UK Energy Review Published

At 16:20 BST Tuesday 11th July 2006 the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) published the long awaited Energy Review.

The full 218 page, 3.2MB pdf file can be downloaded from the DTI server here: Energy Review Report

The DTI server has been extremely busy today but the document is also available from the BBC server here: Energy Review Report

Any comments?

Preface by A Darling

"Without urgent action,..."

Dontcha just luvvit when, after 5 predecessors they finally decide urgent action after 9 years delay is required...Hurry Hurry whilst we get this Stalinist planning system approved...

Meanwhile the man from the French State Energy Company sits on Newsnight looking smug ... but will his smile be wiped off his face when Westinghouse are put in the frame as "preferred" (i.e US) suppliers ?

This show will run and run. My advice , get some candles in.

A couple of comments and questions:

Will any of this plug at affordable cost, the UK energy gap between 2010 and 2015, the latter being the earliest date when any new nuclear stations could be on line, even with an abridged planning process?

I am glad to see that the environmentally disastrous, concrete-guzzling monster of the Severn Barrage has not found favour, though another study into it is planned, presumably as a sop to the Welsh Assembly which seems to support it.

Will this actually get through Parliament as the Libs, Conservatives and it seems quite a number of Labour MPs, don't agree with it?

If so, will the nuclear stations really get a go-ahead soon?  Pushing ahead with them in face of strong public opposition could lose Labour the next election especially if, as seems likely, there's a recession looming or in progress. Will private energy companies want to take the risk of nuclear

As I understand it, "the UK energy gap between 2010 and 2015" will be covered by prayers and luck.

There is always the gas interconnector, assuming it makes it from Russia right through Europe, and an electricity interconnector from France. Plus there is LNG shipping. I imagine the gap will be mostly met in the form of demand destruction from ruinously expensive power bills. Expect energy-intensive business to close left right and centre.

As for the elections, once power shortages kick in, Labour will be out the door. But neither party has much in the way of options- the Tory faux tree-hugging is so transparent it's embarrassing.

Will any of this plug at affordable cost, the UK energy gap between 2010 and 2015, the latter being the earliest date when any new nuclear stations could be on line, even with an abridged planning process?

My bet would be: in the face of shortages planned decomissioning of the nukes will be delayed, first "temporary" and then for indefinate time. The rest should (or they hope to) be covered with electricity imports and with demand destruction caused by the skyrocketing prices and the inevitable recession kicking in.

Anything else, even a single month of rationing will be equivelent to a long-term political death for the party in power.

I am appalled that the Severn Barrage scheme has not found favour. If we are going to get renewable energy up above the miserable 20% in 2020 level trumpeted by the report we need all the sources we can utilise. We need them both for the total quantity and to even out the variability that renewable resources have. Electricity needs to be generated to meet the demand second by second as it peaks and falls. Without any energy storage scheme on a TWhr scale we will need to keep conventional generating plant on standby or built massive excess renewable capacity and shed it when not needed. This is a problem that is trivial at the 0.2% level of renewables that we have now but rises to dominate the economics if we could get the figure up to 50%.

Tidal power is predictable. A double pond scheme with one pond  filled at high tide and one emptied at enables the generation to match demand peak, effectively combining generation capacity with storage. With this and as much other renewable capacity as we can build we can up the renewable share

To get an idea of how great a resource the Severn is, consider that the 1998 single barrage scheme would produce 17TWhr per year. The largest of the lagoon systems favoured by Friends of the Earth would generate 24TWhr per year. This is equivalent to the output of 2150 of the very largest 3MW 100m diameter offshore turbines at a 30% load factor for the barrage and 3030 of them for the lagoon system. For the 200kW 24m diameter turbines common onshore operating at 25% load factor the figures are 39000 turbines for the barrage and 54800 for the lagoons.

Using Sanyo's best 200W 1.18m² solar photovoltaic panels at 10% load factor you would need 97 million panels for the barrage and  154 million panels for the lagoons.

There are drawbacks and environmental costs on all energy schemes. The lagoon scheme has lower environmental costs but uses much more ballast or concrete. If we turn down every new scheme because there are some disadvantages we will be left with the default option. Conventional oil will peak and decline. For a couple of decades a frenzy or development of filthy alternatives such as tar sands, oil shale, Venezuelan super heavy oil and coal to liquid conversion will struggle to fill the gap before that fails but not before pumping enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to ensure climatic disaster. We will be left in an economic and environmental calamity.

We desperately need tidal power and the Severn is the second  best site in the world.  

Wholeheartedly agree Nick.
It also strikes me that we should take a look at all the other estuarys that lend themselves to this sort of thing.
My father (a Cornishman) tells the story of the Hayle tidal gates which used to be operated in order to flush the shipping channel clear.
It wouldn't be in the same order of magnitude as the Severn, but the key to this problem is "Every little bit helps"! (Not Tesco's)
I heard a caller on Radio 4 yesterday deride the initiative to replace all our filament light bulbs with energy saving ones as "A drop in the ocean" - but until the greater population wake up to doing the 'little things', they wont be in a position to decide coherently about the big things.

Off on a tangent for a moment, another caller on the Radio 4 program spoke about the scourge of mobile phone chargers and how people leave them switched on all the time (and only charge their phone for 2 hours every 3 days.

It seems to me the logical answer is to have a push-switch on the charger which 'clicks' out after the recommended charging period is up. A bit like those stairwell lights you find in communal areas. (You have 20 seconds to climb the stairs or you are plunged into darkness.)
That way, the phone owner can leave it plugged in & 'switched on' forever , it won't draw any current until someone hits the button - and then only for xx hours.

Then I got to thinking - how about making a that into a plug facility for all applicances. In the same way as you can get different rated fuses, you could buy a '1 hour' plug for your kids playstation, or a 2 hour plug for the TV.

Get me the patent office or Alan Sugar  - someone...

Timer cutouts would be quite possible. It would also be no great problem to design a phone charging circuit that cut current down to about a 10 microamps when the phone was not plugged in. 2.4kW per million left-on chargers. There are mains rated MOSFET's with lower leakage than this switched off and mains rated reed relays would last long enough for such duty.

You could arrange the switching by an extra contact ring on the jack or the mechanical act of pushing it in. It would add a little to the cost and up to now there has been no incentive for manufacturers to incur this cost. One of the good things in this report is the promise of cutting down on standby current. I hope they include phone chargers in the list.

A retrograde step in this regard has been the spread of cordless phones for land lines. Old fashioned handsets used no power at all when they were not being used. Cordless phones keep the wireless link powered up all the time.

Time to consider again the ancient conundrum, is the light still on in the fridge when I close the door? :-)

There is no mention of Peak Oil anywhere in the 218 pages but it looks as if they half recognise it in  that  they say:-
There is a risk that supplier countries may not make sufficient or timely investments to increase output.

In other words supply may outrun demand but it is all the fault of those nasty mean foreigners.

They also seem to accept the figures of the UK Offshore Operators Association (p83) that UK continental shelf oil and gas production will be 3.2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day this year and rise to 3.4 in 2007. the latest DTI statistics show the April  7.391 million tonnes of oil production and 7.495 million tonnes oil equivalent of natural gas production. By my calculations that is 2.74 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Buzzard is the only sizable new field due to come online in the next couple of years and it is predicted to produce 0.18 to 0.19 mbpd barrels of oil by mid 2007. How this is expected in less than a year to offset decline in other fields running at present at about 0.25 mbpd and produce an increase of 0.2 mbpd beats me.

Buzzard is the only sizable new field due to come online in the next couple of years and it is predicted to produce 0.18 to 0.19 mbpd barrels of oil by mid 2007.
We also need to consider for how long such flowrates might be maintained. Looking at Buzzard History URR is reported as 'at least 550m bbls'.  Let's assume peak rate is 185k bopd and URR is 550m bbls; peak flowrate would effectively deplete entire field in 8.15 years i.e. peak rate represents 1/2973 of URR.  Compare this result with Forties where depletion fraction at peak was 1/5600 (500k bopd peak flowrate, 2.8 Gbbls URR) - in effect they plan to pull on Buzzard at around twice the rate of Forties.

Of course it's not hard to see why - early cost recovery for operator, early tax revenue for Gov't and production will occur during the (now limited) lifespan of key infrastructure i.e. Forties and Frigg oil / gas gathering systems respectively.  Major NS infrastructure dating from 1970's will soon be approaching end of design life for the corrosive environment and average size of new discoveries would be unlikely to justify such repeat investments.

Clearly Buzzard peak rate cannot be maintained for very long thus, after a couple of years or so UK NS oil production will show an even steeper decline curve following a 'blip' on the downslope as Buzzard is commissioned.

Like Nick I cannot see where the 'rise to 3.4m boe/d in 2007' is coming from - Energy Trends has just reported an 8.5% oil and 4.5% gas decline in 12 months 1Qr 2005 to 1Qr 2006.  From this report I've calculated the declines as 155.4k bopd (oil) and 94.4k boe/d (gas) i.e 249.8k boe/d in total.  Even if Buzzard peaks at 190k bopd within 12 months of startup combined energy output from NS for that year would still decline.

Energy trends has reported an 8.5% oil and 4.5% gas decline in 12 months 1Qr 2005 to 1Qr 2006.

It gets worse. The monthly figures at the DTI give the decline for the latest 3 months for which they have figures, (Feb-Apr 2006) over the corresponding three months of 2005 as 10% decline in petroleum and 7.6% in natural gas.

UNITED KINGDOM, A NET ENERGY IMPORTER....AGAIN

The blogspot

http://energikrise.blogspot.com/

had recently a post with some interesting diagrams (in English and click able for larger views) about developments in energy consumption and energy mix for the United Kingdom.

The first diagram, in MBOE; million barrels of oil equivalents a day, illustrates net exports from and net imports to UK of fossil fuels for the years 1981 to 2005.

UK re-entered the role as net importer of energy in 2004. Surprisingly coal imports saw to this, and most recently, 2004, imports of natural gas surpassed exports.

The UK will in the near future have to increase natural gas imports, and this is to happen, as the European natural gas market is growing tighter. A few more years into the future UK will again become a net importer of oil.

As of 2005 UK imported net approximately 14 % of its total energy needs.

The second diagram shows the development in energy consumption by energy sources for the years 1965 to 2005 for UK.

The interesting about UK is that natural gas as of 1999 became the most important primary energy source. There are few other OECD nations where natural gas is as dominant in the energy mix as in the UK.

on page 203 they give the range of oil prices
     low      high
2005 $55      $55
2010 $40      $67
2015 $42      $69
2020 $45      $72

 If all the work has been done with fule prices
in this range, there assumptions are going to
be a long way out, and the case for renewables
and nuclear is much greater than they think.
 The only way they could be right is a VERY
BIG RECESSION to cut demand by 5,000,000
barrels a day or more.
By 2020 that will still not be enough      

Hmm.. we already passed the 2020 high side forecast...
I wonder what some of these people are smoking !  :)