Sunday, October 6, 2024

Carbon Capture. Getting behind the hysteria.


Carbon capture is in the news again, as the new Labour government announces a substantial new programme for the development of the technology. This has attracted a barrage of criticism from both Left and Right, in spite of the fact that carbon capture is widely regarded as an essential component of any mitigation strategy. So it’s worth exploring a bit further.

 

Some technical background.

 

We should get the terminology clear. There are many approaches to carbon capture, including the use of natural processes in the carbon cycle, for example by improved land use, planting trees or through various “geo-engineering” schemes to increase the “fixing” of the carbon in the oceans.  Greens and others, unsurprisingly, tend to favour the most “natural” and least environmentally intrusive of these. 

 

Second, when COis captured, it can either find a useful purpose, or it can be sent to a safe permanent store. Use in the soft drinks industry will be trivially small, but it can also be used in the production of synthetic fuels. Most recently there has been a lot of interest in synthetic aviation fuel (SAF) for the hard-to-decarbonise aviation industry.

 

Trees are one form of direct atmospheric carbon capture (DACC). But there are also industrial process approaches to direct capture, sometimes referred to as mechanical trees, which rely on established chemical techniques to separate CO2  from the atmosphere. It’s claimed that the cost of DACC and subsequent storage (DACC+S) could be brought down to below $200/ tonne, a level that could imply total costs of emission-free oil use well within the historical range of oil price variations. Proposed options for storage include geological formations such as depleted oil reservoirs  and the deep oceans

 

Problems with and arguments against the various DACC methods include:

 

·       excessive requirement for land use, sometimes in competition with food production; this will apply to some but not all methods of both a “natural” and industrial nature; this places an upper limit on what they can achieve

·       excessive land use can also have ecological and human rights implications

·       unproven nature and potentially high costs, and, in the case of natural methods, science unknowns around whether particular land-use policies will be net emitters or receivers of CO2

·       for industrial methods, high energy use requirements

·       the argument that carbon capture is a distraction from the preferred alternative of eliminating fossil fuels

·       in relation to storage, doubts about suitability of locations, safety and permanence; transport of CO2and injection into storage may also be expensive

 

The above has all been about direct air capture. However it is, for obvious reasons, likely to be much easier and cheaper to capture high concentrations of CO at the point of combustion when it is released from the fossil fuel. A Green version of this technique involves the use of sustainable bio-fuels, known as bio-energy carbon capture and storage or BECCS. BECCS is likely to be severely supply limited in relation to the scale of what is needed. More generally carbon capture can be fitted or retro-fitted to fossil burning plant, including power generation, and this has generally been the main focus of carbon capture and storage policies, usually referred to as CCS.

 

An additional issue for CCS is that it is likely to be less than 100% effective, with a leakage rate of perhaps 10% or more, so it is not a silver bullet.

 

Is carbon capture an essential component of climate strategies?

 

The IPCC is fairly clear that carbon removal, ie DACC, will be an essential component of any feasible route to a sustainable future. It also endorses continued use of fossil fuels, where this is accompanied by CCS, as one of the options for getting to a net zero future. CCS is also supported by the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) as part of a UK strategy aimed at this objective. Both these bodies have the advantage of access to a huge body of scientific and technical advice on the subject, in the context of means to mitigate climate change.

 

So should the UK government be promoting CCS?

 

On the basis of IPCC and CCC advice, the principle of promoting CCS seems to bejustified. There may be alternative means of getting to net zero, but if this is the quickest and cheapest option, then there should be no reason to object to it. Moreover this will not just be a UK issue. Much of the world is even more locked into fossil-based technologies than the UK, so the potential of CCS as an interim or transition technology may be quite important.

 

Whether it has a positive contribution to a UK industrial strategy is another question. Potentially the answer is that it does. Countries like Germany have a much higher lock-in to fossil fuel. But as ever, geography and trading relations matter. Not all countries will enjoy the storage options that the UK has, and Brexit will make the potential to exploit European markets harder.

 

Finally there is a history to this. In 2015 the Cameron/ Osborne government cancelled a CCS programme after the spend of £ 100 million of public money and substantial private sector investment of time and resources. This was part of a major rolling back of  Cameron’s Green promises and accompanied the slashing of budgets on other “easy win” measures such as home insulation. As a marker of determination to take net zero seriously, this is a welcome step. But it does not detract from the need to continue to explore the wider DACC options for carbon removal and storage, nationally and globally.

Friday, September 13, 2024

I’m engaging with a climate activist group in the near future, and I wanted to give them some idea of what I thought were some really important ideas on climate. I’m referring them to this blog but I also know this site can be difficult to navigate, so I’m adding a few links to particular past posts which we may cover and I think are quite thought provoking.

 

Oxford Martin School Integrate Programme:

 

Oxford Martin School. Integrating Renewable Energy Programme

 

Historic responsibility and development:

 

COP 27. Reparations and clean development

 

Firewood Charcoal and Deforestation

 

You tube presentation on this subject available at https://youtu.be/d81oGZzQaQ0

 

Climate science and chaos

 

Science versus scepticism

 

Climate and chaos

 

Electric vehicles:

 

Costing an EV future. Ignore the alarmists

 

The case for EVs is strong enough to withstand the ICE lobbyists


Urgency, early action and low hanging fruit:


Bitcoin. Cryptos threaten sustainability


Cumulative carbon. Has the economics lost contact with the physics? 

Sunday, July 14, 2024

CAN THE GOVERNMENT MAINTAIN ITS FOCUS ON SOLAR. THERE ARE A FEW PROBLEMS AHEAD.

The new government is reportedly focusing its renewable energy drive on solar power. The change from the lacklustre energy policy approach of the Tories is welcome, but there are a few technical questions and possible policy traps ahead. 

The first is the wind/solar balance. The Royal Society analysis suggests that, simply in terms of seasonal supply and demand, an 80/20 split in favour of wind is likely to minimise the need for expensive storage. However the biggest driver of storage need with renewables is likely to prove to be inter annual variations in renewables output.  

A bigger headache in policy terms may prove to be the incentive that households receive in terms of a reduction to their energy bills. The immediate saving to an individual household will exceed the actual cost saving for the power system as a whole. This is good for the individual consumer in the short term, but the fixed costs of the distribution network still have to be covered somehow. If they continue to be averaged out over all kWh consumed then eventually households without the ability to instal solar will be subsidising those that do. In many cases this will mean the poor cross-subsidising the wealthy. 

There is a further and related problem if we want a substantial number of households to substitute heat pumps for gas boilers. Current pricing structures are a strong disincentive and tend to make running costs for a heat pump much less attractive than continuing with gas. 

There are answers to this conundrum, but they involve a new approach to recovering fixed network costs. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is through the traditional approach in the water industry, and to the collection of revenues to local authority services – linking a fixed charge component to property value. This is a simple policy to state, but it will take a lot of work to implement. However, its necessity will become increasingly apparent.

Thursday, November 9, 2023

ELECTRICITY TARIFFS IN A LOW CARBON WORLD

 

We can start from a few basic principles and realities.

 

1.     Spot markets as conceived in the UK are increasingly irrelevant and/or dysfunctional. Originally conceived to replicate the optimisation of the merit order of fossil plant, and designed by the operators of such plant, they provided price signals consistent with efficient operation of an existing collection of generating plant. The provision of signals for inducing the right quantities and types of investment were always more problematic and for some time spot markets have increasingly been seen as wholly inadequate for this purpose. However we now need to recognise that with low carbon systems based around renewables, nuclear and storage, they will increasingly be irrelevant even in the first function, that of price signals that result in efficient least cost operations.

 

2.     What should really matter to us is not pricing structures in the wholesale market per se –  more or less a legacy structure of institutional arrangements in need of serious reform - but the nature of the tariffs that get passed through to final consumers. We should try to follow the general economic principle that the structure of tariffs needs to reflect the structure of costs. Failure to do this almost invariably results in major economic distortions that come back to bite us, through adverse selection and other unintended incentives and consequences. Current and recent institutional and structures and regulatory approaches have not encouraged more cost reflective tariffs.

 

3.     Reliability planning is fundamental, particularly as electricity expands into heating and transport (EVs), where the security/reliability requirements are very different from those of “traditional” load. The old VOLL approach is no longer appropriate since we really need very different types and definitions of reliability in the new world. Addressing reliability questions, in terms of what we are prepared to pay for, is essential.

 

4.     At least for domestic and smaller consumers, politically the most important category, a very high proportion of costs rests in the provision and operation of transmission and distribution. These are network costs which are essentially fixed costs that do not vary much (on a long term basis) with the volume of throughput. These are however recovered, typically, by averaging over kWh supplied. This method is widely accepted as “fair” and equitable, but will inevitably produce some major distortions. Other approaches are possible which are more economically efficient and can do a better job on redistribution objectives. 

 

5.     Metering, communications, control and information technologies allow for a range of feasible tariff options that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. These include supplier managed loads, choice over reliability standards, and charging by type of use, as well as more familiar ToD pricing and load management techniques. These are of much greater significance in a low carbon world when there is less flexibility in generation and therefore there has to be more flexibility in either consumption or storage.

 

6.     There have been particular concerns expressed that prices can be set by, for example, very high spot prices dictated by the marginal (gas) plant when gas prices are high, even though most of the power may be coming from low cost renewables. The analogous situations in traditional “vertically integrated” power systems arise when incremental growth is met through different generation technologies, and it can work both ways. For example load growth in some countries can exhaust cheap hydro, and utilities, if they can price at long run incremental  cost (LRMC), can then enjoy a potentially large economic rent from their legacy plant. Legacy costs or surpluses (as an offset) can of course be put with other fixed costs if it is decreed that they have to be recovered from consumers.

 

7.     Economic efficiency and the requirement for adequate revenue generation are clearly not the only considerations. Political acceptability and distributional issues are also key. There are no trivially easy solutions but there is a lot that can be done to improve matters in the future.

 

8.     My idealised solutions rest heavily on technical  assumptions about metering, communications and control systems, but might include some combination and selection from the following:

 

·      Recovery of far more of fixed cost through other “distributional” means, eg via linkin standing charges to property values (cf water), more use of rising block tariffs, and type of use tariffs. 

·      In addition to the above means, price inelastic EV charging might legitimately be expected, as a premium use, to carry a higher burden of infrastructure cost than price elastic and politically sensitive heating load, where we need low unit rates to encourage a switch to heat pumps.

·      Recognition that it is really only the “traditional” loads that need the instantaneous supply response that underlies the VOLL approach, and also dominates conventional definitions of reliability. We need different conceptions and definitions of supply reliability especially in systems that rely on storage. 

·      Consumers will place different values on reliability depending on the application, and this needs to be reflected in reliability planning and in tariffs.

·      Consumer options to designate certain uses as “supplier managed”, with an appropriate tariff incentive for a lower unit rate.

·      Differentiated reliability standards for different uses, with selected uses (eg lights, TV, computer) always the most reliable; default to this standard for less vital services available at a premium.

·      Various methods for reflecting periods of “system stress” into tariffs - eg the French “red light” approach.

·      Continued development of possible time of day or seasonal pricing.

 

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

WHAT ARE THE REAL ISSUES WITH LIFESTYLE AND CLIMATE POLICY?


 

Arguments about the supposed war on motorists operated by a Labour London mayor, with ULEZ, the Welsh government with its 20 mph speed limits , and, allegedly, its  planned extension to England becomes ever more bizarre, as do the allegations of a prospective tax on meat, the likely household cost of replacing gas boilers, and anything that the culture warriors of the Tory party think can be turned into a populist rallying cry. So perhaps it’s time to reflect on what are the elements of truth about lifestyle and climate, and what are simply creative approaches to reality, or lies and falsehoods as they might be called by the less charitable.

 

Let’s deal with some of these in turn.

 

ULEZ

 

Actually this has little or nothing to do with climate policy. It was first mooted as a sensible proposal by Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson. It’s primary purpose is to improve air quality and public health. It may have increased CO2 emissions slightly in the short run, by driving out diesel cars faster than petrol cars, but this will have been offset by encouraging a faster take-up of electric vehicles.

 

Congestion charging

 

Again the primary benefit for this has usually been argued as the reduction in congestion and the substantial saving in the time drivers have to spend at the wheel. There is an important secondary benefit in reduced particulate emissions and in reduced CO2 emissions, because the stop-start involved in congestion reduces overall fuel efficiency.

 

Some of this benefit was negated by the rather illogical exemption of electric vehicles from the London congestion charge. At a time when most vehicles are still petrol or diesel, EV vehicles will still have increased congestion, and hence emissions from all the other non-EV vehicles on the road. When all vehicles are EV, there will still often be a strong case for congestion charging, or road pricing, even though the incremental health and CO2 benefits have become minimal. 

 

The reality therefore is that there is a climate policy case for congestion charging, but it is not a case that has been promoted particularly vigorously.

 

Speed limits

 

Reduced speeds will generally tend to reduce fuel and energy use. This is a matter of simple physics. But the effect in residential areas where the limit is already 30 mph is likely to be relatively trivial. Much more significant would be a reduction from 70 mph to 60 mph on motorways and dual carriageways. In the 1970s US governments imposed 55 mph limits in the face of the OPEC cartel and global oil price hikes, primarily in order to reduce fuel consumption.

 

There are therefore strong arguments to be made, on climate policy grounds, for reduced speed, at least while the majority of vehicles are petrol or diesel. But, at least for the UK, climate has never been the most significant consideration. The drivers for speed limits have always been road safety, and, more recently, air quality.

 

Once again truth is the first casualty of today’s politics, so we might note, inter alia, that:

 

·      Most Tory members of the Welsh Senedd supported the 20 mph default limit.

·      It is subject to local decision making and is not a “blanket” limit.

·      Minimal analysis shows it has almost negligible effects on most journey times.

·      There is no evidence that it has caused congestion or traffic problems.

·      There is evidence that lower speed limits reduce injuries and fatalities.

 

Significant emissions reductions could, fairly obviously, result from limiting higher speeds, for example on motorways, or from enforcement of existing limits, but this is not currently a plank of policy in the major parties. Meanwhile the 20 mph limit has already been widely extended to English cities, with little comment.


This issue, bizarrely given its relative insignificance in relation to either economic activity or climate, is the one that has produced the most insane claims of economic damage, with Welsh Tories claiming it could have economic impacts on the Welsh economy of between two and nine billion pounds. We await any form of explanation for this number.

 

Heat pumps and the end of gas boilers

 

This is perhaps one of the hardest energy sector transitions for the UK, and heat pump issues are hard to cover adequately in a short post. But there are a few important points to note. The first is that major infrastructure transformations are possible in the UK, for instance in the rapid conversion from town gas to natural gas. A second is that we should expect further efficiency improvements and cost reductions for heat pump technology, and a third is that the era of cheap gas (from the 90’s onwards) is coming to an end, reducing the cost barriers for consumers wanting to switch to heat pumps.

 

Of equal importance is the need for tariff reform so that the price per additional kwh of electricity use more closely reflects the actual incremental cost of supply. This would have a dramatic effect on the competitiveness of heat pumps against gas. It implies a radical restructuring of electricity tariffs to change the way that fixed and legacy costs are recovered, but this simultaneously provides an opportunity to deal with some of the other issues on the distributional impact of current tariff structures. 

 

 

Less meat and dairy consumption

 

This really is a major lifestyle choice that would have a major impact on emissions, given the amount of land used for raising crops that are then used as animal feed. It’s potentially much larger in scale than what we have discussed above and will persist as a significant question even after transport has been fully decarbonised.

 

It is also, undeniably, a social trend that many more people are choosing to eat less red meat, in particular, on health grounds, and that vegetarian food has become more popular.

This is certainly an important area of debate for the future, although even the greenest of climate campaigners tend to focus on reducing meat consumption rather than eliminating it. We also know that some meats are intrinsically less carbon intensive than others. And it’s quite clear that none of the major parties in the UK are currently in a hurry to demand meat bans or meat taxes.

 

Looking ahead we might expect that the pressure on food resources, especially if accentuated by a changing climate, will increase the price of many important commodities, including both grains for human consumption and animal feed, and this will affect the price of meat and hence consumption. In terms of lifestyle changes, this really is a huge question, affecting as it does national and global agricultural systems as well as personal diets and elements of social life. Agriculture and land use is also a hugely complex subject.

 

Time for an intelligent conversation

 

It is time to step back from the more hysterical arguments that attempts to limit environmental damage somehow threaten important personal freedoms of all kinds, or the fundamentals of modern life. There are undoubtedly potential conflicts, although, as shown above, few if any lifestyle initiatives have so far been driven primarily or at all by climate objectives. Health and safety have been far more salient factors. 

 

But this may need to change, and it would be good to see more serious discussion of the choices that we may in future have to make as the existential threats of climate change become increasingly apparent, and alarming.

Monday, October 2, 2023

MORE DISINFORMATION ON NET ZERO. COINCIDENCE OR CONSPIRACY?

Sadly we have become accustomed to the routine parade of untruths in government. But what should concern us almost as much is the peddling of ridiculous theories, misleading statistics and nonsensical arithmetic by bodies that pretend to offer some kind of independent analysis. Nowhere is this more evident than in the numerous self-styled

think-tanks and “expert” groups that set out to dispute the scientific consensus over climate science, or the relative costs of climate change versus mitigation policies.

 

One such has been the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Fuel, a lobby group composed of numerous climate sceptic MPs. (It should be noted that APPGs do not have an “official” parliamentary status and are very different from the Parliamentary Select Committees who do excellent work and produce well-researched reposts. They are in fact often just lobby groups for MPs pursuing particular agendas). I dealt with some of the “analysis” provided by this APPG in earlier posts.

 

THE CASE FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES IS STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE ATTACK FROM THE ICE LOBBYISTS

 

and

 

COSTING AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE FUTURE. IGNORE THE ALARMISTS.

 

The latter showed the lobby report had got its numbers wrong by a factor of 50, largely because of a failure to understand either elementary physical principles of energy or the units of measurement it chose to employ.

 

This level of incompetence was however surpassed by another “think-tank”, Civitas, which was sufficiently shamed to withdraw its report on account of “factual errors” after a withering assessment by Simon Evans in the Guardian. Some of the “errors” in this case were of the order of millions. 

 

How a think tank got the cost of net zero wildly wrong

 

Losing six or so zeros might merely be seen as carelessness. But as the Evans article demonstrates, it indicates a much deeper failure of understanding. It is failure to grasp the difference between power (kW) or capacity, on the one hand, and energy (kWh), on the other. This translates, unsurprisingly,  into order of magnitude errors on cost. For those not familiar with the units used for electricity, this is akin to confusing the cost of a button with the cost of the factory that produced it.

 

There seem to have been other errors in the report, such as an equally inexcusable failure to understand the difference between the total cost of investments made under a particular policy, on the one hand, and the net costs or benefits of that policy as a whole.

 

We await with interest the revised report. Civitas, on its website, claims to “… strive to benefit public debate through independent research, reasoned argument, lucid explanation and open discussion. We stand apart from party politics ….”

Odd, then, that this report should appear immediately following Sunac’s alteration of course on UK net zero. Readers will no doubt form their own view of its “independence”, as well as the competence of its authors.