EUMENA Supergrid in 5 years?!?
Concentrated Solar Power
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Michael Foster.]
6 pm
Dr. Howard Stoate (Dartford) (Lab): I feel privileged to be given the opportunity to raise this extremely important issue tonight. Concentrated solar power is a concept of literally dazzling simplicity. It is an idea so simple, and with such extraordinary promise as a means of power generation, that it seems astonishing that in Europe we are only just waking up to its potential, more than 20 years after its first use in California.
The technology is very straightforward. A CSP plant uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and create heat. The resultant heat is then used to drive turbines and generators, just like in a conventional power station. Heat can also be stored in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue at night or on cloudy days. For once, no amount of hyperbole is excessive. CSP represents, as The Guardian stated recently,
“A vast source of energy that holds the promise of a carbon-free, nuclear-free electrical future for the whole of Europe, if not the world.”
I could not put it better myself. In terms of its scale, therefore, CSP is a world away from the concept of solar photovoltaic technology such as the domestic roof-top solar panels with which we are more familiar in this country. The only issue with CSP is that it needs direct sunshine, and lots of it, to maximise its potential. Needless to say, it is not a technology that we will be seeing too much of in Dartford—or even, dare I say it, in Croydon, North.
Europe’s first commercially operating CSP plant has just opened in Spain, just outside Seville. It currently generates about 11 MW of electricity—enough to power up to 6,000 homes—but its operators hope that it will eventually produce sufficient power to meet the needs of Seville’s 600,000 residents. The deserts of north Africa, however, offer us the greatest potential as far as CSP is concerned. Each year, each square kilometre of hot desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Indeed, it has been calculated that we could produce the world’s entire electricity needs by covering less than 1 per cent. of the world’s deserts with CSP plants.
Desert-based CSP plants have the added advantage of allowing fresh water for crop cultivation and land irrigation to be created through the desalination of sea water using simply the waste heat from the CSP plants. The partially shaded areas under the solar mirrors also have many potential uses, including crop cultivation. It is even possible to imagine some energy-intensive industries choosing to locate in deserts to take advantage of CSP technology.
The key to realising CSP’s potential, however, is finding a reliable and above all cost-effective means of getting the power from the deserts to major population centres in Europe and elsewhere. The technology does now exist. Using high-voltage direct current, or HVDC, transmission lines, it is feasible and cost-effective to transmit electricity for more than 3,000 km. With modern high-voltage DC transmission, only about 3 per cent. of power is lost for each 1,000 km.
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That means, for instance, that solar electricity could be imported from north Africa to London with a loss of power of only about 10 per cent. That compares extremely favourably with the 50 to 70 per cent. losses that have been accepted for many years in conventional alternating-current grids. Moreover, it has been calculated that 90 per cent. of the world’s population live within 2,700 km of a hot desert and could be supplied with solar energy from there.
The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Co-operation, or TREC—a group of scientists and engineers in Europe, the middle east and north Africa—is trying to identify ways of exploiting the energy-generating potential of hot deserts. TREC is calling for the creation of an HVDC supergrid to enable the transmission across the region of energy derived from north African CSP plants.
Like a significant number of hon. Members, I strongly support the case for an HVDC grid. Such a supergrid could allow energy from other renewable sources to be transmitted across Europe. Britain could put in wind power, Norway hydropower and central Europe biomass and geothermal power. An HVDC supergrid could also be integrated relatively easily with existing HVAC—high-voltage alternating current—transmission grids. The potential is so large that one may consider the possibility of extending the use of clean solar electricity into areas where gas, oil and coal are currently the dominant sources of energy. It would, for example, be perfectly feasible to expand the use of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, extend the electrification of railways, make greater use of electricity-powered heat pumps, and so on.
Apart from the importing of solar electricity from desert regions, the proposed HVDC supergrid has several other advantages. The chief one is the security of energy supply: a shortfall in any one area could be met by spare capacity in another area or another country. It would also reduce wastage: surplus power in any one area could simply be transferred to where it is needed. Conversely, the impact of the variability of certain renewable technologies such as wind power could be reduced by being able to integrate supply across a wide area. The supergrid could also allow the UK to become a net exporter of clean electricity from our wide array of renewable sources, such as wind, waves and tidal power, which we possess in abundance. The economic opportunities that that would create for the UK are considerable.
Of course, set-up costs are considerable. The estimated cost of a Europe, middle east and north Africa-wide HVDC supergrid comprising 20 transmission lines of about 5 GW each is about €45 billion, while the approximate cost of two 5 GW transmission lines between north Africa and the UK is about €5 billion. However, given that those costs would be shared among several countries and spread over many years, the cost to the UK Government would be reasonable. It is an investment that will begin to look more and more attractive over time as the cost of generating power from renewable sources falls—assuming, of course, that the right package of incentives is put in place—while world oil prices look certain to rise still further as oil becomes scarcer and more difficult to extract, quite apart from the obvious imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
There is a pressing need for concerted governmental action to promote CSP and pave the way for an HVDC grid. Although CSP plants are being built and HVDC transmission lines are being installed, actions and changes in policies are needed to remove unnecessary obstacles and smooth the path for such developments. Those changes are needed mainly at the level of the European Union or beyond, but there are things that can be done in the UK. The UK Government can also help to influence the nature of decisions taken in the EU and elsewhere.
The first issue that needs to be tackled is the use of overt or hidden subsidies for non-renewable sources of energy. In a report published in 2004, the New Economics Foundation made a conservative estimate that worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to about $235 billion a year, and not much seems to have changed since then. Those kinds of support for old-style sources of power have the effect of tilting the playing field against the renewable sources of energy, including solar power, that we now so urgently need. All such subsidies should be removed.
The second challenge is to ensure that a proper price is paid for CO2 emissions. To a large extent, users of fossil fuels are still being allowed to use the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for carbon dioxide—that must stop. The European emissions trading scheme has to work better than it has done up until now. In addition, there is a good case for introducing a system of tradable personal carbon allowances throughout the EU and beyond.
Thirdly, we have to ensure that the right framework of incentives is in place to encourage the growth of the renewable sector. Although CSP has quite a long history, its development has been held back because historically fossil fuels have been cheap. That means that it has not yet achieved the economies of scale and refinements in technology that will bring prices down, as is beginning to happen with wind power. If overt and hidden subsidies are removed from non-renewable sources of power, and if a proper price is charged for CO2 emissions, that will make a big difference to the economics. However, there may still be a need for some short to medium-term support for renewable sources of power, including CSP, in the form of feed-in tariffs. That system has proved to be very successful in Germany and Spain. By contrast, the UK’s system of renewables obligation certificates has so far failed to produce the expansion of renewables that we so desperately need. Moreover, if countries in Europe, north Africa and the middle east are to benefit from the CSP technologies, an international framework of feed-in tariffs will probably be needed.
Fourthly, we have to create a single market for electricity throughout Europe and beyond. It should be possible for any customer in the UK to buy solar power from any supplier in north Africa and the middle east in the same way that anyone in the UK can buy electricity from any UK supplier. Both the British Government and the European Commission are in favour of such development within the EU, but that does mean unbundling power generation from power transmission. They need encouragement to make that reform in the face of powerful economic interests that currently enjoy monopolistic benefits from the vertical integration of power generation with power transmission. Although the single market for electricity that exists within the
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EU would be a great help, it would be even better if it were extended beyond Europe to the middle east and north Africa.
Finally, we have to put in place the necessary policies to allow for the creation of a single, integrated high-voltage DC grid across the whole of Europe, the middle east and north Africa, or at the every least across the EU. At present, HVDC lines are commissioned on a case-by-case basis without reference to any overarching plan. It would be better if the EU, in collaboration with countries in north Africa and the middle east, decided to take the lead in terms of building the HVDC supergrid across the region. A good second-best would be a Europe-wide supergrid.
It would probably be best if such a project were funded by several national Governments, which is feasible. We could not integrate the road networks throughout Europe without each country paying its own share, and the same thing could easily be envisaged for a HVDC supergrid. There is no reason why such a grid could not be up and running within 10 to 15 years if it got the right type of governmental backing. It could be done much sooner than that if we simply integrated the existing AC grid and upgraded it to the necessary standard. I am told that that could be achieved in five years.
It is also possible to plan, design and build CSP plants fairly quickly, certainly compared with the process for conventional power plants. The lead-in time for building a CSP plant is about one year and the building time is about three years. Achieving that goal in the UK will require our Government, together with our partners in Europe, to make a strong commitment to CSP and the creation of an HVDC grid. Given the strong economic case made in the Stern report for strong, early action to combat climate change, I suggest that the Government have to act immediately.
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