The energy gap

DR PAUL HUMPHRIES from the school of applied sciences at the University of Huddersfield, looks at the looming power crisis

Energy in the form of electricity, gas, petrol or diesel is an essential but increasingly expensive part of everybody’s day to day lives.

Although we use energy in a variety of forms, there are only a few basic sources such as fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable.

Concerns over global warming and the realisation that oil will not last forever has focussed increasing attention on our over reliance on fossil fuels.

Although there are many potential alternatives there are none sufficiently developed to provide a credible alternative in the foreseeable future.

The reality is that, although we are very good at distributing energy and making sure the petrol stations have sufficient supply, there is little sign that as a nation we have, or ever have had, a practical energy strategy.

Instead we have relied on market forces to shape our energy supply, with the result that there are no viable alternatives now that we need them.

There was a time when nuclear energy was considered to be the answer to our energy needs, and nuclear does produce around 20 per cent of the nation’s electricity.

It is often overlooked that the UK was the first nation to operate a commercial nuclear power station.

Although the first generation of nuclear power stations were designed with the UK bomb programme in mind, they did an admirable job in providing electricity for the nation.

Many of the Magnox stations worked well beyond their design lifetime, however many have now closed and the last is expected to stop generating electricity by 2010.

The second generation of nuclear power stations such as Sizewell and Dungerness are expected to stop generating by 2023, leaving a big hole in the UK’s electricity generating potential.

Concerns over energy shortages and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have prompted the UK government to sanction what would have been unthinkable a few years ago, namely the building of new nuclear power stations.

This building programme has been estimated to be worth up to 36 billion pounds and has attracted interest from a range of contractors with 2017 being mentioned as a potential start date for the first of these new reactors.

This about turn on nuclear has been generated by a lack of other alternatives for large scale energy production. Fears of an energy crunch have not only resurrected the nuclear option, but put coal-fired power stations back on the agenda.

The first new coal-fired power station for over 30 years received local government backing earlier this year.

However this attempt to build a new coal-fired station resulted in significant protests from climate change campaigners who see new coal powered stations as a step back rather than forward.

New designs of coal-fired power stations do reduce carbon dioxide emissions and linking these stations to carbon sequestration schemes would reduce carbon dioxide emissions further but there is no point pretending that you can break the link between coal and carbon dioxide, it is just not possible.

So what are the other options for large scale power generation?

It would have been impossible to miss all the discussion of renewable energy over recent years. Generally speaking renewable energy means solar, wind, wave and tidal power. The advocates of renewable energy would say quite rightly that the UK is perfectly placed to take advantage of these energy sources.

They may also say that we do not take anyway near full advantage of energy generating potential these resources represent.

Wind power has become more widespread with both large scale wind farms and smaller scale installations of one or two turbines being quite common.

However, larger scale commercial turbine programmes often meet with local opposition with many proposed sites being successfully challenged by local campaigners.

One way to avoid these problems is to place turbines offshore.

While offshore wind farms have become a reality, the development of wave and tidal power has not been as successful.

For years it seemed odd to talk about solar power in a UK context since we hardly see the sun, even in summer. However, the installation of solar panels has steadily increased in recent years with a number of wind turbine projects including solar panels as well.

However, solar is likely to remain an additional source of energy in the UK rather than a major source of baseload electricity.

There are many other alternative sources of energy for electricity generation such as biomass to energy schemes where plants are grown and then combusted in power stations.

Biogas can also be generated from waste materials, agricultural waste and biomass and then used in electricity generation.

However, as with solar, these are supporting rather than central sources of generating capacity.

But perhaps that is the way we should be going.

Moving toward a much more local and distributed electricity generating system rather than the national system we have now.

Unless we do make some significant changes to our electricity usage, it is likely that there will be some difficult decisions ahead when we have to choose between new nuclear build, wind farms in our back yards or a return to coal fired stations.