Net zero could push energy bills up by £120 a year

Freakbro said:
@Caracus2k what's your short, medium and long term strategy for moving away from fossil fuels?
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There's no guarantee that there are ways to maintain some semblance of the societies we have created through the extensive use of hydrocarbons in their absence or even significantly reduced usage.

What this doesn't mean however is that you can't spot a lot of the stupid stuff that's put forward as 'solutions'.

In terms of simply electricity generation, in the UK, we clearly should have been and currently should be investing far more money and resources into nuclear generation capacity.

Outside of that the best hopes probably lie in research and development and pushing the industrialisation of resources beyond this planet.
 
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Caracus2k said:
There's no guarantee that there are ways to maintain some semblance of the societies we have created through the extensive use of hydrocarbons in their absence or even significantly reduced usage.
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Sure, there's no guarantees with anything in life, but it's looking like we're not going to maintain some semblance of the societies we have created by the continual use of hydrocarbons. So inaction isn't an option.
Caracus2k said:
What this doesn't mean however is that you can't spot a lot of the stupid stuff that's put forward as 'solutions'.
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Sure, but its easy to just moan and point out the faults about whats wrong with a solution and not give any alternative. So on the basis something needs to be done, dont let perfection be the enemy of good?

As like I say, I haven't actually seen you propose anything, just criticise.

Caracus2k said:
In terms of simply electricity generation, in the UK, we clearly should have been and currently should be i vesting far more money and resources into nuclear generation capacity.
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Absolutely, but we can't go back in time and it's going to be some time yet to get more nuclear generation capacity, hence why I want to know what your short and medium term strategies are in the meantime.
 
Depending who you ask you get different answers. I was speaking to an industry expert this week. He saw the most likely route as increasing solar and wind backed up by thermal generation with capacity payment subsidies. Initially he thought blue hydrogen where natural gas is steam cracked to hydrogen and carbon dioxide with teh H2 used to power the reserve thermal generation. The CO2 can then be pumped to sub sea storage from source bypassing the need for CCS. Then that wil move to green hydrogen which is electrolysed from water using spare renewable generation. This is then stored to fuel back up capacity secured thermal generation.

He thought batteries will have some impact particlularly in short term dispatch and frequecy response but not large scale storage.

He pointed out that major players in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK are all developing new build CCGT's initially on natural gas but H2 ready once they've confirmed the capacity payments. He thinks we'll see gas/H2 CCGT's into the 2040's.
 
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Caracus2k said:
Apart from saying we should have and should be investing more in nuclear, R and D and the industrialisation of space you mean?
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Which are long term, I've asked you about short and medium, eg: what renewable is doing since its quick to implement whilst we work towards the long term solutions.
 
Freakbro said:
Which are long term, I've asked you about short and medium, eg: what renewable is doing since its quick to implement whilst we work towards the long term solutions.
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Short to medium term we will remain reliant on hydrocarbons to run out societies and anyone that says otherwise is lying to you based on current tech.

We can look to slow down issues by continuing to use renewables (at a high real cost with things like gas in reserve).

But in the UK we should be planning/ building much more nuclear capacity now.
 
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Freakbro said:
As a method to reduce our reliance on them in the meantime to a long term solution being implemented they are....
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There's no reduction in reliance to be had any more, only a reduction in overall utilisation.

We remain extremely reliant on our fossil fuel capacity we just under utilise it when the sun and the winds are playing ball.
 
Caracus2k said:
There's no reduction in reliance to be had any more, only a reduction in overall utilisation.

We remain extremely reliant on our fossil fuel capacity we just under utilise it when the sun and the winds are playing ball.
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But that's good no? We want to be able to "under utilise" power generation by fossil fuels as much as we can, the more the better no? To minimise the amount of hydrocarbons we burn while working on the long term solution is great. So since you can't provide any other short or medium term solution, let's go with the best we have. Your argument seems based in what I said before, allowing perfection (oh no, renewables can't totally replace fossil fuels) to be the enemy of good (no, but we can reduce their use, giving us more time)
 
Caracus2k said:
There's no reduction in reliance to be had any more, only a reduction in overall utilisation.
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if we can reduce our over all utilisation to 10% fossil fuels (with some on stand by) , 90% renewable and nuclear, i could live with that for now.

I dont disagree with you on nuclear...... but mining in space rather than building more solar and wind to cut fossil fuel usage?

ok then good luck with that.

I am not sure on the viability of it but my gut feeling is solar panels in space (so 100% reliable) beamed down to earth is more likely than using other planet resources... but even that i would not bet much money on that being viable (but would be great if it could)
 
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Freakbro said:
But that's good no? We want to be able to "under utilise" power generation by fossil fuels as much as we can, the more the better no? To minimise the amount of hydrocarbons we burn while working on the long term solution is great. So since you can't provide any other short or medium term solution, let's go with the best we have. Your argument seems based in what I said before, allowing perfection (oh no, renewables can't totally replace fossil fuels) to be the enemy of good (no, but we can reduce their use, giving us more time)
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This only works of we maintain and continue to invest in the non solar/wind capacity I'm the meantime.


Unfortunately the goverment has taken the view that it can neglect such investment and so our capacity to reliably generate electricity has been dropping.
 
Caracus2k said:
www.theguardian.com

UK innovators get £4.3m to develop space-based solar power

Minister says technology to collect energy and beam it to Earth could help boost UK’s energy security
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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snap!. i just added that onto my post before seeing your link - . yeah space solar power would be great if it works...... but.. that IS still renewable energy. I put that up there with nuclear fusion. if it works then fantastic, it solves all our issues, but i just dont think we can bank on it.
 
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Caracus2k said:
But with a lot of the issues of intermittency addressed.... to be replaced with issues of transmission.
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yeah, possibly i have watched too many sci fi disaster movies but a massive high power beam fired at the earth sounds like something that could go incredibly wrong if the transmittor got knocked out of alignment (but this is a million miles outside of my wheelhouse i guess redundancies and emergency shut offs could be put in place)

a while back fully charged did an episode on it (its on youtube if interested), it was one of the more tech driven ones rather than a Robert rant or just gushing at the possibilities.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
if we can reduce our over all utilisation to 10% fossil fuels (with some on stand by) , 90% renewable and nuclear, i could live with that for now.
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But to be clear unless the great storage revolution takes place that means maintaining large numbers of thermal generation plants in an operable condition to generate when wind and solar are inevitably in short supply. So the "cheap" green energy always requires the back up of thermal generation. Renewables are the pay twice option.
 
PlacidCasual said:
But to be clear unless the great storage revolution takes place that means maintaining large numbers of thermal generation plants in an operable condition to generate when wind and solar are inevitably in short supply. So the "cheap" green energy always requires the back up of thermal generation. Renewables are the pay twice option.
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i guess it comes down to cost to the people in terms of money, or cost to the people in terms of the planet...... I am no raving leftie (it may not always seem like it, up until the last decade i had been leaning to the right) but this is all made so much harder with energy being a privatised institution. (though would i trust our government to organise a kids birthday? let alone our energy generation).

but ideally once all the wind and solar generation has been installed that realistically can be........... when the really cheap energy is plentiful with sun and wind, the masses of profits made would instead of being used to pay share holders would be put to oneside, and then that money would cover the costs if a few gas turbines needed to be fired up for a few weeks to top up what storage we do have and cover renewable shortage. Perhaps this isnt realistic and wont work......

the other side of the coin is reducing what energy we need. As it is personally our energy use has plummeted over the last few years. LED lights, better white goods and tv, and most important of all far better insulation. That is at home.

Our work claims to be green, we have solar on the roof... but the energy waste is still biblical. we have the heating on with no way to turn it off, and the air cooling fighting it, whilst we sit sweating in the office.

equipment left running unused. we are just 1 small institution but multply that over the country, i think we could likely use a lot less power without it affecting us too much
 
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PlacidCasual said:
But to be clear unless the great storage revolution takes place that means maintaining large numbers of thermal generation plants in an operable condition to generate when wind and solar are inevitably in short supply. So the "cheap" green energy always requires the back up of thermal generation. Renewables are the pay twice option.
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If we actually started investing in and using geothermal that is available 24/7 that'd certainly help.

Even in sites where it's not hot enough to be used to generate power it could still be hot enough for domestic and agricultural settings.

But, yes, a massive leap has to be made in storage.
 
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