Questions of energy security are much in the news at present. Take, for example, the recent report that Europe’s ‘Energy Dependence Day’ is getting earlier each year. This is the notional day by which the EU has used up all its domestic supplies of energy and has to rely on imports. This was 11 June in 2011, considerably earlier than in 1995, when it was 26 July.
This analysis was conducted by the European Alliance for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EuroAce) so, not surprisingly, their message is about how increased energy efficiency is the key to improving the situation. Their figures suggest a 40% improvement in efficiency could make Europe notionally self-sufficient until 26 October.
In similar vein, we read that the UK ‘needs more home-grown energy’. Beneath this fairly innocuous headline comes the rather alarming message “In just over five years Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas, researchers have warned”. This projection comes from the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. According to the Institute, while Russia has more than 50 years of oil, 100 years of gas and 500 years of coal at current rates of consumption, Britain can rely on only 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal and three years of gas. This however, is better than for France, which is projected to run out of domestic supplies of all three fossil fuels within a year.
It is difficult to give credence to what looks suspiciously like scaremongering. Rates of extraction vary with demand (and price, of course) and reserve estimates are constantly being revised on the basis of surveys, exploration and economics. Taken together with the call by the Institute’s Professor Victor Anderson for a “Europe-wide drive” towards renewable energy, particularly wind, tidal and solar, this study begins to look like propaganda for the renewables industry.
However, doubts about the objectivity of this study should not make us lose sight of the fact that many European countries are dependent on imports for energy security. This is reinforced further by the current crisis in Ukraine and the fact that Russia is a key source of the gas which so many consumers and industries depend on. Russia is also a major oil producer, but oil is much easier to transport and therefore trading is truly global. For gas, on the other hand, importing countries depend either on pipeline connections with regional producers or on established channels for LPG.
Energy efficiency is, of course, the simplest and most rational way to reduce energy demand and increase security of supply. EuroAce is right to argue that much can be done by way of building standards. The UK is notorious for the poor insulation of much of its housing stock, for example. On the other hand, this is only part of the picture; Norway, with its use of triple-glazing and other heat-retaining techniques, still has one of the highest per capita uses of energy in Europe.
And despite the siren calls for greater and greater reliance on renewables, there is only a very limited contribution they can make to energy security. Wind patterns are quite consistent over rather large areas, so that the suggestion that the wind in one part of the country (or even across another part of Western Europe) is likely to compensate for calm conditions elsewhere is pie in the sky.
Solar is somewhat more predictable, but only to a certain degree. Tidal flow is very predictable, but still totally uncontrollable. The likelihood of high output from one source compensating for the lack of generation from another source is not high. This is not a recipe for increased energy security, but (at least until an economic means of storing massive amounts of energy is found) simply pot luck. No modern society can run in this way.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to change the fact that we will have to rely on existing sources of energy for some time to come, while waiting for R&D on new generating and storage technologies to make the breakthroughs needed for any major change to occur. There is still much potential for nuclear fission, whether using the latest generation of uranium-fuelled reactors or eventually using the theoretically very attractive option of thorium. But new build takes a long time and more gas-fired stations will be needed in the meantime. This leaves us with fossil fuels.
It must be good news therefore to hear that (in the UK at least) we may be moving closer to exploitation of oil and gas reserves in shale (UK looks to boost fracking with new land access rules). This comes at a time when the British Geological Survey estimates that there are 4.4bn barrels of shale oil across a swathe of southern England. Indeed, about 40 million barrels of oil and gas have already been extracted from this area with remarkably little controversy or impact on communities or landscapes.
It is the potential use of fracking techniques to free the reserves which is currently proving controversial. Opposition groups have managed to fix in people’s minds worries about earthquakes and water contamination, despite there being no evidence that the risks from properly conducted fracking operations are any higher than for other forms of mineral extraction. Of course, there would be some impact from traffic and initial drilling, but the same is true for any construction project, including wind turbines.
Governments have shown their willingness to support the building of major infrastructure projects, including wind farms and HS2, in the teeth of opposition. Extracting shale oil and gas will be no different, but should be pursued, with due regard for appropriate compensation of neighbouring communities, because of their strategic importance. Similarly, techniques such as underground gasification to make use of remaining vast coal reserves without recourse to mining should be encouraged where possible.
We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the Age of Oil, but it has a long way to go yet. We would be foolish to wish its early demise until better options are available.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
_________________________________________________________