In the last few weeks a number of serious errors have come to light in the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) plan for Net Zero. The CCC plan was published mid-2019 in a document titled ‘Net Zero Technical Report’.
In summary, the CCCs plan for Net Zero is to shift transport and heating from using petrol, diesel and gas to using electricity and then to decarbonise the electricity grid.
To decarbonise the grid, it is assumed that electricity will be generated using nuclear and renewables. During periods when nuclear, wind and solar cannot meet demand, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will be deployed to remove CO2 emissions as the electricity must be generated using gas.
Carbon Capture and Storage is a new and untested technology that has never been deployed at scale anywhere on earth. However, it is clear from the CCC’s report that CCS plays a major roll in achieving Net Zero. As I reported in a previous article, regardless of this being an untested technology, the U.K. only plans to build a quarter of the required capacity to hit Net Zero by 2050 (the plan requires the U.K. to capture and store 176Mt of CO2 annually).
Nevertheless, our Government envisages significant CCS capacity at 50Mt annually. Carbon Capture and Storage involves filtering CO2 from the exhaust produced from gas turbines used to generate electricity, then piping the captured CO2 to plants that compress the gas into a liquid before it is then injected into underground storage areas around the U.K.
Compressed CO2 is currently being commercialised as a way to store energy for use in periods when nuclear and renewables are unavailable. The company Energy Dome has developed a working 4MWh system in Sardinia, Italy. The company says its technology has an energy storage density 10-20 times higher than other compressed air energy storage (CAES) solutions and two-thirds that of liquid air energy storage (LAES).
The CCC’s plan requires vast quantities of CO2 to be compressed and stored under the U.K. Given this potential energy could be released at any time should something go wrong, it seems sensible to consider the safety implications of Carbon Capture and Storage.
Energy Dome has recently raised $11m and is building a larger 100MWh system. Its 100MWh store requires about 2,000 tonnes of CO2. This means the company is expecting to store 0.05MWh of energy per tonne of compressed CO2. Using this energy density, the CCC’s plan to store 176Mt per year will mean 8.8TWh of potential energy is being trapped beneath the U.K. annually. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT or 0.0174TWh. Therefore the energy we will be storing under our feet is equivalent to 505 Hiroshima bombs every year or the energy released by 16 magnitude seven earthquakes per year.
Fracking is currently banned in the U.K. due to the risk of causing earth tremors. The planned Carbon Capture and Storage facilities are of an altogether different magnitude. Fracking can be stopped in an instant if a problem is detected. Obviously, if there is an issue with 505 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy under our feet, we cannot just release this vast amount of trapped energy.
No one knows what the effects may be of creating a whole series of high pressure areas in the earth beneath our feet, it has never been done at this scale.
There are other issues. CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas that is about 1.5 times heavier than air.
In addition to the asphyxiation hazard of CO2 displacing oxygen in the air, the inhalation of elevated concentrations of CO2 can increase the acidity of the blood, triggering adverse effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. A CO2 concentration of around 5% by volume in air may cause headaches, dizziness, increased blood pressure and difficulty breathing within a few minutes. If concentrations above 17% by volume in air are inhaled, this could cause loss of purposeful activity, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma and death within one minute.
The Lake Nyos disaster saw massive release of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon on August 21st 1986.
The 1.6 million tonne cloud of magmatic gas was deadly, and a count of the fatalities indicated that 1,746 people, most from villages by the lake, had been asphyxiated by it, along with some 3,000 cattle and innumerable birds, insects and other animals. The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were.
The CCS plan means vast quantities of CO2 are going to be piped around the U.K. and ultimately injected into the ground. By 2050 we will be dealing with over 110 times the amount of CO2 released in the volcanic event that took place at Lake Nyos, every single year.
Of course to actually achieve Net Zero the CCC state we will need to store 176Mt of CO2 by 2050. That’s 3.5 times more than we have just been discussing.
As the years go by, the risks increase. The Carbon Capture and Storage plan means that every five years we will be pumping just shy of one billion tonnes of CO2 into the earth beneath our feet.
Does that sound like a smart move to you? What will your children and grandchildren think? They’re going to be stuck with this issue for ever.
As any commercial glass house grower will tell you, the plants on earth are currently pretty much starving. During daylight hours glass houses maintain CO2 levels that are double to three times more than our current historically low levels of atmospheric CO2. Plants have evolved for hundreds of millions of years; the fact they are adapted to thrive in an atmosphere with three times our current CO2 levels is a pretty good indicator that CO2 ain’t the problem.
CO2 is fundamental to all life on earth, but as we have seen with the Lake Nyos disaster, it is also capable of taking life if there is enough of it available in one place. Perhaps storing billions of tonnes of the stuff under our feet is just plain stupid, regardless of the reason?
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One certain way to reduce heating costs is to reduce the volume of rooms, especially by eliminating unused space, for example by lowering ceilings.
I achieved a distinct improvement in comfort levels upstairs by boxing in a large void in my stairwell which had always been a pain to decorate, requiring scaffolding to access it.
The rising heat from downstairs is now directed to the landing and into adjacent rooms.
I am appalled at the trend – promoted by such as Kevin McCloud – for vast open plan, high-ceilinged living spaces
My house has roughly 8 foot high ceilings. At six feet tall, I can touch the ceiling when I stretch my arms. I wouldn’t want the ceilings any lower. In many cases, putting doors on staircases and blocking them in at the sides would help. It would be architecturally impossible where I live, though, so effectively the hall, stairs and landing is one giant room.
It is clearly not an issue with 8ft ceilings, but there are many pre-war houses that would benefit.
Why? What real problem will this solve?
It also leads to and increases mould in many cases. Especially in houses not made for modern insulation, like your average Victorian terraces, which are also completely unsuitable for heat pumps.
But as we learned with Covid, one cannot argue with cult members.
Indeed. Also, you have to be very careful what type of insulation is put in: if you have the wrong type and there’s a problem, it’s a case of ‘Do you want us to tear down your outer wall or inner wall?’
We actually had the guys out to do the insulation on our house a few years ago – they’d brought the kit with them and were ready to go – and they said it was impossible to do, because of the house’s design and the way our house extensions had been built 30-40 years ago. Some other people came out a few years later. The same thing happened. The guy in charge was walking back and forth on his mobile phone to his head office, saying ‘You mean there’s really no way we can do this?!’
I think that is true. The house I was born in was a Victorian terrace with just a coal fire. We didn’t open windows because of the cold but we had ventilation because of the air flow due to the fire. As it was “improved” with double glazing, gas fires and a supposed damp proof course the dampness got worse. Poor quality houses all sealed become damp, and we saw the consequences with the recent death of a young boy.
Jevons Paradox in a nutshell.
We need to drop all the Grade II, etc. listing rubbish. A lot of those houses have single glazed wooden frame windows which are very expensive to replace. Let those homeowners put proper uPVC double glazed windows in, maybe in future a solution which pleases the heritage bureaucrats can be found. Of course sealing up such a building may then create a damp problem but I wouldn’t be surprised if using a dehumidifier still led to a net decrease in energy usage.
The solution is to get rid of the climate change loonies and Net Zero so we can return to abundant, cheap energy.
Hands up those who remember one coal fire to heat the house and ice on the inside of bedroom windows in the winter
FYI here are some recent costs of running an air source heat pump.
I live in a pretty rented 2 bed cottage (2 generous rooms downstairs, bathroom, kitchen) that is probably 150 years old in East Yorkshire. The owner installed an air source heat pump 10+ years ago replacing oil (the village doesn’t have mains gas). They put in (correctly) overlarge radiators and some uPVC windows at the back and upstairs at the back and front leaving 2 huge sash single glazed windows at the front overlooking the village. It has a decent log burner which I light every night and is essential to get one room really warm!
Here is what my smart meter tells me were the electric costs over last 6 weeks running the house at 14 degrees during the day (I find the office warmer), hot water for one person (me) and a fridge, freezer and router 24/7. I use the washing machine and dishwasher if I need to during the night as I am on a variable rate. The heating isn’t on at night:
w/c 21st Nov: £21.19
w/c 28th Nov: £44.15
w/c 5th Dec: £64.58
w/c 12th Dec: £82.09
w/c 19th Dec: £22.17 (away – heat pump turned off from 22nd to 27th)
w/c 26th Dec: £40.65.
I have nothing to compare it with so I genuinely don’t know what other bills look like but I have to say the pump really struggled during the cold snap – 3 days it didn’t go above freezing – the pump is noisy and the radiators are never quite hot enough however much I turn up the thermostat.
I am building a new house and am not installing one.
Extra insulation must reduce heat loss and reduce the amount of heating required if all other factors remain the same, so if records show this doesn’t happen other factors must be changing. Trying to make houses airtight is an error without provision of ventilation. Human occupation causes considerable amounts of water vapour, so ventilation is required to deal with it. Many recently constructed commercial properties use heat recovery ventilation systems in conjuction with otherwise sealed buildings to provide at least minimum statutary ventilation levels based on intended occupation, but these usually use electricity to heat the incoming air when insufficient heat is recovered. I’m not sure how genuinely efficient these systems are, but there are claims by the manufacturers of them, which may be biased to show performance when incoming air temperatures are relatively high. It is obvious as with increased heat pump installations that when its cold they will demand grid electricity. In addition with the drive to more and more electric cars and the need to charge them more frequently in cold weather we are setting things up for electricity grid demand that even with massive investment will not be met. The whole crazy net zero agenda needs to be properly evaluated and realistic targets set which will mean continued use of fossil fuels which are the most efficient generators of energy. This should be coupled with proper data based science about the effects of Human introduced CO2 rather than the ridiculous data biased models deliberately using distorted data targeted to show future disaster which will not happen. To put things in perspective, currently CO2 is about 420 parts per million in our atmosphere which means our atmosphere is 0.042% CO2 and in historic times has been much higher. Without CO2 which is required for plant growth we would not survive and the increase in CO2 has improved crop yields which in some poorer countries has reduced starvation.
The Net Zero fanatics are at it again. The Telegraph reports today that the Conservative chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee wants the motorway speed limit cut to 64 mph to prevent climate change. A few years ago the Conservatives were campaigning to raise it to 80 mph. It’s a good job that in future that will not allow ordinary people to afford personal transport, so at least we won’t have the frustration of driving slowly along empty roads behind the great and the good in their £80K Teslas.
As with all things GREEN there is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for which no evidence exists. It is all pronouncements, statements of certainty where there is none and all spouted by technocrats trying to control the world and it’s resources with climate as the excuse, and then the compliant media filling the people’s heads with “crisis” and “emergency” to such an extent that some people are so thoroughly brainwashed that they glue themselves to buildings and lay down in the road clamouring for their own impoverishment.
To demonstrate the Government’s lack of joined up thinking (or more likely they don’t believe their own propaganda), in response to Chris’ observation “To make a substantial difference, all the doors and windows in often leaky U.K. houses need to be made airtight” it’s worth highlighting that from 15th June 2022 the majority of replacement windows and doors must be fitted with trickle vents! https://www.fensa.org.uk/building-regulations-homeowners