A Blueprint for Green

We all have that friend who doesn’t stop whinging.

No one likes these people. Except for other moaners maybe, misery loves company. They suck the fun out of a room like Rowling’s dementors.

So when I got feedback after my last article along the lines of “sure Harry, it’s easy to slag off crappy energy policy and nutty, narcissistic, naïve, narrow-minded activists, but what are the solutions?”, the inveterate people pleaser in me had to start penning this piece asap.

It’s true, a lot of my writing to date has been critical. Frankly, there’s just so much energy BS out there that it was the obvious place to start. But today we’re going to look on the sunny side. And you’ll be pleased to hear there’s plenty of cause for optimism.

So let’s talk solutions. What would I do vis-à-vis energy and climate if, God forbid, I woke up tomorrow as a benevolent dictator of Planet Earth?

Caring about both humans and environment, I’m looking for a plan that maximises energy affordability, reliability, and sustainability. There are trade-offs to be made here, of course, in the energy / climate conundrum we have no silver bullets. We also don’t live in a Disney movie. So we’ll be working within the confines of proven options that exist today, while hoping, but not assuming, the fairy godmother will conjure up some game changing tech in the future.

And a quick caveat: the energy system is far, far more complex, interconnected, unpredictable, and multi-varied than can ever be covered by one underdeveloped brain in a 2,000 word article. To ensure this piece doesn’t become biblically long and boring, there’ll be plenty I leave out, simplify, gloss over (wittingly or otherwise) so don’t get mad if I fail to mention your favourite moonshot climate start-up or counter point. I’ll include external links so you can dig into more detail if you fancy and I’ll expand on many of these points in future pieces.

Alright. Let’s go. Here’s the TL;DR. The foundation of an energy strategy fit for the 21st century and beyond:

1. Nuclear power

2. Natural gas

3. Hydrogen

4. Nature-based solutions

plus a nod to the also-rans and DNQs.

1. Manhattan Project v2 to unlock Nuclear Power

What if I told you we already had a zero-carbon, safe, effectively limitless, reliable source of electricity that uses hardly any natural resources or land and, once built, produces non-stop power for over 80 years?

Well, as you’ll have guessed, we do. It’s been around for decades. It’s called nuclear fission. And it’s a bloody miracle. 

If splitting the atom and harnessing the energy released in the subsequent chain reaction sounds like some next level genius wizardry, it’s because it is. This is the energy of the future. Not the wind. We tried that before and left it in a bygone age for a reason.

Put simply: there’s no proven way to generate reliable zero-carbon power at scale other than with nuclear energy.

The French have already done it. So have the Ontarians. They have some of the lowest carbon grids on the planet and were able to remove almost all hydrocarbons from their power mixes in just a decade or so with a huge nuclear push. 10 years is not a long time: in 2013 Avicii was topping the charts and filling d-floors with Wake Me Up. Feels like yesterday, right? Don’t let anyone tell you nuclear is too slow.

If even the French could do it 40 years ago then we can sure as hell do it now.

We have the technology. We know it works. But thanks largely to fear and propaganda that has lingered since the 1970s, and which reached fever pitch after Chernobyl and then Fukushima, we’ve forgotten how to build these things on time and on budget.

That’s why we need a Manhattan Project style push. A war-like concerted effort to relearn how to build these plants. To productise nuclear reactors by settling on a standard design, establishing supply chains, and training bright young minds. Indeed, the long-term thinkers in China are already getting started, showing the rest of us “how to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap”, and have dozens under construction and planned for the coming decades. We risk getting left behind.

Yes, there will be an expensive learning curve to scale (and no, nuclear power is not dangerous), but it will be well worth it. Let’s mass produce nuclear reactors like an iPhone and enjoy true energy abundance.

2. Natural gas to displace coal and balance the grid

Do you know what the single biggest driver of reduced CO2 emissions in the US has been since 2000?

Nope, not wind, not solar, not energy efficiencies. It has been replacing coal with natural gas in power generation. That’s right, a pesky fossil fuel has been responsible for the largest decline in CO2 in the world’s mightiest economy.

Gas has approximately half the CO2 intensity of coal, and so removing coal from power systems around the world, particularly in India and China, with natural gas (and eventually nuclear) is a guaranteed win for the climate.

But why do we need gas if we’ve got nuclear? You might be thinking. Well, the beauty of gas is that it’s flexible, it can be ramped up and down relatively easily and quickly to meet spikes in power demand or to fill in for when nuclear is offline for maintenance. So nuclear acts as the “baseload” i.e. the foundational power source, while gas acts as the “balancer”. Neat.

The trouble is that coal is cheap. Really cheap. And often produced domestically. So if you want to convince some of the world’s poorest to stop burning it, then you need to make sure the alternatives can compete on price and reliability. This requires huge investment into natural gas supply to bring prices down and keep them down. As we saw last winter, the opposite is also true: when gas prices spike, the developing world retreats to coal in order to keep the lights on.

Abundant gas supply and attendant low prices for the next 30 years are key to end the reign of king coal. Government policy should encourage long term gas investment, including into shale in Europe, through tax incentives and demand signals, rather than sending mixed messages and calling gas a “transition fuel”.

3. Hydrogen to decarbonise non-electric energy

So far we’ve only spoken about electricity. Rookie error number one in energy circles is failing to appreciate the difference between electricity and energy. Electricity is only ~20% of total energy consumption.

The far larger share of energy, and where the real energy transition challenge lies, is burning hydrocarbons directly in vehicles, factories, homes, to generate heat and release kinetic energy.

One option is to try and “electrify everything” and decarbonise electricity: EVs, heatpumps, stoves etc. This makes sense in theory but is incredibly resource intensive, will take a long time, and is simply not feasible for many uses such as shipping, aviation, and heavy industry. (Think about how heavy your power bank is, and then imagine what sort of battery would be needed for a Boeing 747 or cruiseship. Exactly. Not gonna happen.)

We need to find smart ways to decarbonise these hard-to-abate sectors, and one answer is found in the first entry on the periodic table: hydrogen.

What’s exciting about hydrogen is that when combined with oxygen in a fuel cell it releases electricity and the only waste product is water. It can also be burnt cleanly to generate heat for industrial processes like iron and steel production (~9% of global CO2 emissions), thereby replacing coal. And because hydrogen’s energy density (the amount of energy stored in a unit of space and mass) is far superior to batteries, it’s a much better option for fueling planes, ships, and trucks. If all that wasn’t enough, hydrogen can also be used to create ammonia and nitrogen for fertilizers, replacing natural gas.

Sounds great. What’s the hold up?

Well, the trouble with hydrogen is that, despite being the most abundant element in the universe, it’s rarely found in pure form. It sticks incessantly to other atoms like oxygen (H2O) and carbon (CH4), and to use it we first need to divorce it from these other elements. The most promising zero-carbon way of doing this is through a process called electrolysis that uses electricity to split the Hs from the Os in H2O. But, and it’s a big BUT, electrolysis is extremely inefficient.

I won’t bore you with the details but the long and short of it is that by the time you convert hydrogen back into useful energy, in a truck for example, you only get about 30% of the energy that you originally put in during electrolysis. The rest is lost along the supply chain.

So hydrogen production is only justifiable from a position of energy abundance, when society has huge quantities of affordable electricity to power electrolysis. Right now, in an era of high power prices and energy scarcity, hydrogen makes little sense. This is why the nuclear build out, and the energy abundance that it can bring, is so important.

Here’s what a hypothetical nuclear + gas power grid would look like, with excess electricity to produce hydrogen:

4. Nature-based solutions for carbon removal and biodiversity protection

The final piece of the puzzle involves a technology that mother nature herself has been researching and developing for about 3.2 billion years. It’s called photosynthesis, and as it turns out, it works rather well.

Given CO2 emissions aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and considering there’s a few hundred billion tonnes of the stuff already up there in the atmosphere, it would be prudent to figure out ways of removing some of that carbon.

Try as we might with giant fans and chemical processes, no amount of human hubris has unlocked a more effective way of carbon removal than the humble tree.

Nature restoration, driven by carbon markets, should be a high priority for all governments. It’s cost effective, has huge scale potential, and comes with a whole host of other benefits like biodiversity protection and local community support.

Yes, there are some dodgy nature-based carbon schemes out there, but I presume Harold Shipman hasn’t put you off the entire medical profession?

Natural carbon markets are poised for take off but are being held back primarily by an understandable lack of trust among those holding the purse strings. Continued investment into technology (think satellite imagery, drones, sensors, digital twins), a rebuilding of carbon standards, and global coordination around what counts as a carbon credit and what doesn’t, will go a long way to help shed the Wild West perception that many have of this promising sector.

Trees have been providing us with food, shelter, and warmth since we figured out how to stand on our hind legs. Now they have the capability to make a major contribution towards a more modern challenge.

The also-rans and DNQs

Still with me?

Let’s wrap up with a quick nod to some supporting actors and those conspicuous by their absence.

I’ve focused today on the big ticket items but they’ll be complemented by all sorts of other exciting developments in energy efficiencies, carbon capture and storage, smart grids and demand response, next-gen energy storage, public transport, self-driving cars etc. The list is long and many will play roles of varying and still unknown importance. They should all be pursued and given the best chance of success.  

And then there are technologies that I just don’t see a place for.

Most notably, utility-scale wind and solar.

What purpose do they serve alongside a modern zero-carbon nuclear fleet? Some rooftop solar, sure. Decentralised solar systems to provide power to rural communities, absolutely. Giant wind and solar farms adding instability to our grid, industrializing our countryside, and generating electricity only when the weather feels like it? Why? They’re redundant in a nuclear world.

This isn’t a prediction. Making those are foolish for something as complex as this. Wind and solar crossed the Rubicon long ago and will form a big, expensive part of our energy mix for the foreseeable. But things didn’t end well for Caesar, and once we’ve woken up in a decade or two, we’ll look back and wonder what on earth we were thinking spending so much money and time building these unreliable, resource intensive, Rude Goldberg machines when, in nuclear power and uranium, we had the answer all along.

I should also briefly touch on behavioral change. Some suggest the answer to our problems is for everyone to just use less energy. This is extremely wishful thinking. Everyone wants a better quality of life, and your quality of life is determined by how much energy you can use. These are both unbreakable maxims that will drive growing energy demand for a long time to come.

There are billions in the developing world who use less power per year than your fridge. Who’s going to tell them they need to slow down and forget about owning a car?

We need a lot more energy and we need better energy.

I certainly don’t have all the answers and there are plenty of valid counter points and trade offs to my proposals. But one thing’s for sure: our current approach isn’t working. Since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, we’ve spent trillions on wind and solar yet CO2 emissions keep rising, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of our energy, and higher power prices are crippling industries and households.

It’s painful to think where we’d be today if that same effort had been directed at nuclear, natural gas, nature, and hydrogen.

I don’t doubt the motives of (most) who’ve been blowing the wind and solar trumpet, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It’s time we charted a different course.

Thanks for reading. 🛢️⚡⚛️