Hutton humbled as E.ON calls for Kingsnorth delay

For some reason Greenpeace appears to have missed out a link to the press release in question . It’s something about a carbon capture and storage project. Of course Greenpeace was saying earlier this year such things would be around until 2050, followed by 2020, and now you are talking of it being only seven years away?….

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"It's something about a carbon capture and storage project". Indeed it is - but what exactly? E.ON say they are committed to enter a government competition to build a model CCS facility on the Kingsnorth site - as a test. The desire to make the proposed new coal-fired Kingsnorth 2 plant carry CCS equipment remains just that - an aspiration. And a greenwash aspiration at that. I refer you to the email traffic between E.ON and Dberr leaked to us under the FoI act, in which the ministry asks for confirmation that it is ok to include a CCS requirement in the conditions for building the new plant, and is told by E.ON that it is not acceptable and should be removed. This behind the scenes discussion would seem to be far more representative of E.ON's true position than their PR puff. Anyway, here's their press release – and you can make up your own mind.

As for "Greenpeace was saying earlier this year such things would be around until 2050, followed by 2020, and now you are talking of it being only seven years away?" What we're actually doing is reflecting back the government's own changing figures. Only last year chancellor Alistair Darling went on record saying CCS was “in the foothills” and “may never work”; now high oil and gas prices have put coal back on the agenda the government's decided that CCS would be a convenient achievable reality within a few years. 7 years is the timescale for a demo project to be up and running. 2020 is their aspirational timescale for a commercial one. The truth is that no one knows how long it will take to build commercially viable CCS coal plants and they're only at the stage of building models like the one E.ON plans to enter into Dberr's competition.

Our point is that it is reckless to build new coal-fired power stations and pump millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere while promising that at some unspecified point in the future we might be able to clean them up. This is dangerous risk-taking based purely on economics. Coal is cheap and therefore we must use it, according to this logic, regardless of the consequences.

So you say the CCS application is “greenwash”? Well it’s hardly unexpected to anyone following such matters. And for “greenwash”, I doubt if it has come cheap, considering the extent of E.ON’s (amongst others) involvement in various collaborative research projects. Now an interesting question is whether the Government has the legal right to insist on CCS at Kingsnorth? It’s definitely an issue raised by Mr Land raised when offering an alternative wording to the proposed CCS requirement (see the first of the .pdfs obtained under FoI).

Of course people’s definition of “greenwash” may vary. I note you say the 2050 date is one quoted by the Government. The only place I’ve seen this attributed to the Government is on your website here. Although I queried the accuracy of the quote at the time, I see you have repeated the quote since then. Now either the Hansard search engine is playing tricks on me (please feel free to check), or I may have a different definition of “greenwash”.

Looking further down the latter Greenpeace page, I see a claim that large generation plants are not required as decentralised energy is cheaper. No doubt this is thanks to your WADE report. I guess it must have seemed to be too good to be true when it was delivered. But “is it true” is a good question. I’d like to thing the study was properly checked, but is micro CHP really capable of 76% generating efficiency? Could it be that the generating efficiency and thermal efficiency have been mixed up? Or could this be called “greenwash”?

To deal with each of your points in turn...

"So you say the CCS application is “greenwash?"

E.ON's application is to build a model CCS facility on the Kingsnorth site; a small test rig which will have no impact on
any new coal-fired power plant they build there, but which will confuse the public because the company will be able to claim that there is a working CCS facility at the site. A triumph of perception over reality - sounds like perfect greenwash territory to me...

"I note you say the 2050 date is one quoted by the Government. The only place I’ve seen this attributed to the Government is on your website here."

I assume that the 2050 you refer to quote was this one:

"By 2050 it is possible that most new coal-fired power stations will be able to deploy CCS technology…However, CCS is as yet unproven technology and we have to acknowledge there is some risk that safe and reliable CCS for power generation might not be proven or deployable at scale and at reasonable costs. This could happen if the projected costs turn out to be too high or if it proves to be difficult to develop safe ways to transport and store CO2."

Our apologies - it's not from a Hutton statement in Parliament on Jan 10th. Instead it comes from the Nuclear Power White Paper (click on this link to download a copy in pdf format) released on the same day (see para 2.80 on page 71 of the White Paper (p73 of the pdf) for the quote), and so it is most definitely a government quote, as we said.

"Is CHP really capable of 76% generating efficiency?"

Yes, and more (over 85% in Denmark's latest combined heat and power plants). This is compared with 33-36% generating efficiency in conventional plants (whether coal, gas or nuclear powered),and why we think it makes no sense to replace an aging, inefficient, centralised production system with more of the same when we could potentially be producing the same amount of power and dramatically reducing the amount of fuel we use at the same time.

Thank you providing the source. I had queried this (and other issues) before, and not having had a response may have coloured previous postings. Can I assume you will correct the “FAQ” before the minister takes offence. You could also include the missing section of the quote (repeated below) as it could otherwise be misinterpreted.

“By 2050 it is possible that most new fossil-fuelled power stations will be able to deploy CCS technology. That could reduce carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels by up to 90% compared to today. The Government supports the development of CCS, and recently launched a competition for the development of a demonstration project. Successful development would provide the UK with cleaner fossil fuelled energy, so that in the future CCS and nuclear can complement each other as low-carbon sources of electricity. However, CCS….”

With respect to the CCS plant, the competition is looking for a plant of 300-400MW, which is around a quarter of the size of the proposed Kingsnorth station, and is two orders of magnitude larger than the experimental CASTOR plant. From you emission data, it will be removing about 2 million tons of carbon emissions per year. For comparison, all the wind farms currently in service in the UK are currently saving less than three times this amount of carbon (data source: BWEA). With CCS installed on the whole plant, it should reduce carbon emissions by more than the whole of the current fleet of wind turbines.

Now for the CHP claims: are you really sure you know what you are talking about? I’d be quite happy to accept a 76% thermal efficiency (or even more), but not a 76% generating efficiency. This figure is from Annex 1 of the WADE report, which gives a future CHP heat rate of 4700Kj/kWh. The heat rate is the number of joules (energy) per Watt (unit of power, in this case electrical generated power). There are 3600 joules per watt hour, so the generating efficiency is 3600/4700, or 76%. The WADE report looks at different generating mixes that could be used to meet the forecasted demand for electricity. The annex does not appear to differentiate between electrical and heat energy.

Wikipedia gives the generating efficiency for a micro CHP unit as 10 to 20%., The rest of the energy (say 60%) being the heating component of the Combined Heating and Power. This heat energy is not terribly effective at lighting our houses or powering our computers (note that districted heating can produce electricity more efficiently, but in almost all cases will be unable to beat straight generation). As a result, the largest component of the energy balance proposed by WADE is using an efficiency figure of between two and four times too large. Short of reproducing the model, I cannot give precise figures, but I’d guess the energy requirement and emission figures for the decentralised scenario should be between 50% and 100% more than that stated. I have other criticisms of the report (e.g. inclusion of the electricity network, but not the costs of heat or gas networks), but I’d suggest you should take a closer look and reconsider any policies it was used to justify.

Sorry simrek - I'm a webbie not an engineer so apologies if we are talking at cross-purposes about thermal or generating efficiency - I bow to your superior knowledge. But the point is surely that, by whatever measure you choose, CHP by definition uses energy more efficiently than large centralised plants because it makes use of large quantities of heat that would otherwise be wasted.

Our current non-CHP power-stations waste two-thirds of the energy put into them and are responsible for 30% of the UK's CO2 emissions - they are grossly inefficient because they only generate electricity - the heat they generate is simply thrown away. And we're talking about enough heat to supply the country's heating and hot water needs here.

Our power station/grid system is over 50 years old and much of it needs replacing. The question is, do we replace it with more of the same old inefficiencies, or CHP systems that can convert as much as 85% of the energy they burn into power, not a paltry 33%? Given the threat of climate change and our commitment to dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions, it makes sense to use as little energy as necessary, and generate it as efficiently as possible. And it can be done here if we get serious about it - as we explain here in this film: What are we waiting for.

Finally, regarding your comment that:

"With CCS installed on the whole plant, it should reduce carbon emissions by more than the whole of the current fleet of wind turbines."

You make this sound as though it's some kind of criticism of wind farms, when it's the exact opposite. A functioning CCS plant (assuming it could be built on any kind of reasonable timescale, which as we've seen both Alistair Darling and John Hutton's Dberr have called into question) would produce this kind of CO2 saving ONLY because coal is such a dirty fuel to begin with. Unlike wind farms, Kingsnorth without CCS pumps as much CO2 into the air each year as the 30 least polluting nations in the world. With CCS this could be reduced by as much as 90%, but the plant is likely to be operating as a plain old dirty coal power station for years before such a devlopment arrives, if it ever does. If we do it (and the other 7 new coal plants currently in the pipeline) we will have little or no chance of meeting our 2020 CO2 reduction targets - does this sound like a sensible idea to you?

Here Here Joss.

Until CCS is up and running no more coal plants should be built. T'is an unproven technology.

In many european countries they have slashed emissions and reduce dependance on foreign fuel imports by investing in CHP. T'is a proven technology.

By decentralising the grid we could virtually eliminate transmission losses and use the heat which at the moment is lost to the atmosphere or hydrosphere from large inneficient power stations. Often the cooling water from coal, nuclear, oil and gas power stations destroys the aquatic/marine ecosystems where it is released due to thermal pollution.

As for energy efficiency: what happened to banning standby switches? the TV I got for my birthday doesn't have a proper off switch so I have to switch it off at the plug. If everyone got rid of standby's and turned appliances off when not in use we could close a coal fired power station.

JetG. rescue diver extraordinaire.

P.S. wish me luck in the london marathon on sunday, so far I've raised over £550 for greenpeace, My running number is 52700 and I'll be wearing a GP running vest, I'm aiming to finish in 4 hours.

I suppose it is a lot to expect Greenpeace to field experts to answer every criticism, but is it too much for their reports to be checked before they are issued by somebody who knows the facts?

Anyway, to CHP. There is no doubt there is a place for CHP in the energy mix, but you need to understand the difference between electrical power and heat. I’m afraid you are repeating mistake by saying they “can convert as much as 85% of the energy they burn into power”. You should be saying they “can convert as much as 85% of the energy they burn into useable energy”. If CHP plants were able to convert 85% into electricity, all other generating plants would have long since closed.

Now how effective is CHP at meeting our electrical demands? As previously referenced, micro CHP can generate electricity at up to 20% efficiency. Taking your 85% efficiency figure above, this gives a heat output of 65% of the inputted energy. Now I had a look at my gas bills and found my boiler works at less than a 4% annual load factor. If I were to use a micro CHP boiler constantly as base load, 96% of the available heat would be wasted, and the annual efficiency would be 22.6%.

However I suspect my load factor is below average (thanks to my wood stove), so let us take the 35% annual load factor used in the WADE report (I’d guess the true figure should be somewhere between the two). Now the annual efficiency is 42.75%. What does this show? There is very little chance of micro CHP plants being used just to generate electricity in summer, so there is still a need of sufficient other generating resources to meet the majority of the summer demand.

Can CHP at a district heating level make a significant difference? Smaller (gas) plants will inherently have lower generating efficiencies (see below), and will see heat generation as the main product with electricity as a lucrative by-product. They are unlikely to generate electricity when there is no demand for heat as their costs will be higher. Other plants burning waste and biomass could potentially be driven by the availability of fuel to determine whether to generate. Larger plants will be able to supply heat but will see generating electricity as their main business.

As you said, there is a need to generate electricity as efficiently as possible, and all the more so in the plants designed mainly to generate electricity. But what you appear to have missed is that larger generating plants do just that: In order to increase the efficiency of a steam powered thermal generating plant, the temperatures and pressures of the steam have to be increased. But to extract the usable energy, the steam has to pass through a turbine. There is a practical limit to the minimum size of the first stage of the turbine train or else losses will become excessive. As temperatures and pressures increase, the whole plant also needs to increase in size to ensure the high pressure turbine is of a practical size. Thus current plants in the UK are sized between 400MWand 600MW per unit and have a sent out generating efficiency around 37%. Kingsnorth 5/6 would be a 800MW supercritical plant with an efficiency of around 45% (and a pressure ratio of over 8000). Assuming the availability of suitable materials for their construction, we could see future plants of 50% efficiency or more with a size of at least 1100MW.

Now I can only assume you accept there is a need for generating plant whose main purpose is to generate electricity (with or without CHP); either you have some amazing technology up your sleeve, or you have to accept that larger plants are more efficient. Either way you still need to ask yourself what is the most appropriate source of fuel to power the plant, and at some point you need to query just how dependent do you wish to be on imported gas?