Monday, September 15, 2008
Do the maths!
Philip Johnston is one of the "good guys", writing intelligently on a wide range of subjects for his Monday column in The Daily Telegraph, largely by not entirely to do with state bureaucracy and waste.
Unfortunately, in today's effort he typifies the perils of stepping outside his normal brief without doing his homework.
His theme for today is "carbon capture", something we did last night for the "Horlicks" so I did not want to return to it so quickly. But Johnston's efforts should not pass without reward.
He starts his piece by expressing a lukewarm sympathy for the Greenpeacevandals activists who got away with damaging Kingsnorth power station. This is in part conditioned by his dislike of the plant. Brought up near the Medway Towns, he writes, "I yield to no one in a dislike of the Kingsnorth power station. It dominated the landscape of my childhood, a brooding, belching presence across the estuarial creeks and marshes …".
Thus conditioned, the man has swallowed the greenie propaganda, hook line and sinker, arguing that carbon capture would enable us to produce "clean" electricity from coal, hence reducing the "belching", one assumes. And, in so doing, we could take advantage of plentiful supplies of coal in this country and improve our energy security by reducing our reliance on countries such as Russia for gas.
Taking on board the issue of energy security, Johnston – like so many writers who venture into this field – clearly has not bothered to discover the sources of the coal from which we generate electricity.
Yet, as we pointed out in this piece written in early August, last year the UK consumed 62.7 million tons of coal, of which 52.4 million tons was used for electricity generation. Of that, the British coal industry actually produced 17 million tons in 2007 (with 2.9 million tons lifted from stock) while we imported 43.3 million tons. Of this, 22 million tons came from Russia and 12 million tons from South Africa.
Thus, all other things being equal, in the short-term (for ten years or more which it would take to rebuild our coal industry), increased coal usage for electricity generation would require more coal imports from countries like Russia and South Africa, reducing rather than increasing our energy security. And that, of course, assumes the coal is there to be bought, which is a dangerous assumption as both countries have capacity problems.
Even then, though, all things are not equal. If as is suggested, carbon capture could absorb 40 percent of the power output of a power station, the "clean coal" option would require a 40 percent increase in the coal burn just to deliver the same amount of usable power that we produce today. With some 52 million tons of coal currently used annually for electricity generation, that would equate to an extra 21 million tons of coal needed just to stand still, all of which would have to be imported.
Furthermore, as an indication of just how mad that would be, it would absorb four million more tons than the entire annual output of the British coal industry (17 million tons).
This though just deals with the energy security issue. Our best estimate is that carbon capture could also double the cost of electricity produced from coal-fired power stations. Add to that the cost of the other barking mad policy – the reliance on renewables – and we are looking at the overall doubling of electricity prices, over and above today's inflated rates. Is this really what Mr Johnston wants?
However, the best is yet to come. Mr Johnston "dislikes" Kingsnorth power station but it would appear that he is content to visit his dislike on others. To make up for the power loss occasioned by carbon capture, the generators would have to build another four power stations the size of Kingsnorth – without producing a single watt more usable electricity.
The trouble is that Mr Johnston means well. Yet, in advocating measures without having the first idea of the consequences, he potentially does great harm. That is possibly to overstate his influence but he is by no means the only one in thrall to this madness. And therein lies our problem.
COMMENT THREADThe onset of madness
A week ago we were reporting on the twittering about carbon capture, not least the enthusiasm of shadow energy spokesman Alan Duncan.
Today's Times offers a report which allows us to revisit this madness as we learn of a plan drawn up by Scottish Power to install carbon capture at the Longannet coal-fired power station in Fife.
Two things of very great interest emerge from this report – first some useful statistics on the station. Together with other data, the power station details and cost projections on carbon credits under the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS), this enables us to do some basic calculations which indicate the massive costs involved.
The second thing of such interest is that the newspaper itself does not do these calculations itself, instead presenting the idea of carbon capture from this plant as a "massive [business] opportunity" for the power company, entirely heedless of the massive adverse consequences to us the consumers.
Taking a look at the story together with some of the various statistics, we learn that the power station produces an annual average of 10.4 TWh (10,400,000MWh), burning five million metric tons of coal in the process. The electricity, at current wholesale prices of £85/MWh, is worth about £884 million (call it £900 million for simplicity).
No price data are given for the cost of the carbon capture but Scottish Power are thinking is terms of it being profitable, the profit coming from not having to buy carbon credits under the ETS. By 2012, the cost of credits per ton of carbon dioxide produced is estimated at £35 (although it could be more or less). With Longannet using five million metric tons of coal, at 2.84 tons of CO2 per ton of coal, we are talking of a cost "saving" of £497 million (call it £500 million) - money which will still be charged to the conusmer.
Thus, Scottish Power are effectively looking at a "kitty" of half a billion a year to finance the burial of their carbon dioxide emissions under the North Sea, a process that will attract considerable costs but also yield an acceptable profit – let's say about ten percent.
On that basis, we are actually talking about a scheme that is set to cost about £450 million a year – adding half as much again as the value of the electricty produced. That is money that will be charged to the consumer which with the usual margins, etc, could mean electricity prices going up by as much as fifty percent. To that, you also have to add between 10 and 20 percent increase in coal consumption to power the carbon capture system - although that may be an under-estimate. It could add 40 percent to the coal burn, effectively doubling the price of electricity if you take the higher figure.
Accepting that these are very rough and ready figures (but we have no others to go on), this means a massive extra burden on already hard-pressed electricity customers, all for the privilege of seeing minuscule quantities of carbon dioxide (on a global scale) buried under the sea, with no measurable impact on global warming – even if you believed there was a link. The cruel joke is that, even without the carbon capture, the money would still have to be paid by the consumer, although it would go to the government instead of the energy companies.
That this is being proposed and without any hint of adverse comment by the newspaper which reports it is utterly bizarre. We are witnessing here the onset of madness - but we are also seeing an illustration of why power companies are amongst the leading cheer leaders for climate change controls. There is money in that there carbon.
COMMENT THREADSunday, September 14, 2008
Come back global warming
Inflation is poised to peak and then slide says David Smith in "Economic Outlook" in The Sunday Times.
This is something we flagged up in our piecelast week, also pointing out the political implications. If the main concern of ordinary people is "the economystoopid", the Gordon Brown has some good news waiting for him, just as we edge closer to an election.
We did say in our piece that the news would come too late to save the beleaguered prime minister, as the "tipping point" has come and gone. The polls seem firmly in the Conservative's favour and nothing short of a political earthquake would seem capable of shifting them.
However, as David Smith writes, "sharply rising prices of essentials have a bigger direct impact on most families than restrictions on the availability of credit", in which context he avers that "it is difficult to overstate the importance of inflation peaking soon and then falling".
In terms of the near future, Smith thinks food prices are still a risk in view of the bad harvest in the UK, but he also notes that prices are set globally. In the round – with record harvests elsewhere in Europe and the world, the risk is likely to be minimal.
Where the risk is most evident is in the energy field. With the tightness of supply for liquid natural gas, everything depends on the forthcoming winter. If the weather is severe and gas consumption rises, the utility companies will be forced onto the spot market big time, paying exorbitant prices in order to maintain supplies. It will be difficult then to see how another round of energy price hikes can be avoided.
Given mild weather, the chances we have seen the last of the big price rises for the short-term which will give Brown a chance to claim that his steady hand on the helm has enable the country to weather the economic storm. And, if it isn't enough to make the difference, it may afford him the opportunity to give the Conservatives a tougher time than they perhaps expect.
If a week is a long time in politics – and it certainly does feel like that these days - the 20 months or so to the next election is an eternity. The funny thing is that, in order to avoid the meltdown that would come with higher energy prices, Gordon Brown really needs global warning – just as it looks like it is a thing of the past.
COMMENT THREADThe blindness of the political classes
With the onset of the conference season, and the impending Labour Party Conference, the political correspondents and the chatterati are engaging in their usual displacement activity, immersing themselves in the soap opera of the challenge to Brown's premiership.
That Mr Brown is not going to be forced out of office has been evident ever since the prattling classes first latched onto this source of entertainment, but it does not stop acres of extruded verbal material being published, and hours of idle speculation being broadcast.
So it is that there is that ever-increasing divide between ordinary people and the political classes, built on the fundamental confusion about the nature of politics. Where the chatterati believe that politics is about politicians they have lost sight of the fact that the subject is about policies, the choices about how we live and are governed.
Thus, the chatterati version of politics becomes dominated by the sterile soap opera of "politician's lives", in a policy-free environment where major issues are hardly discussed and then only in terms of how they can be milked for short-term partisan advantage. Things like energy, for instance, become merely props to add colour to the ongoing story lines.
So it is that Booker in the "real world" ghetto of his column addresses surreal attempts of the warmists to bolster their bizarre religion, and comments on the Greenpeace activism which is set on closing down coal-fired generation in this country.
It is that last issue, particularly, where the political classes have run for cover. Despite Booker's pieces on "climate change" and related issues regularly appearing in the "most commented" lists, this is a subject that the political classes cannot and will not deal with. They have their soap opera and they are not going to be diverted from their navel-gazing. They are not going to engage in this debate – they do not understand it and it terrifies them anyway.
Thus, we observed earlier this week an "entertaining" discussion under way on Conservative Home about whether David Cameron was a "lightweight".
Of the many commentators, Tony Sharp – and a very few others – made the obvious point about energy policy, Tony subsequently reinforcing the pointon his blog. If he needed to demonstrate "heavyweight" credentials, Cameron could do no better than come up with a substantive energy policy.
Even a couple of days before that piece, we would have agreed completely but with the Greenpeace acquittals and the involvement of Zac Goldsmith as a witness in support of the vandals activists, the ante was upped considerably. To retain any credibility on this issue, Mr Cameron must publicly distance himself from Goldsmith and make it very clear where he personally stands on the energy issue.
Of course, in his Westminster bubble, engrossed in his own version of the soap opera, he cannot or will not. And with those surrounding him equally engrossed and detached from reality, we will see the gap between the concerns of ordinary people and those of the political classes increase exponentially.
It cannot therefore be unrelated that, as we learn, beat constables are to be issued with Taser stun guns. They are going to need them.
COMMENT THREADAll a little unpredictable
As we all know, many of the people in high positions in former Communist countries, including their representatives in EU institutions, are not just erstwhile members of the Communist party but people who had had high position in it or, not infrequently, in the security services of the countries in question. The latter is of some importance because anyone who had risen high in the East European secret service would have been trained in the Soviet Union.
For various reasons, not least the fact that Communism deliberately involved as much of the population as possible in the running of the system, full lustration has never been possible and has been deliberately avoided by most political parties.
Poland has decided to break with that in a way that may rebound on the government though, undoubtedly, it seemed like an easy target, unlike, say, the unravelling of the truth around Lech Walesa.
The BBC reports that General Jaruzelski is to go on trial for imposing martial law on the country in 1981 and clamping down on all opposition, including the trade union movement Solidarity. Dozens of people were killed and many more imprisoned. Also, the left in the West, particularly in Europe was once again shocked by the intolerance of the Soviet system. Ah well, live and learn, except that they never do.
The general, who is 85 and in poor health, is being tried with various colleagues of his. The defence is that if he had not imposed his own military rule the Soviet Union would have invaded or, to be quite precise, would have sent many more troops in to bolster the existing contingent stationed in the country and would have imposed order far more brutally.
It seems, according to the BBC, that many people in Poland do believe this and that is why the belated prosecution may not be as popular as the Polish government hopes. The time to have done this was immediately after the fall of the Communist system. For various reasons the Solidarity government decided not to go after Jaruzelski then. 15 years and many other problems on it is probably too late.
Monday, 15 September 2008
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