Commissioned in 1963, Ffestiniog Power Station was the UK’s first major pumped storage power facility. It is still in operation today. This area is in the middle of Snowdonia National Park. This is a hikers dream land. A pristine landscape with a power plant large enough to power the whole north of wales. And it is totally green. If the power feeding this facility was created using only renewable energy then it would be totally green and renewable.
Stored Hydro Electric Power stations can save our environment, our energy and our future too. Here is a link to the Wiki article regarding stored hydro electric energy systems.
Many countries arround the world are using energy storage systems. There are several different types of systems to store energy. Most of these systems are Dams holding back water from a river or snow melt. Some are designed and built just for the purpose of storing extra energy that we dont need. These systems are used to store the energy untill it is needed. The water flows down hill and drives generators like in a regular dam. The difference with stored-hydro-electric is that it is designed to push water up hill when there is an excess ammount of energy.
What if we could take carbon dioxide from a power plant’s chimney stack and turn it into a useful fuel? That would be a great boxing day present!
Our climate is changing due to man made products such as carbon dioxide. The idea of capturing carbon emissions and storing back underground has bee around for a while. This is called carbon sequestration. This is not an answer that is viable as it will push the pollution from carbon dioxide underground and threaten our drinking water supplies. What we really need is a magical box that we can put CO2 in and change it into something more useful, like say Methane.
*Waves magic wand* Presto! I give you the MAN re-gasification project. MAN is taking CO2 from a power plants exhaust stack mixing it with Hydrogen produced using renewable energy and creating Methane. The methane is stored on the gas grid in Germany for later use.
The design idea of creating synthetic methanation is not new but the method is. Taking excess renewable energy and using it to make Hydrogen is not new either. Combining the two concepts to make more fuel out of pollution and renewable energy is brilliant!
Audi calls this e-Gas and will use it to power a new line of cars that run on methane. Germany sure has some great ideas. Oh, they are using British Designs and engineering expertise too. I wonder why we are not doing this too?
This is a step in the right direction. Mr Cameron? Are you listening? maybe we should let our MP’s know what we think.
The last posting was all about fracking and how David Cameron is selling your environmental future to give away fracking rights. In the last post we looked at who will pay the cost of cleaning up any environmental disaster that occurs due to fracking: YOU!
So what is the alternative? Hydrogen of course. There have been many discussions about Hydrogen powered cars in the news for several years now. The fuel cell uses Hydrogen to make electricity which runs the car. This is the same technology that powered the Apollo missions to the Moon. Astronauts used the only two byproducts of this electricity generator – Fuelcell – to heat their cabin and drink the waste product, Water!
So instead of fracking for more natural gas or methane we can create the fuel for the future today. Hydrogen is normally produced in a petrochemical plant. Big Oil would dearly love to keep it that way. However, New methods of creating Hydrogen are available now that are clean green and use renewable energy.
One of the biggest drawbacks to wind and solar has always been the lack of sun, or wind. Another big drawback to wind and solar is that they produce too much when we don’t need the electricity. In Germany a hydrogen plant is being used to store excess energy created by renewable generators like wind and solar.
Governments are starting to see the benefit of promoting hydrogen. If David Cameron was working for the people he would be pushing these technologies. Cameron works for BIG OIL so he does what they want. Cameron works for BIG Electric companies so he does what they want.
So our environment continues to suffer. Our chance to switch to renewable energy now takes another step back. Feed in tariff cuts, new nuclear power plants, a reduction of support for wind energy, tax breaks and government sponsored cleanups of fracking pollution: Are you seeing the pattern here folks?
Hydrogen is the future, tell your MP to support it now please. The link will take you straight to a site that will help you send an email to your MP in just a few munites.
David Cameron is working for BIG OIL companies and not you. Not only has Cameron sold you out he will make you pay twice. Cameron wants Taxpayers to pay to clean up any pollution caused by fracking if the companies go bankrupt, after a proposal to make UK operators take out insurance against such damage was ruled out by the government. As if that were not enough Cameron’s Government has now opened up more than half of the UK to fracking. Two-thirds of the UK’s land will be available for fracking companies to license. A government map published on Tuesday shows, with new areas opened up in the Midlands, Cumbria and Wales.
Cameron has cut funding for renewable solar systems on your home. 1 year ago in January Cameron was fighting a legal battle to enact drastic unwarranted cuts in the FIT. The government has consistently maintained that deep cuts are urgently required to stop the feed-in tariff scheme exceeding its budget – a scenario that could result in increased energy bills. I find it very ironic that Cameron could say that only one year ago and after the cuts prices are still going up.
Cameron has cut the tariff paid for renewable land based wind energy systems. Wind energy onshore has the potential to replace nuclear plants across the country. In the USA onshore wind is taking over nuclear so well that Dominion is now shutting a money-losing reactor and selling coal plants, Exelon warns of shrinking nuclear margins and an Edison International merchant coal-plant unit has gone into bankruptcy. The previous post discussed the fear that energy companies are facing over the end of centralized energy generation. Here is the proof of what is happening now in the USA.
Meanwhile in the UK, three new off shore wind farms have been canceled in the last 3 weeks alone! Fresh questions raised over UK offshore wind plans mean that Cameron has won a TRIFECTA! Scottish Power decides not to go ahead with the Argyll Array, which would have provided green energy for 1 million homes. This is another win for Cameron’s plans to destroy renewable energy. Cameron pays lip service about the government’s plans to tackle a looming supply problem and to meet its low carbon targets. Meanwhile, RWE, another of the big six power companies, announces two weeks ago that it is abandoning plans to construct a £4bn offshore wind farm, the Atlantic Array, off Devon. On Thursday, Centrica, owner of British Gas, announced it was selling its stake in another huge offshore wind farm, Race Bank, off East Anglia. All of Cameron’s hard work cutting our renewable future is killing jobs too! The UK wind sector has been dealt a blow as Vestas has announced that they will scrap their plans to build a new wind turbine factory in the Port of Sheerness.
He is selling your future away at twice the price France is willing to pay to build new nuclear power plants. In short David Cameron and his ‘Greenest Party Ever’ is nothing of the sort.
Below is only one of many articles regarding the PM’s stance on Fracking. Fracking has been proven to cause pollution in underground water reservoirs and cause environmental pollution on the surface of areas where drilling occurs. Fracking is bad for our environment. Fracking gives BIG Oil just what it needs to carry on. Fracking is not renewable, not clean, and not green! It is known to cause EARTH QUAKES!
British PM urges EU to cut fracking red tape.
London – British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso that the continent risks being left behind in the shale gas revolution unless red tape is cut, the Times reported on Tuesday.
In a letter to Barroso, seen by the paper, Cameron said new EU legislation was “a major cause for concern” and insisted that the shale gas industry could be regulated “in a safe and sustainable manner”.
“There is clearly merit in providing additional clarity on how the existing comprehensive EU legislative framework applies to shale gas,” he wrote.
“However, I am not in favour of new legislation where the lengthy timeframes and significant uncertainty involved are major causes for concern. The industry in the UK has told us that new EU legislation would immediately delay imminent investment,” he added.
The full article on News 24
THE END OF ENERGY AS WE KNOW IT CAN HAPPEN NOW!
The full Article from Forbes:
Distributed Generation Poses Existential Threat To Utilities
To the list of industries at risk of complete obsolescence – which at the moment includes daily newspapers, government postal services, and men-only barbershops, among others – you can add U.S. power utilities. The creeping sense of impending peril that has enveloped the power sector was made explicit earlier this year in a widely distributed, and remarkably candid, report from the Edison Electric Institute entitled “Disruptive Challenges.”
Warning of “irreparable damages to revenues and growth prospects” of utilities due to the spread of distributed power generation from renewable energy sources, the report foresees “a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent.” The result: a “cycle of decline [that] has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).”
A Bloomberg BusinessWeek story last week put an even finer point on it: “In about the time it has taken cell phones to supplant land lines in most U.S. homes, the grid will become increasingly irrelevant as customers move toward decentralized homegrown green energy.” NRG Energy CEO David Crane told the magazine that microgrids, small wind and solar, and net metering constitute “a mortal threat to the existing utility system.”
In the Kubler-Ross end-of-life model, U.S. utilities are still mostly in the denial stage. Utility executives spend a lot of time these days decrying government subsidies, particularly for rooftop solar. To be sure, several big utilities have at least hedged their bets by investing in alternative forms of power generation; Duke Energy, for example, entered the renewables business in 2007 and has built some 1700 megawatts of renewable capacity since then.
Sabotage in the Suburbs
Gloomy prediction aside, it’s worth remembering that this transition is sure to be prolonged, that the utilities, in their respective regions, often enjoy quasi-monopolies, and that they have ample resources, both financial and political, to draw on to protect their positions. Power from wind and solar still accounts for less than 1% of the electricity generated in this country. Southern Company has a market cap of $37 billion. This is not a sector that is going to meekly fold its tents and retreat.
Think of Big Oil. The “End of Oil” has been forecast now for decades, and oil consumption in many developed countries peaked in 2007 and has not yet reached those heights again. It may never. Nevertheless, the shale gas boom has given petroleum companies an unforeseen boost, and world petroleum use set a new record last year. Many major oil producers are enjoying record profits. The forces at work in the utility sector are very different (for one thing, technology advances, which are fueling the current oil and gas boom, are likely to work against utilities, not for them), but in times of upheaval and transformation, incumbents tend to do well, at least for a time.
What’s more, the recent glowing news in the renewable-energy business — which has seen prices for solar power approach grid parity as adoption by consumers, encouraged by no-money-down leasing arrangements, accelerates — is not guaranteed to last. In fact, there are indications that solar markets in key states are slowing, as prices drop to levels unsustainable for providers. “It is getting difficult to deliver a good product and still be profitable,” an executive with REC Solar told Greentech Media last week.
At the same time, the industry is fighting a delaying action on the policy front. “The future of net metering in Arizona is under attack,” SustainableBusiness.com reported last week, “with the state’s largest electric utility Arizona Public Service (APS) proposing changes that undermine cost benefits for residential solar installations.”
Pushing back on net metering, investing in renewable capacity, and building new fossil-fuel plants are likely to buy the utilities some time. And they may just figure out how to thrive in the new era of distributed generation. But the threats they face are not going away – and they’re not just economic. The FBI said last week it is investigating an act of industrial sabotage in Arkansas, in which an unknown monkeywrencher climbed a 100-foot transmission tower, cut a supporting cable, and brought down a 500-kilovolt power line. That’s at least the second instance of destruction of utility transmission infrastructure this year. When suburbanites putting solar panels on their roofs are joined by nighttime saboteurs, it might be time to rethink your business model.
Who we are
The DESERTEC Foundation is a global civil society initiative aiming to shape a sustainable future. It was established on 20 January 2009 as a non-profit foundation that grew out of a network of scientists, politicians and economists from around the Mediterranean, who together developed the DESERTEC Concept. Founding members of DESERTEC Foundation are the German Association of the Club of Rome, members of the international network as well as committed private individuals.
What we do
We are working on the fast global implementation of the DESERTEC Concept, a comprehensive solution that combats global warming, ensures a reliable energy supply, and promotes development and security. With around 30 staff members, national associations and a network of regional coordinators as well as a large global community of supporters, we are active around the world:
I intend to stop Hinkley C from ever being built. We will never need another nuclear plant! I will need your help to change the minds of our government leaders. This book is how I will get the message out in to the world. The current government here in the UK has turned it’s back on renewable energy technology.
We could start building our renewable energy future now, today. We can do this with less money than would be spent on big power plants. The energy produced from a local, distributed generation model can quickly replace the aging dirty coal and dangerous radioactive nuclear plants.
The problem with our renewable future is that there is not enough profit for the Big energy producers. I will provide links in future to articles in prestigious magazines and financial news papers which discuss the threat that micro-generation and distributed energy systems pose to the big energy companies. Placing this generation in the hands of the many, in the hands of the people will end forever the domination of our energy markets by the few.
Most important in this book and the path we must follow is the healing of our planet and our climate. We have waited too long ! we must now work in earnest on the renewable future we deserve. Our planet, our environment, and our very future depend on us acting now to remove all the blockades erected by the current big energy producers
The biggest advantage to solar power is the fact that it is owned by homeowners, local councils, social groups, and communities. The ownership of the means of producing electricity is the key to unlocking our renewable future and lower bills.
The big 6 energy companies are at risk of losing their business model because we can now make our own energy; we don’t need them any more. We can make electricity and charge a price we think is fair for all.
Here is an excellent article from the Guardian:
Westmill Solar, a 5 megawatt PV farm sited between Swindon and Oxford, is one of the largest arrays in the UK. It was built a year ago to profit from the high feed-in tariffs then available to large PV installations. Adam Twine, the farmer on whose land the 21,000 panels were sited, kept a right to buy back the solar farm from its original financiers. Twine is an enthusiast for community ownership and recently set up a cooperative to purchase the whole array. Small investors can apply to buy shares now, with local residents given priority. If successful, the new cooperative will be the biggest community owned solar farm in the world.
In this book we will discuss the ways we can build this renewable future. This book will also discuss some of the reasons why it is not happening today. In the next chapter we will look at how solar alone will power the future world. In the following chapters we will examine how different ideas once put in practice, can save our climate, save our planet and save us. Chapters 7 through 9 will look at the energy industry as it exists today. There are different parts to the business of making energy today. We will look at the industry as a whole and how it keeps us as a nation and as a species from going green forever. Chapter ten is a primary reason I am writing this book……