Oh, I agree, nuclear has its problems, too - I wasn't meaning to suggest it's a panacea. But, given the short-termism of the thinking that seems to operate around national power needs, I suspect nuclear's the best bet [ETA] for now, perforce.
no it's not. It's incompatible with the high levels of renewables we'll have in the energy mix by the time the next nuclear plant to be built comes on line, and will actively prevent or make more difficult the further growth of renewable energy.
Renewables will be generating well in excess of the level that nuclear has ever done in this country well before the next nuclear plant comes on stream - we're already installing something like the equivalent of a new nuclear plant every couple of years between onshore, offshore wind and solar PV now, and Germany is installing the equivalent of a new 1GW nuclear plant in solar alone each year, which we could well get up to in 2-4 years time with the right government policies.
Falcon is arguing from the perspective of an old, out of date energy paradigm, ignoring the fact that the solar PV industry in this country grew from a MW to a GW scale industry between 2009-11, and the offshore wind industry is also now installing at an increasing rate of knots, and delivering projects ahead of time and under budget.
To put some numbers on that, the solar industry went from 32MWp total installed capacity at the start of 2010 to 400MWp in early November 2011 to 2GWp now (2000MWp), and apparently has installed 0.5GW in this last quarter alone mostly of the largescale systems Falcon dismissed earlier, while the 0-50kWp roof mounted sector has still been relatively quiet due to the poor weather etc. To me that means that the industry already has the combined capacity to install around 3-4GWp per year (8-10GWp gives around the same annual output as a 1GW nuke) if the government policy framework allowed for it - all we need is some stability.
Of course I don't!
But the problem is, as I see it, that the density of energy usage is sufficiently high that, at the comparatively low densities (ie kWh/km²) of most renewable schemes, we need more land area than we've actually got to generate enough power for our needs. If I'm wrong, I am more than happy to be corrected.
Consider how much roof space there is in this country that currently isn't covered in solar panels, but could be, then multiply that up by the 2GWp we've got installed now to give you a rough back of the envelope idea of the roof mounted solar potential, then consider the fact that there's quite a lot of movement towards building integrated PV on the facades of big office blocks etc.
And that's just PV, there's over 40GWp worth of offshore wind licenses already been sold, then there's the potential from the severn barrage if we ever get a vaguely sensible government in power, then there's the conversion of coal plants to biomass plants (or co-firing), tidal stream, biogas, energy from waste (not exactly renewable or benign, but a power source that's being rolled out), and not forgetting the existing hydro capacity we have.
All backed up by our existing gas generation plants, and 3GW pump storage capacity, with another 1.2GW pumps storage capacity in the pipeline, plus several GW of interconnectors to norway for hydro backup and export, iceland for hydro & geothermal back up, Germany, Holland, France, Ireland etc.
Realistically, I think the answer will be a middle road - somehow, we are going to have to substantially reduce our dependence on power, whether that's by replacing all our lights with LEDs, insulating homes even more than we do now, relying on passive heating, changing our travel habits, etc., etc., while at the same time ramping up on sources, so we'll all get solar collectors on our roofs, heat pumps in our gardens, and so on.
We definitely need to reduce our energy consumption as far as possible, but those means are largely at hand, and there's already been a hell of a lot of work done, with the majority of suitable houses now having cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, and double glazing for example, and the attention now mostly turning to solid wall insulation for 'hard to treat' homes, as well as mopping up the laggards - which contrary to Falcons assertions, is being done now as we go by solar installers due to the energy efficiency requirement DECC put in place last year, so if we find an uninsulated loft, we'll insulate it as part of our work, and have sometimes had to even go as far as internal wall insulation and replacement boilers to meet the target.
My personal rough estimate is that we as a country could relatively easily manage to get our energy consumption down to 50% of it's peak and still maintain the same standard of living (or even improve it). I suspect we could well go lower than that, but that would require some significant structural changes to reverse the car based culture that's developed - eg reopening local shops and services to allow for more walking and cycling etc.
But I imagine there will still be a big gap, and I presume that renewables isn't capable of filling that gap? Which presumably takes us back to the non-renewable sources - nuclear and fossil fuels.
I hope I've gone some way to convincing you otherwise.
I'd like to think someone in a position of responsibility is taking a strategic view, but I suspect they're not.
Well, the guy that many on here seem to love, Prof Mackay, was appointed Chief Scientific advisor to decc, and has done work on getting a strategic view of this in place. Unfortunately he's essentially self taught in this field, made some major errors in his assumptions in his book, that then got carried into government, so the strategic overview has been a bit counterproductive as his vision essentially was more nuclear based with lots of heat pumps for heating and electric cars, and while he was supportive of renewables, he reached a back of the envelope calculation on them that he determined showed they weren't up to the job essentially... and because he never published his work in any peer reviewed journals, or really discussed it with anyone who had a proper background in the field, he made some major mistakes on that IMO, and DECC policy has suffered as a result.
