Need a regular up to date source of hard info on renewable energy? Renew is a 36 page newsletter on renewable energy developments and policy which has been produced by Open University Professor Dave Elliott without a break bi-monthly since 1979. It’s widely seen as a reliable and up to date source of information, news […]
Read MoreSenior Electricity and Industry Executives Discuss National Energy Policy at Claverton Energy Group Conference 23/25th October
8th Claverton Energy Group Conference 23/25th October, Wessex Water, Bath BA27WW
Read MoreNuclear and Wind are Officially Stated to be Incompatible
This statement , from E.ON and EDF was in the financial pages of the Guardian on 16th March 2009. Fred Starr and Dave Andrews put in a briefing note to this effect in the Inst of Civil Engineers Journal ” Energy” last year. But we also pointed out that nuclear cannot exist without back up from fossil, and because […]
Read More"These Fossil Fools" – Catherine Mitchell – excellent article in the Guardian on futility of market solutions to climate change
The UK’s energy policy has to focus on lowering carbon emissions by a combination of renewable energy and reducing demand. This requires a system almost entirely different from that we have in place today: one that is conducive to innovation and change; and one that is flexible and resilient to all sorts of technological futures.
Read MoreSenior Energy Analyst reports on biochar as economic method of CCS
Hi Claverton,
Just read this on bio-char.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/67843ec0-020b-11de-8199-000077b07658.html.
Sound’s good to me. At £9/tonne this seems a sizeable contribution to GHG
reduction at a carbon price we already have in the EU cap and trade system.
I think the silver buckshot Al Gore cites will have many such low tech, low
cost solutions. For me making charcoal is an intuitively correct solution
as it seems to be a simple way of compressing the natural carbon capture
cycle that can be done at low capital costs and with lots of other benefits
as well.
Rgds
M
Read More"would it be practical to store syngas as a method of allowing IGCC-CCS plants to respond to the overnight fall in demand?" Fred Starr responds
Claverton Hydrogen Storage on IGCC Sites
Dear Neil
You asked if it would be practical to store syngas as a method of allowing IGCC-CCS plants to respond to the overnight fall in demand
The prospects of the on-site storage of syngas, to enable an IGCC to vary its output seem limited. The gas that would have to be stored would have to be hydrogen. Otherwise, the processes by which the carbon in the syngas is removed would have continuously vary their throughput. Only the gasifier and air separation unit ( for supply of oxygen) would run at a constant output
Unfortunately, a very large amount of gas is produced when gasifying
Read MoreThe NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen – urgent warning
The NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen and an international team of researchers have very recently completed a paper for the Open Atmospheric Science Journal, concerning an in-depth analysis of Climate history at the Earth’s Polar regions, relating it to today’s warming conditions.
Published on 7th November 2008, the peer-reviewed research paper shows, by careful calculations on proxy data for the very distant past, that we should expect high Climate Sensitivity, the warming signal of the Earth in response to Greenhouse Gas accumulation above ground.
The team looked at the relative changes in Carbon Dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and showed that the rate of change showed strong negative “radiative forcing” clearly associated with the formation of the polar ice caps, and used that as a basis for calculating the Climate Sensitivity.
Read More2008 Claverton Energy Group Conference Papers Available
Those that have been forwarded in text format have been published as News Articles. Those in PowerPoint or PDF format have been uploaded to the website, and can be downloaded for reading at:
Read MoreIGCC plus CCS: An Objective Analysis
By F.Starr
2008 Conference Paper Synopsis: The paper briefly describes the technology of conventional IGCCs for electricity generation and shows how such “precombustion plants” need to be modified to capture CO2. The main difference is that the raw gas from the gasifier has to be treated to produce a fuel gas containing more than 90% hydrogen. This adds to the complexity of the plant. But the main reason why the large scale construction of such plants is unlikely in the near future is the absence of a large domestic and industrial market for hydrogen. The paper therefore advocates the production of substitute natural gas, with CO2 capture, as being a more realistic option which can use the existing infrastructure
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