DECC-led cross-Department Bio-Energy Strategy - opportunity for Consultation input**
Chris Hodrien
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/meeting_energy/bioenergy/strategy/strategy.aspx
Just making sure you all know about this – they want* external informal input via E-mail by the end of October, with a view to publishing the Strategy report around Christmas.
This is a cross-department/UK Regions effort, led by DECC but including (embedding) the DfT, DEFRA + its agencies, the Treasury(!), the CCC and equivalent Welsh Assembly & Scottish gov’t depts. Each department involved has a small dedicated team for this exercise. (-wow! –‘joined-up’ gov’t at last!)
This seems to be a really intelligent, ‘joined-up’ strategic approach, ‘in listening mode’, usefully targeted at those pressing legal EU 2020 targets rather than the ‘fadd-ish’ ‘dim and distant’ 2050 scenario. I think it deserves our strong encouragement and support.
The official central public E-response point is in DECC: Bioenergy.S...@decc.gsi.gov.uk – but if you have specific points re. transport it would be sensible to also E-mail the lead DfT representative, Sarah Sheridan.
My own view is that we should swing strongly away from blindly bunging biomass into large power stations (or much worse, less efficient small dedicated distributed biomass power plants, including waste incinerators, and worse still, small locally-polluting log-stoves!) just to burn, and ‘raise our game’ to look at ‘the big picture’ (much as natural gas was strategically viewed pre-1990) of the more urgent need for refined fuels and chemical/other industrial products to displace rapidly-dwindling +cost-escalating imported oil. (the ordinary market is not giving sufficiently clear signals on this due to the great instability of oil prices over the 2008-‘11 Recession – but sustained crude prices exceeding $140/barrel are clearly on the cards when the global recession eventually ends). For example, it is relatively technically easy and cheap to turn biomass of all types (inc’ wastes) into methane (or chemical syngas) by both AD and larger-scale high-pressure gasification (complementary technologies re. their best bio-feedstock mix), at much higher efficiency and net CO2 saving than for liquid biofuels, to partly decarbonise the existing, paid-for gas grid with all its multifarious end-uses (including CCGT power) (and a larger present total energy supply than electricity). These technologies are inherently technically CCS capture–ready for later retrofit to meet tighter future CO2 targets, with possible eventual modification to the manufactured hydrogen pathway (about 95% of the world’s hydrogen is made this way today – not by electrolysis as many think!) (and BP are already developing power-CCS projects on this basis). Selective electricity-based ROC incentives arising from woolly, incomplete policy have dominated the thinking and distorted the clean energy market for far too long. The fossil power plant CO2 issue can be more readily dealt with by (proven!) CCS, with the CO2 being primarily used strategically for EOR (and EGR for natural gas wells) to eke-out those dwindling fossil resources from existing proven fields. We need to think long and hard in whole-system terms about the best ‘UK plc’ ‘bang for the buck’ (societal benefit) from this relatively limited but valuable resource.
- Chris Hodrien
Expansion Energy Ltd