EDF Energy shuts down four UK nuclear reactors

EDF has shut down four nuclear reactors, which means it has taken two power stations off line. The issue is not a nuclear problem; it relates to a defect discovered in one of the boilers related to the reactors. Although this problem has been found in only one boiler, all four reactors at Heysham-1 and Hartlepool, which share the design, have been shut down as a precautionary measure while further examination takes place. The outage is expected to last up to eight weeks.

For the moment the reduction in output is not a problem as electricity demand is always low in summer and there is currently plenty of wind. The reduction in output is not a significant proportion, although it would be critical if it occurred during peak winter demand. Energy bosses and OFGEM have all warned that the safety margin to prevent winter blackouts is vanishingly small. This is because many UK power stations of all types are coming to the end of their useful lives and being decommissioned. Renewables are not yet big enough to take up the slack and new nuclear power stations are still at least 10 years from coming into service, especially as legal disputes mean construction of the next new nuclear power stations is yet to start.

There’s no doubt that the UK has a serious problem with its energy policy and this is only one aspect. Reliance on imported fuels, especially from volatile areas like the Middle East and from Russia, is another factor threatening our energy security. The answer is increased renewables, and, even more important, we need to curb demand.

It’s in the hands of politicians, but generally they look five years ahead to the next election. Building a nuclear power station takes decades!

Sanctions on Russia - the best argument for renewable energy!

When the idea of a gas pipeline from Russia to Europe came up in the 1980s US president Ronald Reagan was strongly against it. At the time I couldn't see why, but the reason has become blindingly obvious in the last few weeks. Europe now gets up to a third of its natural gas from Russia and cannot afford to do anything that would cause Russia to turn it off. Of course loss of exports would hurt the Russian economy, but turning out the lights in Europe would have a devastating effect in only a few days. That's why Angela Merkel's response to Russia's involvement in Ukraine has been so low-key. David Cameron, on the other hand, has made much more fuss. He can afford to: the UK gets its gas elsewhere - from the British North Sea, from the Norwegian North Sea and from the Middle East. For the moment! Resources in the North Sea are running out, while Russian reserves are enormous. 

Britain, as much as the rest of Europe, needs to look at energy security, at energy that we can control within our own borders. That's why fracking is so attractive. It's exploiting British gas and oil. As commented elsewhere, fracking is no silver bullet. It's likely to be costly, there's no guarantee that the reserves can actually be recovered, there are pollution risks, there's strong public opposition and it produces fossil fuels which emit co2 when used. 

We need to explore all the options. Nuclear - under our control, but apart from all the arguments about pollution and waste disposal the plain fact is that it's no short-term solution. It will take a decade to bring a new nuclear station into production. Renewables. There's nowhere near enough capacity at present and it will take years of research and development to increase it significantly. Time to start now. Many people will complain that it can never be as cheap as coal, oil or gas. Probably true, but the age of cheap energy is over. Which would you rather have, expensive energy or none at all? 

The third step to securing our energy supplies is to minimise waste. Are you sitting in an office enjoying the sunshine with all the lights on as well? How many public buildings have the lights on 24/7? Lighting is only part of it. In a few weeks we'll have the heating on again. How hot is your home? What mpg do you get from your car? We need a government lead to encourage energy savings, otherwise we’re never going to do enough. Unfortunately the Green Deal didn't work so we need something else. Pushing energy prices up would do it, but it would make any government that did that unelectable. We need more public education, more investment in renewables, and a subsidised Green Deal ( the one that didn't work failed largely because it was too expensive, too inflexible and in many cases unlikely to yield the promised savings). Governments need to take action, because if they don't they'll be thrown out when the lights go out - and that will be the least of our troubles!

And when our energy supplies are truly secure we’ll never be held to ransom by foreign powers.

No surprises!

 No surprises in the Autumn statement after all the leaks. No surprise that Labour criticised the whole thing. Sadly, no surprise that energy policy, which is crucial to the long-term prosperity of the country, is being treated as a short-term political football. Obligations on energy companies have been relaxed so they are now able to save consumers about a pound a week on bills. Once again an increase in fuel duty has been scrapped. Subsidies for onshore wind power have been reduced and at the same time the duty on gas produced from fracking is cut in half.

In the short term, reductions in energy bills and the fuel duty freeze will help with the cost of living, (though Is £1 per week really important when the average energy bill is now some £1200 per year?) It’s suggested that the reduced support for onshore windfarms is designed to head off a threat from UKip, which is totally opposed to them. All these are good political points in advance or the 2015 election. Not sure why George Osborne is so desperately keen to promote fracking, when it’s clearly so unpopular!

Altogether, these measures are symptomatic of a chaotic energy policy. There are three issues that have to be taken into account when planning energy supplies - cost, security and pollution. 

Let’s look first at fracking. Driving high-pressure water down into shale deposits to drive out oil and gas looks like a good idea. It’s been very successful in the US. The Americans have reduced their carbon footprint by using shale gas, which is a much cleaner fuel than coal. They calculate that they are sitting on reserves of shale oil which are greater than all the oil left in Saudi Arabia. Certainly ticks the security box - as it would for the UK. We’re talking about resources firmly within our borders and under our control.

The trouble with fracking is that it doesn’t tick the other two boxes. Gas is still a fossil fuel which produces co2 when burnt. Globally, we cannot afford to burn all our fossil fuels because if we did the co2 would cause runaway global warming and extreme weather events which would damage food production and make some parts of the world uninhabitable. (Of course George Osborne doesn’t believe in this. He’s with the 5% of scientists who believe it won’t happen. The other 95% are sure it will.) Fracking uses vast amounts of water, it causes minor earthquakes and it releases methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Then there’s the cost. Nobody knows what gas from fracking will cost. Looks as though George expects it to be very expensive. That’s the second time he’s cut the duty! The sad thing is that fracking is no silver bullet. Nobody even yet knows whether it will work outside the US. In the UK the geology is different, the population density is different and the planning laws are different.

Relaxing the obligations on the energy companies means that they can slow down the process of offering free insulation for cold homes. Well-insulated homes mean less energy and lower bills. There are some (a very, very few) high-spec council homes that cost no more than £20 a year to heat. That’s the dilemma of the privatised energy companies. The less we spend, the less profit they make. In the long term more insulation, more efficient heating and lower bills are good for the consumer and good for the balance of payments. (Don’t forget, we import 20% of our gas from the Middle East, much of our coal from Russia, even electricity from France!) So who will win this one? The consumer or the energy companies? Don’t hold your breath.

Has the government really got an energy policy? Some of us have been warning for years that the lights could go out in winter 2014 or 2015, as power stations are retired before new ones are built. The government has announced a new nuclear power station that won’t be ready for 10 years, they’re offering subsidies to fracking but they don’t know if that works - and it will probably also take 10 years to commission. Meanwhile they are preserving demand by cutting back on insulation  and scrapping the fuel duty rise, and limiting supply by cutting wind power subsidies. Is that a credible policy?

Energy Bill - who pays?

The Energy Bill makes its way through Parliament with an important vote later today. Why important? Because there is going to be a revolt. 

Just announced - the government defeated the amendment which means there will be NO decarbonisation target - unless the Lords overrules.

The government does not want to include a carbon target for electricity generation. It wants to defer a decision until after the next election. Why is this a problem - and why the revolt? The carbon target will define how clean and efficient our electricity generation must be. In turn that will define how much of the supply must come from renewables, from nuclear and it will determine how urgently (or not) the industry should be cleaning up coal and gas generation with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). In energy policy the government is gaining a reputation for dithering. The Feed-In tariff, revised down well before the promised deadline, is a key example. The market for solar panels collapsed overnight and more than a few installers went out of business. 

Carbon targets are as important as guaranteed prices for energy generators. If they are planning plants which will take years to build and will operate for decades they need to be sure that tariffs and taxes - and carbon targets - can be relied upon. Otherwise they will reject the risks and go and look for business elsewhere.

We are on the threshold of a new phase of generating plant. The chancellor is committed to a new dash for gas, powered by gas extracted by fracking from deep beneath Lancashire. Announcements made yesterday claim there could be 7 years’ supply down there. Could be. Nothing is proven yet. Well, we can still get gas from Norway, the Middle East and in time from Russia. Leaving aside the energy security arguments, (would you prefer to rely on gas and coal from thousands of miles away, or to use wind, solar and tides freely available at home?), if the generators go ahead anyway and build new plant, what happens in 2016 when the targets are finally set?

Either we bring in standards which will make a sensible contribution to reducing the UK’s emissions, (and maybe bankrupt generators who can’t meet the new standards), or we decide that all the controls we need fit nicely with exactly how these new power stations operate. 

We have a declared target to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. 

But that’s still a very long way off, and it won’t be this government’s concern!

Keeping the Lights On

Back in October I predicted major power cuts on 18th January 2013. In the event, some 5,000 people in Wales lost their electricity as the result of bad weather, but nothing catastrophic happened. This weekend's weather caused power cuts for 10,000 people in Scotland and up to 200,000 in Northern Ireland. 

There are two issues here. One is the ability of the network to stand up to bad weather. The other is whether the system can cope with increased demand. 

Running out of Gas?

Saturday's papers were full of government denials that we're going to run out of gas. Apparently we have some of the smallest reserves of any country in Europe, and they are down to 10% of capacity. That's not a problem as long as gas flows into the system at least as fast as it's used up. The key issue is where we get the gas from. Yes, we still get about half of what we use from the North Sea. About 20% comes from Norway and about the same from the Middle East in ships. All our gas, whether it comes from the North Sea or elsewhere, is governed by world prices. Middle East gas - mainly from Qatar - is also governed by Middle East politics. The US is rapidly increasing its domestic production by exploiting shale gas and by 2030 could no longer need the Middle East. Who will attempt to keep the peace there then? Norway is a friendly, stable nation but its government already recognises that its gas may last little more than another 10 years. The biggest reserves in Europe are in Russia, at the end of a very long pipeline from the UK. In recent years Russia has been in dispute with Ukraine and others about gas prices and has simply cut the gas off - affecting innocent countries down the pipeline as well.

Powering the Future

In view of all this it's a bit of a worry that George Osborne has announced a policy of building a fleet of gas power stations. They are cheap and quick to build, they can react rapidly to fluctuating demand, but although they are much cleaner than coal they still burn fossil fuels and still create CO2 emissions. And where is the gas going to come from, George? Why not shale gas like they've discovered in the US? George announced special deals for "fracking" in the budget, and fracking installations which extract the gas from shale are likely to be fast-tracked for planning. (Locals will not be involved in the planning decision.) Why not? I'll tell you why not.

1. Although there has been test drilling, shale gas reserves have not been proved in the UK.
2. There are suspicions that the test drilling caused an earth tremor near Blackpool. 
3. There are fears - yet to be proved or disproved - that the fracking process can contaminate the water table. Certainly it generates a lot of dirty water which has to be dealt with somehow.
4. Shale gas, like any natural gas, is a fossil fuel and releases CO2 when burnt.

In the short term the question is whether existing systems and existing supplies will keep the lights on in the face of this terrible weather and increased demand. (Did anyone ever predict the consequences of rising emissions and resulting climate change? Wasn't there something about unseasonable weather? Did you read that Sir John Beddington, retiring chief government scientist, says that climate change is more serious than ever?) 

The Nuclear Option

Of course planning permission was awarded last week for a new nuclear power station at Hinckley Point, but that will take at least 10 years to build. All but one of our existing nuclear plants are scheduled to close by 2020. 

And if we run out?

What will happen if the nation does run out of gas? Probably, the lights will go out. That's because it's very much easier to turn off a major gas user like a power station than thousands of individual users. Let's hope it doesn't happen, because the consequences would be horrific. Last time we had nationwide power cuts - which, incidentally, brought down the government- was in the 1970s. At that time we had no ATMs, no computers, no barcode scanners, no electronic tills, no mobile phones. Which of those would you be happy to go without? And remember, your gas central heating has electronic controls and an electric pump. You won't just be sitting in the dark, you'll be sitting in the cold as well!

Cheer up, it's Spring!