The Energy Review

By Professor Peter F Smith  - 18th August 06

The appearance of the Energy Review coincided with a period in which new evidence of accelerating climate change was appearing almost every week. Scientific opinion is converging on the opinion that the so-called 'tipping point' will be when CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere grow from the current 382 parts per million (ppm) to 440ppm. The rate of growth is presently 2 nudging 3 ppm per year which places the tipping point around 20 years from now. The tipping point is then there will be step change in the rate of global warming due to mutually reinforcing feedback systems. This gives us about 10 years in which to have in place a radical carbon abatement strategy that will have the twin benefits of significantly curbing emissions and a near carbon neutral energy infrastructure by 2050. This means only 5 years for feasibility and development studies.

What the review should have revealed is a government commitment to a three-pronged strategy:

• Significant reductions in demand especially in terms of the existing housing stock (note the Euro1.4 billion/year to bring the pre-1978 housing stock to current German thermal standards.)
• Subsidies to achieve economies of scale in micro-generation to facilitate the government's declared support for distributed generation
• State investment in macro-generation, ie up to gigawatt scale, mainly from the UK's unrivalled marine resources.

The government is misguided in concentrating on wind power to 2020. It is beset with problems and investors are now being deterred by rising manufacturing and infrastructure costs. At the same time the technology is capable of misinterpretation due to the load factor. This is the percentage of power delivered to the grid in a year as a percentage of stated capacity of the turbines. On average it is about 30%. The government needs to dispel the suspicion that capacity claims for wind energy have not taken account of the load factor.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you would like to submit a response to this article please contact the Partnership Secretariat.