Tuesday's power cuts were due to an "antiquated energy system", according to
environmentalists.
Robin
Oakley, head of Greenpeace's climate and energy campaign,
said: "Britain's antiquated centralised
energy system relies on a few large power stations, such as our aging and
increasingly unreliable nuclear power plants. When they fail the impact can be
enormous. Sizewell B for example, the plant that failed on Tuesday, has the
single greatest need for back-up on the national
grid.
The ROCA 3 CHP plant in Rotterdam provides electricty and heat to 400,000 homes
Due to popular demand (well, demand anyway), The Weekly Geek now has its very own RSS feed.
Back in 1882, Thomas
Edison built the United
States' first electric power plant. Pearl Street Station, which
supplied the good folks of Lower Manhattan
with electricity for lighting and steam for manufacturing, was around 50 per
cent efficient.
125 years on, the typical
UK
power plant is just 38 per cent efficient. But those modern power plants that
have been built on the same principles as Edison's
are reaching efficiency levels of up to 95 per cent.
So how did Edison do it? And where are we going so wrong?
In this week's slightly
tardy Weekly Geek,
we're looking at combined heat and power (CHP): the system Edison
was using, and the heart of any truly clean and efficient decentralised energy
system. (Those who read the first Weekly Geek on decentralised energy may notice a fair bit of crossover.)
EfficienCity is a virtual town, but pioneering, real world communities around the UK are using similar systems. As a result, they're enjoying lower greenhouse gas emissions, a more secure energy supply, cheaper electricity and heating bills and a whole new attitude towards energy.
Posted by bex — 3 August 2007 at 4:27pm
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Comments
We recently launched a new film about the real solution to climate change (clue: it's not nuclear power - and the film explains exactly why not). The film's been sent to every MP in the country and is making its way around the interweb nicely. But we think its message - that the UK needs a new, and sane, energy system now - is crucial and we want to push it out further. So we've produced this new trailer.
Mike Smith, Executive director of Southampton Geothermal Heating Company, in the engine room at the CHP plant.
Archive content: last updated 27 August 2007
Southampton is a true pioneer of sustainable energy. Having committed to implementing decentralised energy years before many other local authorities (some of whom are only just picking up the ball), the city now has several pioneering energy schemes:
We all know that, to stop climate change, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. The government says we need nuclear power to do this. Our new film explains why nuclear power can’t stop climate change – and lays down a better, cheaper, more convenient solution:
Right-click on these links and select 'Save link as...' to download the film as a Quicktime (30MB) or Windows Media (27MB) file.
Convinced? Find out what you can do to make sure the UK gets a genuinely clean and efficient energy system.
Not convinced yet? Read on.
The single biggest use of fossil fuels in the UK isn't for electricity or for transport, but for creating heat to warm our buildings and power our industrial processes. So any solution to climate change needs to contribute to heating, as well as to electricity generation.
Nuclear power contributes almost nothing to our enormous heating requirements. In fact it contributes less than four per cent to our overall energy needs. And building new nuclear power stations (as the government wants to do) won't increase that share.
So what is the solution? Well, in the same amount of time and for less money, we could implement an energy system that will do far more to stop climate change and ensure energy security than nuclear power: a combination of renewable energy, efficiency, and combined heat and power:
The Royal Brewery, in Moss Side, Manchester (the home of Fosters, the second biggest selling lager in the UK) is well over a century old, but is now years ahead of its competitors in dealing with the energy used on site.
