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An assessment of renewable energy for the UK
Bioresource Technology 49 (1994) 281-284 © 1994 Elsevier Science Limited Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved ELSEVIER
Book Review
An Assessment of Renewable Energy for the UK. Edited by James Cavanagh, Vivien Brooks and Eric Bevan. HMSO, London 1994. pp. 308. Cost £30. ISBN 0 11 515348 9. The acronym HMSO prefixing a title has, in the past, tended to trigger the same reaction as that accorded to junk mail, assignment to the wastepaper basket. This reaction may still be justified for some HMSO documents, especially those of the 'whitewash' class. However, the whitewash class, perhaps a necessary evil of the political system, detracts from the value of the output of a remarkably wide-ranging publishing house: Her Majesty's Stationary Office (HMSO), currently producing a wealth of original well-presented documentation, beneficially read by a very large readership.
Systematic treatment of the topic is essential. The volume's Fig. 1, shown here, depicts the range of sources cladistically; the subject of man's need for energy is as varied and complex as that other requirement, food. The two subjects, food and energy, overlap. For the production of source materials (renewable-energy, or food) there is competition for the use of land and often wide choice in the end-use of the natural products from the land. Not only does direct cost-accounting enter the picture, but so do energybudgeting and environmental accounting. Additionally, there is frequently the possibility of dual-purpose use by exploiting the energy-value of the residue from the food harvest.
World-wide application of the information
Short-termism There has also been a very large class of so-called uneconomic, but useful, documentation (viz. the systematic works, catalogues and inventories) which in these days of need for: improved-productivity, cost-effectiveness, politically correctness and 'Disneyfication', and, most of all, cutting back on long-term research (shorttermism), is being reduced in flow. However, the data this type of documentation records are helpful, as discussed later, in the quantification of environmental impact, viz. environmental accounting. This study on energy includes long-term projections of need and supply. This is a welcome recommendation on policy to the Government, which normally insists (in advertisements for research and development posts) that 'the work by likely to yield results within three years: shorttermism. An Assessment of Renewable Energy for the UK is a vade mecum production showing the new, more attractive, face of HMSO, combining a systematic and statistical treatment with proposals for R & D planning, suggested 'policy' and even proposals for long-term strategy under various scenarios. 'Scenarios' is a term widely misused but applicable here. Whether the reader agrees with all the statements and conclusions is another matter, the reviewer himself does not, but, as Cavanagh, Brooks and Bevan, the editors, say in the Introduction, it is the work of a team; the result is that it is easy to locate, in the text, the 'modules' discussing the different forms of renewable energy and to extract information on the specific attributes of interest to the different types of reader: from the specialist, to the polictician, to the concerned citizen.
The compliers are being unduly modest in suffixing the title of their work 'for the UK'. In considering 'energy', it is appropriate to think of that 16th Century poetphilosopher, John Donne, and the immortal phrase to be uttered 'No man is an island entire of itself'. The present reviewer himself stumbled on the UK Government's energy technology support unit's (ETSU's) activity in the course of looking for information to compare 'bio-diesel and palm oil', information which impinges on the rape-seed diesel debate, with 'ethanol from palm starch'. The content of this ETSU volume was noted for the possibility of retrieving data for enlightenment in the currently highly emotive windfarm debate, as it applied to the aesthetic backdrop to 'Bront~land'. Bront~land is on the upland moors of the Southern Pennines of West Yorkshire. These treedenuded peatlands are characterized by being windy; scenically they are dramatic and were the inspiration for the social novels of the 19th Century authors, the Br6nte sisters. The authors of the ETSU assessment concentrate on renewable resources for electricity production, but recognize that this end-form of exploitation of these resources may not necessarily be the best, when all factors are taken into consideration. They briefly discuss combined heat and power units, but they do not mention the classical conversion of wind and water power directly to mechanical power. Such an omission is excusable, as the conversion may be of limited use in the UK, though the prevalent sentimental attachment to wind-power derives in part from the use of windmills to pump water and this form of exploitation overcomes the great disadvantage of wind -- the irregularity 281
Book review
282
Tidal Power IHydr°P°wer I [WindPowet [WavePower [GlacialPower {OceanCurrentPower~---'-----
ipitationI
1 1 ] }
on
~
sign ~
~ - - ~ ActiveSolar I
. ng
[OtherSolar
I
I°T c w
I Geothermicenergy[
V ] I
I
tes
h
[ [ [ t I
Municipaland general I Ih~d~stnatwastes ] [Speeialised I I IInd~s~ialWastes [ ] ILandfiUGas Energy Crops IAgriculturalWastes
IHotDryRock [GeopressuredMagna ~1
Fig. 1.
with which is blows -- apart from the fact that there is a power loss in the conversion of mechanical power to electrical power and a cost in conveying that power over grid lines.
Economic considerations The first general comment on this volume is that the arguments and economic analyses applied to the different forms of renewable energy are internationally applicable, not solely UK or EC specific. The second general comment, culled from those made by the authors themselves, is that, with some notable exceptions, 'Most renewables are not competitive, under current accounting systems...'. The authors therefore allow for subsidies in their calculations of economic feasibility. There is, however, no discriminatory North-South divide. The different technologies, all carefully scrutinized in the text, are applicable; as they show from various types of map, mainly according to geographical criteria. Once these criteria are identified, the economic analyses are similar world-wide, whatever the location. Economics is inevitably beset with the proviso 'It all depends on what you mean by economic', to which question the reviewer returns later in the text.
State of development of the different forms of renewable energy A third general comment, also made by the authors themselves, is on 'state of the art' depicted in the volume's Fig. 2 and reproduced here. This figure shows that the three main kinds of resource (viz.
gravity-using, solar-capture and earth-core energy) are very unequally developed in geographical terms. Only one of the 20 or so forms of renewable energy can be said to have an established market: gravity-using hydro-power. Half the technologies listed are still research dreams, or at an early stage of development. Nevertheless, the amount of installed electricity generation by 'renewables' is impressive as is demonstrated by their Table 4 (illustrated). Some forms, such as wave-energy recovery and energy cropping, including tree-loppings and coppicing, are still at the early developmental stage, at least in the UK; further, some are inappropriate to UK application, or have very limited use. Nevertheless, they may be applicable to other parts of the world.
Data presentation within modules As well as presenting clear comparative analyses of the different forms of renewable energy, the compilers have adhered to a strict regime, an itemized 'technological (I) and programme (II) review', for presentation of the data within the different modules. This description addresses, for each module under consideration, under (I) technological review: the technical status; market status; nature and extent of the resource; environmental aspects of exploitation; resource-cost curves; constraints and opportunities; and prospects-modelling costs, in the form of 'maximum practicable resource-cost' curves. Under the programme review (II) the UK Government's programme and the R & D needs are given. Finally, for each, there is a mention of the state of exploitation of the resource in other countries.
Book review Inappropriate for the UK
Research
283
Development Demostration Comercially Established Available Market
Hydro Large-scale Hydro Small-scale Active Solar Landfill Gas Simple Passive Solar Onshore Wind energy Specialised Industrial Wastes Municipal and General Industrial Wastes Advanced Passive Solar Photovoltaics Geothermal Aquifiers Agricultural and Forest Wastes Offshore Wind Energy Advanced Conversion Energy Crops Tidal Power Wave Energy Photoconversion Geothermal HDR Thermal Solar Power Fig. 2.
Table 4.
with new attitudes to crop production and a new awarenesss of the surreptitious rape of the 'greenfield site', a process which has taken place at an alarming rate since the Second World War.
Fossil
Nuclear
Renewables
60%
24%
16%
North America - OECD 64%
20%
16%
Energy-system modelling
Pacific - OECD
67%
20%
13%
European Union
58%
34%
8%
Belgium
39%
60%
0%
Denmark
98%
0%
2%
Apparently simple directives such as the very recent switch, for the purpose of grants, from 3 to 2 m spacing of new forestry plantings, have many secondary effects, demonstrating reversion to classical 'plantation' thinking; there remains an anti-environment groundswell of opinion. Conversely, the 'gift' of energy from farming the wind, an exercise optimistically portrayed in the text, in the reviewer's opinion, has many unresolved aspects; not least is the value attached to skylines and open space, though it would be helpful if bodies in the windfarm debate, such as the Br6nte Society, attempted to quantify -- anathema to the 'arts' person the concept of landscape quality, to place the arguments on the same playing field as that used by the energy-system modellers. The main problems are, however, low energy-density, inefficiency of capture of moving air masses and the uncertainty of the wind. Other aspects of environmental quality are more easily expressed in economic terms, and therefore easier to render accountable; the discipline of environmental accounting is, however, very new; the computing exercises are not easy to conduct, and the complex interactions are perhaps even more difficult for the general public to appreciate, hence the Silwood Park approach. The harmful effect of the postulated rise in the level of carbon dioxide -- the rise in global temperature, if carbon continues to be burnt at its present level to generate energy -- is held as an environmental Sword
All OECD
France
14%
74%
13 %
Germany
70%
28%
3%
Greece
91%
0%
9%
Ireland
95%
0%
5%
Italy
79%
0%
2 !%
Luxemburg
88%
0%
! 2%
Netherlands
95%
4%
0%
Portugal
70%
0%
30%
Spain
46%
36%
18%
UK
77%
22%
I%
-
The cautionary note The waste recycling and renewable energy debates are both comparatively new and, as the authors imply, the economic calculations are subject to social, political and environmental factors, all of which are highly controversial. It is highly debatable as to what value should be set on the millenia-evolved and management-regime-shaped countryside, that is 'the landscape of the UK' as we see it today. Even as the reviewer writes new aspects of the debate are emerging, along
-
284
Bookm~ew
of Damoclese over the use of wood and similar fuels, one of man's oldest sources of energy. As Sir John Houghton, chairman of the IPCC (International Panel on Climatic Change), states 'stabilizing emission of carbon dioxide is of little help in the critical task of stabilizing the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere'. Figures for the CO 2 effect of accumulation of biomass by the 'standing crop' (including the below-ground portion) -- depleted over the last 5000 years in the UK and over a longer period in other regions; peat formation and destruction and algal growth and marine-detritus carbonate accumulation are still speculative; not to mention the speculation attached to the concept of the overall harmful effect of a rise in atmospheric CO2.
Further reading Because of the taxonomic treatment of the subject, an index is not needed, nor is one included, but the authors give some 70 references to further reading. Reviewer's conclusion The objectives set by the Department of Trade and Industry for the Assessment were: • To review the current status of renewable energy in the UK and abroad.
• To assess the extent to which renewable energy technologies can contribute to the energy supply of the UK. • To consider the environmental benefits and impacts which may result from the deployment of renewable-energy technologies. • To identify the major barriers to the deployment of renewable energy and the means to overcome them. The conclusion is that this assessment fulfills these objectives and that, although one may disagree with many of the social and political considerations expressed, and even the interpretation of some of the statistics and the economic arguments, this is a very valuable contribution to energy-resource literature and copies are, in the reviewer's opinion, likely to be well thumbed, through being repeatedly consulted. The text is unlikely to be rapidly outdated, at least in terms of the broad features of the canvas it paints. The editors have allowed more space than usual for this review, as this study on renewable energy is a comprehensive reference source, hopefully to be consulted by would-be writers for this journal. Robert Stanton
Book Review
An Assessment of Renewable Energy for the UK. Edited by James Cavanagh, Vivien Brooks and Eric Bevan. HMSO, London 1994. pp. 308. Cost £30. ISBN 0 11 515348 9. The acronym HMSO prefixing a title has, in the past, tended to trigger the same reaction as that accorded to junk mail, assignment to the wastepaper basket. This reaction may still be justified for some HMSO documents, especially those of the 'whitewash' class. However, the whitewash class, perhaps a necessary evil of the political system, detracts from the value of the output of a remarkably wide-ranging publishing house: Her Majesty's Stationary Office (HMSO), currently producing a wealth of original well-presented documentation, beneficially read by a very large readership.
Systematic treatment of the topic is essential. The volume's Fig. 1, shown here, depicts the range of sources cladistically; the subject of man's need for energy is as varied and complex as that other requirement, food. The two subjects, food and energy, overlap. For the production of source materials (renewable-energy, or food) there is competition for the use of land and often wide choice in the end-use of the natural products from the land. Not only does direct cost-accounting enter the picture, but so do energybudgeting and environmental accounting. Additionally, there is frequently the possibility of dual-purpose use by exploiting the energy-value of the residue from the food harvest.
World-wide application of the information
Short-termism There has also been a very large class of so-called uneconomic, but useful, documentation (viz. the systematic works, catalogues and inventories) which in these days of need for: improved-productivity, cost-effectiveness, politically correctness and 'Disneyfication', and, most of all, cutting back on long-term research (shorttermism), is being reduced in flow. However, the data this type of documentation records are helpful, as discussed later, in the quantification of environmental impact, viz. environmental accounting. This study on energy includes long-term projections of need and supply. This is a welcome recommendation on policy to the Government, which normally insists (in advertisements for research and development posts) that 'the work by likely to yield results within three years: shorttermism. An Assessment of Renewable Energy for the UK is a vade mecum production showing the new, more attractive, face of HMSO, combining a systematic and statistical treatment with proposals for R & D planning, suggested 'policy' and even proposals for long-term strategy under various scenarios. 'Scenarios' is a term widely misused but applicable here. Whether the reader agrees with all the statements and conclusions is another matter, the reviewer himself does not, but, as Cavanagh, Brooks and Bevan, the editors, say in the Introduction, it is the work of a team; the result is that it is easy to locate, in the text, the 'modules' discussing the different forms of renewable energy and to extract information on the specific attributes of interest to the different types of reader: from the specialist, to the polictician, to the concerned citizen.
The compliers are being unduly modest in suffixing the title of their work 'for the UK'. In considering 'energy', it is appropriate to think of that 16th Century poetphilosopher, John Donne, and the immortal phrase to be uttered 'No man is an island entire of itself'. The present reviewer himself stumbled on the UK Government's energy technology support unit's (ETSU's) activity in the course of looking for information to compare 'bio-diesel and palm oil', information which impinges on the rape-seed diesel debate, with 'ethanol from palm starch'. The content of this ETSU volume was noted for the possibility of retrieving data for enlightenment in the currently highly emotive windfarm debate, as it applied to the aesthetic backdrop to 'Bront~land'. Bront~land is on the upland moors of the Southern Pennines of West Yorkshire. These treedenuded peatlands are characterized by being windy; scenically they are dramatic and were the inspiration for the social novels of the 19th Century authors, the Br6nte sisters. The authors of the ETSU assessment concentrate on renewable resources for electricity production, but recognize that this end-form of exploitation of these resources may not necessarily be the best, when all factors are taken into consideration. They briefly discuss combined heat and power units, but they do not mention the classical conversion of wind and water power directly to mechanical power. Such an omission is excusable, as the conversion may be of limited use in the UK, though the prevalent sentimental attachment to wind-power derives in part from the use of windmills to pump water and this form of exploitation overcomes the great disadvantage of wind -- the irregularity 281
Book review
282
Tidal Power IHydr°P°wer I [WindPowet [WavePower [GlacialPower {OceanCurrentPower~---'-----
ipitationI
1 1 ] }
on
~
sign ~
~ - - ~ ActiveSolar I
. ng
[OtherSolar
I
I°T c w
I Geothermicenergy[
V ] I
I
tes
h
[ [ [ t I
Municipaland general I Ih~d~stnatwastes ] [Speeialised I I IInd~s~ialWastes [ ] ILandfiUGas Energy Crops IAgriculturalWastes
IHotDryRock [GeopressuredMagna ~1
Fig. 1.
with which is blows -- apart from the fact that there is a power loss in the conversion of mechanical power to electrical power and a cost in conveying that power over grid lines.
Economic considerations The first general comment on this volume is that the arguments and economic analyses applied to the different forms of renewable energy are internationally applicable, not solely UK or EC specific. The second general comment, culled from those made by the authors themselves, is that, with some notable exceptions, 'Most renewables are not competitive, under current accounting systems...'. The authors therefore allow for subsidies in their calculations of economic feasibility. There is, however, no discriminatory North-South divide. The different technologies, all carefully scrutinized in the text, are applicable; as they show from various types of map, mainly according to geographical criteria. Once these criteria are identified, the economic analyses are similar world-wide, whatever the location. Economics is inevitably beset with the proviso 'It all depends on what you mean by economic', to which question the reviewer returns later in the text.
State of development of the different forms of renewable energy A third general comment, also made by the authors themselves, is on 'state of the art' depicted in the volume's Fig. 2 and reproduced here. This figure shows that the three main kinds of resource (viz.
gravity-using, solar-capture and earth-core energy) are very unequally developed in geographical terms. Only one of the 20 or so forms of renewable energy can be said to have an established market: gravity-using hydro-power. Half the technologies listed are still research dreams, or at an early stage of development. Nevertheless, the amount of installed electricity generation by 'renewables' is impressive as is demonstrated by their Table 4 (illustrated). Some forms, such as wave-energy recovery and energy cropping, including tree-loppings and coppicing, are still at the early developmental stage, at least in the UK; further, some are inappropriate to UK application, or have very limited use. Nevertheless, they may be applicable to other parts of the world.
Data presentation within modules As well as presenting clear comparative analyses of the different forms of renewable energy, the compilers have adhered to a strict regime, an itemized 'technological (I) and programme (II) review', for presentation of the data within the different modules. This description addresses, for each module under consideration, under (I) technological review: the technical status; market status; nature and extent of the resource; environmental aspects of exploitation; resource-cost curves; constraints and opportunities; and prospects-modelling costs, in the form of 'maximum practicable resource-cost' curves. Under the programme review (II) the UK Government's programme and the R & D needs are given. Finally, for each, there is a mention of the state of exploitation of the resource in other countries.
Book review Inappropriate for the UK
Research
283
Development Demostration Comercially Established Available Market
Hydro Large-scale Hydro Small-scale Active Solar Landfill Gas Simple Passive Solar Onshore Wind energy Specialised Industrial Wastes Municipal and General Industrial Wastes Advanced Passive Solar Photovoltaics Geothermal Aquifiers Agricultural and Forest Wastes Offshore Wind Energy Advanced Conversion Energy Crops Tidal Power Wave Energy Photoconversion Geothermal HDR Thermal Solar Power Fig. 2.
Table 4.
with new attitudes to crop production and a new awarenesss of the surreptitious rape of the 'greenfield site', a process which has taken place at an alarming rate since the Second World War.
Fossil
Nuclear
Renewables
60%
24%
16%
North America - OECD 64%
20%
16%
Energy-system modelling
Pacific - OECD
67%
20%
13%
European Union
58%
34%
8%
Belgium
39%
60%
0%
Denmark
98%
0%
2%
Apparently simple directives such as the very recent switch, for the purpose of grants, from 3 to 2 m spacing of new forestry plantings, have many secondary effects, demonstrating reversion to classical 'plantation' thinking; there remains an anti-environment groundswell of opinion. Conversely, the 'gift' of energy from farming the wind, an exercise optimistically portrayed in the text, in the reviewer's opinion, has many unresolved aspects; not least is the value attached to skylines and open space, though it would be helpful if bodies in the windfarm debate, such as the Br6nte Society, attempted to quantify -- anathema to the 'arts' person the concept of landscape quality, to place the arguments on the same playing field as that used by the energy-system modellers. The main problems are, however, low energy-density, inefficiency of capture of moving air masses and the uncertainty of the wind. Other aspects of environmental quality are more easily expressed in economic terms, and therefore easier to render accountable; the discipline of environmental accounting is, however, very new; the computing exercises are not easy to conduct, and the complex interactions are perhaps even more difficult for the general public to appreciate, hence the Silwood Park approach. The harmful effect of the postulated rise in the level of carbon dioxide -- the rise in global temperature, if carbon continues to be burnt at its present level to generate energy -- is held as an environmental Sword
All OECD
France
14%
74%
13 %
Germany
70%
28%
3%
Greece
91%
0%
9%
Ireland
95%
0%
5%
Italy
79%
0%
2 !%
Luxemburg
88%
0%
! 2%
Netherlands
95%
4%
0%
Portugal
70%
0%
30%
Spain
46%
36%
18%
UK
77%
22%
I%
-
The cautionary note The waste recycling and renewable energy debates are both comparatively new and, as the authors imply, the economic calculations are subject to social, political and environmental factors, all of which are highly controversial. It is highly debatable as to what value should be set on the millenia-evolved and management-regime-shaped countryside, that is 'the landscape of the UK' as we see it today. Even as the reviewer writes new aspects of the debate are emerging, along
-
284
Bookm~ew
of Damoclese over the use of wood and similar fuels, one of man's oldest sources of energy. As Sir John Houghton, chairman of the IPCC (International Panel on Climatic Change), states 'stabilizing emission of carbon dioxide is of little help in the critical task of stabilizing the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere'. Figures for the CO 2 effect of accumulation of biomass by the 'standing crop' (including the below-ground portion) -- depleted over the last 5000 years in the UK and over a longer period in other regions; peat formation and destruction and algal growth and marine-detritus carbonate accumulation are still speculative; not to mention the speculation attached to the concept of the overall harmful effect of a rise in atmospheric CO2.
Further reading Because of the taxonomic treatment of the subject, an index is not needed, nor is one included, but the authors give some 70 references to further reading. Reviewer's conclusion The objectives set by the Department of Trade and Industry for the Assessment were: • To review the current status of renewable energy in the UK and abroad.
• To assess the extent to which renewable energy technologies can contribute to the energy supply of the UK. • To consider the environmental benefits and impacts which may result from the deployment of renewable-energy technologies. • To identify the major barriers to the deployment of renewable energy and the means to overcome them. The conclusion is that this assessment fulfills these objectives and that, although one may disagree with many of the social and political considerations expressed, and even the interpretation of some of the statistics and the economic arguments, this is a very valuable contribution to energy-resource literature and copies are, in the reviewer's opinion, likely to be well thumbed, through being repeatedly consulted. The text is unlikely to be rapidly outdated, at least in terms of the broad features of the canvas it paints. The editors have allowed more space than usual for this review, as this study on renewable energy is a comprehensive reference source, hopefully to be consulted by would-be writers for this journal. Robert Stanton