The Winning of The Carbon War, with Jeremy Leggett

Yesterday I went to a presentation, hosted by the London Futurists, by Jeremy Leggett, who gave a similar presentation about eighteen months ago. His new book is currently in production and he gave us a brief overview of it's themes and possible content.

His main thrust was that renewables are succeeding to the loss of fossil fuels. Renewables, mostly solar and wind, but also wave and tidal, have become much cheaper over the last few years, in particular solar technology. This contrasts to fossil fuels, which investors are seeing as increasingly risky: in particular he cited the reluctance of Shell's shareholders to back it's exploration of the Arctic and the cost overruns of Kashagan oil field, which has only just started production after more than ten years. As previously, he also highlighted the problem with shale oil and gas production. The third theme is the concerns over climate change and the reduction in greenhouse gasses.

Jeremy was quite bullish, even when some of the audience pointed out flaws in his arguments, and he's almost as myopic in his support for renewables as his opponents are for fossil fuels (one question concerned the degradation of solar cells and the difficulty in recycling them, for which he had no answer).

There seems to be two main problems with renewable energy, and energy in general. The first is that renewables don't seem to be very portable or storable. Most renewables concentrate on generating electricity, which is relatively easy to do, but they are unreliable and to make them truly an alternative to fossil fuels will require the storage of the electrical output. I'm not talking car batteries here, but of the size that can keep a small town supplied for, say, a week. My father was involved, briefly, in the Dinorwic pump storage scheme in Snowdonia. This was designed to allow nuclear power stations to run at a constant rate, storing the excess power at low demand times for use a peak times. On a smaller scale, this is what's needed for renewables to viable as an alternative to, say, gas, which can be used on demand.

The other problem, slightly related, is that electricity cannot be used in places where fossil fuels are used due to energy density. Aviation, i.e. jet, fuel has a density of about 40 MJ/L. Lithium-ion batteries, such as you have in mobile phones, have about 3 MJ/L. You can't power a jet aircraft on batteries. You can create hydrogen using the electrolysis of water, which could then be liquefied. It might also be possible to chemically create hydrocarbon fuels, such as ethanol, which has a energy density of around 20 MJ/L. Still, it's a fair way off and not currently achievable.

Another, more subtle, point is that the "war" hasn't been won at all. The energy companies are starting to look at renewables and investing in them, thus increasing and extending their hold on energy production in the future. On those terms, it doesn't feel like a victory. We've merely swapped one form of cartel for another. Maybe it was the wrong war?

Ultimately, despite Jeremy's hubris, my electric bill is not going to get smaller and there's no renewable answer that gets me to work and back.

Update: As usual, the group has videoed the event and posted it on Youtube.

On the way back home, the train passed by a large solar farm on the outskirts of West Horndon, but, as I looked up, I saw about a dozen contrails criss-crossing the sky.