Sustainable Energy - Without The Hot Air David JC MacKay HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

For those of you who would like to have a proper understanding of the current situation regarding sustainable energy, David MacKay's 2009 treatise on how the UK could transition towards this, is highly recommended.

The goods news is David's treatise is freely available online at:

www.withouthotair.com

Welcome to 2016 - It's Time to Start Cleaning up our Mess (Originally published on Linked-in on 1 January 2016)

Not Quite The Best Solution, But Moving in The Right Direction


Humanity has, in effect, been defecating in our own back yard for the last couple of hundred years. We appear to be starting to understand this is not very smart. The process for changing this is actually very simple; all of our faeces must be cleaned up (in real time), otherwise the endpoint is an uninhabitable planet. The mechanism is very simple: the cost of cleaning up must be included in the cost of the product causing the mess.


Economists and therefore policy makers and politicians continue to avoid the most significant issue, which is the cost of pollution. Because this cost is considered difficult to quantify, it's simply avoided or put more bluntly, ignored. The vast majority of current economics dealing with the use of energy are fundamentally flawed because they ignore the cost of pollution thereby allowing hugely polluting fossil fuels to be "economic".


They are not.


It would appear that a global consensus has been formed as a result of the 2015 Paris agreement. In a nutshell, you could summarize it along the lines that most countries now understand we cannot continue burning fossil fuels as we did in the past and do now.


This is significant.


Even though coal is "relatively cheap", the global coal age is starting to close and I sense the global oil age will also start to close in a few decades. The global gas age will likely continue into the second half of this century.


It doesn't have to be this way. Fossil fuels could continue to be used so long as the pollution generated was removed. The technology for pollution remediation exists but of course it hasn't been scaled-up to allow large scale remediation; consequently in the first instance, it'll be very expensive. This reflects the true cost of burning fossil fuels. In the ideal World, Economists would have recognised this hugely significant cost and factored it into energy policy and we wouldn't be where we are today. Hindsight is wonderful.


Sadly Economics still largely ignores this issue and comes up with ineffective & costly schemes, for example subsidising solar power at medium latitudes, which is completely illogical, or you might be harsher and say, plainly stupid!


What's needed is widespread recognition that we have to actively remediate human produced pollution and that the cost of all energy sources must include the cost of remediation. Put in different words, Economists (and therefore policy makers & politicians) cannot avoid massive costs such as pollution.


Economics is, in fact, a holistic, global "science" where any human process (cost), that changes the planet, must be remediated.


No Batchelor's, Master's or Doctorate is required to understand this; however, getting all the human tribes to buy in and implement this, is the ultimate change management project.


I think we have started on this road; however, to speed up the process requires traction within Economics as well as within the general public. Going forward we need to remove human-generated pollutants, almost certainly in a mechanical sense.


Spread the Word...

The UK's Electricity Generation Problem...

The Economist had a provocative article entitled "Hinkley Pointless" ( http://econ.st/2b6nG0J 6th August 2016) where they questioned the economics of the UK's proposed nuclear power plant and recommended scrapping the project, plus investing in alternative renewables.

A large number of people will reference The Economist article in support of renewables without either knowing about the omissions (errors?) in the article, which were highlighted later by the company (EDF) planning to build the nuclear power station, see below:

"Why Hinkley matters

You (The Economist) urged the British Government to cancel the Hinkley Point nuclear-power project and instead spend the money on renewable energy (“Hinkley Pointless”, August 6th). There are a few things to bear in mind that were not mentioned in your leader. We take the construction risk. The consumer pays nothing before Hinkley starts producing electricity. The fact that prices decades from now are unknown is precisely why investors and consumers benefit from a set price today. It protects consumers from volatility. It makes investment possible. You also claimed that combined-cycle gas turbines are cheaper to run (“When the facts change…”, August 6th). That is only true based on today’s low gas and carbon prices and with the running costs of existing plants. The correct comparison is with future options. Under the government’s central forecast for gas and rising carbon prices, the cost of a gas-plant commissioning in 2025 is close to the Hinkley strike price.

Moreover, the government’s pledge to pay £92.50 ($120) per megawatt hour for Hinkley’s output is lower than the average £123 per MWh in renewables’ support schemes. You compared specific technologies without considering the whole-system cost. In fact, a low-carbon mix with nuclear is significantly more affordable than one without. Other technologies play a role but cannot replace the need for large-scale low-carbon generation.

Hinkley will create thousands of jobs as part of a real industrial strategy. Suggesting that Britain could “muddle along” is an unwise response to the issues of energy security and climate change. Hinkley Point is a wise response.

PAUL SPENCE
Director of strategy and corporate affairs
EDF Energy
London"

Conclusion: The Economist's article is incomplete and their conclusions, likewise.

Moral: Don't trust anything you read and if you're an economist it probably helps to get the same data as the actual players, rather than make potentially erroneous assumptions.

Climate Change - Who's Responsible?

Unlike most people, I'm not concerned as to whether humanity is causing climate change; it's simply not something that will be proven, until it's too late. So that puts that aspect to bed and sidesteps a large proportion of the discussion.

It is very clear to me that we are treating our living space in a pretty poor manner, rather like Mediaeval folk throwing their excrement & waste into the street.  We are effectively doing the same thing today.  Fortunately we moved on from open sewerage systems, developed the ones we have today... and pay for them.

Until people, Economists, Policy Advisors and ultimately Politicians understand that we need to clean up our pollution; this being a moral imperative, not a free-market one; we won't be getting the equivalent of a sewerage system for all the pollutants we are currently dumping into our own back yard.

Using the analogy of modern sewerage systems, there is a simple process to introduce the currently missing pollution remediation systems, that we need.  It's founded on basic economics: the cost of any process that causes pollution must have the cost of remediation included in the cost of the product at the point of sale.

Simple.

The pollution remediation cost is collected and made available to pollution remediation industries who remove the offending pollutants in a similar manner to modern sewerage systems.

Think about it...

We can continue using coal, gas, nuclear, cars, ships etc. but, as consumers we will be paying a higher price for those energy sources that have the higher remediation costs.

You can see how this would give rise to a level playing field in terms of True Energy Costs and, I suspect, that currently uneconomic renewable sources, could become economic (without needing any subsidies that Tim correctly points out are somewhat ludicrous); whilst highly polluting sources such as coal & oil turn out to be very very expensive.

I know, you're very sceptical.  It can't be done, you say. How can we come up with the cost of remediation (or externalities as Economists like to categorise them)?  It's all too difficult.  It's too expensive.

Wrong.

Imagine the response of a Mediaeval person being told that he would be much better off if he paid (a large) amount of money to have his excrement hygienically removed from his house.  The reaction would be very similar to the one I expect most people have to my solution described above.

As for Tim's conclusions: Politicians rarely solve big issues, they generally skirt around them. Policy Advisors generally provide Politicians with "solutions" they believe the Politicians may be able to implement without compromising their hold on power.  Which is why we have the variable degrees of mess that Tim describes. It's unlikely to change until either there is a very smart Politician that can articulate a simple scheme that allows us to continue using our existing equipment whilst adopting an environmentally neutral philosophy which means actually removing the pollution we add to the environment.

Am I hopeful?

No.

Democracy is more and more dysfunctional and it's more likely that we will continue to pollute our back yard and then pay for the consequences when they occur, which is not a very responsible approach but this is simply too big an issue for today's Politicians to deal with effectively.

The real climate change conspiracy – or is it a cock-up?

By Tim Worstall

Energy Last updated: June 6th, 2012

Even if climate is changing, our policies are hopelessly muddled

Viewing the ghastly mess that politics makes of anything, it can be difficult to decide between cock-up and conspiracy theories. Are politicians simply too dim to perceive the effects of what they do, or are they are plotting to make the world a worse place?

Which brings us to where I believe the real climate change conspiracy is: in what we're told we must do about it all. I've pointed out that if we assume that the basic science is correct (and I certainly don't have either the hubris or technical knowledge to check it) then the answer is a simple carbon tax. The British Government employed Nick Stern to run through what was the correct economic response, assuming the IPCC was correct, and that was his answer. So the question has to be why hasn't that same government enacted that very solution? Which is, as I say, where I think the conspiracy comes in.

For instead of this simple and workable solution we end up with the most ghastly amount of wibble and dribble.

Consider the subsidies to renewables. Our system gives higher subsidies to the more expensive technologies: clearly ludicrous. We have some limited amount of money, whatever that limit is, and we thus want to get as much renewable power as we can from that limited money. But we give five times more money per unit of power to the most expensive technology, solar, than we do to the cheapest, hydro. What have the politicians been smoking to deliberately spend our money in the most inefficient manner possible?

Or we could look at the argument for subsidy to solar itself: we're told that it will be economic, comparable to coal-generated power, within only a couple of years. Thus we must have subsidy now – which is insane. If something is about to be profitable without subsidies then we don't want anyone installing it yet; install it in a couple of years when it is profitable without subsidies. Why waste good money when we can just wait?

The Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) is guilty of a couple of horrors. At one point they proudly pointed out that renewables would be cheaper than gas. Which, given that each renewable is more expensive than any gas, is quite a trick to pull off. What they had actually done is assume that if we had renewables then we'd all use much less electricity because it would be so expensive. In fact, the renewables calculation assumed that we would use half as much power as the gas calculation. I can do that sort of thing too, prove that 50 apples will be cheaper than 100, but I'd like to think that a government department would be able to come up with more sophisticated trickery than a newspaper hack.

DECC's claim that shale would not make gas cheaper in the UK was a corker as well. They simply stated that, as all of it would be exported, then it wouldn't make any difference at all to UK prices. So even if the country was floating on a cushion of the stuff, gas prices would only ever rise into the future: absolutely nonsense as anyone can see. If we can ship all our cheap shale gas off to other people, then the world gas price goes down – and also they can ship all their cheap shale gas to us. So gas gets cheaper in the UK. And if it isn't easy to ship gas around (it isn't) then the shale gas we have in the UK has to be used in the UK, pushing gas prices down again.

We've also had Ed Davey announcing that he doesn't think there's any shale gas to talk of about. Weirdly, we have a method to find out: drill for it. But rather than do that, Ed listened to Centrica and then announced this sad lack of that shale gas (which every other country in the world is finding all over the place). Centrica were, by the way, the people who owned the Lancashire shale field before Cuadrilla Resources. Centrica were the people who 20 years ago said there was no gas there and Cuadrilla were the people who a year ago said there was lots. Ed took Centrica's word for it, listening to the people who really don't want to be shown up, and didn't even bother to ask Cuadrilla.

We've also an inspired misunderstanding about carbon prices. The EU has a cap and trade system: if you want to emit a tonne of CO2, you've need a permit to do so. Many of these are given to industry but some have to be bought. Our Ed Davey – you know, the man in charge of this whole climate change thing – has recently announced that there must be a minimum price for such permits. Showing, sadly, that he doesn't understand the first thing about such a permit system. In the carbon tax that I recommend, yes, it is the tax which limits the emissions. In a permit system it is the number of permits: the price of the permits shows how expensive or cheap it is to meet the target. Thus we should all want to have very low permit prices, for that shows us that it is very cheap to meet that target. At which point the minister in charge says no, my goodness no, we can't have it being cheap to save Gaia – we'll have to artificially raise the price! I'm sure you'll agree that this is just drivelling absurdity.

And for my final example of incompetence, I give you the Climate Change Levy. This is a tax paid on power; that's fine, it's similar to a carbon tax. Coal pays it, gas pays it, but solar hydro and wind do not pay it. That's also fine, for low- to near no-carbon power sources shouldn't be paying a climate change levy. Given that nuclear has carbon emissions about the same as wind and hydro and less than half solar, should nuclear pay this charge? Well, no, obviously, it shouldn't, but it does.

So this is where I identify the conspiracy in climate change. Not in the basic science, which I'm perfectly happy to accept. But in the discussion, the rules, the regulations, about what we should do about it. Just about every decision that is actually being made seems to flow from ignorance, mendacity or even, as with the CCL and nuclear, just plain flat-out stupidity.

I still haven't worked out whether this is simply a conspiracy of damn fool idiots or whether they really do have it in for us.

Solutions for Global Energy Through 2050 - Apparently

Take a look at the Economist Intelligence Unit's report referenced below and decide whether you think the Leading Energy Experts have proposed any significant solutions for the Global Energy issue?

http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/global-energy-conversation2/home?elq=f732bc15660c4e99afea1bbd53e6ad38&elqCampaignId=137

Personally I see no viable solutions articulated in the report; there's a number of suggestions and predictions, but nothing concrete about solving the issues.

Sad really...

The most viable solution is the one I've articulated earlier in this Blog; in summary:

• Include the cost of pollution remediation into the cost of the product or process, at the point of sale


• Direct the remediation cost element to companies that remove the pollution

Win, Win

The analogy is sewerage disposal, but what's urgently needed is not human detritus removal, but human pollution remediation.

Welcome to 2012 - What Do We Need To Be Doing?

Well, 2012 is just around the corner, there are 7 Billion people and I'm not sure our Leaders actually understand the meaning of the word sustainable?

It's interesting that in Western Europe, and to a certain extent, North America, the current economic woes are supposed to be banished by "growth".

But this isn't sustainable; however, like it or not Economics now underpins the human race, but the significant element missing from the current version of Economics is the Environment.

Of course, it's not actually missing; we are choosing to ignore it, either through ignorance and/or expediency. And that includes me!

Personally I put the blame for this squarely onto the Economist fraternity, who should be advising our Leaders that Economics is holistic and that the Environmental element cannot be completely avoided, although as we know, it can be ignored.... for a while.

So my Mission is to inform as many people as possible that we need to factor in remediation whenever human activity has an impact on the Environment; not as an afterthought when it's potentially too late.

Fortunately, basic Economics provides the best solution..

Take the fossil-fuel electricity generation business, which puts millions of tonnes of pollutants into the environment....

The cost of removing these pollutants, in order to maintain a "neutral environment", must be included in the cost of the fuel.

Which today, would mean that fossil fuels should be very very expensive.

This simple economic principle seems to cause many people to get alarmed and fret about the cost of petrol/gasoline, electricity etc. Which is partly where the politics comes in and makes a mess...

Sadly, with Economic Growth being the predominant focus and the population growing at the rate it is; Politics is likely to become increasingly dysfunctional, which is why it is very important for Scientists & Economists to agree that all our activities need to be implemented within a global, holistic framework, meaning..

Economics Must Include the Environment
Politicians need to understand this simple principle and then legislate accordingly.

For example:
Globally, within 5 years, the cost of removing pollution from fossil-fuel burning engines must be included into the cost of the fuel AND this cost will be made available to (new) pollution remediation industries.

In this way, simple Economics will give rise to less environmentally polluting processes and energy sources, whilst moderating the Environmental impact using the pollution taxes.

That's a Win-Win and it doesn't need an unrealistic change in our current usage of products, energy, or lifestyle.

There will be millions of people who will disagree with this and trot out the usual: "It can't be done", or "It won't work".

I've seen quite a few esteemed science folk advising Politicians on what can be "politically" achieved, i.e. without risking being voted out at the next election (this is very bad science in my view, and may well explain why we in this mess).

It can be done and the more people discussing the simple "Economics Must Include the Environment" message; the more chance that Politicians will come to understand this is a "no-brainer" which everybody, once they understand it; will support.

Help spread the simple message....

Hopefully people in Pakistan, Thailand, Bangladesh and all others living in low-lying or recently flooded areas can help to get this message broadcast and understood?

Best Wishes for 2012

Wilted Greenery

"Even avoiding deadlock would be and acheivement"

This is The Economist talking about the UN's "annual climate-change circus" in the week commencing 5th December, 2011, before the conference started

Take a look at the whole article and see what you think?

http://www.economist.com/node/21540996

It appears, according to The Economist, that:

"the European Union, as the only large industrial power (that is) willing to undertake a second five year "commitment period""

which is interesting, as I'll try to explain later.

Secondly:

"a delegate from a powerful developing country says that the politics of the negotiations are, unfortunately "much more important" than climate-change."

In summary:

The Approaches Adopted So Far Have & Are Failing

Personally I'm not surprised; however, the politicians and and their advisors, plus a large number of Green organizations will continue to bang this failing drum, but at least they will get applauded for trying..... and failing?

As Howard Aitken stated:

"Don't worry about people Stealing your Ideas; if they are any good you will have to force them down peoples' throats"

The Mechanism for Reducing Environmental Impact is the Creation of a Parallel Industry that Removes Pollutants from the Environment and is Paid for by the Consumer of the Product that Causes the Pollution.

Think About It