Expert view: Difficult decisions over future energy

Dec 2 2008 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Dr Paul Humphreys from the University of Huddersfield's Applied Sciences department gives his view.

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 to fossil fuels, 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.

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 £36billion 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.

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.

Locally, Kirklees Council has actively promoted wind power schemes with turbines on the Civic Centre in the middle of town, at the Deighton Centre and Spen Valley Sports College.

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 – offshore wind resources in the UK are potentially massive – the problem is how to harness them economically.

While offshore wind farms have become a reality, the development of wave and tidal power has not been as successful. Wave power is receiving increasing interest but it is not as commercially developed as wind power.

A project under development off St Ives in Cornwall aims to change this. The Wave Hub project provides an electrical socket that plugs directly into the national grid allowing a range of wave power technologies to be evaluated under realistic conditions.

Technologies demonstrated at the Wave Hub could then be commercialised elsewhere once proven to be of value. In theory tidal power offers massive potential for energy generation. Tidal power stations work rather like hydroelectric power stations with the tide generating electricity as it flows in and out.

However, the fact that there is only one tidal station operating in Europe, on the Rance estuary in Northern France, indicates that there are many obstacles in the way of the large scale use of this technology.

In the UK there are a range of sites potentially suitable for a tidal power station including the Severn, Solway and Humber estuaries. However, the construction of a tidal power station has such a major impact on the environment and commercial users of estuaries that it is unlikely that any of these sites will be commercially utilised.

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.

The recently completed Creative Arts Building here at the University has both solar panels and turbines installed, as has the Civic Centre in the town centre. 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. In this way we could use smaller scale local electricity generation to run our homes and take a much more personal interest in where our electricity is coming from.

I think we would all be much more aware of how much electricity we use and waste if we had to generate our own contribution to the local demand.

This may give the incentive we need to turn off our appliances rather than leave them on standby, unplug our phone chargers once our phones are charged and turn off unwanted lights.

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.