"50 new gas-fired power plants for Germany" - and UK?

"German opposition leader vows to build 50 gas-fired power plants if elected", the story goes.  This is Merz, leader of the CDU and potentially Germany's next Chancellor (although see the 2025 Predictions compo).  50 is hyperbolic[1], but the point remains: Germany is hugely lacking in natural energy resources and, having bizarrely closed all its nukes on Merkel's whim, can't remotely rely on its large but actually not very impressive fleet of solar and wind power.  (Solar?  This is N.Europe.  Wind?  It has only a very small coastline, and that's in the wrong place.  Coal & lignite?   In abundance - but not "green", of course.)

So where would the gas come from?  Well, "imports": but lack of detail on this is just one element of the hyperbole, and his statement isn't any kind of practical plan.  But the point remains: the more wind & solar in a power fleet, the more strategic, long-term[2] backup power is required.  Right now, batteries aren't even remotely candidates for this, and won't be within a realistic planning period.   Pumped-storage hydro is great but in limited supply.  Imports of electricity are what Germany relies on right now but the Scandinavians are getting pretty testy about this - it plays havoc with their own markets - and may well pull the plug. 

Which brings us to our own shores.  Large-scale build-up of solar and wind - check.  Growing electricity demand (after more than a decade of decline) - check.  Declining nuclear capacity[3] - check.  Reliance on imports which might not be a practical proposition indefinitely - check.  So: continued, nay, growing need for gas-fired backup - check.  Even Little Ed Miliband realised this before the election, and now plans to retain the full 30-35 MW of our existing fleet[4] in his feeble "100% decarbonised by 2030, oops, make that 95%, it's what I always meant, it's the same thing" non-plan.

Here's the thing: these things are easy for a politician to say but that's not enough.  Capital plant can't equally easily be made to stand around doing nothing all year, but spring into life with ultra-high reliability on the odd, unpredictable occasion it's needed to be in action for a week or so.  That's not how the world works.

To be fair, HMG has gone one step further and has come up with a new subsidy for which backup gas-fired plants would qualify - but that's only the financial aspect.  The practical and physical aspects are legion, not least because if Mili's plans for decarbonising home heating progress[5] the overall scale of gas infrastructure[6] will be diminishing materially, and it would be comprehensive extant infrastructure paid for by someone else (as it is at present) that a rarely-used gas-based backup system would parasitically depend upon.

Yet another facet of the infeasibility of Miliband's plan.  He gave a very upbeat (and in fact, rather good - in political terms) performance in front of the Select Committee last week, and one can easily see how Labour MPs who don't understand the subject matter (evidently including Starmer and Reeves) would be inclined to view him very favourably and trust him implicitly.  But it's all destined to hit the rocks of hard reality at some point.  When?  I'm not sure.  Meantime, a heap of subsidy-contracts are gonna get taken by some players - and paid for by us.

ND

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[1] ... but music to the ears of hard-pressed Siemens!

[2] In this context, 'long-term' means weeks.  Batteries are only good for hours - which is very useful for some purposes, but not for Dunkelflaute

[3] Hinkley Point C start-up is a distant prospect, and the existing fleet is in decline, even if its life is prolonged to the max and the ONR throws safety considerations to the winds

[4] Numbers vary from document to document

[5] His targets won't be met, of course, but the gradual replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps is inevitable, even if at infinitesimal pace.  Ditto EVs

[6] By 'infrastructure' I mean not only the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG import terminals, but also the commercial and 'soft' aspects associated with there being a vast amount of gas sloshing around the UK all the time & particularly in winter:  lots of long-term supply contracts, gas traders, commercial, engineering & tech expertise, market liquidity etc etc - in other words, a thriving, extant gas industry of critical mass.   

A Bloody Great Bale of Straw in the Wind

... for Drax, that is.  Here's a telling slip by Amber Rudd.  Writing to defend the indefensible Hinkley Point in the Graun, she says:

"new nuclear is the only proven low-carbon technology that can provide continuous power, irrespective of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining"

 - i.e. what we in the trade call baseload.

Oooh.  What about biomass then, lady?  What about Carbon Capture & Storage, that *indispensable* adjunct to the gas plants necessary to balance the intermittent and random output of wind?   Both, like nukes, capable of continuous power and much better still, both what we call dispatchable ...

They know, really.  Biomass mostly isn't low carbon; and CCS is a fantasy.  They know, really.

ND

Renewables: the Bums are Squeaking

Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Wind and solar energy are at the point of becoming really competitive with fossil fuels, but failure to support them for another few years will result in huge losses of potential jobs.” 

Inde, Renewable Energy Industry Is About To Fall Off A Cliff (sic)

He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers."

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

If only it had been as few as eight years with the renewables: but the windies, in particular, have been at it for decades, with pitiful results.  The onshore wind industry has had its bluff fairly well called (though existing windfarms continue to be featherbedded) but the government is still pouring our money into the offshore sector and the best you can say about it is, Keynes would presumably have approved if more of the jobs etc were British.  I take the opportunity to repeat my oft-made prediction that the maintenance of over-the-horizon arrays will turn out to be a seriously under-estimated problem / cost.

Ever Been in the North Sea in Winter?

Solar PV is better: the vast amount of research into ever-improving solar generation shows every sign of paying off (eventually).  Let some other idiot governments accelerate the process with a different bunch of taxpayers' money.  Universities and tech labs all over the world (including UK) really have momentum now, and solar can safely be left to reach the status of "really economic" all by itself.

Even with oil at $30 for a while.  Meantime, stand by for more disingenuous whining from Parr, Legett and the vested interests they represent because, despite lots of whistling the in the dark ("It's good because it means more oil will stay in the ground") $30 will do for them more surely than a big shale gas discovery in George Osborne's back garden.

ND

Oil Price: More Whistling In The Dark

Before we get to the frantic whistling, here's an observation from Old Drew's collection of historical anecdotes.

Back in 1994 there was a big overhang of gas supply in the UK, which came about for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with.   The spot market had just started and liquidity was building nicely.  Over the period August '94 to January '95, the price fell from 22 pence per therm to 9 p/th and there it stayed, with seasonal fluctuations, for the next four years:  a fall of 60%.  Why it settled at 9 has no obvious arithmetic rationale - there was plenty of North Sea gas available at lower cost than that - but hey, that's how markets work.  The price of a house has little or nothing to do with the cost of bricks.

Anyhow, one cannot fail to be struck by the similarities between this, and what's been happening to oil.  Maybe January is a good month for bottoming out after a rapid halving of prices.  Then again, for anyone taking cheer at the prospect of finding a bottom there's the unhappy prospect of 50 (or 45?) becoming a new baseline for several years.  As I've pointed out before, only in 2008 did a big oil-price movement ever reverse inside one year.  

I'm not sure how all this sits with the conspiracy theories, but I'd be very surprised if anyone has seriously and consciously engineered $48 oil.  They may have to live with it anyway.

As we all know, among the many parties who'll suffer will be the greenies - amusing bedfellows for Russia and Iran.  The greens of course (and perhaps also the reds), hope in turn that frackers will be hurting to the point of extinction: they'll see the hurt happening alright, but that'll be the limit of their gratification, I suggest.

Here's another source of whistling and bleating - along with some more sensible reflections.  The International Renewable Energy Agency ('IRENA') is one of those annoying and spurious international bodies - 'an intergovernmental organisation', no less - that busies itself at our expense promoting a special interest group.  They've clearly been working for quite a while on a substantial report on the costs of renewables which contains some interesting stuff, albeit spun about with quite disingenuous and misleading puffery.  

Just as they get to publication date, the oil price kicks them in the goolies.  But their jolly Director General, one Adnan Z. Amin, puts on a brave face.

Renewable power generation will keep getting cheaper over time, even in a period of falling oil prices, which history tells us will in all probability be transitory. Renewables development and deployment represents the most secure long-term hedge against fuel price volatility, the best route to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and a sound financial investment. Their future is bright indeed. 

That would be the long term future, Adnan, because a chilly draft is coming in the short- to medium-term.  'Transitory' won't be measured in months, and there may be a drop-off in demand for energy volatility hedges, ask Ed Miliband.  Ad's right about costs coming down though - they'll have to, it's the only response possible.  Oil costs.  Coal costs.  Wind costs.  Even, dare I suggest, nuclear costs.  Come on you engineers, you know you can do it - you always have done in the past.

And solar PV costs in particular.  Here, technology really is moving forward apace.  Based on some fairly uncontentious projections, it is well within the bounds of plausibility for solar power one day to be economic.  (That's really economic, not 'economic when supported by subsidy'.)  Some even say, we may not need to wait for cheap & efficient electricity storage before solar makes it to economic respectability.

In the meantime, despite the waffle they all still want subsidies.  Which will be in increasingly short supply, with the alternatives at rock-bottom price for a while.  That Paris jamboree will be pandemonium.

ND

Big Lies, Small Mercies

Go, Turbo

In the thick-and-fast documents on its soi-dissant 'Electricity Market Reforms' the government has come up with a mantra to be repeated at every opportunity:

EMR will deliver the greener energy and reliable supplies that the country needs, at the lowest possible cost

It's a shameless, blatant lie, of course - but hey, if repeated often enough ...  The word 'needs' is of course mendacious, but for that they can at least argue they have a mandate.  The real outrage is the pretence of delivering at 'lowest possible cost', and incontrovertible proof is readily to hand in the shape of the CfD 'strike prices' (= guaranteed electricity prices) announced over the summer for the various technologies on offer.  Some examples:

• Landfill gas:          65 (£/MWh) 
• Energy from waste: 90
• Hydro:                  95
• Onshore wind:      100
• Large scale solar: 120
• Offshore wind:      155
• Tidal and wave:    305 (sic)

For reference, wholesale prices are currently in the range £50-60.  Manifestly, no-one can be offering £155, still less £305, and still claim to be delivering at lowest possible cost.  The real motive is given elsewhere in government documents, for example here (page 7, my emphasis): 

[The] CfDs have been designed to provide efficient long-term support for all forms of low carbon electricity generation

Yes folks, the aim is for all technologies, however fatuous, to be given a piece of the action.  In that context I suppose we we must take a crumb of comfort from the Severn Barrage - epic fatuousness on large concrete stilts, being promoted by Peter Hain and 'Lord Deben' - yet again being given short shrift.  Why won't it just go away ?

For the record, I offer to generate on my exercise bike for a mere £295 per MWh.  Turbo my hamster in his little wheel is only slightly more costly at £300.  And we can start tomorrow - which is more than any of these other crazy schemes can say.

ND

Renewable future...?

or not. This story about the Biomass plants that were never to be is quite interesting. The spin the Guardian puts on the that it is a good thing that the plant at Tilbury is being shut because biomass is not very eco-friendly is hilarious. Evil people burning imported pellets, say NO TO THE USA!

It's a great scoop. Also, oddly true, maybe there is a reason after all that power stations have burnt coal for over a century and not wood that is only used for small domestic heating?

Luckily with have the 1000 Megawatt London Array being finished this week too. So that should supply much of London, on the odd occasion that we have a windy day. Anyone know how we can tack the output daily of this gargantuan farrago?