Absolute No.

You can't base an economy on an unreliable source of energy.

What, like gas you mean?

Gas would be great.

Get fracking now.

I believe the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change. I believe that we should minimise our impact on the planet, minimise our use of finite resources and that fossil fuels are a too valuable chemical feedstock to just be burnt.

Renewables (wind and solar PV) are neither limitless energy nor a precious resource. They are a parasitical system optimised to allow the rich to get richer via various open and hidden (such as a guaranteed market and not having to pay for backups) subsidies.

Some people, including one of my colleagues, have installed small scale solar PV systems that they are happy with but still expect the grid to be available as a backup. Combined small wind, solar and battery systems are an excellent solution for remote communication systems (emergency telephones etc.) but these also need a backup system to come and replace an exhausted battery when the weather conditions are not suitable for an extended period.

Why parasitical? Solar PV and wind are not dispatchable, when the wind blows or the sun shines there is electricity, when it is dark and still there is no electricity. Our current way of life requires a continuous source of electricity in many areas, healthcare, communication, transport etc. This may have to change , but it won’t happen overnight. Would you prefer your operating theatre and ICU to be powered by renewables or conventional thermal power stations? Currently the power distribution operators are required the take every kWh generated by renewables and pay them to shut down if there is a surplus. The power distribution operators also have to fill any shortfall with other generators who are required to turn off and on according to the vagaries of the weather.

There is an argument that every kWh from wind and solar PV is a kWh not produced by burning fossil fuels. This is true to an extent but is not the whole picture. What ever is needed to back up renewables has consumed resources to be constructed and requires resources to keep it operational, hot standby and spinning reserves for example. These resources are not charged to the renewable energy sources, if they were the energy payback for renewables would be significantly longer or possibly negative.

When renewable energy suppliers have to arrange and pay for their own back up or storage systems they can be considered a resource, whether this is precious or not will depend on the true economics and energy/resource balance.

With the current parasitical renewables there is limited incentive to invest in any other form of generation which is being shown by the current energy problems. For years the green movement has been forcing the shutdown of nuclear power plants and blocking the building of new ones as much as possible by forcing in increasingly stringent regulations. They then continued the attack on coal again forcing the shutdown of viable plants without offering any viable alternatives.

The current gas supply problems are highlighting the lack of investments as old coal fired plants are being reopened and nuclear plants scheduled for closer are being offered life extensions. It is unfortunately too late for Tihange unit 2 in Belgium due to the extreme regulatory burden.

So what do we do? The first step is a reliable base load supply, at the moment nuclear is the best option. Next we need some sensible storage systems, where geographically possible pumped hydro is certainly the best, but many countries have limited options. Some of the thermal storage systems look quite interesting. What of the other possibilities?

Bio mass as carried out by Drax and similar is a joke. Small local heating systems using local waste wood are sensible as long as the emissions are monitored and controlled. Our apartment is heated via a district heating system using waste wood from the local forestry operations.

Carbon capture is currently just a waste of energy. You burn some fossil fuel and then burn some more to extract the CO2 and put it somewhere. A completely pointless exercise which merely increases the consumption of resources.

Hydrogen is just a rather inefficient energy transfer medium with losses all along it’s production, distribution and consumption pathways. Once again a means of consuming more resources for limited/zero benefits.

Tidal is a possibility but due to the long cycle times requires huge areas of trapped water with unknown ecological effects. It also requires back up when the tides are turning unless you use multiple basins which reduces the overall efficiency.

Thanks for all your responses on this. If you haven't already, it would be great if you could complete the survey which relates to the recommendations in the report 'UK renewables – limitless energy or a precious resource? (theiet.org)'. 

I see no survey.  Is it hidden?

It’s above in the OP Simon. Where it says ‘…complete the survey here’ the ‘here’ is linked to the survey. 

I’ll edit that for Jayne so it’s more obvious though 

Long essay, worth reading. Some good points, but some fantasy. 

I notice you didn't take on board what I pointed out about your future projections for climate change.

You are right that current solar and wind turbines don't provide "limitless energy". But saying they form a "parasitical system optimised to allow the rich to get richer" seems to me to be perverse cod-political analysis. For example, Germany used to lead on PV technology. It now has no PV industry. It was destroyed by lower-quality but much cheaper Chinese products. I wouldn't think the Chinese industry is appropriately characterised as a "system optimised to allow the rich to get richer"; if anything, the rich in China seem to be defenestrated on a regular basis by the CCP. 

You bring up the issue about storage and intermittent sources (solar and wind). No question that storage capacity is one of the most undeveloped parts of the electrotechnology of renewables. Also no question that the proven methods have their limits (hydraulic pumped storage is the most proven, but batteries are doing better, as Tesla has shown in Victoria). By why on earth would anyone think that the storage issue is destined to remain unsolved? People are working on it hard, and technical progress is palpable. 

You also seem to conflate the storage issue with current UK political/commercial arrangements concerning supply. Every country has supply problems which are political - Germany committed abruptly in 2011 to no nukes by 2022, while being legally required to continue to use coal-fired plants (and to continue to allow lignite to be mined) to 2038. The political can be separated from the technical. If you don't know technically how to do storage for intermittent, then no amount of politics will help. But if Germany decides politically to restart nuclear plants, as is being discussed, then this is not impossible (this is currently a local political issue where I live, for a plant my city owned was shut down end 2021 to conform with the government decision in 2011).

You are right about the "externals", as economists call them, that they exist and distort both the energy market and the decisions about it, but I don't think you are right about the details. One of the best discussions is that of Dieter Helm in his Net Zero (2020). Helm has been pointing out the market distortions for many years (not least in his report for HMG). His solution is a carbon tax (and a carbon border tax for imports). An accurate tax, though, depends on an accurate accounting of the carbon generated in producing the item. That is hard, and will politically be resisted. 

I disagree with you strongly, from a position of some knowledge, that nuclear is a good option, let alone the "best". You are in fantasy land in your suggestion as to why nuclear plants are not being built. There is no "green movement .... forcing the shutdown of nuclear power plants and blocking the building of new ones as much as possible" except in Germany. And it wasn't the Greens that did that. It was Angela Merkel and the CDU (supported by the coal industry, which is also part of the electricity-supply industry). Britain has no "green movement" able to influence the politics of nuclear plants, and never has had. The Green party has one MP out of some 600+. 

France is heavily nuclear, and has been unable to complete its new EPR at Flammanville in many years. The EPR at Olkiluoto is similarly not running. Britain's new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point is having construction problems. These are technical problems, not political ones, and they are not caused by new "stringent regulations". I know what the regs are, and I know what the problems are.  The US has the same general issue (although not the same detailed problem set). The upshot is that it has not been commercially viable to build new nuclear plants anywhere in the West for many decades. All require political negotiations and some form of political insurance (e.g., price guarantees). Further, extreme events are by no means  ruled out (although they need to be), and waste fuel is stacking up with nowhere to put it - and that has been the case for 70 years now, with no signs of change. 

You are right that Drax-type biomass generation is questionable. Calculations currently rest on externals, for example not accounting for the carbon involved in harvesting and shipping the biomass to its point of consumption.

I don't agree with you that hydrogen is hopeless. But at this point I know too little about it. It could be used as a form of storage. Ways of doing that have been proposed, but I don't know how they cost out (when all externals are accounted for). Batteries and pumped hydro are currently better. Hydrogen may work out for shipping and aviation.

Tidal is more than "a possibility". I don't understand why R&D here is so minor. Wind turbines, at the beginning, had feasibility problems at scale (e.g., the turbines would get really hot and nobody knew how to cool them) and these have been solved over the last two decades. Tidal has similar issues, but rather than having thousands of research engineers and a few dedicated university engineering departments working on it, it seems there are just a few companies. British waters have some of the highest-tidal-energy spots in the world; an enormous geographical advantage. It seems short-sighted not to throw mind-power at the problem. 

BTW, I did fill out the survey. So if you disagree with anything I say above, hurry up and fill it out too!

Wind turbines and solar PV don’t appear to make any money for the manufacturers as you say. The west certainly can’t compete pricewise with unlimited coal power and what appears to be close to slave labour. The people who collect the subsidies and sell the electricity into a guaranteed market do make money, otherwise why would they make the investment?

The green movement has also managed to get a moratorium on new nuclear plants in Switzerland. They don’t however act directly, they have spent years exaggerating the risks of low level radiation to make construction, insurance and decommissioning more expensive. Some well known proponents are Chris Busby, Helen Caldicott and Arnie Gunderson who just make up a lot of what they say. These exaggerated risks have been responsible for thousands of deaths due to unnecessary evacuations and tens of thousands due to unnecessary abortions after Chernobyl. This is quite a good document from the UK Health Protection Agency on the risks from ionising radiation:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ionising-radiation-risks-from-exposure

It notes the extreme uncertainty regarding doses of less than 100 mSv especially when delivered over time. It also notes the attempts of Busby and Green Audit to exaggerate the effects of very low level radiation.

Tidal is very much limited by the slow cycle time. It is an interesting exercise to select a reasonable tidal range, 3m for example, and to calculate the area of water required to generate 1GW. You then have to work out what to do when the tide turns, maybe have an interconnector to another tidal array on the other side of the country.

What is your solution to the energy problems if you don’t like nuclear and don’t want to burn fossil fuels?

I have indeed filled in the questionnaire.

Thanks for the reference to the UK HPA. It's very good. I went through the literature about two decades ago; it is from a decade ago and includes work from the first decade of the millennium - I didn't know about the KiKK study, for example, despite being in touch with people at the BfS. Most importantly, it is short, with a long bibliography. 

"What is your solution to the energy problems if you don’t like nuclear and don’t want to burn fossil fuels?"

Let me say I'll let you know when we've done it. This is only slightly tongue-in-cheek, for this is exactly the situation in which Germany finds itself now. Most of our heating is gas and I can't predict what change can be forced. People are going to have to rethink electric heating. It is sort-of-happening, in that all the heat pumps (air and ground) are electric driven and there is huge (and unfulfillable) demand for those right now. 

Dieter Helm suggested, plausibly, large geothermal plants in Iceland supplying Europe, as well as pumped hydro storage in Sweden and Norway, amongst other measures. That makes technical sense, but there are political difficulties for a country such as the UK which is currently unwilling to establish or maintain mutual unbreakable economic ties with its geographical neighbours. And CritInf security problems are made harder by such measures: it is easier for an aggressor to take out undersea cables from Iceland than it is to take out myriad local power generation sources. But, whatever - if the UK can import electricity from Belgium at a reported spot price jump of 5000% during a heatwave, there is surely something to be said for a longer-term deal for low-carbon or neutral-carbon energy from Iceland.