Launch of Independent Energy Scrutiny Panel
On Wednesday 23rd I attended the Oil Supply Summit at the Palace of Westminster chaired by John Hemming MP. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Chemical Industries Association (CIA), National Farmers Union (NFU), Energy Institute (EI), Ofgem, New Energy Foundation (NEF) and Powerswitch with the aim to review the fossil fuel situation facing the UK.
As it happened gas was at the forefront of everybody’s mind with the recent price spikes. It was clearly a major concern for the CIA with many members unable to compete with companies in other countries.
A serious problem we face is that of information, the Winter Outlook Report for this year contains serious errors in its assumptions, assumptions which conveniently demonstrated how the UK can just about meet its gas and electricity requirements this winter. A case of the conclusion coming before the analysis?
The justification for these assumptions is not clear; we need transparency in energy planning. For example thinking outside the Winter Outlook Report for a moment, the Aviation White Paper Dec 03 suggested a growth from 189 million passengers in 2002 to between 350 and 460 million forecast in 2020. This is clearly ridiculous, the energy availability assumption behind this needs to be challenged. To address this it was agreed that the Independent Energy Scrutiny Panel should be established comprised of energy stake holders and experts to challenge the assumptions behind figures provided by various players (Government, Regulators, National Grid etc).
This post was written by Chris Vernon
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Hydrocarbon Depletion, Economy, Electricity, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:52 am
Yet no one seems to concern themselves with coal. Why should the shareholders of UK Coal keep digging the stuff out of the ground ? If they don’t what happens ?
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the current electricity grid will not effectively handle a major inout from variable output wind energy - Sharman says that it requires switiching a Drax on and off at will to allow for overall 1% wind speed variation.
There are lots of assumptions to challenge. Finally - say we decide to build nuclear plants, who can do it, the Engineer had an Editorial in 2003 saying we haven’t the engineers or experience anymore - anyway the decent ones are building Dubai.
December 2nd, 2005 at 11:02 am
Coal? Here’s a scary number for the UK regarding coal. According to the 2005 BP Statistical Review the UK has only 220 million tonnes of coal which “at the present rate of extraction” will last only 9 years! We are less than half self sufficient for coal today.
Regarding your point about wind, have you seen this report from Oxford University last month? It has some good points about how UK wind has a remarkably high capacity factor and rarely sees large swings – add to that a smart way to dynamically shape demand like Dynamic Demand and wind could be pretty useful.
The lack of engineers is a real problem for any new nuclear build – would we accept off the shelf 5-10 year old designs or would we want to try and improve on the design? How many people do we have to evaluate and sign off the safety case for any new build? To embark on a new build we would have to import designs and manpower, just when everyone else is wanting to import manpower, nice time to be a nuclear power engineer!