UK 'could face blackouts by 2016' - David MacKay appointed as advisor

The government's new energy adviser says the UK could face blackouts by 2016 because green energy is not coming on stream fast enough. 

Well if his book is anything to go by, the government should be getting some excellent advice.

He raises an interesting point though: can we really expect to campaign for renewables whilst simultaneously campaigning against nuclear and all fossil fuels?  Climate change is extremely important, but we have to keep the lights on somehow.

The time will soon come when we have to choose our battles very carefully.  Compromises will have to be made, and listen to me sounding like a politician; heaven forbid.

But it's true: if we want to prevent these blackouts, we may have to choose sources of energy which aren't everyone's cup of tea.  Most people have problems with clean coal because carbon capture technology doesn't actually exist commercially.  Nuclear power is generally disliked because of the waste problem (though many people, after Chernobyl, seem to think they are all ticking time bombs...)

Well these are all perfectly valid concerns, but disliking our options doesn't mean that the problems requiring them will go away!  That would be wonderful, wouldn't it?  I dislike wearing a seatbelt, but it's okay because if I can pretend I'm invincible then I'll be just fine...

 I hope we can collectively discuss these compromises intelligently and openly before they are forced upon us, and any rational thought goes out the window as we pursue a "dash for whatever is available at the time".

Many thanks to a fellow coursemate for pointing out the BBC article!

The distasteful side of looming energy crises: population

I have to tread very carefully here, lest I stray too far from statistics and risk upsetting people.

Population is probably the most important contributing factor to all our woes: food shortages, climate change, energy use, drought and so on.

When we numbered in the millions, we had ample resources around us, space to spread out, and the impact of our actions was limited by our comparatively small numbers.

Since 1950, global population has increased from about 2.5 billion to about 6.5 billion, and almost all of that in less developed countries.

Not surprisingly, energy consumption has increased rapidly over this time as well.  Has the increase in population caused energy use to rise or has the increase in access to abundant energy caused population to rise?

Both.  It's no shock that the population started to grow significantly around the time of the industrial revolution.  Energy improved medical care, gave us better shelters and the technology to improve our environments.

As our population now grows, freed from "nature" by our domination of energy, we use more and more of it, with none of the natural controls in place to prevent a population getting out of control.

Let's focus on here and now, though.  Over the next few decades, population is expected to increase significantly as it has done until now, and per capita consumption of rapidly developing economies such as India, China and Brazil will rise.

So not only are we trying to find energy to power our current levels of consumption (about 16 TW of average continuous usage), but we'll have to keep up with a growing world, hungry for ever larger amounts of energy on demand (expected to rise to between 20 and 30 TW by 2050)

What can we do about this? 

Let's leave any mention of population control alone for this discussion, as it's easy to move from energy and statistics to somewhat less pleasant topics at this point.

I would suggest energy efficiency will play an increased role in the future.  As populations grow, the energy we demand is used better, so that the same amount can go further.  Hopefully the rate of energy consumption increase won't be directly proportional to population increase.

We can expect energy consumption to increase significantly though, so the only solution is to look ahead and plan for this growth now, by laying the groundwork not only for energy generation to supply us now, but enough to sustain us in the future.

We can't have a whole generation of, say, nuclear power plants, ready to be decommissioned again in 2050 and put the next generation through exactly the same probems as we're trying to solve today.

Impartial journalism at its finest

A few days ago I posted about the Daily Telegraph article about predicted blackouts.  Well, I should also inform you that recently the EU banned 100W incandescent light bulbs for sale for domestic use.

With that in mind, take a look at the front page of said paper.

Well.  I love irony as much as the next man, but this is just comedy.

Seen it yet?  Top right and bottom left.

I'm not saying the light bulb ban is a good thing, in fact it seems to be bordering on trivial, but you'd think they'd show a little more care than that!

BP discovers oil field in Gulf of Mexico

'BP said the discovery, amounting to more than three billion barrels, would "support the continuing growth of our deepwater Gulf of Mexico business into the second half of the next decade".'  (BBC News)


Image © BP p.l.c.

I think we can agree that three billion barrels of oil appears to be a fairly large amount.  On one hand we are told that oil is in decline, but then we discover more oil fields and the world continues to turn.

But by how much do finds like these really delay the ultimate depletion of oil?  How long will the three billion barrels last?

There are a couple of ways of doing this calculation.  First is the gross simplification: divide the amount of oil discovered by the amount of oil consumed globally.

According to BP figures, the world used about 85 million barrels per day in 2008.  If we assume BP can recover all 3 billion barrels from Tiber (the new oil field discovered), then it would last the world about 35 days.

The BBC article quotes a BP spokesperson, saying that "... only as much as 30% is extracted from the ground in practice".  Given that, the number of days' supply falls to about 11.

That is a fairly poor estimate, though, as it does not take into account the fact that oil production from a new well follows a normal distribution (a bell curve).  Production increases as infrastructure and access to the well improves, then peaks, and as the well is a finite resource, starts to decline again.  This is also known as a Hubbert Peak.

A better way to consider the impact of this new well is to add its bell curve to the bell curves of all the other oil fields globally.  The largest oil field is called Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, producing about 5 million barrels per day and estimated total reserves of 75-83 billion barrels.

Ghawar is but one of the giant fields, others include Burgan, Safaniya and Samotlor, all significantly larger than young Tiber.  There are also thousands of smaller ones.

Imagine all these bell curves overlapping one another, adding up to make one very large one (with a definite peak).  What is the effect of adding a new discovery like Tiber to it? 

The problem is that adding one bell curve to many does not change the average of them by very much at all.  In fact, given the relative size of this new field compared with the total, I cannot imagine the peak of the total bell curve shifting by more than a couple of days, if that.

Unfortunately an actual number is beyond my resources to find - I'm sure there are hundreds of highly paid analysts working for BP and others trying to find exactly the same thing.

The point is that, though new oil discoveries do happen, they are simply not of the scale or number needed to push the "end of oil" back very far at all.  The chances of finding another super-giant like Ghawar are slim now, and searching in harder to reach places (Tiber is the deepest known field, at about 10km deep) increases cost.

I fear that hoping that new discoveries will continue to allow our current oil consumption is folly of the highest order.  Most oil fields are now in decline and, though this is contested, it would appear that oil has most definitely "peaked".

Time for something new.  Gas, nuclear, or renewables?  Or, in fact, all three, as well as recovering oil from less conventional sources like oil sands/shale.

---

Sources Used

BBC news story
BP oil usage statistics (BP)
Hubbert Peak Theory (Wikipedia)
Ghawar reserves statistics (foreignpolicy.com)
List of oil fields over 1 billion barrels (Wikipedia)

"Ministers predict energy shortage within eight years" [UK]

This is the tagline of a news story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, September 1st 2009. The article can be read in its entirety here.

To summarise: as energy reserves run low and demand increases, there is a predicted shortfall of 3000 megawatt hours in 2017 and 7000 megawatt hours in 2025. The paper tell us that this second number is "equivalent to an hour long blackout for half of Britain over the course of a year".

This is not a lot and if they were to do this when I am asleep each night I would not notice. However, it shows that as time goes on we can expect our energy situation to get worse and worse. An hour can quickly become a day, and energy demand will almost certainly rise more than predicted.

In fact, the paper cites Greg Clark, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, stating (the article) that "some of the modelling used was 'optimistic' because it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until 2020." Oh dear. We can safely assume that the predicted shortfall is an underestimate, and probably a gross one at that.

Why is this happening? Several coal and oil power plants are being closed due to environmental concerns, existing nuclear power plants are being decommissioned, and investment into renewable energy is not sufficient.

The solution seems obvious: create rapid investment into renewables and nuclear power. Extend the lifetimes of existing nuclear plants and build more as a matter of utmost haste (and continue research into carbon sequestration and storage just in case we still have to burn coal.)

Well, there are the problems. Renewables are not developed enough to provide such a proportion of the energy supply, and their intermittent nature would require the creation of a large scale national energy storage system. Not only is this technologically beyond our means (on such a scale), but it would be novel and hence extremely expensive. Nuclear power plants take a long time to build, are expensive, and given the privately owned (foreign) utilities companies' distaste for risk, it seems there will be no new nuclear power plants for decades.

We can see this shortfall coming, but we are like an enormous supertanker heading for an iceberg, unable to slow down or change direction quickly. We see it coming but it seems we can do nothing to prevent our demise. It would be almost comical if it were satire.

What is the answer, then? Government has known about this for a while, but it has been largely ignored, or if not ignored, then not taken seriously enough for any real solution to be present now.

Should we nationalise energy again? The only real way of ensuring safety and speed of nuclear and renewable builds would be a concerted effort from a single body, rather than contracts being won by the highest bidder, and work done as cheaply as possible. Nuclear power is safe if done properly; deadly if not. Is the government that bothered? Would it be up to the task if it were?

Rapid investment and building of nuclear or renewable sources seems unlikely. Coal and nuclear are protested against by environmental activists. Renewables are protested against by residents and other environmental activists.

Gas seems to be our only option, being much cleaner than coal. But as North Sea reserves dwindle, more of this will be coming from Russia. This would be widely regarded as a Bad Thing, given Russia's history of cutting supplies to countries to enforce a position of power. Not only that, but reliance on a single energy source, like gas, increases the risk of something going wrong or costs skyrocketting, considering the volatile nature of gas prices.

Better stock up on candles, then.