July 10, 2006

experts react to the DTI Energy Review

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) today released its report on the Energy Review, aiming to examine the UK’s progress against the medium and long-term 2003 Energy White Paper goals and consider options for further steps to achieve them. The work commits the UK to reducing carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change and to securing clean energy at affordable prices.

Professor Ian Fells, Energy Consultant, said:

“It will be very difficult to get to the target of 20% renewable electricity by 2020. The Severn Barrage could provide 5%, one quarter of the total if we have the courage to go ahead and build it.

“A nuclear component of 30% of our electricity supply is essential if we are to approach our targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions reduction. Renewables and energy savings cannot possibly do it on their own.”

Godfrey Boyle, director of the Open University Energy and Environment research group, said:

“The Energy Review has given a green light to new nuclear power, but that’s not the end of the story. Big power companies need a political consensus before investing billions in nuclear plants, and that’s conspicuously absent. Nuclear is regarded as a last-ditch option by a wide range of opponents, from David Cameron at one end of the spectrum to Ken Livingstone at the other, with the Liberal Democrats — and even Labour’s own Peter Hain — also expressing scepticism. Also, despite Government protestations to the contrary, nuclear tends to be the ‘cuckoo in the nest’ that crowds out investment in other, better, energy options.

“Instead, we should be putting much greater emphasis on using energy efficiently, and on investing in offshore wind power and combined heat and power plants.

“Britain has been described as the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of offshore wind. This Labour Government should seize the challenge of offshore wind with the same enthusiasm as its Labour predecessors did with offshore oil and gas in the 1970s. If it did, as our Open University’s submission to the Energy Review showed, by 2024 it could be making a bigger contribution to our electricity needs than nuclear, with bigger reductions in carbon emissions at lower cost. It would also create many tens of thousands of jobs to offset the decline in offshore oil and gas employment.

“Combined heat and power plants enable the ‘waste’ heat from power stations to be used for heating buildings. At present, about two thirds of the fuel used in UK power stations is thrown away in ‘cooling towers’. Combined heat and power is widely used in other countries: half the energy used for heating buildings in Denmark comes from such plants. The Government should set a long term goal of harnessing at least half the otherwise-wasted heat from Britain’s power stations. This could cut UK carbon emissions by 10%.”

Robert Gross, UKERC Head of Policy and Technology and Research Fellow, Imperial College London, said:

“I am pleased that the government has recognised the importance of providing support for technologies at different stages of technological maturity. Banding the RO is something many analysts of innovation systems have long argued for. This will help key technologies – offshore wind and wave power – reduce costs. It is also pleasing to note that nuclear power has not been given new subsidies. Whilst nuclear may offer some benefits it is not an ‘infant’ technology, deserving of special measures or further state subsidy. It is also something of a relief to note that the government has not sought to unravel the benefits of liberalisation and rig the market in favour of nuclear power.

“It is now for the market to decide the future of nuclear power. In this respect, as an author of the 2002 Energy Review, I am also pleased to note how little has changed. I hope that any new planning arrangements will be even handedly applied to all forms of generation. It is also important that investment in non-nuclear and non-renewable generation proceeds – flexible plant are essential to balance intermittent renewables and meet demand swings inflexible nuclear stations cannot respond to. To this end carbon capture deserves strong support. It remains to be seen whether the govt will provide for this.”

Professor Stuart Haszeldine, carbon management leader at UK Energy Research Centre, said:

“The Energy review fails to deliver any real or rapid content on reducing carbon emissions. The extension of the Renewables Obligation, and its banding, is welcome, but to address fossil fuel emissions, this needs to be extended to clean coal and gas power production. The UK has a world-class opportunity to use Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This can extend North Sea and manufacturing employment, and use skills in offshore and manufacturing industries and geological surveys. This Review fails to provide assurance, and it is now quite possible that leading developments will occur elsewhere in the world.

“Carbon capture from clean coal and gas power stations has CO2 emissions similar to nuclear power, if the whole cycle is calculated from resource to waste. CCS can deliver CO2 reductions sooner than nuclear power, with guaranteed cleanup costs. So would be sensible to use CCS in the UK whilst renewables carry on being developed. CO2 captured from new clean power stations could be used to produce more oil from existing North Sea fields, by making the oil less viscous – more like water, less like treacle, and by increasing the pressure to push oil out. That would supply 12% of UK 2006 oil production. However the Review seems to be missing this opportunity.”

Dr Jonathan Gibbins, Senior Lecturer in Energy Technology for sustainable development, Imperial College London, said:

“The Government has correctly identified carbon capture and storage as a key technology, both to allow our existing coal stations to be replaced by new, environmentally-sustainable coal plants instead of gas plants, and to provide a lead for key developing economies such as China and India. But their aspiration of ‘CCS saving several million tonnes of carbon on an annual basis in the 2020’s’ is derisibly small and slow, and directly contradicts information they have been given during this and previous consultations. There are at least four proposals by major industrial organisations to build commercial power plants with CCS in the UK, to start delivering near-zero emission electricity to the Grid between 2010 and 2015, saving millions of tons of CO2 each. And by 2020 many of the oilfields where CO2 could be used to produce additional oil and which could form the basis of an offshore storage network, will be closed and dismantled.

“I have just got back from a Defra meeting in China on the urgency of implementing CCS, including building new plants so CO2 capture can be retrofitted ‘soon’. It is clear that China will not go faster than developed countries like the UK; if we are not proposing to do any better than this then they are unlikely to take further comments from UK representatives very seriously.”

Dr Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre’s energy programme, said:

“Today’s Energy Review has a highly disproportionate focus on electricity supply as opposed to heat and transport – neglecting the other 82% of UK energy use. It has the traditional over-emphasis on large, centralised and big power supply using conventional engineering thinking. There is no real action proposed to realise the substantial potential of alternative means of generating low-carbon power, such as micro-generation of electricity at the community-level and the widespread implementation of combined heat and power.

“Electricity provides just 18% of the UK’s final energy consumption, with nuclear providing only 3.6% of UK energy. Consequently, replacing ageing nuclear plant with new nuclear power stations has an irrelevant impact on targets for reducing the UK’s carbon dioxide.”

Gordon Masterton, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers , said:

“The Energy Review seems to be a well-balanced response to carbon emissions and security of supply. ICE has always championed a mix of energy supplies made up of cleaner coal, gas, renewables and nuclear to keep the lights on. We are urging the government to look at energy from waste, an area of power generation often overlooked during the recent energy debate.”

Shaun Fitzgerald, BP Institute, University of Cambridge, said:

“Much of what is stated is sensible, and the key areas for savings have been identified. However, I am somewhat concerned by a couple of factors which don’t seem to have been addressed. This review focuses on carbon but an equally key issue is how we can ensure we have enough energy. Energy consumption by the existing housing stock is non-trivial, and a key question is “How can home owners be persuaded to invest in energy savings schemes such as increased levels of roof insulation or some form of local generation such as solar panels?” In today’s world many people don’t know for certain where they will be working, and hence living in 2 years time. Therefore, persuading these homeowners to invest in energy saving technology is hard, even if the long term investment makes sense. Will the incentives which the government provides mean that the payback period for these investments is much shorter than currently?

“In the commercial buildings sector, why do we see more and more air-conditioned buildings when these types of building typically consume TWICE the energy of buildings which don’t rely on mechanical fans for ventilation?” The Part L regulations which the Government refers to in the Review continue to allow air-conditioning systems to be installed in buildings when the technology now exists for buildings to be constructed with natural ventilation systems and which provide very similar internal environments. This is a major opportunity which should be addressed.”

Ian Arbon, Chairman of the Energy, Environment & Sustainability Group at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said:

“The statement broadly agreed with IMechE’s proposals for more renewables, clean coal and new nuclear, but we await the detail (if any!) on how exactly this will be implemented. In any case, this was still all about power generation, which says nothing about how energy consumption in the vitally-important transport and built-environment sectors is going to be addressed. We support the Government’s new commitment to ‘distributed generation’ and ‘micro-generation’ and look forward to some genuine incentives being put in place to achieve this in reality, not just in theory.

“We are pleased that the Government has at last accepted the obvious that the twin policy priorities are ‘carbon reduction’ and ‘security of supply’ and appears to have dropped the ‘competitiveness’ and ‘fuel poverty’ issues. This is in line with what we have been saying since the Energy White Paper in 2003.”

Professor Robin Grimes, Professor of Materials, Imperial College London, said:

“New nuclear build is the only viable way of generating the capacity to deliver a reduction in carbon emissions but it needs to be embraced in conjunction with renewable technology. The government seems to have taken this on board which is excellent news. The government has given the first indication that, in line with other countries, the UK will embrace pre licensing agreements for selected reactor designs. This is clearly an essential first step for new nuclear rebuild.

“If we are to address global warming both nuclear and renewable technology are required, and, what’s more, they need to work together. Nuclear generation is most useful for producing a constant amount of electricity, the so-called “base load” for which we pay a lower tariff. Although feasible, in the UK nuclear is not used to follow the peaks of changing demand. This is partly because existing stations are too slow to react when electricity demand fluctuates hour by hour. That’s unfortunate for nuclear, because consumers pay more for peak rate electricity. Renewables suffer from different limitations. For example, biomass and wind farms are necessarily small scale. This means that a significant part of the cost of building and running such schemes is putting in place the infrastructure to transmit the electricity they produce.”

Professor Richard Clegg, Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, said:

“At the Dalton Nuclear Institute at The University of Manchester we welcome the publication of the Government’s Energy Review and support the need for a diversified mix of energy technologies such as fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear, as well as the drive for energy efficiency and demand reduction. The challenges behind the Energy Review regarding security of supply and global warming are massive and will require a comprehensive approach supported by world class research and the availability of the right skills.

“In the case of nuclear, the availability of key skills and research support will be a key necessity. It is here that The University of Manchester, through its Dalton Nuclear Institute, is ready to play a central role building on the significant investment it has already made to strengthen the UK’s civil nuclear research and education base. The University of Manchester is ready to help address the challenges of supporting any new nuclear build programme and helping at the societal level to inform the public debate on this important topic.”

Miles Seaman, Chairman of the Sustainability Subject Group at the Institution of Chemical Engineers, said:

“The shortest sentence in the summary is the most telling. “Time is short.” Yet the sense of urgency is palpably missing. Yet another Green Paper followed no doubt by a White Paper with policy announcements on the way. This process seems never ending. Meantime various ministers will no doubt trot out the truisms evident in this review to give the impression that they are thinking about doing something about it. To bring about a transition to sustainable energy is merely a matter of properly penalising the users of unsustainable energy (i.e. fossil fuels). This can’t be done overnight but it won’t be done if we continue to dither in the manner implied by the output of this review.”

Roland Clift, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Technology, University of Surrey, said:

“Yet again, the Government has made the mistake of confusing energy policy with electricity policy. Alistair Darling said that the UK gets 20% of its energy from nuclear generation. No! The UK gets about 20% of its electricity from nuclear sources. This is about 6% of total energy use. The biggest single component of energy use is in buildings, for space and water heating. If we continue to ignore this we overlook the biggest contribution which renewable energy could make to reducing demand for imported gas: this is bioenergy, used not for electricity or transport but for space and water heating.”