Europe: Why it needs political harmony

There has been much debate about what is wrong and it has taken me time to internalise all the sometimes conflicting theories. Groucho Marx said “I would not want to be a member of a club that had somebody like me as a member”. The crisis in the Euro is affecting every European country.  Unlike the previous downturn in 2009, when the world relied on emerging markets to create growth there appears ...

Electricity generation subsidies

All forms of electricity generation involve an economic subsidy for the generator. Think coal fired generation for instance:

• Sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides are almost always produced. They are put up into the atmosphere whence they fall in dissolved acidic form in rain. They deteriorate surface water by acidifying it. Most coal fired plant owners do not pay for the pollution damage.
• Cadmium, chromium, and other heavy

Thriving on controversy

Mr Booker wrote a mighty long article in the Daily Mail on February 28th. The subject was wind energy and how inefficient it was. One of the big questions has to be “why was Mr. Booker given so much space in a daily paper?” Mr Booker’s record gives a clue as to why he should write on wind energy: he is the one who denies the theory of evolution, the one who says global warming is a lie, he ...

More on carbon capture and storage

It is always useful to review options when new evidence presents itself. This is particularly true in energy where the commercial options are so few. On a recent visit to Norway I was told that the Ecofisk field was engaged in CCS. Actually what happens is that CO2 comes up with oil. The platform operator is able to easily separate the pure CO2 from the oil. The CO2 is re-injected into the well. This technique allows more oil ...

Supergrid: Why it is not a series of point to point connections

The original high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables and transformation stations were national grid to other national grid connections. The HVDC arrangements were invented by the entrepreneurial ASEA company to carry Scandinavian hydroelectricity from where it was generated to where it could be consumed by customers. The HVDC link presupposed that the structure of the transmission grids was a permanent feature. In this regard, and at this time in the mid 1950s this was a good assumption to make. ...

Supergrid – turning wind into firm power

It is a while since we wrote about the European Supergrid.  This is one fault that can be corrected today. Creating the Supergrid has been my most cherished dream for the past decade.  Perhaps I should explain why this is. When I came into the wind business, I was constantly berated by the non wind community (which was almost everybody) that I was backing the wrong horse.  The storms that beset northern Europe and are the main drivers ...

Living in the now

“Neither a borrower or a lender be.” This very impractical phrase expresses what I am attempting to say about sustainability, about living in the now. Right now we are borrowing or leasing the environment from future generations. We as a species need a functioning environment to live and grow. Lord Stern reckons that 1% of GDP should be spent here and now to rectify the damage done by burning too many fossil fuels. He further goes on to ...

The definition of Sustainability

In conversation with a leading banker last week the subject of sustainability was raised. He asked me “what do you understand by sustainability?” Sustainability is about living in the now. It is about not borrowing the environment from our grand children and exhausting its potency in a couple of human lifetimes. It will be about not destroying everything we have been given by the past. What has been given by the past can be used, ...

Lord Stern’s speech

Lord Stern’s speech in Shanghai was significant for several reasons. It continued the theme he outlined in his extort report on the subject of committing a sustained percentage of GDP to reducing CO2 emissions. He quantified what China had to do in terms of tonnage of CO2 that it had to reduce on the glide path to zero emissions by 2050. It seems to me that the problem he described is in fact more stark than he assumed. He ...

Debate continues in SA

Following on from my most recent  blog in the Mail and Guardian, click here to review continuing debate…   Eddie