Renewable energy sources - the good, the bad and the ugly

That is so ridiculous. You should be the one to use the power first and the overage then goes back into the grid. It's your home that hosts the collectors!

 

It was on the news this morning that many renewable projects are being paused or not getting off the ground due to long delays to connecting to the grid.

It was saying how Torbay council have now been told that the 6 hectare solar plant that will be completed by next year will not be connected to the grid until 2028. The council was going to use some of the money raised by selling to the grid to fund other local projects but they are now likely to be delayed.

Octupus energy have been told by the national grid that future renewable projects could have to wait nearly 15 years before being connected to the grid.

UK national grid puts renewable projects on decade-long hold (power-technology.com)

So the UK has the longest wait to connect renewables to the grid in Europe, yet we set out a mandate to ban gas boilers and the sale of ICE cars quicker than Europe

 

Something the "just stop oil" mob should take into account.

 

I don't think any of that qualifies as 'surprising'.

It's also a bit misleading. The 'residue', or sludge as they called it when I was over at the petrochemical site, is only that tiny fraction shown in the diagram when everything goes to plan. Surprisingly (perhaps) it doesn't always go to plan.

The central part of the diagram represents what the lads at the site call the 'cracker'. It's basically a huge cylinder that is heated at one end and cooled at the other. The oil then splits into the constituent parts. Lots of things can and do go wrong. If either end is not at the correct temperature, they can either get a large batch of sludge, or too much gas (or both). Automated systems monitor this, as well as a team of engineers. If too much gas is produced, it becomes dangerous, so they vent the lot to the flare stack where it is simply burned. From a distance, a flare stack flaring looks like a big candle, unless they buy high pressure steam from another plant to mix it with (yes they buy steam), in which case it looks more like a jet engine with afterburners on, producing less visible soot but still the same co2.

The oil in the cracker is only a fraction of the oil used in the process. A lot more is used to generate the huge amount of energy to actually run the cracker, remembering that it has to be heated to a very high, tightly regulated temperature at one end and cooled to a specific temperature at the other. Then of course there's the oil used for transportation, fuel which itself has been through the same lossy process.

At the site near me, one of the products is plastic pellets. These are the ones that spill from bulk bags in transit and end up in the sea and all over the beaches. The frustrating part of the plastic side is that the oil comes to the UK by ship from halfway round the world, is made into plastic pellets (among other things) to be shipped to China, where it is made into plastic tat that is shipped to the UK, only to be discarded, and shipped half way round the world to be 'recycled'.

That all sounds like I'm in cahoots with the just stop oil bunch. I'm absolutely not. In fact I hate them for the endless damage they're doing, not only to local economies and people's lives, but also to the environmental cause, as they have taken a real issue that people care about, and got people to associate this real issue with their highly disruptive stupidity.

We are not ready to 'just stop oil'. Pretty much everything still depends on it. But if people understood the process a bit more, without causing untold chaos, maybe there'd be more determination to find innovative alternatives.

 

I think its just more about its not just petrol and diesel that we get from oil so we will still need oil even when they have forced the last engine off the road, and we are all running around in super clean electric motors.

Maybe not surprising, just thought it illustrates something.

 

I'm not defending them for one second. As I've said before, I hate them for what they're doing. But in the interest of being objective, here's their 'about' info.

'Just Stop Oil is a nonviolent civil resistance group demanding the UK Government stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects'

So they're not saying they want to get rid of all oil. They want the government to not authorise any NEW oil, coal or gas projects.

Personally, I could support that cause, except I can't, because the way they go about things, I don't want to be associated with any of that shenanigans.

 

So basically they want us to import it.

 

I think they want us to reduce our use of it, by moving faster towards renewable energy, and cutting down on plastic waste. I'm speculating there. I don't actually know what they want. I just know that if I was the big cheese of an oil company, I'd absolutely love them for the way they've taken a legitimate cause that people care about, and made it all about them and the utter chaos they cause.

 

Oil consumption has always been on the up, but pushing the renewable agenda you could say our use of oil is firmly on the accelerator pedal.

According to Opec and other sources glodal oil consumption in 2019 was just shy of 98 million barrels per day. In 2020 it dropped to 88 million daily with 2022 back to the level of 2019. They reckon daily oil consumption now stands at 102 million barrels per day and it is forecast to continue to increase. It is the same with recycling, people don't really understand what a high energy demanding industry it is, so we reduce what goes to landfill but increase fossil fuel consumption in the process.

In 2022 the fuel rebate for many industries was abolished, with only the agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and forestry being exempt. But food needs packed, you have warehouse and distribution that process the food, there will be diesel powered folk lifts and back up generators, which now have to use full duty fuel. Now if I had to use full duty fuel to power my machines and for heating then at the current cost for diesel that would add 90% to my fuel bill.

You will have compost that states peat free and other goods and products that state made from a percentage of recycled material, which all sounds good and well until you start to do the number crunching and realise that by doing so it has actually increased our carbon footprint.

 

Then you have these top lawyers that will defy the bar and will now not prosecute peaceful protestors. So peaceful blocking of a road, which could result in life and death if it prevents or delays the emergency services from getting through is deemed as peaceful protesting. I think over 100 top lawyers have now signed a pledge that they will not prosecute peaceful activists protesting against companies pursuing fossil fuel projects.

 

And yet, new plans have been revealed to build a £350 million data centre in Manchester that should be operational by late 2025 and will consumer 40MW, which is enough electric to power between 16,000 and 40,000 homes annually. I vote for new homes, the data centre can take a flying jump.