to be effectively recovered.
For the first to occur investors and companies must be assured that when they make an investment, that this will have a market that will allow them to recover that investment and profit from it. Given the current concerns on Greenhouse gases that is a debatable question, and will likely delay investment. And for the second, someone has to encourage people to develop those new ideas, and at present they aren’t.
That's why it is so important to know with some certainty what UK coal reserves actually are.
The table below shows the 1980 the World Coal Study showing 98% of world production at the time. What is interesting is the column that gives the current estimate of reserves from the BP Statistical Review, (2006 ). The interesting number is the dramatic drop in the UK considered reserve. It does not indicate that there has been huge amount of mining over the past 25 years, but rather the constraint of what is currently economically viable. Re-sinking shafts is expensive, and the price is not yet high enough or the market large enough to justify the investment.
On the plus side reopening coal mines in England would provide feed stock for existing generating infrastructure, provide jobs for immigrant east european miners who will pay tax to pay the pensions of our ageing population and the source of the energy lies within our borders.
With regard to nuclear, the natural uranium equivalent required to operate the 370 GWe nuclear power plants of today is roughly 65,000 tons per year. However during the past 10 years, the world-wide uranium mines extracted, on average, only about 40,000 tons of uranium per year, and the difference had to be compensated for by secondary resources. According to the data from the Red Book 2007 (The Joint NEA/IAEA Group on Uranium familiarly known as the "Red Book" )and the WNA, the remaining civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years. Consequently the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable.The urgency to increase world-wide uranium mining by a large amount is well documented in the current and past Red Book editions and related official declarations. However, the latest uranium mining data indicate that new uranium mines will not be capable to compensate for the diminishing secondary uranium resources, and that it will be difficult to fuel the existing 370 GWe. It seems that either a rather welcome but improbable further large conversion of nuclear weapons into reactor material will happen during the coming years, or fuel supply problems within the next 3-5 years will force a 10-20 GWe reduction of the operational nuclear power capacity.
So nuclear may act as a stopgap during the coming few years, but it will by no means offer a long term solution.
So what is the long term solution? Certainly energy efficiency, where we can make up to a 50% saving on our energy consumption in a very short time, but in the long term we need everything we can get our hands on and we have to make renewables work, in some way, shape, or form.
