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2011-06-09 Evidence for the Energy Bill - the Green Deal

I submitted the pdf file in response to the The Green Deal
and Energy Company Obligation, Consultation Document.

2012-08-14 Regarding 'Solar Energy in the Context of Energy Use'

The late Professor David MacKay, FRS submitted to the Royal Society the paper: 'Solar Energy in the context of energy use, energy transportation, and energy storage',

2010-09-21 CCS vs Wind Turbines

This presentation was prepared for - but not given at - a conference on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in London.

The UK Government was then offering the power companies £ 1 billion to build coal- or gas-fired power plants with CCS.

2012-04-11 The Real Lessons of Fukushima

The Real Lessons of Fukushima - click for full size image

This study is based on evidence on the Fukushima disaster and it's consequences, almost all from the internet. Many quantitative studies have been found, but no proper studies from the IAEA or the UK ONR. The fast-moving and highly dangerous events of such a disaster require decision support. Thermal models of the reactors and spent fuel pools are essential to predict their behaviour under Station Blackout and to evaluate possible counter-measures. Also plume (dispersion) models of possible radioactive releases are essential to inform decisions on the magnitude and direction of evacuations. The Japanese have such a plume model, but it was ignored until later. Also they had no instrument for airborne radioactivity measurements at hand and had to rely initially on aerial surveys carried out by the Japan-based US Emergency Response Centers. These deficiencies were omitted or downplayed in the reports of the IAEA Fact Finding Mission, but most were included in the report of the Hatamura Panel.

2003-10-20 New Automotive Powertrains and Fuels

I was a co-author of a paper 'The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak?', of which the final version was published on the web on 15 April 2003. This prompted me to make an extensive study of new automotive powertrains and fuels - to meet the increasing concerns of climate change and resource depletion - particularly Peak Oil. I found a surprising amount of data published on the web, and subjected it to careful analysis. One significant finding is that - of the various Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle prototypes - the Toyota FCHV5 has the best overall 'Well-to-Wheel' efficiency. The second is that even this is inferior to the 2004 model Toyota Prius engine-electric hybrid car that is already in high-volume production.

2008-02-18 Carbon Savings in the Buildings Sector

The on-site generation of electricity and heat from renewables – often called microgeneration - has been proposed in the U.K. for saving carbon – reducing carbon emissions – in the buildings sector.

2011-09-26 Geo-Engineering Debate: Transport Fuel, then ‘Roll-back’

For a 'Geo-Engineering Debate' held at the Royal Society, I prepared - but did not give - a presentation.

2008-04-14 Response on Domestic Heating etc

I submitted a PDF file in response to the UK Government Market Transformation Programme Domestic Heating and Hot Water Consultation.

New tool can calculate renewable energy output anywhere in the world

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ_3hWjB4Doow1__0ZYLRVGf8IwH9_h_jvcQw0mPj5zxnm1nweB

Researchers have created an interactive web tool to estimate the amount of energy that could be generated by wind or solar farms at any location. The tool, called Renewables.ninja, aims to make the task of predicting renewable output easier for both academics and industry. The creators, from Imperial College London and ETH Zürich, have already used it to estimate current Europe-wide solar and wind output, and companies such as the German electrical supplier RWE are using it to test their own models of output.

2011-06-08 The Case Against Nuclear Power

The critical issue for nuclear power is the consequences of a major radioactive release. These were predicted in the Sandia CRAC-2 study as 42,000 to 100,000 early deaths. They were confirmed empirically by Chernobyl, which contaminated huge areas of the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as well as 40% of Europe, with an eventual death toll put variously at 10,000 up to 1.8 million. Due to the high population density, Fukushima has been predicted to cause up to 210,000 excess cancer deaths. The probability of any size of radioactive release is not just unknown but unknowable, so must be taken as 1 - i.e. inevitable. This was understood by the worldwide insurance industry from the start and by some involved in the Reactor Safety Studies as well as by independent analysts. If insurance was fully paid, the cost of nuclear power would increase by e.g. 45 to 348 p/kWh. Other countries are adopting safer, sustainable and infinitely cheaper solutions for supplying electrical and other energy services so there is no need to add to our already huge nuclear risks and debts. Moreover the consequences of a major radioactive release are completely unacceptable, so all existing nuclear plants should be phased out forthwith.

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Climate and Energy Transition to Zero Carbon
Planning the appropriate renewable energy installation rate should balance two partially contradictory objectives: substituting fossil fuels fast enough to stave-off the worst consequences of climate change while maintaining a sufficient net energy flow to support the world's economy.
The Uninhabitable World
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2017-07-10 Climate and Energy Topics
Topic 1) emphasises the urgency of energy transition.Topic 2) is the main focus of the document, with the paper by Sgouridis et al, 2016.This identifies the relationship between the remaining fossil fuel emissions cap, the transition time, and the required investment in Renewable Energy (RE) supply plant.Topics 3) and 4) refer to the initial conditions prior to the energy transition.Topic 5) compares the Energy Return on Investments (EROIs) of Renewable Energy (solar and wind power) supply measures with the weighted average value of 20 assumed by Sgouridis et al.Topic 6 is concerned with the global limits of renewable power sources.Where Topics 3) and 4) deal in UK quantities, Topic 6) deals in Global quantities. However, the UK must expect to use only a proportionate share - e.g. equal per capita.Topics 7) and 8) consider energy demand measures as complements of the supply measures assumed by Sgouridis et al. They refer to two papers by Cullen and Allwood et al, 2010 and 2010.Including energy demand measures will greatly ease an energy transition within the constraints, such as 2 C global warming.
Quantifying the Narrowing Net-energy Pathways to a Global Energy Transition
'Planning the appropriate renewable energy (RE) installation rate should balance two partially contradictory objectives: substituting fossil fuels fast enough to stave-off the worst consequences of climate change while maintaining a sufficient net energy flow to support the world’s economy. The upfront energy invested in constructing a RE infrastructure subtracts from the net energy available for societal energy needs, a fact typically neglected in energy projections. Modeling feasible energy transition pathways to provide different net energy levels we find that they are critically dependent on the fossil fuel emissions cap and phase-out profile and on the characteristic energy return on energy invested of the RE technologies. The easiest pathway requires installation of RE plants to accelerate from 0.12 TW p yr –1 in 2013 to peak between 7.3 and 11.6 TW p yr –1 in the late 2030s, for an early or a late fossil-fuel phase-out respectively, in order for emissions to stay within the recommended CO 2 budget’. So the early fossil-fuel phase-out requires the installation of RE plants to accelerate by 7.3/0.12 = 61-fold and the late phase-out by 11.6/0.12 = 97-fold. Further delay would mean that there is no solution.
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Christiana Figueres and colleagues set out a six-point plan for turning the tide of the world’s carbon dioxide by 2020. In the past three years, global emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have levelled after rising for decades. This is a sign that policies and investments in climate mitigation are starting to pay off. The United States, China and other nations are replacing coal with natural gas and boosting renewable energy sources. There is almost unanimous international agreement that the risks of abandoning the planet to climate change are too great to ignore.
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Avoiding Climate Change Disaster
A short paper on the actions we must take soon in order to meet a carbon budget target which will limit global warming to 2 degrees and to arrive at a viable sustainable energy scenario thereafter.
2013-10-22 Auto Graphical Insights: Learning from Plots of Car Data
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2010-09-21 CCS vs Wind Turbines
This presentation was prepared for - but not given at - a conference on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in London.The UK Government was then offering the power companies £ 1 billion to build coal- or gas-fired power plants with CCS.
Time to listen to the ice scientists about the Arctic death spiral
Ice scientists are mostly cheerful and pragmatic. Like many other researchers coolly observing the rapid warming of the world, they share a gallows humour and are cautious about entering the political fray. Not Peter Wadhams. The former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge has spent his scientific life researching the ice world, or the cryosphere, and in just 30 years has seen unimaginable change. When in 1970 he joined the first of what would be more than 50 polar expeditions, the Arctic sea ice covered around 8m sq km at its September minimum. Today, it hovers at around 3.4m, and is declining by 13% a decade. In 30 years Wadhams has seen the Arctic ice thin by 40%, the world change colour at its top and bottom and the ice disappear in front of his eyes.