Lexus: The hybrid debate blog

If government wants me to switch from petrol cars - which make just as much music to my ears with their turbo-charged engines as an amazing Live Aid concert -to a lifeless hybrid then they should lead by example.

When every bus and taxi in the country is run by "clean" energy then i will seriously consider switching to a hybrid car.

It is a big dissappointment that at the point my generation has reached the age and financial position where our dreams to drive powerful cars can be fullfiled, we are told switch to lifeless driving. At the same time politicians and influencial figures are able to drive their gas guzzlers freely.

Abdul, UK

The comments about nuclear not being carbon free when you take into account the lifecycle actives - yes there are some emissions, just like there are emissions when you pour the tonnes of concrete for wind turbine foundations. There are some emissions, but countless studies, with just one or two rogue and suspect exceptions, have found that nuclear and most renewables have emissions much lower than fossil.

As for uranium resources, the industry spent much of the last couple of decades using the enriched uranium that had previously been set aside for weapons, real swords into ploughshares stuff. People have only just started looking for more uranium - and they are finding it. The forty years figure in a previous post is well out of date.

Sir Bob

reading about your advocacy of nuclear power as the way forward in the Metro today infuriated me enough to actually make me come onto the internet and find your blog just so that i could open your eyes to the sheer fallacy of your argument. as my predecessors have rightly pointed out, nuclear power is NOT renewable. it is a finite resource, just like oil and gas. one day it WILL run out. the only nuclear power that is sustainable is fusion (don't confuse it with fission, they are like chalk and cheese), but we're a long way from that.

Also, you refer to wind, wave and other renewable energy as "Mickey Mouse". clearly you are not educated in this field. please allow me to educate you. the human race used 15 trillion watts of power in 2004. that may seem like quite a lot, but consider this:

Every year, waves generate 3 trillion watts of power. granted, wave power isn't the most practical way to harvest energy, but even then we could capture around 30 billion watts without breaking a sweat

Every year, wind generates over 300 trillion watts of power. thats 20 times more than our usage. capturing just 5% of it would suffice.

Every year, the amount of solar energy falling on our planet equals around one hundred thousand trillion watts. capturing just over one hundredth of a percent of this will supply our needs adequately.

but the biggest reserve of energy simply has to be geothermal. it is estimated that there is 13 trillion trillion joules of energy in the heat of the earth. with the right technology, we could extract over a trillion trillion watts, enough to power the human race for many thousands of years to come (provided we're even around that long)

do you now see that renewable energy is not "Mickey Mouse"? if anything, fossil and nuclear fuels are mickey mouse. i think its irresponsible of a man in your position to advocate views without knowing what the hell you are talking about. you have the gift of peoples ears, use it wisely. its a shame that you endorse a form of energy that creates waste which remains toxic for thousands of years over other sources that are truly renewable and produce no waste at all. i hope in the least that i have managed to open you eyes.

Regardless of the resource-related definitions of sustainability, renewables are not.

This is because they just don't generate the always-on power we need. Pursuing them is a lofty goal, but will have to conclude with a renewed focus on the few technologies that will really deliver the goods, or Volts.

Right now, which is what we're talking about, the only one is nuclear.

Well done for taking a bit of leadership on this Bob.

I hope you stick to your guns when the die-hard Lefties and Greenies start bleating. It's their whinnying about nuclear that has led the UK to the need to 'scramble' for nuclear.

^ the person above me is clearly an idiot. solar energy is always on. half the earth is always in daylight. all we need is a few of solar cells (with around 50% efficiency, which is nearing the realms of possibility) measuring a few km squared dotted at a few of locations and viola...always on power. its just a case of piping the right amount to places that need the most, and storing the excess for a rainy day. america, australia and africa are the prime locations for such cells, usually sunny and far apart enough that one of them will be receiving a hell of a lot of light at any given moment. and if you're still short on power, have wind turbines out at sea...the wind is always on at sea. ur excuse of power not being available at all times is so pathetic it makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time

^ The person above ME is clearly an idiot - the one above him (and Bob Geldof too) is talking about technologies to invest in using NOW, not ones that are 'nearing the realms of possibility' and use energy sources on the other side of the world.

Jeez!

Ha ha ha!

To the poster who advocates using solar energy from other countries, I suggest you found a company and get out and do it.

If it's the best way to generate electricity asyou claim, you'll be a zillionaire before you know it.

Or is it a hopeless, totally economically unviable dream?

I will eat my hat if there are solar power stations with anything like the capacity of a nuclear plant in ten years time when the first ones come online in the UK.

there are enough companies out there who are going to do it, like i said, solar companies are the hottest in the market today. i sincerely hope you remember those words when the solar revolution does come my friend. when your neighbours have solar cells on their roofs and are selling electricity back to the grid, making them a tidy second income (as they are currently doing in germany, home of around half the worlds solar cells), you can kick yourself. hard. countries already buy and sell electricity from each other, england and france have a dircet pipeline. im not talking pie in the sky stuff. this is happening now, and this country is being left behind. nuclear is the past, stop living there

"england and france have a dircet pipeline"

Down which comes the equivalent of two nuclear power stations that greens prevented us from building.

"I will eat my hat if there are solar power stations with anything like the capacity of a nuclear plant in ten years time when the first ones come online in the UK."

solar plants can already generate over 10 million watts each. in 10 years time it'll be 1000 times that amount, nuclear is obsolete. leave it for rich western countries to make bombs with

That was couragous Bob !
Congratulations for daring oppose the thought-police antinuclear people (there are a few of them above me)

I would like somebody in the showbusiness in my country (France) would be as courageous !

Emmanuel

Mr Geldolf, forgive me but I think you are wrong. Nuclear, I propose, is not the answer. Only 4% of our energy needs in the UK will be met by a complete replacement of our nuclear stations, and then by 2026 at the earliest. A matter of too little too late, you might think. Whilst we benefit, future generations will carry the detriment of policing and paying for it's environmental, social and economic costs for many centuries to come.

This is the way I see it:

The use of fossil fuels, as you know, are the originating source of virtually all emissions. The equitable solution is just simply not to dig ‘em up. Energy efficiency is not the answer - all it does is merely delay the need to take alternative action, thereby deferring the recognition that we need to replace fossil fuel with with clean-tech energy solutions.

2 years ago I was informed that the government's policy would be energy efficiency first, clean-tech second - which left me mightily frustrated. I asked: what if we do not have the luxury of time? Because energy efficiency merely delays implementation of alternative solutions (there is statistical evidence to demonstrate that energy efficiency actually leads to increase in use - the more energy efficient a car is, the more it is used. Any savings are thus lost). If that policy had been the other way round, I am convinced that we as a nation would be in a far better position now.

If it were calculated how much viable fossil fuel is left, then a time line can be charted and a corresponding escalation of greenhouse gases. We would then have a calculation as to what point we would need to stop using such polluting fuels before tipping over 2 degrees. But crucially, the timeline would give a framework for replacing and implementing an alternative clean energy system.

How to calculate this? Go with the Peak Oil'ist view: oil is already running out, coal is not far behind. So, 17 - 20 years all in. Scary - but this could be a good thing. It would afterall be better for the planet; there will be less emissions released. May even keep us under the so called crucial 2% increase. Hurrah. But of course this is bad news for us humans living our sophisticated well heated/air conditioned 4x4 jet-setting lifestyles if we do not have in place a replacement (and benign) energy source.

Or, take Mr Exxon's view: no worries 30+ years of oil, 100's for coal. This is a nightmare scenario. Emissions escalate whilst business as usual continues and no real effort is made to substitute alternative energy resources.

So, it's a matter of business - or the third sector (with the likes of you Mr Geldolf) - taking the lead. And so far Concentrating Solar Thermal Power is the only big solution out there. 110 x 110km of desert covered in mirrors concentrating the power of the sun to heat up water to generate steam to turn a turbine to generate enough electricity for the whole of Europe. It just needs to be rolled out as fast and as big as possible. See http://concentratingsolarpower.info

Dave Rutledge of the Caltech centre has made some calculations on the very basis of what will be released by when. http://rutledge.caltech.edu/

I would be interested to hear whether, in light of The Lazy Environmentalist's comments you would be willing to reconsider your view on nuclear.

Hi Mr Lazy!

Yes, concentrating solar power sounds amazing. The only problem with it is that you have to put your power station in someone else's country. That would be a tough sell for a politician, no?

For example, the major driving force for nuclear in the UK is to avoid having to import Russian gas. Would we really like to swap that for, say, Egyptian sunlight? What if President Mubarak decided he didn't want to sell his solar power to the UK any more?

We need power generation under our control and on our own soil.

And it also needs to be a technology that is in the shop window right now - at this exact moment - because we should have changed our ways yesterday, so to speak.

Isn't it a matter of cutting our use of oil altogether? CSP would bring to us electric cars (and buses and trucks and trains) run on clean electricity. And you wouldn't have all that problem with the inherent dangers of nuclear: no legacy waste to worry about. We still haven't worked out what to do with that.

Then there is the terrorist risk which is so often downplayed: why not bomb a plant or two if you feel so inclined? Hmm, easy targets. Meanwhile, trying to bomb a bunch of mirrors spread across a desert would be rather more difficult and with rather fewer consequences. It would merely be a matter of replacing them. Irritating, but at least you would not have the worry of the high levels of radiation contaminating plants, soil, animals and humans for hundreds if not thousands of miles.

Surely CSP is the solution - not hybrids?

In response to Anonymous above who veto's CSP on the basis that it is not home grown:

Yes you have a point:
1. we need a supergrid, linking Europe, North Africa and Middle East, some links already exist, but much more are needed, so that there can be an extensive interlinking of offshore wind as well as CSP between as many countries as possible. But if your choice of country worries you - why not consider hooking up with Spain? They are racking the stuff out and have hugely ambitious plans.

2. CSP can be supplementary to homegrown and decentralised solutions. But there is a time factor here. It will take a long time to future-proof all existing stock and new build properties with appropriate microgeneration and/or decentralised community units. CSP plants can and are built incredibly fast - it's proven mature technology in the shop window right now. It has already been in place for over twenty years (A plant takes just a couple of years from granting of licence to electricity output and many more plants can be built than the paltry amount of Nuclear we have in place)

3. HVDC links can transmit under water and over land with nominal losses - less than 10% over 3000 kilometers. By way of example, from Algeria to London would be less than 2500 km.

4. In a wider context, it matters not that these plants need be built in sunbelt countries - carbon reductions and fossil fuel replacement is not boundary specific. Indeed there is an equitable argument to build them in developing nations - there are ancillary benefits: water can be desalinated and growth of agriculture under the mirrors will provide food. Two very important needs in nations that face ever increasing water and food crises.

5. Less than one percent of all the world's desert can give us all the electricity we need - and more. Can you suggest any other solution that is capable of doing just that?

PS I'm not a Mr...

Sorry Bob,
You are undoubtedly one of these people who think the earth is powered through a long lead to a nuclear reactor on Mars. A bit of a reality check will reveal that it is infact powered by the sun and everything we have is solar. Wind and waves are caused by solar. One of the contributors above suggested that if there was as big a solar plant on earth as nuclear in ten years time, then he would eat his hat. Start Eating, because the whole earth is a solar plant and that's big. Fossil fuels are little more than stored solar energy. But to return to your Nuclear bit. Can you write out the fission cycle for Uranium?, for MOX? or for Thorium? I'm assuming you can't, and you wouldn't know much about the bitter battle being fought within the Nuclear industry between the Uranium protagonists and those for Thorium. When you see how desperate the uranium guys are not to have their mineral reserves rendered worthless by a superior product, then you will see the lot you have thrown your hat in with. It was simply a stupid thing to say. And the blogsphere being what it is, you can't retract. You will now (rightfully) share some of the blame for any disaster that occurs involving U235 or P23n. And don't give me any of these solutions which see electricity sold across national borders when it is generated form nuclear sources, but mysteriously electricity from solar can't be. Or similar for the storage issue. Because nuclear powerplants run flatout, they need to be associated with electricity storage systems like reverse hydro to store electricity, but of course the nuclear industry will maintain that the very same storage techniques wouldn't possibly work for solar generated electricity .... give us a break

I'm afraid that your comments on renewable energy v nuclear are not well informed.

Nuclear, as has been stated, is also limited. Any large scale global usage would soon see those limits reached. On that matter, just how many countries in the world would be allowed to have a nuclear programme anyway?

However, you have brought attention to the matter. So perhaps, being optomistic, together the world will get to the right answer.

If for no other reason than the unaddressed legacy of the waste left from Nuclear Fission, it is NOT and alternate. It's not just generations that will live with that legacy, long after suitable radioactive sources have been exhausted, it will be a problem for millenia.

Two forms of power are viable in renewable terms - Solar,m and so-called "Hot Rocks" or geothermal.

Solar can be deployed by beginning to use the millions of lazy, non-productive rooftops that exist in the world - in cities, and in rural areas. Connect these 9into a super-grid and you ahve a highly resilient, massively scaled/scalable solution during the day (which, ironically, is a peak time for demand). Why does electricity have to be generated in massive plants that chew up space when we can use space that we don't use for anything else anyway?

For night demand, hot rocks is availble anywhere provided you have the balls to drill deep enough into the earths crust. Some - like the Pacific Ring of Fire - have it easier than others, but here's the thing - one the hole is drilled and the generators are in place it is an inexhaustible resource in every reasonable sense of the word. The byproduct is...steam, which become water - again.

Solar and Hot Rocks have minimal greenhouse gas emissions. WRT Solar, the PVA volumes generated by using existing rooftops will quickly lead to price drops for thee technology, and acceleration in the development of and improvement of the technology. This can be started gradually - any renovation involving changes to rooflines must incoroporate Solar, new houses must have solar capable roofs and so on. As the costs drop, the technology will become cheaper for others to also install on their roofs.

This problem came about because people thought outside the sqaure but didn't consider the longer term problems caused. Lets no repeat that by leaping at another short term, limited life solution that will also leave a legacy (one that will arguably take longer to dissipate than the carbon problem). Lets, instead, look at truly sustainable solutions, then figure innovative ways to apply them.

Nuclear energy is only CO2 intensive if we don't help the mining industry switch to electric power. Many large machines already use electric motors to drive heir wheels, they just carry dirty great big diesel generators with them to create the electricity.

Industrial strength hybrid engines would offer the potential for nuclear energy to become far less CO2 hungry than it is now. To focus only on what they produce now is a farce, the sort of chicken and the egg argument that goes nowhere.

To e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e above:

Did you see that Bob said, "I don't care what anyone says: we're going to go with it, big-time"?

And he's right. It is not you and I that decide how 'we' want our electricity generated, it is private companies operating in a market bounded by government policy. Thatcher got rid of central planning ages ago.

So we'll have exactly as much wind, nuclear, solar, coal, hydro and gas as the low-carbon incentives lead to. The decisions on that will be made by large companies with the responsibility to keep the lights on. And they want to use nuclear because they're confident it would be damn good at generating electricity!

Dear Sir Bob

The main quality of wind and solar energies is a production far too weak, too unpredictable an too expensive to meet our civilization needs.

Using appropriate technologies in atom fission (such as fast neutron reactors) which allows the use of any kind of uranium, plutonium, thorium and many others elements will give us tenths of thousands years to find other way to make energy (why not fusion ?) with very few nuclear waste.

If all our efforts in R&D fail to give us a new energy, it will be time to return to animal and wind energy, and (why not ?) to go “back to the trees”.

But we have plenty of time (10 000 or 20 000 years) before doing that

In the meantime, you are perfectly right, all the country of the world must develop – as soon as possible – nuclear energy on the largest possible scale.

This does not prevent R&D in other energy fields,

Jean-Claude

I'd call 3 major Nuclear accidents over 60 years (Three mile island in the USA, Windscale in the UK and Chernobyl in the Ukraine) not to mention accidental spills at Sellafield, tonnes of radioactive waste, security issues from terrorism and sites that take centuries to decommission Mickey Mouse!

I'd call three major accident over 60 years pretty damn safe!

Note: All 3 Nuclear reactors where the same flawed design. I think Horizontal rods not vertical rods. Therefore retified.
Like cars new designs create better and more efficient and safer to use. Many steam-engine-trians use to blow up when first used, with progress we now have magno-trains that can be run on carbon free power.
Nuclear power is no great evil,.... as all renewable? energy derives from the "sun" which is a nuclear power generator. Every tree lives on N-Power (fisson)

Save the plannet from ignorance.

Every tree lives on N-Power (fusion)!!!

Annette Mercer, Entrepreneurs with Conscience.

Visionary engineer, Buckminster Fuller, designer of the Geodesic dome (used at the Eden Project) once said of the potential of large scale (or concentrated) solar power: "There's no energy shortage, there's no energy crisis, there's a crisis of ignorance." Get back to Google Sir Bob, you're asking the wrong questions.

Whilst there are energy inputs, and in practice some fossil fuel use, associated with the whole life cycle of nuclear energy generation, for example the mining of uranium, the same can be said for all other energy systems - for example solar and wind require silicon, bauxite and iron to be mined, milled, transported and refined.

The same whole-of-life-cycle analysis methodologies need to be applied equally to all these energy systems - and when this is done, nuclear fission energy is up there with the best of them, such as wind and hydro, and photovoltaic solar has the highest whole-of-life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions intensity of any non fossil fuel energy system.

All our resources are finite - the hydrogen in the sun is finite, the geothermal heat within the earth is finite, the deuterium in our oceans for fusion, the potential energy of the Moon's orbit is finite, and the free energy of the universe itself is finite - as per the Second law of Thermodynamics.

One day, all our energy sources will run out, and one day, every source of energy in the entire universe will have run out.

In any literal, meaningful, scientific sense, there is no such thing as "renewable energy".

There is sufficient uranium and thorium on earth to supply the energy needs of an advanced civilisation for every person on earth - for every person on earth to have access to energy the way we do, which is a significant factor in beating poverty and increasing standards of living, for no less than one million years, if it is used efficiently, meaning non wasteful fuel cycles and Generation IV reactors.

-- Luke, http://enochthered.wordpress.com

God gave us the great nuclear fusion reactor in the sky. Thats probably the safest place to put it. No fear of spills, leaks, or terrorist attack.

The future is solar.

The choice between nuclear and renewables is a false dichotomy. We need both.

There is certainly a lot of energy to be had from renewable sources. The trick is extracting the energy cheaply, in quantity, and at the times and places where we want it. Hydro certainly works, but most of the major sites have been developed, and many of those remaining (largely in Africa) would cause more environmental problems than they solve due to the release of methane from flooded vegetation. Solar has huge potential, especially if it is based in space, but we are a generation or two away of realising this potential. CSP is part of the solution, but it unrealistic to expect the UK to import a large fraction of its electricity from a distant location. This wouldn't be secure. Solar, wind, and geothermal all have their place in certain parts of the world where the geography is suitable - but nuclear fission is the most scalable general solution in the medium term.

As others have pointed out, the lifecycle CO2 emissions for nuclear are certainly as low as the best renewable sources (wind and hydro) and significantly better than others (solar and biomass). And, of course, the lifecycle emissions from nuclear can be as low as 1% of those from fossil fuel. Furthermore, as we reduce the use of fossil fuel in mining and fuel enrichment, the emissions from nuclear will drop further. It is, without doubt, a low carbon source of energy.

I agree that nuclear fission really becomes sustainable if we use breeder reactors to use the fuel more efficiently. Yes it involves the creation of plutonium, but it also involves burning plutonium as fuel. Plutonium is not as dangerous as the myths would have us believe. There has never been a recorded death from plutonium poisoning. In contrast 300,000 people die prematurely from air pollution each year in Europe alone, mostly from the byproducts of burning fossil fuel.

The suggestion of terrorist attacks on nuclear power stations is simply scaremongering. Apart from military installations, nuclear power stations present the hardest possible target to attack. They are physically very secure, and robust to the point of withstanding aircraft impacts. Given the level of security, they make a poor choice of target for terrorists. Any attack would probably fail. But more to the point, even if an attack succeed, the most the terrorist could expect would be a release of radiation which would take years or decades to actually cause any fatalities. There are many easier targets, with more immediate potential for carnage.

Regarding the disposal of nuclear waste, the solution has been known for decades. Deep geological disposal ensures that the waste is passively safe forever. The repository does not need to be guarded after it is sealed. The waste is sequestered deep underground and decays to safe levels long before it can possibly be transported into the biosphere.

These repositories are designed such that the risk of causing a death at any point in the future is less than 1 in a million per year. That is, less than one individual cancer death per million years, on average. Given that the waste decays to safe levels in less than a million years (in fact it returns to the level of natural ore within centuries) we would not expect anybody to ever be killed by one. (Once again, I contrast this with the 300,000 premature deaths caused by fossil-fuelled air pollution _every_year_ in Europe.)

The high level waste repositories are safer still. The risk for these peaks at about 1 in a hundred billion per year. In the short term the risk is well below 1 in a trillion per year.
http://www.corwm.org.uk/pdf/1529%20-%20Long-term%20safety%20of%20geological%20disposal%20-%20Nirex%20response.pdf

Given that the risk from natural background radiation is about 1 in 10,000 per year, any reasonable person would consider the waste repository to be safe.

Colin

Bob,

I agree with you Re: Nuclear.

Let me also point out that France and Japan have solved the "Nuclear Waste Problem" by recycling the spent fuel rods.

Problem is not cars - it is jet engine aircraft. Find a way to fuel aircraft with liquid hydrogen from nuclear reactors and carbon emissions will go down, now what about the heat generated?

Dear Bob Geldof,

You are completely right in considering nuclear power as one of the cost effective solutions to climate change.
Transforming small quantities of matter into energy, multiplied by the square of the speed of light, is one of mankind’s conquests that will not go away, will only improve. Nuclear energy is by far the more competitive, safer and cleaner way of producing significant amounts of electricity.
Renewables are developing fast and an effort to decrease their costs and increase their reliability must continue. However, we would be misleading the public by making them believe that it’s possible to solve the present problems without clearly reinforcing nuclear power. Present technology of PV power has a life cycle balance of CO2 content that is 10 times higher than nuclear, hydro or wind powers, and costs roughly 10 times more than nuclear, and 3 times more than wind or hydro. See the 4th assessment of the IPCC for confirmation: "http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter4.pdf"
The only exception is biofuels which can, in a single stroke, give a clear and significant contribution to climate change by decreasing drastically CO2 emissions, alleviating poverty and famine, and increasing the security of supply.
Only 1 condition exists: that protectionism in the USA and in the EU, where all arable land is being used, disappears and makes room for imports from Sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America where 70 % of all unused arable land in the World exists. Unfortunately, a coalition of interests in the oil industry, the protected rich north hemisphere farmers and the usual green verbal terrorists, is trying to destroy this other cost effective answer to the transportation sector. Cultivating oil beans in the tropics will provide fuel and food to those with the greatest needs. Bioethanol from Brazilian sugar cane costs less than half of the cost of gasoline from crude from refineries in the USA or in the EU without taxes.
So courage and go ahead with your lead and your right vision regardless of what ignorance grown out of demagogy and vested interest will try to refuse.
So if we could overcome the wall of ignorance and atavism, climate change will, in fact, represent a major opportunity to combat poverty, security of supply and famine, without a major cost to society. Insisting in solving the problem with not yet mature technologies ignoring the existing cost competitive solutions, will only lead to distortions in the better allocation of scarce resources.

Pedro de Sampaio Nunes
Former Director of Energy Technologies in the European Commission

"In the UK, we'll soon have to scramble for more nuclear power. On this issue, I don't care what anyone says: we're going to go with it, big-time. We may mess around with wind and waves and other renewable energy sources, trying to make them sustainable, but they're not. They're Mickey Mouse. But to really help the planet, we have to go nuclear, fast."

Bob, you are a mouth piece for the vast corporations and have been influence by the dictators at the UN. You say you want to help the planet, but nuclear is short term, do you want the planet to producing lots of radioactive material with a eon-long legacy?

Wind and solar aren't mickey mouse. If we all isolated our home properly, then we wouldn't need anything more than the increase solar and other alternative energy gives us. Also Hybrid tech is a good start.

You're full of rubbish. You see things in 2D. Don't you know the reason why the UN exists? They are using you to help them form single opinions throughout the world.