A few months ago I started a new Serious Change project. The aim of the project was to write good responses to online newspaper and blog posts about the UK energy system.
Well, after a few months of online meetings, and posting comments, we got pretty good at responding. We even started to see common arguments for not investing public funds in our energy system. So, the obvious thing to do is to list these common arguments and write our best reponses (google doc). Anyone who would like to help write reponses is most welcome to write on that google doc — and if you would like to discuss any aspect of this project then just email lisa at seriouschange dot org dot uk.
The good thing about this exercise is that the next time we come across one of these common arguments, we can save ourselves some work and just refer to our reponse here — and so can you!
Filed under: Uncategorized — Francis Irving @ 2:58 pm
Do you agree?
It’s most clearly true for some of the efficiency savings we’re going to make. For example, insulating your loft and your cavity walls saves you money in a very straightforward way.
Things are a bit more mixed for electricity generation. The Royal Academy of Engineering priced nuclear at 2.26 pence per kWh, compared to 3.64 pence for gas and 3.33 pence for coal (see Nuclear power’s cost conundrum).
However, the price of fossil fuels is a rapidly moving target, fluctuating up and down by orders of magnitude in the space of months. And you can easily increase the cost of nuclear, if you disagree with the cost of cleanup that the RAE have factored in.
The key message though, is that the costs are very comparable, it isn’t clear whether the old or the new technology will be cheaper.
The same applies to concentrating solar power. Rapid advances are still being made in these “mirrors in deserts” power stations. This post on the Climate Progress blog gives some details of the economics compared to coal.
Again, the take home message is - they are so similar in price, nobody is sure which is or will be cheaper.
On balance, my view is that with efficiency savings and with improvements as the new technologies mature, the new energy system will be cheaper than the old fossil based one. And that’s before the extra costs of energy insecurity and climate change are factored in.
It’s most clearly true for some of the efficiency savings we’re going to make. For example, insulating your loft and your cavity walls saves you money in a very straightforward way.