Dr. Eddie O’Connor, Chairman and founder
Europe risks falling behind the US and China in efforts to decarbonise unless it legislates for a radical expansion of renewable energy.
The actions of the European authorities seem like a reprise of the plays of Anton Czechov. We come from a noble line, we thought out how to support renewables and developed them first, but now we are old and utterly unable to face the changes needed to go the distance and completely decarbonise.
What is currently stunting planning is the debate, pushed hard by the billions of PR money from the fossil fuel industry, on whether natural gas is renewable or not. Facts always help: burning one tonne of coal releases 2.8 tonnes of CO2; one tonne of gas burned releases 2.75 tonnes of CO2. Of course, it is argued that natural gas can be burned more efficiently than coal in combined cycle gas turbines. But there are 2 things that mitigate against higher efficiency.
First: a sizeable proportion of the world’s gas fleet is open cycle so it has a similar efficiency and therefore the same emissions as coal. And as more wind is installed on the system the use of open cycle gas goes up.
Second: research published recently shows how the mining of natural gas releases huge quantities of methane, which has a global warming potential that is between 20 and 80 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, depending on the time scale used for comparison purposes.
Renewable electricity is heavily influenced by climate which in turn is dependent on geography.
The greatest wind resources are offshore.
Wind speeds are higher than on land, where friction reduces them. The average capacity factor since wind installations began on land in Ireland, and which in turn is driven by wind speed, is 32.5%. The average capacity factor in the North Sea is 55%. In future, in deeper waters, using floating technology, the capacity factor will be 65%. The average size of “on land” wind farms is around 20 megawatt (MW), whereas the average offshore wind farm is 1,000MW.
As basically all transport is being electrified and likewise heating and cooling, demand for electricity in the EU will almost triple over the coming three decades. The great bulk of this will come from offshore wind and solar PV. Some 900,000 MW will need to be constructed offshore. A similar amount of solar PV will need to be constructed, to decarbonise Europe’s economies.
This realisation turns the European energy procurement into a European wide proposition, as distinct from a national or regional one. We no longer will be able to transport the oil, coal, and gas from where it is mined to some local nationally suited location. Wind and solar must be harvested where they deliver greatest bangs for the buck and the generated electricity transported to where the people need it and consume it.
Most inland European countries are short of renewable sources of energy. The peripheral regions to the north west and south are rich.
Because of this and the need to smooth out fluctuating renewable sources of power, Europe needs a Supergrid. All electricity systems since Thomas Edison need a grid.
If we are to decarbonise sustainably in less than three decades, at minimum cost, Europe needs a European-wide electricity grid. The current barely interconnected mish mash of independent systems, relying for the most part on fossils can never effect decarbonisation. The planning for this infrastructure has to begin immediately and must become a main government priority of the European Union, its member States plus the UK and Norway. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a higher political purpose for these governments to undertake in their common fight against global warming.
Europe should be preparing its electricity infrastructure for a carbon free future based on weather-dependent technologies. Still, its leaders seem trapped in a continual debate about the role of, and subsidies to, fossil fuel infrastructure, as evidenced by the latest meeting of EU energy ministers in Luxembourg on 11 June. It is time to change focus, and pace.