Sun, wind and tide
Janice Warman detects a sea change in attitudes to alternative power generation, and looks at the technologies that are attracting investors’ attention
Could anyone have imagined even a decade ago that that most entrenched of cultural icons, Glyndebourne, would fight for and win a battle to erect the ugliest of new energy status symbols, a wind turbine, in the lee of the South Downs? Or that the Prime Minister-in-waiting would have a wind turbine on his roof?
There’s no doubt that there has been a sea change in our attitude to alternative energy.
Oil is still the main source of the world’s energy needs, but its price has soared, triggering startling hikes in electricity and gas prices: EDF’s have just gone up by 20 per cent. Leaving aside the debate about when precisely we will reach the moment of ‘peak oil’, the world’s energy demands will jump by another 50 per cent over the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency.
Change is necessary and urgent. The EU has declared that the UK must supply 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Those sources include solar, tidal and wind power and newer technologies: ground-source heat pumps; biomass; biodigestors; second-generation biofuels, using forestry residues rather than food crops. The former chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, has said that American cars could run on the energy from their country’s domestic rubbish. Wouldn’t there be a nice circularity in that?
The latest figures from the UN suggest the world is likely to spend $450 billion a year on renewables by 2012, reaching $600 billion by 2020. The renewable energy news and analysis company, New Energy Finance, points out that the amount of investment made by venture capitalists and private equity had risen strongly in the second quarter of this year to $5.8 billion, compared with $2.6 billion in the first quarter and $3.5 billion in the second quarter of 2007.
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S.McDonald
September 12th, 2008 2:00pmOh dear...a Special report by someone with only a sketchy appreciation...
SOLAR - does the author appreciate there are two types of solar energy used: photo-voltaic (makes electricity) and solar thermal (heats water directly)?
Tiles are not inherently superior (or is she talking about panels?); its all about the technology not the form of the finished product ie. thin-film PV is cheaper but lower efficiency, but overall solar PV is LOW efficiency. And she does not mention the fact that PV, though it might give a householder payback in 15-20 years, will NEVER generate as much electricity as was used in its manufacture (because you have to melt silicon at 1000+ degress to make the PV panel!)
WIND - amazingly, the author's main source seems to be...the Guardian! But if she read the Telegraph she would know of Christopher Booker's campaign against wind because no matter how many turbines you have, you still have to have all the conventional power stations on hand to deliver electricity when the wind is not blowing! Not to mention all the steel, engineering, transport, erection etc of the huge turbines - energy that will probably never be re-couped.
TIDAL - the main problem with the Severn barrage is environmental; not just a question of a few feeding grounds but it will destroy the ecosystem of a unique feature of British geography.
The key point is that we are probably only at the beginning of technical advances in new energy sources; until huge improvements in efficiencies are made they will never achieve the objectives that all the promoters desperately want them to achieve.
Perhaps a researcher could have spent more than 30 mins on this important topic before the article was written?