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Andris Piebalgs on European Energy Security
Posted by Euan Mearns on March 9, 2008 - 11:30pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: energy security, fossil fuels, gas supplies, running out, russia, solar panel, ukraine, wind mill [list all tags]
In his second blog entry, Andris Piebalgs moves the focus to European energy security. A few choice excerpts for those who want to have a more spontaneous debate:
Europe is currently importing half of their energy needs, and according to most of the studies, our dependency may grow to 70%. We are running out of fossil fuels and our energy needs grow. This makes Europe terribly vulnerable. As Commissioner responsible for security of supply I often wondered, where are we going to get all that energy from? (my emphasis)
The EU is already a leader in renewable energy sources and we have taken a commitment to go further with a mandatory target of 20% of our final consumption by 2020......
Ambitious indeed, but I would like Europe to go far beyond this target and there are many reasons for that: climate change, competitiveness, development of new technologies, new companies, new jobs you name it. And if this was not enough, we simply have to think that every wind mill, every solar panel, every litre of biofuel makes the EU simply more independent.
And on the recent spat between Russia and Ukraine on gas supplies (discussed by Jerome here):
A first agreement was reached on the phone by Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy chairmen, and normal deliveries of gas have been resumed. I must say that the fact that supplies to Europe remained unaltered during the bilateral conflict between Russia and Ukraine plays in favour of their reputation as reliable supply and transit country. But I am still concerned. What would it happen if the bilateral crisis had become worse? Will this happen again? What about if a key supply infrastructure is destroyed by an accident or a terrorist attack? What would be the consequences for Europe of geopolitical instability in key energy regions like the Gulf?
I have to say I am warming to Mr Piebalgs appreciation of the precarious state of European energy security and the proposed expansion of renewables targets will receive my full support - with one glaring exception.
One omission from the whole strategy is energy efficiency. This I believe must lie at the heart of everything we do.
My new year's resolution for 2009 is to quit the oil drum!
This mindset is the root of all our problems. We may want it to keep growing, whether it can or not is another matter.
I'm not sure in legal terms how to interpret the words "mandatory target". Do they mean the target is mandatory? or do they mean achieving the target is mandatory? If the latter, we may see some politicians going to jail. My optimism knows no bounds!
The UK needs about 10GW of renewables to get 20%. This is one hell of construction undertaking, given wind's capacity factor and that wave is not yet proven. The Severn barage could supply most of this in a single project, but that's some project as well. Do people appreciate the scale of the problem facing us?
NO!
Not even the people who read TOD ... I find it amazing that people can see that oil production will peak but propose alternatives completely blind to the fact that they could also peak.
Peaking is a phenomenon of consumption of any resource faster than it can be profitably created - if the peaking resource in question happens to be a Liebig minimum for 'something else' then the 'something else' will also peak.
Example resources might be credit, steel, copper, gold, fish, agriculture, tropical jungle, etc. etc. etc.
Example 'something else' - humans.
I've found some one who agrees with me at last!
Lithium and Nickel as well, when we try to build 100's of millions cars with batteries using these metals.
The Severn Tidal Power Group proposal, which appears the most developed and costed, suggests 17 TWh per year from 8.64 GW installed capacity.
UK electricity consumption is 350 TWh per year, so the barrage scheme would supply less than 5%
And electricity is less than 20% of total delivered energy in the UK
I just made some rough approximations to illustrate the difficulty. A project of this scale to deliver 10% is bad enough. I did not take into account that tide is cyclic and therefore the installation would have an RMS of somewhat less than installed capacity. Forgive me for that if you will. The figure of 5% you quote makes things that much worse.
The second point you make is another thing that worries me. To generate 20% of our electricty from renewables by 2020 is to generate 5% of our total energy requirements by 2020. Oh dear!
If this were to displace coal fired plant, then you need to consider the 63% of primary energy wasted as heat. In other words 17 TWh may displace a significantly larger amount of primary energy. The tidal power is free and available every day - for so long as Earth, Moon and Sun continues to spin in space.
The cost lies in loss of amenity and inconvenienced ducks - no solution will suit everyone.
I won't dispute what you say here, the same applies to wind. Cost is a man made concept, but unfortunately money is the only universal "binder" of society.
I mentioned the Diana saga below, but this time I will use it in a more serious note. I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to how much money, both public and private has gone into this. At the end of all we will have no more than we did at the start. If the same amount of effort was put into doing something constructive there would be no problem. The fact is society is by and large none productive. The bed rock of our electrical infrastructure was built 50 years ago. To get a motivated labour force to repeat what was achieved then, especially with the "you can't make me do that its not safe" culture, is going to be a toughie.
Yes, I wasn't meaning that as a comment on the desirability of doing it or not - although I doubt it will ever be constructed (cost 8.3 billion pounds at 1988 prices). If we were serious about a transition to renewables in the UK then more consideration would be given to it than a few ministerial comments and reports left gathering dust.
According to this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Renewable-Energy-Godfrey-Boyle/dp/0199261784 total UK potential is about 53 TWh, nearly all from the 8 largest potential sites in the UK.
Tidal power may be reliable and predictable but it is also variable between spring and neap tides, and peak generation times advance 50 minutes a day, so integration might still be a problem
Also, 350 TWh is consumption, actual generation is more like 380 TWh per year
for starters we can allow shell oil to start using the technology they have developed to mine crude from oil shale in the american west. we can gassify coal and drill off both coasts and in anwar. we can use one type of gasoline in the us. , as opposed to the multi region blends foisted upon the american public by the greenies.
Germany has efficiency initiatives like Passivhaus. How can any EU official whose focus is energy fail to mention such things?
EP - to be fair to Andris, most EU energy policy statements do mention / focus upon efficiency. It is just omitted from this blog article - which has focussed on salvation via renewables.
I think that you and I are pretty much in agreement that the way to go is a combination of energy efficiency and use of energy efficient alternatives - which does not include bio fuel. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
Hello all.
No need to be fair.
Piebalgs is well aware of passive houses (Passivhaus) and has been for many years. This is the reason that Passive houses are in specifically mentioned as a goal in the important EU documents regarding EPBD- (energy performance og buildings directive).Here you can read a short summary of the process- mentioning the integration og Passive houses ( Passivhaus):
http://www.euroace.org/EuroACE%20documents/GPDpaper%20EU%20Policies.pdf
If You google Piebalgs and Passivhaus the first hit is this nice picture, where Piebalgs is updating himself in a conversation with Dr Feist the "father of the Passivhaus" in early 2007 (text in German, I'm sorry)
http://www.igpassivhaus.at/news_det.php?themenid=2&subthemenid=870
So don't worry. Piebalgs knows, It is built into the EU strategy already. What is needed is member country compliance to the EU planning...
kind regards/And1
EP,
In our last saga, about the ICE vs battery, I quoted VW as an example of a major automobile manufacturer who had just invested in common rail diesel technology, although it already had a leading "unit injector" design under the "PD" designation. I don't know who/what Passivhaus is, but I get the gist of your comment. Germany has very predominant car manufacturing industry and is obviously reluctant to implement any policy that may damage that. It is also a major EU economy and is against speed limits on its Auto Bahns. Speed restriction is a very cost effective way of fuel conservation as I'm sure you agree. In contrast, the UK will implement any amount of legislation as long as it does not affect finance.
Changing the subject, Jevons's paradox is alive and well. My first diesel was a Montego estate. It was direct injection and offered very good fuel economy at the time. A work collegue had also bought a similar vehicle, he was an ex coal miner. He said to me in his North Notts/yorkshire accent " Trouble is youth, thou buys a car that does twice miles per gallon, but thee ends up doing trice the miles and you gain nowt.
On Passivhaus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
My €100 million invention is to introduce smaller engine sizes and speed limits. We will know when the EU and EU states are getting serious about energy security when this happens.
Thanks for that link, I found an error which needed to be corrected.
I very much disagree - I'd say that that energy reduction must lie at the heart of everything we do. We have better energy efficiency than we have ever had in the EC, yet energy consumption continues to rise: LCD adverts on the back of cycle rickshaws, every self-respecting estate agent now has a massive flat panel display in their window, London underground is ditching paper posters on the escalators for moving LCD displays, several billboards are changing to large video displays, families are no longer content with one TV, increasing use of electrical appliances and generally pointless gadgets and so on. I recently read that due to legislation on safety, plus audio systems, air-con, etc., the most efficient car available in the US (The Prius I think it was) still used more fuel than a Honda Civic from the 70s.
A focus on efficiency assumes that we can manufacture our way out of the problem that manufacturing has got us into! Industry and the government love efficiency because it means that a) You will buy more stuff with better efficiency than your 1 year old "inefficient" thing, keeping the big wheels of consumerism turning and b) It means that no change whatsoever is required in our well-trained and much loved consumer behaviour of shopping.
Now energy reduction - that's to be avoided as far as society in general is concerned because it invokes the ultimate four letter word - LESS! It means using less and buying less. In a global economy that revolves around the other big four letter word - MORE - that really is thinking the unthinkable...
KiltedGreen - I won't argue with what you say here. Consume less will come with high energy prices which IMO are only just getting up a head of steam. Part of what you say here is explained by Jevon's paradox - this is lifted from a post we should publish this week. If any Jevon's experts want to comment?
Where I am really coming from with my efficiency argument is in, for example, coal fired power stations that are only 37% efficient where they could be over 90% efficient. Do you not agree that it would be much better to use all primary energy much more efficiently than 37%?
Euan, I am totally with you on getting power stations from 37% to 90% efficiency along with raising the efficiency of any and all new products where appropriate.
But I would disagree with "At best, what we can hope for is that efficiency improvements will allow industrial civilisation to continue to function in much the same way as before whilst using considerably less energy whilst becoming increasingly reliant upon alternative energy sources." In my opinion we cannot let industrial civilisation carry on as now as it will continue to trash our planetary home for the sake of increased profit. Industrial civilisation has got us to where we are; radically new thinking is required to get us of it. It's time is over and a new paradigm must replace otherwise we're in deep doo-doo.
Our actual experience of increased efficiency, as I said previously, is that energy demand rises. In your scenario, if we had 90% efficient power generation what would be the implication? - presumably cheaper electricity. The result of that could be people then deciding to buy electric patio heaters (as gas prices would be rising of course) 'cos the electricity then wouldn't cost so much, but demand then rises again. If prices remain roughly static then things carry on as now. This I assume is what "Jevon's Paradox" is saying. It seems though that the Wikipedia article contradicts itself "In an energy declining world energy efficiency will be King" - logically that is absurd. Surely, in an energy declining world, energy reduction will be King as efficiency can only take you so far. Everything made from now on should be as efficient as it's possible to make it, but as had been said on this board and elsewhere, the easiest Watts to generate are the ones you don't use - we don't need TVs that use less energy when on standby, we need TVs (if at all!) that don't even have a standby option.
[OT] By The Way, I'd just like to thank you Euan, Jerome and other that I can't sadly remember right now (but you know who you are) for all the amazing work you do here and the amount of research time you put into producing such detailed and intelligent resources for us. Thank you.
KG,
As I understand it, Jevons (An English economist) realised that by increasing the effective use of energy (efficacy, not efficiency) you could invest the money saved on energy to create more economic activity. The end result was more energy ended up getting used, though the growth of energy used was less than that of economic growth.
The delusion is we keep fooling our selves (and goverments keep telling us) that energy use per GDP has fallen. Thats not relevant. Its absolute consumption that matters as we all know (here at least).
How many perfectly good CRT television sets have been dumped because of the fashion to purchase flat screen TV sets? All we do is turn energy into rubbish, the cheaper the energy, the more rubbish. We're in deep doo-doo as you put it!
Sorry I have a bee in my bonnet about the word efficiency. It has a specific meaning. I prefer the word efficacy because if your turning energy into paper, Its how much paper you make/kWhr that counts. And i don't think the word efficiency can be used to define this.
I'm not an expert in TVs, but clearly LCD computer panels waste considerably less power than CRTs. It may be like "wasting" an incandescent bulb before it has burned out, in order to use high efficiency lighting. With TV's the LCD form factor allows for a much larger screen. Of course in my house the LCD doesn't replace the CRT until the later dies.
In a fixed or declining energy world, greater efficiency/efficacy means means we can have more stuff than otherwise. If efficiency/efficacy can be increased faster than the energy decline, we can actually be seeing actual gains. If you believe as I do, that after some lean times, greater energy production via renewables and nuclear can stem the tide of reduced energy availability, increasing efficiency/efficacy just might be sufficient to keep the masses from revolting.
KiltedGreen -
I think I can rephrase that. I've learned a lot from Greens who Blog here - MD Solar and Greenish in particular. I don't disagree with the message, but what I write is often along the lines of what I think may happen as opposed to what I would want to happen.
The first step for me is to argue for a way forward that avoids a Mad Max type of outcome - and if we continue to squander energy on bio fuel, inefficient coal burdened with carbon capture, hydrogen fuel cells, GTL and syncrude then I fear we may very soon end up in an energy impoverished and distintegrating society. So I see high eroei renewables, nuclear and energy efficiency as the way forward to avoid the former scenario - the details of that were laid out by myself and Luis in Olduvai revisited 2008 - here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3565
I'm persuaded of the need for a plan to manage reduction of population significantly through the 21st century. Combining that with the feasible energy scenario laid out in Olduvai 2008 may leave Mankind with an abundance of sustainable energy per capita. How that opportunity is used is up for grabs and it is really at that point that the ideas of ecologists need to kick in - to build a new efficient and "wealthy" world order. And the word wealthy can mean a variety of things - lets say enriched.
Back to the real world of today I see escalating energy prices resulting in a consume less reality unfolding as we speak within the OECD - balanced by consume more in Asia
Pitt recently made a comment saying exponential population growth has ended. Even if the population growth ends today (what function it is following today, I don't know), there is huge a popualation out there (Saudi Arabia, China, India etc) that if they intend to reach European (or worse US) energy per capita living standards, will result in more than doubling the world energy demand. Saudi (and some other nations) may well have to resort to water desalination on a huge scale. I seem to recall Matt R Simmons making this point to imply Saudi's internal gas consumption (hence reduction in exportation) will increase dramatically for this purpose. (I have lent the book out so can't check my facts here).
Population reduction is an issue our current leaders will not address. China was/is under fire for such a policy. Political correctness and various forms of "the human rights" acts stand well in the way rational thinking. Human rights is a man made concept, and unfortunately nature couldn't give a s**t about humanity.
Many people believe our population will stabilise at 9 billion and all will be fine. I'm not one of them.
Cheaper than the alternative, but consider the likely conditions relative to today:
On the other hand, the price of electricity would likely be (and remain) cheaper than the price of energy from oil is today. Wind and solar PV will probably keep getting cheaper. If people react to inexpensive clean energy by consuming more, is that bad?
Pretty much, and it's not a paradox; it's just a recognition that lower inputs per unit allow the price of that input to increase, and decreasing cost of the product may increase total demand for the input. In a world of fossil fuel and carbon constraints, increased efficiency will drive up the market clearing price of energy until the renewables are competitive, at which point they begin driving the fossil sources out of the market. This is already in progress in the USA, as wind is being used to reduce use of natural gas.
KG
I read carefully what Euan says and I think he is well aware of the problems you adress. But you are right in what you say here. There is an interesting "rant" on the Australian blog about health and safety. It touches my heart. Here's the article.
I added this comment (awaiting moderation - probably until Monday...):
If security of supply is such an issue, why is so little done to (i) focus policies and politicians on demand reduction and (ii) stop investing in scarce-resource-consuming energy use?
(i) the EU Commission should stop spending all its political capital on unbundling which, however one might think it will be useful, is not understood by the population and thus distracts attention from policies that all could comprehend and participate in;
(ii) competitive markets lead to additional investment in gas-fired plants, as they are the easiest and least risky to finance by the private sector. Thus the main tool of current EU energy policies brings results which are in direct contradiction with the goal of improving security of supplies (not to mention climate change efforts, as burning gas also emits carbon dioxide, even if less than coal). If we are so worried about Russian gas (something I think is unhelpful, as I explain here: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/3/4/83643/48655), then weshould certainly have policies that encourage more gas burning.
Urgh...
we should certainly NOT have policies that encourage gas burning.
E.on is building a gas-fired electricity/heat plan right now in Malmö, Sweden. Of course big projects like this are decided several years ago but the completion will come very untimely, in the middle of the global warming debate, and add to that the unsecurity of gas supplies.
http://www.eon.se/templates/InformationPage.aspx?id=79817
Europe has to invest more in natural gas storage.
http://www.platts.com/Natural%20Gas/Resources/News%20Features/eurostorag...
I think the US has 7.5 Tcf of storage and uses 23 Tcf a year.
I would guess that Europe probably uses 20 Tcf per year(.6 Tcm).
World LNG market seems stetched thin at 8 Tcf per year and can't help much.
majorian, as my conceptual forecast for UK gas shows, growth in storage capacity is essential in the short term but only provides a short term solution (which will happen). Medium term (10+ years from now) we may struggle in the UK to source sufficient gas in summer to fill storage for use in winter.
On LNG - global supply is about half global import capacity.
It's a bad situation.
There has been a huge increase in new natural gas electrical generation, but supplies are not rising. It would be in the interests of the powers that be( who caused the problem) to 'solve' it by increasing the world trade in LNG, but as I mentioned the whole LNG trade is rather small and so they are painting themselves into a corner IMO.
Besides it is hard to imagine an international LNG trade continuing should any kind of major war break out anywhere in the world.
Gas supplies seem tenuous; the 300 Tcf Stockmann field would be nice, but that's just a gleam in the corner of Putin's eye.
Somebody probably already posted this recent report on European energy.
http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/vulnerabilityesfinal.pdf
http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/finalvulnerabilityofeurope2008.pdf
Current storage capacity (as of 2006):
(1 bcm = 35 tcf)
France, Italy and Germany are close to 25% of yearly imports.
Jerome - I think the storage issue is easily resolved within the UK where storage will more than double in the coming years. The real problem Europe will face is actually filling the storage during the summer months as N Sea production declines (UK, Norway and Holland). Increasing competition for summer gas will lead to convergence of summer and winter prices. Against a back drop of old long term contracts at low price expiring and global gas scarcity I think a perfect storm is brewing for gas supplies and energy prices in Europe.
Smart then that the UK is planning to build a further 12 CCGT power plants. Energy efficient yes - but overlooking the security of fuel supply. The National grid in the UK sees future gas prices falling - the logic being that free markets deliver low prices.
We need to move quickly to the Danish (Finnish and Dutch) models of co-generation combined heat and power generating plant that is over 90% efficient. Using the waste heat from such plant in district heating schemes conserves gas currently used in domestic boilers - we are going to have to use less gas and this is one solution - that avoids building tonnes and tonnes of neuks - which probably can't be built in time.
Its more important use resources (fly people to Paris etc) to resolve the Princess Diana Inquest! (sorry for this none constructive comment, but couldn't resist it). I'm trying to design a pcb for a hobby project, but I find the oil drum more intersting, hence pcb progress is not good!
Natural gas generated electricity and wind/solar are complimentary (in a bad sense)i.e. building a large wind farm will require
a large amount of natural gas backup generation. If natural gas supplies come under pressure, wind resources will become at least temporarily unavailable.
The key is storing wind energy. One way is to
electrolyse water into hydrogen gas which would take the place of hydrogen made from natural gas. It's even possible to store excess hydrogen gas mixed in with natural gas at a 1:5 ratio called hythane in existing gas lines(burns just like natural gas).
Another way is to use excess wind electricity to compress air to raise the efficiency of gas turbine generators as they have at Huntoff in Germany. You might save 25% of the energy/natural gas with CAES (compressed air energy system).
District heating would only end up burning more gas. Wind is more dependable in winter.
Home heating by electric heat pumps (ground source heat pumps would be best) makes more sense than district heating.
Natural gas should be used for peaking electricity only and as natural gas declines there will be rationing.
That's a non-sequitur.
Storing electicity from any source is a big headache; hydrogen in particular is a boondoggle. It is preferable to distribute the generators so that variability is reduced, and use demand-side management to follow production.
Hythane is only about 7% hydrogen by energy content, and it has a much higher flame speed than methane (which is why it is preferred for a vehicle fuel).
It's perfectly simple. Wind can only provide the grid a small percentage(25%) of the overall electricity without stability problems. In the real world this is solved by running gas generators when wind drops. This is a hybrid system.
You say this can be solved with sudden brownouts and 'distributing generators'(probably meaning build a gigantic grid around the globe). This would not be a satisfactory solution for the people paying for it(the Europeans).
(And don't bore me with fantasy magic batteries or pumped hydro all over the place.)
The solution is to stop natural gas usage for heating and substitute heat pumps(especially in Europe which has a mild climate). Non-coal electricity should replace gas use whenever possible. Natural gas should provide peaking electricity in conjuction with wind massive farms. Excess wind energy can go to compressed air storage to boost back up gas turbines efficiency(from 30 to 60%) with any further excess going to off-grid hydrogen production. In such a system 150 GW of North Sea wind would be paired with 300 GW of CAES natural gas generation to provide a continuous 375 GW using .39 Tcm per year of natural gas. Add this to 180 GW hydro and 150 GW nuke you get 705 GW which is about 10% less than the current 780 GW.
Europe is deficient in fossil fuel but is also close to Russia which allegedly has the world's largest gas reserves of 65 Tcm while Europe uses .6 Tcm.
Of course Russia is not a reliable supplier, but with efficiency and natural gas storage, Europe can gain leverage.