Craig Venter

“Rely on the sun and the other eco-friendly things that Mother Earth has given us. We need to stop being dependent on the corrupting effect that is oil now!”

– HuffPost Super User “ProgressivePicon86″

The next energy revolution is coming – and promises the biggest disruption since the industrial revolution.

Today we assume that oil is a finite resource. The “Peak Oil” argument, for example, is not that it runs out, but that conventional sources run down, and it becomes prohibitively expensive. This obliges us to think about re-ordering society. The other assumption is that the exploitation of fossil fuels creates the rapid release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, changing the climate. Along with this, too, are arguments for re-ordering society. But with the next generations of fuels, these assumptions go out of the window. Policies based on these assumptions lose their relevance and appeal.

This promises a fundamental change in how we think about man, industry and nature. Just as Karl Marx anticipated a future of machines, where manual labour had been replaced by automation, we need new political thinking.

Replacing oil, however, isn’t so simple. The problem is that oil is a terrifically energy-dense material, and useful in many other ways. Entire industries are founded on the byproducts alone, such as fertilisers and plastics. We tend to take this for granted.

But what if oil could be created in your backyard? Or by your children as a school project? What if we thought of oil as a renewable energy? What if it was a low-carbon renewable? With cheap hydrocarbons it becomes just that, and within 15 years much of our oil will be produced this way: it’s simply an open bet on who’ll get there first.
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Energy Minister Christopher Huhne has an opinion piece in the The Daily Telegraph today – and it’s really an 800-word explanation of why we need a new Energy Minister. The subject of Huhne’s essay is new, cheap gas.

The article finds the minister on the defensive about shale gas: it’s why he’s taking his argument into print. Huhne doesn’t like this exciting new development, but he doesn’t have the power to kill it. He welcomes it through gritted teeth before explaining how many handicaps could be put in its place: the ownership of the land, the regulatory framework, the planning hurdles, and so on.

(France has bowed to its powerful nuclear lobby by imposing a moratorium on unconventional gas exploration, but since France’s electricity is already so cheap – the cheapest in Europe, in fact – it doesn’t need shale anything like as much as the rest of Europe does.)

Huhne writes that the Coalition’s energy policy is “technology neutral” – a claim guaranteed to invite widespread public ridicule. The UK’s energy policy is anything but “technology neutral”. It’s full of measures created by lobby groups for their respective energy sectors.
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For Esquire‘s May edition, an in-depth feature on the implications of new synthetic hydrocarbons, including interviews with Dr Craig Venter, and Vladimir Koutcherov. An excerpt

It’s not online so you’ll have to buy a copy: £4.25 from all good newsagents.

Is it time to decouple “Climate Change” from the Department of Energy and Climate Change? If it was the plain old “Department of Energy” again, it might spend more time researching new fuel sources. Two peers last week took aim at the department because its latest energy blueprints are ignoring the potential impact of shale gas.

The government is “re-consulting” (in its own words) on national energy blueprints, also known as the Revised Draft National Policy Statements, up to 2050. But one of the Lords expressed surprise during the gathering that the latest didn’t mention shale at all.

“There is the possibility that potentially abundant supplies of unconventional gas will result in considerably lower gas prices,” said Lord Reay, continuing:

“The Government apparently cannot find space in several hundred pages of their energy national policy statements to acknowledge the existence of this potentially game-changing development. Gas is now cheap, the price having decoupled from the oil price, and it is going to be accessible in many countries worldwide, not least in Europe. “It emits 50 per cent to 70 per cent less carbon than coal, with the result that when the previous ‘dash for gas’ took place in the 1990s and gas to some extent took over from coal, our power station carbon emissions fell overall by some 30 per cent.”
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In a utopian report, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) says the UK needs £20bn additional spending on recycling infrastructure over the next decade. The recommendation is made in a report today that proposes “unlocking value locked up in the UK’s current waste” – which sounds great – but the report fails to tell us whether the value unlocked will exceed £20bn. Alas, no attempt at all is made to quantity the costs and benefits of the recommendations – which are grand indeed.

No new public money is likely for waste infrastructure once the current PFI-funded projects are complete, which worries the engineering trade group. It has expressed concerns that current technologies are immature and unreliable, which can only deter investors. But, in a splendid bit of utopian speculation, the State of the Nation report proposes that by 2050, “the circular economy is a reality and the waste industry has fully converted into a materials supply sector”.

This is a lofty ambition: only 9 per cent of British waste comes from households to begin with. And, the ICE notes ominously, China may stop taking our recycling as it advances economically. The engineers also advocate new tiers of administration to co-ordinate waste management.
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This year, Imperial College graduated its first nuclear scientists for a very long time. After years in the doldrums, other universities are also increasing their activity. Is this a sign of a Nuclear Renaissance?

Perhaps it is. Even deep Greens are dropping long-standing objections [1] to nuclear power generation. I got in touch with Imperial’s Professor Robin Grimes, who recently co-authored a Science paper with William Nuttall indicating how the nuclear industry could re-emerge. Here’s an interview that encompasses the current state of play, and some ideas about how the next 40 years could take shape.
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The UK faces at least two years of peak-time power cuts in five years, despite the Conservatives’ pledge to revive nuclear power.

The Tories’ energy policy was published Friday, and while a revived nuclear commitment provides some of the promised “energy security”, it won’t come in time. And, amazingly, the party has committed to propping up the carbon price.

By 2015 the high cost of complying with EU environmental compliance will have taken out a third of the UK’s coal capacity – the power companies would rather close than comply – followed by two thirds of its oil powered generating capacity by 2020. Nuclear provides 14 per cent of UK electricity today, but all but one of the current generators are due to close by 2022.

That means cuts – or in the ministry’s jargon “expected energy unserved” – in just five years’ time.
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Carbon quango The Energy Saving Trust has come up with a new reason for Britons to save energy in the home. Our power stations will soon close, and you’ll need to do your bit.

That’s what one Reg reader discovered, after enquiring about the Trust’s calculations on the effectiveness of new low-energy bulbs.

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The government’s climate minister in the House of Lords dropped a clanger on Monday evening, when he claimed that the polar ice caps were melting at a record rate.

“It is indisputable that polar ice caps are melting – we can see that with our own eyes,” Lord Hunt, Minister of State of the Department of Energy, told the house. Hunt described himself as a climate “agnostic” – but he was swiftly corrected by Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor.

“My Lords, that is not true of the past year; The noble Lord’s predecessors were seriously misinformed by his officials, and I suspect that he will be too,” Lawson replied. Twisting the knife he continued: “That is a real problem for him, and I feel for him.

“The fact is that in the Antarctic, where most of the ice is, the ice is thickening and has been for some time. In the Arctic this year there has been a greater extension of ice than ever before.”

The Lords were debating the Climate Change Bill once again – which the Commons voted through on an unusually snowy October evening recently. That Bill was passed by our elected representatives by 463 votes to 3. Would the unelected upper chamber – which has a reputation for rejecting and amendment hasty legislation – be show greater scrutiny?

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Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday – the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session.
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