Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Renewable Reality

Part of the answer lies in the way the wholesale market works. Many (all?) suppliers like to offer their customers the option to purchase energy on a green tariff, and so they need to purchase volume from renewable generators.

Demand for such tariffs is quite buoyant, and since the actual available volume is limited, the market value of green energy is pushed up. This gives investors the motivation to pump money into building more renewable generation - hence the continuing construction of massive off-shore windfarm projects like Dogger. So although the generation cost of wind/solar isn't going up like gas/oil, higher demand is still pushing the price up

For the consumer, it means that if you want renewable energy you either have to be prepared to pay a premium, or be happy with a contract that says something like 'we might have to buy fossil energy if we need to' in the small print.

This can lead to quite a high additional cost. I get my energy from Ecotricity who are absolutely dedicated to only generating or sourcing renewable/low carbon energy and investing all their profits in building more. As a result I am paying £0.40/KWh for my power. If you are on a 'Green' tariff that is charging you much less than that, then it means they are topping up with energy from fossil generators when they need to.

How do suppliers ensure they can provide renewable or low-carbon power? By buying long futures, hedging their supply out absolutely as far as they can, and/or by operating renewable generation resources themselves (vertical integration).

Of course, once the power is in the grid, there's no differentiation between the electrons. All the suppliers are really doing is selling you the services necessary to figure out how much you've used and sending you a bill.

As for carbon capture, there are certainly some small-scale proofs of concept in operation such as the one in Iceland, but it seems pretty clear to me that it's nowhere near cost-efficient enough to enable coal fired power stations to be run cleanly, otherwise there would be people pouring money into developing more of them, especially as the cost of wind and solar is dropping so fast. When it's so cheap to use solar and wind, why bother with the complexity and cost of carbon capture?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

Tim,

which is the lesser of two evils, fossil carbon or new carbon?
I'd argue that the only viable carbon capture process at the moment is biomass: far better to grow something for 5 to 10 years, capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and then burn it than to burn coal of oil or gas.
A lot of work and investment money is going into producing hydrocarbon fuel from water, CO2 and solar energy. I see that as comparable to biomass, using what CO2 we have and recycling it.
Ultimately, "green" energy, including nuclear and possibly fusion, are the ideal, but for the interim I prefer to reduce fossil carbon consumption rather than obsess about the degree of greenness.
We get our fuel from Octopus and our solar panels, this satisfies my green ambitions. But you are right, an electron in the grid and distribution network is an electron and it isn't labelled..

I'd say it's pretty clear that our major priority must be to stop putting any 'new' carbon into the atmosphere, so yes, it's got to be better to re-use existing carbon rather than releasing 'new' carbon from fossil sources. I think the idea of using renewable-generated energy to crack water to make hydrogen fuel is a great idea, especially for long-range transport requirements.

But that's not nearly enough. It looks like we're going to miss the 2C target, and if it gets to 3.5C we're pretty much dead, so I would expect longer term we could hopefully develop planetary-scale carbon capture technology to start to reduce the overall load. But I believe the idea that if we can do a bit of carbon capture we can carry on running around is gas-guzzlers is simply not viable.

All the debate is about renewable energy what about the loss of the resource that produces the air we breath and eats CO2, trees particularly the Rainforest. It really doesn't matter what renewable energy we use if we don't save the trees and rainforest which we are losing at an alarmingly increasing rate.

The people in the business tell me coal + CCS is now competitive with nuclear in pricing - and of course not subject to the vagaries of season / time of day / weather vs most renewables. Of course a Carbon Capture Scheme costs power / reduces efficiency, hence the global reticence to add their costs to bills. That might all be moot compared with current natural gas prices...