It’s difficult to understand why they don’t appreciate the utter futility of Carbon Capture and Storage when Carbon dioxide is being increased by millions of tons in China
Thank you David. For me, this article has shown more than any other the squalid and pathetic nature of Ed Miliband's thinking. The answers to his questions are pretty well known, but don't suit him, so he will keep searching until he finds someone wholly unqualified, such as a political crony, who will give him the answers he wants, before he has to resort to the Tooth Fairy.
For instance, on bio-fuels, there is a TED talk on Youtube by the late physicist David Mackay covering, for one thing, land areas. He creates an example road with steadily flowing traffic, and gives his estimate of the amount of land needed to produce bio-fuels for just those vehicles - a continuous strip on either side, 8 kilometres wide, the entire length of the road.
But for the fact it would be completely lost on him, Miliband should read Jean-Baptiste Fressoz's 'More and more and more'. There has never been any energy transition in the entirety of our species' existence, and the notion that technology can produce some miracle by 2030 or 2050 is pure illusion.
Whatever his planned assault on the impregnable fortress of thermodynamics, it will of course fail - as Sun Tzu advised millennia ago, the worst approach is to besiege a walled city - but perhaps not before, as the lady said, he has run out of other people's money.
"biomass is not very energy dense and a lot of the embedded energy in the wood is wasted in the pulping, drying and transportation processes that get it to a power station."
The total supply chain emissions for Drax waste biomass from the US and Canada is around 100 gm CO2/kWh. This will soon be higher than the UK grid carbon intensity which was 119 gm CO2/kWh in 2024 (see https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2024-01-01&&_k=4m426t). With a lot more offshore wind going in over the next few years, the UK grid average will drop below 100 gm CO2/kWh, so Drax will soon be pushing up average grid carbon intensity, when operating all the time in baseload mode. But it is still better than unabated natural gas when used as backup for low wind and solar output. Far better would be Drax + CCS which provides negative emissions.
"However, the position gets even worse when power plants are converted to BECCS because it takes even more energy to capture the CO2 and pump it underground for long term storage. "
Here's the thing though. The more biomass you have to burn per kWh, the higher the direct immediate CO2 emissions per kWh, and the higher the CO2 saving per kWh when implementing CCS. If some of the electricity generated has to go into powering the CCS process, that does reduce the output power and kWh, but obviously is necessary for saving the CO2.
"The Royal Society of Chemistry produced a report that suggested BECCS using willow pellets from Louisiana in America would have an EROI of less than one."
This isn't relevant. It is talking about growing energy crops specifically for bioenergy. But that isn't what happens with Drax and most wood chip burning power production.
Drax gets almost all its wood chips from waste wood - sawmill residues, thinnings (whole weedy trees in a stand removed to promote the growth of more robust trees). The trees, from which waste wood comes, are grown primarily for timber e.g. for use in buildings, furniture, mine pit props etc.
If Drax were to start taking specifically grown energy crops, rather than waste wood, then the best bet would be eucalyptus grown in the subtropics, because it gets far more sunlight, so grows to maturity in ten years.
"We have already entered energy austerity, with energy consumption falling and per capita energy consumption is set to fall by half from 2023 levels by 2050."
UK electricity use over the last 15 years has reduced by around 1% per year, as a result of the move to LED lighting and EU energy efficiency regulations. Going back 20 years, 20% of electricity supply was used for lighting. But now this is down to 2-3% of demand. Industry is also keen to improve energy use efficiency, because it then saves money.
So the reduced electricity and other energy demand over time is due to more efficient use of energy, not constraints on supply. However, electricity and gas prices recently have been higher because of Putin's energy war on Europe from mid 2021, and his Feb 2022 invasion of Ukraine, followed by Europe's decision to reduce use of Russian gas.
Primary energy consumption always falls when you move processes from fossil fuel primary energy to electricity, because use of electricity is invariably far more energy efficient. For instance, the primary energy (in the form of electricity generated) used to drive EVs per mile is around one third of the energy in the oil used to produce petrol or diesel to drive vehicles on mile. Similarly heat pumps use about one third of the energy of gas boilers to provide the same quantity of heat.
So the fall of one half in per capita energy consumption by 2050 is just from electrification and the improvement in efficiency of energy use. It also results in elimination of all (or almost all) UK CO2 emissions.
"The first green hydrogen projects awarded contracts in HAR1 had a strike price of £175/MWh in 2012 money or about £244/MWh at 2024 prices. "
The UK CfD register gives the base currency value date for hydrogen contracts as 2022, rather than 2012, though £244 is the right ball park when translated into March 2025 prices.
Burning wood produces more CO2 emissions per MWh of output than burning coal, it's just that we choose not to count it in the calculations. More importantly it produces more particulate emissions too.
The low energy density is why it has such a poor EROEI and needs so much subsidy. I can't see the EROEI from forests being that much different to willow. EROEI will still be very low and even lower with added CCS.
As I have covered before, reducing emissions and energy use is highly correlated with low economic growth:
UK primary energy use (even using the substitution method) and electricity demand are both falling. It's not just because of more efficient lighting. Energy intensive industry is collapsing. Global energy and electricity use are both growing and they are subject to the same efficiency gains in lighting, ICE, heat pumps and EVs.
Using low-EROEI sources to generate electricity make the supposed benefits of electrification largely an illusion, because the calculations do not take account of the gross energy required to generate the net energy.
Why are they asking a political scientist to head this up, rather than, say, an engineer? Sounds like they don’t expect it to work. When do these sort of things become fraud and money laundering?
It’s difficult to understand why they don’t appreciate the utter futility of Carbon Capture and Storage when Carbon dioxide is being increased by millions of tons in China
Thank you David. For me, this article has shown more than any other the squalid and pathetic nature of Ed Miliband's thinking. The answers to his questions are pretty well known, but don't suit him, so he will keep searching until he finds someone wholly unqualified, such as a political crony, who will give him the answers he wants, before he has to resort to the Tooth Fairy.
For instance, on bio-fuels, there is a TED talk on Youtube by the late physicist David Mackay covering, for one thing, land areas. He creates an example road with steadily flowing traffic, and gives his estimate of the amount of land needed to produce bio-fuels for just those vehicles - a continuous strip on either side, 8 kilometres wide, the entire length of the road.
But for the fact it would be completely lost on him, Miliband should read Jean-Baptiste Fressoz's 'More and more and more'. There has never been any energy transition in the entirety of our species' existence, and the notion that technology can produce some miracle by 2030 or 2050 is pure illusion.
Whatever his planned assault on the impregnable fortress of thermodynamics, it will of course fail - as Sun Tzu advised millennia ago, the worst approach is to besiege a walled city - but perhaps not before, as the lady said, he has run out of other people's money.
There are a few issues with this post.
"biomass is not very energy dense and a lot of the embedded energy in the wood is wasted in the pulping, drying and transportation processes that get it to a power station."
The total supply chain emissions for Drax waste biomass from the US and Canada is around 100 gm CO2/kWh. This will soon be higher than the UK grid carbon intensity which was 119 gm CO2/kWh in 2024 (see https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2024-01-01&&_k=4m426t). With a lot more offshore wind going in over the next few years, the UK grid average will drop below 100 gm CO2/kWh, so Drax will soon be pushing up average grid carbon intensity, when operating all the time in baseload mode. But it is still better than unabated natural gas when used as backup for low wind and solar output. Far better would be Drax + CCS which provides negative emissions.
"However, the position gets even worse when power plants are converted to BECCS because it takes even more energy to capture the CO2 and pump it underground for long term storage. "
Here's the thing though. The more biomass you have to burn per kWh, the higher the direct immediate CO2 emissions per kWh, and the higher the CO2 saving per kWh when implementing CCS. If some of the electricity generated has to go into powering the CCS process, that does reduce the output power and kWh, but obviously is necessary for saving the CO2.
"The Royal Society of Chemistry produced a report that suggested BECCS using willow pellets from Louisiana in America would have an EROI of less than one."
This isn't relevant. It is talking about growing energy crops specifically for bioenergy. But that isn't what happens with Drax and most wood chip burning power production.
Drax gets almost all its wood chips from waste wood - sawmill residues, thinnings (whole weedy trees in a stand removed to promote the growth of more robust trees). The trees, from which waste wood comes, are grown primarily for timber e.g. for use in buildings, furniture, mine pit props etc.
If Drax were to start taking specifically grown energy crops, rather than waste wood, then the best bet would be eucalyptus grown in the subtropics, because it gets far more sunlight, so grows to maturity in ten years.
"We have already entered energy austerity, with energy consumption falling and per capita energy consumption is set to fall by half from 2023 levels by 2050."
UK electricity use over the last 15 years has reduced by around 1% per year, as a result of the move to LED lighting and EU energy efficiency regulations. Going back 20 years, 20% of electricity supply was used for lighting. But now this is down to 2-3% of demand. Industry is also keen to improve energy use efficiency, because it then saves money.
So the reduced electricity and other energy demand over time is due to more efficient use of energy, not constraints on supply. However, electricity and gas prices recently have been higher because of Putin's energy war on Europe from mid 2021, and his Feb 2022 invasion of Ukraine, followed by Europe's decision to reduce use of Russian gas.
Primary energy consumption always falls when you move processes from fossil fuel primary energy to electricity, because use of electricity is invariably far more energy efficient. For instance, the primary energy (in the form of electricity generated) used to drive EVs per mile is around one third of the energy in the oil used to produce petrol or diesel to drive vehicles on mile. Similarly heat pumps use about one third of the energy of gas boilers to provide the same quantity of heat.
So the fall of one half in per capita energy consumption by 2050 is just from electrification and the improvement in efficiency of energy use. It also results in elimination of all (or almost all) UK CO2 emissions.
"The first green hydrogen projects awarded contracts in HAR1 had a strike price of £175/MWh in 2012 money or about £244/MWh at 2024 prices. "
The UK CfD register gives the base currency value date for hydrogen contracts as 2022, rather than 2012, though £244 is the right ball park when translated into March 2025 prices.
If you believe that Drax gets ~7m tonnes of wood chips each year from sawmill residues and weedy trees, I have a bridge to sell you.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68381160
Burning wood produces more CO2 emissions per MWh of output than burning coal, it's just that we choose not to count it in the calculations. More importantly it produces more particulate emissions too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-40963488
The low energy density is why it has such a poor EROEI and needs so much subsidy. I can't see the EROEI from forests being that much different to willow. EROEI will still be very low and even lower with added CCS.
As I have covered before, reducing emissions and energy use is highly correlated with low economic growth:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/cop29-flops-starmer-makes-uk-cop-lot?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
UK primary energy use (even using the substitution method) and electricity demand are both falling. It's not just because of more efficient lighting. Energy intensive industry is collapsing. Global energy and electricity use are both growing and they are subject to the same efficiency gains in lighting, ICE, heat pumps and EVs.
Using low-EROEI sources to generate electricity make the supposed benefits of electrification largely an illusion, because the calculations do not take account of the gross energy required to generate the net energy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/electrification-efficiency-gains-illusion?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Such an approach can only work if using high EROEI power sources like gas or nuclear.
HAR1 results are here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-production-business-model-net-zero-hydrogen-fund-shortlisted-projects/hydrogen-production-business-model-net-zero-hydrogen-fund-har1-successful-projects
They are quoted in 2012 prices. I indexed by 1.3956 to 2024 prices as per AR6 budget notice.
You can wriggle all you like, but you can't break the Laws of Physics and Thermodynamics.
Why are they asking a political scientist to head this up, rather than, say, an engineer? Sounds like they don’t expect it to work. When do these sort of things become fraud and money laundering?