There are many Sources of Eletricity
The UN Climate Change report was once again serious but not the emotional document that it has been the past. We should all agree that focus, hard work, and international cooperation are essential steps forward to improvement in the issues.
Engineering has developed many solutions that should be major components of all G7 Governments policies to mitigate the man-made impacts on the climate.
Of late PR Releases claim to be the largest in Europe or the biggest in the world. As E F Shumacher wrote in 1973 “Small is Beautiful”. So, for climate mitigation why not many more small installations?
The flagship of Renewables is wind has become ever cheaper per unit of power generated, even though its engineering is more complex. Continue building around our coasts, but onshore should only happen in the rare cases and where there is overwhelming local support, which I suspect is likely to occur with great inducements. However, in industrial coastal areas such as ports, installations should happen. Return on Investment is becoming a problem and share values are falling.
The second string in the UK is solar and much of the world has too much solar heat. If a seaboard is close to a hot desert area then sun powered desalination plants should be built for irrigation to produce food and forestation, potentially allowing Saharan Africa to feed itself and become richer. It would be better for the rich world to donate such plants for the local population to operate rather than give money for climate mitigation which may not reach the desired target. If more water is not needed then the sun’s heat could power Direct Air Capture (DAC) to strip out CO2 from the atmosphere for storage.
The world’s population will always produce waste and there are sophisticated recycling and waste to energy recovery plants in operation, removing the need for polluting landfill and providing sustainability through recovery of expensive materials. Some are also designed to provide local amenities such as ski slopes. There are also Anaerobic Digesters to harvest bioenergy. Biomass technologies are developing and reflect my email “Do not waste, WASTE.” There should be a time when any medium to large, livestock farms should approach self-sufficiency in energy, with their biomass energy supplemented by solar panels on south facing farm buildings, a couple of windmills. Throw in some geothermal on the farmer’s land and they may sell to the Grid more than they buy.
Renewables are great but the sun and never shines at night and the wind does not always blow to the correct strength, so we need energy storage and base load generating capacity. Offshore wind farms are now being built just to create hydrogen as an energy storage medium, likely to be far more efficient than batteries, as well as an alternative fuel for heavy transportation where one rapid fill provides fuel for an entire day’s work. But its uses should not be stretched into unsuitable areas, such as replacing town gas has many issues, such as the capacity of the mains and hydrogen’s safety in homes.
Nuclear is excellent as a carbon free baseload generator and Small Modular Reactors are likely to power future large facilities.
Fossil fuels are a no, no in most parts of the developed world. This opinion also causes the burning of wood as a substitute in developed and remote places, which is clearly counterproductive for carbon capture. Ten years ago, the UK was a leader in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). But various Government decisions caused our R&D to be abandoned. However now the CCS technology is well established with US leadership and over 400+ sites throughout the developed world. Professionally designed and installed makes fossil fuel powered plants, environmentally friendly and with more and more being transferred to electric power oil will be around for a considerable time.
There is considerable TV marketing effort going into Geothermal ground source heat pumps. But the depths that drilling has to go to give a reliable heating in colder periods are just too great to be economic for domestic properties. However, I am told that Air Source is effective even in Norwegian winters.
A lot of effort has gone into make capturing structures for tidal energy strong enough to withstand the enormous forces that are involved in surface seas. River estuaries also generate more heat than power because of concerns for nature. But what about the neglected area of sub-surface currents. Constant and not so severe, our many miles of coastline should offer many suitable sites. Hydro is great, but the UK have few geographical sites for this energy source.