All wind and no Substance?

An article in the Sunday Telegraph (Jan 10th) by Cristopher Booker made almost as a throw away aside, an excellent point about the relative merits of various forms of alternative energy.

Now before I go further I should make my own views on the matter clear. I believe the UK should have, as a matter of national policy, complete energy independence. Further I believe it makes sense that this should be as clean as possible. This reguardless as to weather the theory of man made global warming is right or not.

Mr Booker’s point concerned power generation by wind turbines. He pointed out that the recent cold snap had effectively been largely windless. The point being that wind generation is not necessarily to be relied upon. Even over an area as large as the UK you can suffer a massive drop off of the power wind generators are capable of delivering.

One wonders why those who promote wind turbines so often quote near maximum out put in their figures, it would be more honest and accurate to quote averages, andy one who ever tried to fly a kite as a child knows that some days you can and some days you can’t.

If we had been reliant on wind power this winter we would have been in deep trouble.

So what can be relied upon to deliver power?

Well there are the tides. They are driven by the sun and moon and unless there were a disaster of unimaginable proportions are regular and utterly reliable.

Then there is nuclear energy. This is the route the French took decades ago, French steely self interest being less inclined to wilt before short sighted nimbi left/green luddite foot dragging.

It is interesting to note that the main reason our power generation capacity is not effectively carbon free right now is because of the Greens.

That is why not only are we not carbon free - we are in danger of soon being in a position of being unable to service our full power needs. We already have to buy nuclear generated electrical power from France.

I have said before. Surely we can use existing defunct deep coal mines to sequester spent nuclear material?

What is to prevent us building nuclear power facilities underground near the top of such mines and sequestering the spent fuel deep in the geologically stable depths of the mines. If there were ever a leak it would be contained underground and no spent fuel would need to travel overland.

It is also worth noting that recent evidence suggests that low levels of radiation may be far less dangerous than originally supposed at the dawn of the atomic age, even Green Patriarch and possibly now former poster boyJames Lovelock is now in favour of generating electricity by means of nuclear energy

With enough spare power capacity the possibility opens up of generating hydrogen from seawater in sufficient quantities to substitute it for petrol in internal combustion engines. The technology to burn Hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is relatively simple and could easily be adopted.

The only emissions from vehicles running on hydrogen would be water vapour then those inclined to hate 4WD vehicles would need to find some other excuse to do so. I suspect we can be assured they would do so.

The problem with crude oil

Due to the general economic slowdown oil is no longer in such demand right now. This had resulted in a drop in the price of crude oil. Now OPEC want to restrict supply in the hope of driving prices back up.

Now I am not generally in favour of what the Green’s are. Their science often seems dubious, their policies ill thought out. Their motives anti progress, anti people. To the point where the mere fact that they may endorse something is enough to raise suspicions about it.

Never-the-less I do sometimes involuntarily find myself marching in parallel with them. Their dislike of oil is one of those occasions. Needless to say I am not demonising 4 wheel drive vehicles and their drivers, wanting to impose punitive taxation on air travel, or want to see Tata forced to stop selling cheap cars in India.

Still it would be nice to wean the world off carbon fuels. This is difficult as there is a massive existing technology and infrastructure. It is not like starting out from scratch.

The thing is, a standard car/truck, preferably made with a stainless steel engine parts and exhaust could run almost unmodified on hydrogen gas, producing nothing but water in the way of emissions. Zero Pollution.

Now Hydrogen can be ticklish stuff, but so can petrol. Surely it can not be beyond the wit of the worlds engineers to come up with a relatively 'safe' (as safe as petrol) means of storage, if only a really tough tank/bottle.

If it could be accomplished it would be an easy win in so many areas and has the potential to grant energy self sufficiency.

With sufficient power it would be possible to crack hydrogen from water.

So then, lots of power… atomic power stations anyone? Follow the French lead?

That would certainly cut green house emissions, but having power to spare is probably not sufficiently hair shirt for the Greens. Obviously not hair shirts for them personally, just the rest of us who would get to live in mud huts and die before 45.

UK Government Gives the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations.

I have been mean to Gordon Brown and New-Labour of late, highlighting bad stuff – but finally, something that makes sense! The Government are to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations.

I suggested that if they were actually serious about reducing carbon emissions they should stop playing around, get serious - and commit to a comprehensive nuclear generation program. It seems they have done just that and I applaud them for it.

Now they should estimate what it will take to cover all the countries power needs and cover it by at least half as much again.

Hopefully the state will interfere as little as possible, apart from encouraging it and setting up a sensible framework for it to operate within that does not stifle.

In the future we should be looking to encourage the development of technologies that can power cars and air travel with hydrogen that could be cracked from seawater by Nuclear, or renewable power.

If James Lovelock supports it then the environ-Mental-ists should ease up with their anti lobbying and consider how much cake they can keep if they want to eat it too.

Unfortunately Government is a bit like that advert where they joke that there is a clever/dumb balance and for every clever thing there has to be a corresponding opposite.

So I am now waiting for them to balance things up with something stupid ;-)

Of course if that were really true we would be seeing much more clever things happening to balance up all the stupid things they have done already ;-)

UK Premier’s tough talking ‘War on Carbon Emissions’

Will climate change be Brown’s bid for world fame (or at least infamy)? His ‘War on Carbon Emissions’ to Blair’s ‘War on Terror’.

He is talking tough on carbon emissions. Legislation already in the planning stage sets the difficult target of cutting the UK's emissions by 60% by 2050.

Typical New Labour response to anything - more legislation than you can shake a stick at.

Not something Gordon will ever have to actually worry about the political chickens coming home to roost over though, as he is unlikely to still be in office then.

But that’s not tough enough for tough old Brown. He is apparently thinking of going even further, possibly even doubling of the targets to produce renewable energy by 2020. Again hopefully he will not be in office by then.

Renewable energy is OK, as far as it goes.

If Brown is actually serious about reducing carbon emissions he will stop playing around, get serious - and commit to a comprehensive nuclear generation program.

New Labour's Benn Barking up wrong tree

Nu-Lab’s Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, son of Anthony starey eyed Wedgewood Benn is planning to put forward what he describes as a ‘tougher, more effective and more transparent bill to help tackle climate change’.

There is much talk of various environ-mentalist measures that will probably do the economy no good and will probably involve stealth taxes.

Yet again Nu-Lab unerringly gallop off in the direction of controls, regulation, social engineering and punitive taxation.

Assuming that climate change is in fact down to Manmade CO2 rather than say variation in solar output. If the Governemnet are really serious about reducing CO2 emissions then they should be encouraging the building of new generation nuclear power plants. It is estimated that, in total in 2003, the UK produced 786 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

If all of the UK’s power needs were taken care of by nuclear, wind, tide, etc. then this could be reduced to close to nothing

In the future we should be looking to encourage the development of technologies that can power cars and air travel with hydrogen.

But touching on the subject of things nuclear – Remember the threat of the nuclear winter? Or the depression of global temperatures, as a result of major volcanic events?

Just a thought, but if climate change is indeed a threat, down to CO2 or not, maybe someone should be looking into the possibility of duplicating the effect of a nuclear winter on a non toxic controllable scale?