Mari Martiskainen on fuel poverty for ‘The Conversation’

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As thousands die, the UK must face up to its responsibilities on fuel poverty

Mari Martiskainen, University of Sussex

As we approach winter, many of us start turning the heating back on, but there are thousands of people across the UK who dread the onset of colder weather as they are forced into the fuel poverty trap. It is a phenomenon that kills, and worse, something we have become accustomed to. Another year, another set of headlines that should shock us into action, but rarely do.

In 2013, an estimated 2.35m households lived in fuel poverty in England. Furthermore, there are an estimated 26,000 deaths each year which can be linked to the cold weather during the winter months, and at least partly explained by fuel poverty.

Fuel poverty statistics for England (2003-2013)
DECC, 2015. Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics Report.

Fuel poverty is a persistent problem, but what exactly is it? There is no one global definition of fuel poverty, but many countries use the initial UK definition. In brief, you are in fuel poverty if you need to spend more than 10% of your income on heating and electricity in order to have the required energy services to cook, have lighting, keep warm, have a hot shower and so on. This definition has been updated since, but the old version is still widely used across EU countries. It also means that it is possible to be fuel poor even though you may not be otherwise living below the poverty line.

It is estimated that anywhere between 50m-125m people live in fuel poverty in the EU, and that figure is expected to rise in the coming years. Whichever end of that range you choose to believe, then this is a significant number considering that there are around 500m people living in the EU. While the issue of fuel poverty has been recognised in many countries, awareness is still lacking.

Cause and effect

There are usually three causes linked to fuel poverty: the poor energy efficiency of housing stock; high energy bills; and low incomes. As a combination, these three factors often mean that people vulnerable to fuel poverty have to make hard decisions over which room of the house to heat and whether to wash clothes by hand or not wash them at all. Furthermore, being fuel poor also means that you are more likely to suffer from poor health, especially respiratory diseases like asthma, as well as anxiety and depression. The Fuel Poverty Advisory Group estimated in February that the impact of cold homes cost the NHS some £1.36 billion every year.

There have been numerous programmes in the UK, which have been aimed at fuel poverty, including the Winter Fuel Payments. However, it seems that official action on fuel poverty has not been able to get to the root of the problem – especially given that the government’s commitment to deliver energy efficiency measures has reduced considerably in the last two years.

Being fuel poor often has a stigma attached to it and it is not always easy for authorities to immediately recognise those who may be in need of help. The persistence of the problem has prompted others to dive in. These have included health workers, who can see a benefit in helping those who live with fuel poverty and have respiratory or other health complaints. It is a simple equation as lifting people out of fuel poverty usually also improves their health, which then reduces their need for hospital visits. You also get interventions from civil society; community groups which address sustainable energy often have both the means and the motivation to offer help.

Energy Cafe in action.
South East London Community Energy (SELCE)

Those community-run initiatives can include “energy cafés” like the events run by South East London Community Energy. Around ten energy cafes have been set up across the UK by different groups, to provide information and advice for those vulnerable to fuel poverty. They often involve getting volunteers into a high street location for a limited amount of time, from where they can hand out advice about energy issues to the public. This might focus on energy market engagement – like how to switch energy providers, on energy efficiency or behaviour change. These community-led cafés are pretty well placed to reach those at risk of fuel poverty; it can be as simple as an informal discussion over a cup of tea.

Stepping in

However, the immediate question this raises is clear. When ad hoc initiatives start to address national concerns, then it is time to ask whose responsibility is it really to tackle fuel poverty, and who should pay for it? Should it be community groups, health authorities or the government?

Community groups are well placed to access people in a subtler manner than government agencies or energy companies might be able to. However, many rely on volunteer time and grant money – both often intermittent and limited.

While fuel poverty has been tackled from many angles, the problem ultimately cannot be solved without dedicated, long-term, government action to address the quality of the housing stock, not only in terms of improved energy efficiency but also in terms of improved quality of life. It is vital that we as a society address fuel poverty as part of a wider ethics issue, and ask the government can it really afford to lose another 26,000 people to fuel poverty this winter?

The Conversation

Mari Martiskainen, Research Fellow, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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All at sea: making sense of the UK’s muddled nuclear policy

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A new ‘The Conversation’ post by Phil Johnston and Andy Stirling

Philip Johnstone, University of Sussex and Andy Stirling, University of Sussex

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has recently been waving huge wads of cash at different (but similarly delinquent) parts of UK nuclear policy. In August, he sailed triumphantly up the Clyde to the Trident-hosting Faslane Naval base to announce £500m of investment. This was a move many considered to be jumping the gun, or even “arrogant” given that no final decision has been made on its renewal.

A few weeks later, on his tour of China, Osborne was announcing an astonishing £2 billion loan guarantee to city investors if the developers of the Hinkley C reactor go bust. And this is additional to a guaranteed strike price of £92.50 per megawatt hour for 35 years (roughly double the current price of electricity – and significantly more than the current strike price for several renewables). As Simon Jenkins writes in relation to the chancellor’s recent announcements: “You can accuse George Osborne of many things, but austerity isn’t one of them”.

No laughing matter

It has got to the point with Hinkley C where one must wonder how Osborne, the secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd and the chief executive of EDF, Vincent de Rivaz, manage to keep straight faces while repeating what a good deal the project will be for everybody. The French state-owned energy firm EDF is due to partner with the Chinese under the deal announced by Osborne in Beijing, and Rivaz’s boss, Jean-Bernard Levy, has admitted that the Chinese state is the only investor that can be persuaded that the project is viable.

Even this is only possible, with still-secret commitments that the Chinese can then build their own further nuclear power stations in the UK. Indeed, there is now virtually no commentator in the British media, or elsewhere, who seriously considers the Hinkley C project to be a sensible idea. As the most expensive nuclear power station ever built, left and right are united in recognising it as one of the worst infrastructure project decisions in British history. Experts formerly claiming nuclear to be a “necessity” now seem to have realised that other low-carbon pathways are not only possible, but manifestly more attractive.

Off the grid. Power games.
Nayu Kim, CC BY

British journalists who were noisily insisting people were wrong to protest against Hinkley C are now themselves equally vociferously arguing against the power station. As support for renewables are cut and commitments to Hinkley remain, international observers look on in wonder at UK energy policy – but for all the wrong reasons.

It seems a sorry end for the unusual partisan attachment that the UK government has shown for new nuclear since 2008. With all the efforts of orchestrated pro-nuclear advocacy – lambasting anyone daring to depart from complete ideological commitment to new nuclear – it might be expected that nuclear plans would be looking more secure. But the main aims now seem to be blame management and saving face.

Route map

Never plausible to anyone recalling past episodes of nuclear enthusiasm, the latest bout of zeal for a “nuclear renaissance” has now lost all credibility. With global investments in renewable electricity two years ago overtaking those in all fossil fuel generation put together, the direction of change is clear. Numerous international assessments show renewables are already price-competitive even with optimistic costings for new nuclear.

Panel beaters. Renewables are outpacing nuclear.
BELECTRIC UK, CC BY-SA

Despite better nuclear engineering and a worse renewable resource, developments in Germany reinforce the picture. Even in the UK, where official analysis tends to remain eccentrically romantic about nuclear, the picture has long been clear for anyone with an open mind. As early as 2003 the most detailed energy white paper for decades found nuclear power “unattractive” – before being overturned by a cursory revision that was itself rejected by judicial review for being too superficial.

Specialist analyses for the UK government – of kinds that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has resisted making public – repeatedly find many renewables to offer better value than new nuclear. This is borne out in the government’s own data for electricity contracts. And, for any project with such a long lifetime, perhaps even more damning is that renewable costs keep dropping, while nuclear costs keep rising.

So it is an understatement to say it is odd that DECC is cutting support for onshore wind, solar power and ending support for home energy efficiency – while unswervingly staying committed to extortionate new nuclear power. Former minister for energy, Ed Davey, puts it bluntly:

Twitter

For Davey, the only explanation can be one of partisan commitment by Osborne – because “he just wanted a nuclear power plant”. It is sure that Osborne is no environmentalist. With so much nuclear work contracted abroad and UK employment allowed to haemorrhage in other sectors – for instance in steel and solar power – it doesn’t seem Osborne is motivated by jobs.

Attracting Chinese infrastructure investment may play a role, but the realities make it clear there are many more economically promising alternatives than nuclear. And encouraging Chinese involvement in a technology with such grave national security implications further compounds the oddity. George Osborne’s nuclear obsession really does require some kind of explanation.

‘Deep state’

As we have explored elsewhere, perhaps the best clue lies in Osborne’s trip up the Clyde to Faslane; maybe the real commitment here is to maintaining Britain’s nuclear arsenal. Amid the clamour of the recent China visit, it was also announced that a big slice of Hinkley contracts would go to Rolls Royce – the makers of Britain’s nuclear submarine reactors.

HMS Vigilant returns to port.
Defence Images, CC BY-NC

The calculation seems to be, that trickle-down from foreign power reactor manufacturers may be just enough to sustain a national industrial capability sufficient to continue the nuclear-armed status that current debates remind is so emotively cherished both by Tories and at the top of Labour. There are tantalising signs that this lay behind the strange reversal in nuclear white papers mentioned above. If this is not at the bottom of Osborne’s mind, it is difficult to know what is.

If so, the implications for the health of UK politics are extremely serious. The Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party is raising these issues anew. All sides are limbering up for the coming argument over Trident. But if the above analysis is true, then massive financial pre-commitments are being made (and some already firmly in place) on an unprecedented scale, that risk effectively locking in a decision before the process of making it has ostensibly begun.

With mainstream press reports of senior British Army figures mooting mutiny under a Corbyn government, this carries more than a whiff of something akin to an unaccountable British “deep state”. For anyone who cares about democracy – whatever their views on nuclear power or nuclear weapons – now is the moment to ask some searching questions about what nuclear policy is doing to British politics. And there seems no-one better to ask than Osborne.

The Conversation

Philip Johnstone, Research Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex and Andy Stirling, Professor of Science & Technology Policy, SPRU and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Small Modular Reactors – a real prospect? by Gordon MacKerron

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Despite ongoing and major delays in financing Hinkley Point C, which would be the first new nuclear power station in the UK for over 25 years, enthusiasm for new nuclear power remains high in several quarters.  This includes the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), a public-private partnership between the UK Government and energy and engineering companies.  It has just produced an ‘insights’ report on the future UK role of nuclear power.[1]

Although the report is about all potential future nuclear technologies, it gives little attention to the large scale reactors that are the only currently feasible technology choice for nuclear.  But in considering such reactors, it now believes that in its ‘optimistic’ scenario for the future (‘Clockwork’) the possible feasible total capacity by 2050 of large reactors is 35 GWe, down from a previous maximum of 40 GWe.  Given that the UK Government gave the green light for nuclear power back in 2008 and the earliest we are now likely to get any power from new reactors is around 2025, this would still be going some.

What the report is really interested in exploring is the potential for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which ETI sees as potentially complementary to large reactors.[2]  SMRs are reactors of below 300 MWe, (some 4 or more times smaller than current designs), none of which yet exists, though there are many possibilities.  ETI argues that 21 GWe of these SMRs might be in place by 2050, an apparently modest total compared to the 63 GWe of ‘theoretical capacity’ of SMRs for the same year.  All this is in the context of the ETI’s optimistic, high-growth scenario – its more pessimistic scenario (‘Patchwork’) is not considered, so we are in an exclusively nuclear–positive world.  In this scenario, ETI seems to suggest that SMRs are a good prospect.

However there are at least two serious problems – according to ETI’s own account – that could prove destructive to the SMR ambition.

The first is that ETI only expects that SMRs might be economically viable if there were a pre-existing district heating network at city-scale.  SMRs could feed otherwise wasted heat from the nuclear reaction into this network – in addition to feeding electricity into the grid.  But this network would already have to exist and have been paid for.  The costs of adding this network to the costs of SMRs is, implicitly but clearly, enough to render SMRs economically unviable.  There is no obvious reason to expect these multiple heating networks to be so conveniently available as a ‘free good’ to SMRs on so large a scale, if at all.

Second there is the economic appraisal itself.  Given that the construction costs of SMRs are yet entirely unknown, but will be dominant in overall costs, ETI is in a difficult position in trying to make a stab at what these costs might be.  Its report says that its estimates are ‘independent of any specific vendor estimates’ and ‘are not derived from the traditional bottom up application of established power plant cost breakdown structures’.  Unfortunately ETI does not say exactly how its cost estimates are derived, nor show any intermediate steps in this process.  Given that there cannot be any commercial confidentiality issues involved because of the ‘independence’ of the estimates.  This omission is unfortunate, especially in the light of chronic historic optimism in previous nuclear cost estimates, even when designs are well established.

There are three further issues with the ETI report.  The first is the assertion, muted but clear, that a major objective is for the UK to acquire full IPRs in any SMRs that might be deployed.  While development of indigenous technology capabilities is generally desirable, the UK has no serious capabilities in SMRs at present.  The acquisition of intellectual property rights (IPRs) would be a long and costly process and ETI do not clarify how this might be done.  It would also seriously extend timescales and highlights tensions between climate change-derived urgency and other worthwhile objectives.  Given that the UK has no ambitions to acquire IPRs for the three reactor types currently being pursued, it is not at all clear why this becomes so important for SMRs if low carbon is the dominant objective.

Second there is the almost total neglect of the need for public engagement and consent for SMRs, especially as they would need to be sited relatively close to cities (so that the district heating systems would be viable).  This might or might not be a show-stopper but it certainly constitutes a major public acceptance risk and at the very least suggests that major delays are likely.

Finally there is the unsupported assertion that ‘action needs to be taken now if the option to deploy SMRs …is not to be closed off’, echoing similar remarks by the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change a few months ago. [3]  This makes no sense at all.  It would be much more prudent to wait and see whether other countries’ proposed deployment of SMRs proves successful before premature commitments are made to a technology that is economically and socially high-risk.  And if, as seems probable in a time of continuing reductions in public expenditure, no such supportive public action will be taken now,[4] this kind of rhetoric may easily backfire.

Gordon smilingSo what can we conclude from this report?  It may reflect growing disillusion within the nuclear community with the large reactors currently proving so hard to finance and deploy.  Whether this is the case or not, ETI – while advocating early development of SMRs in the UK – have in practice demonstrated quite how thin the current case for SMR pursuit really is.

Gordon MacKerron

[1] Energy Technologies Institute Nuclear – the role for nuclear within a low carbon energy system An insights report, October 2015

[2] Small Modular Reactors are a topic of recurring current interest.  See ‘Small modular reactors – the future of nuclear power?’ – A blog by Gordon MacKerron and Phil Johnstone, 2 March 2015

[3]  House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee Small nuclear power 4th report, Session 2014-2015, HC 347, 17 December 2014

[4] The Government’s response to the Energy and Climate Change Committee cited above makes no commitment to significant expenditure, instead concentrating on further studies.  House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee Small nuclear power – Government response to the Committee’s 4th report,  Session 2014-2015, HC 1105 5 March 2015

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Florian Kern on Carbon Capture & Storage in the UK

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Photograph of Dr Florian Kern

Could Canada hold the key to Britain’s rotten record on carbon capture?

If you want to stop carbon entering the atmosphere and speeding up the process of climate change there are two things you can do: stop using fuels which produce it, or capture it before it does any damage. In a society which is only slowly moving away from its reliance on fossil fuels, that second part of the equation would seem to be utterly crucial. Odd then that carbon capture and storage in the UK has become such a sorry tale of delays, cancellations and uncertainty.

At the end of last month, North Yorkshire power station Drax announced it would not invest further in the planned White Rose demonstration project – a stand alone power plant which would have captured some 90% of the CO₂ emissions it produced, or about 2m tonnes per year. It is only the latest setback – and the company’s operations director Pete Emery blamed the government for the decision:

We are confident the technology we have developed has real potential, but have reluctantly taken a decision not to invest any further in the development of this project. The decision is based purely on a drastically different financial and regulatory environment and we must put the interests of the business and our shareholders first.

Commercialisation

The rather uncomfortable truth here is that even though £1 billion of subsidies have been available in the UK since 2007, not a single final investment decision to build a large-scale, integrated demonstration project has been taken in the UK – or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. And this is despite the fact that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are seen as a crucial part of climate mitigation strategies by many international organisations including the International Energy Agency and governments around the world, the UK government among them.

Critics of CCS point out that the technology merely extends carbon lock-in and that prolonging the use of fossil fuels such as coal has a number of other undesirable consequences such as causing air and water pollution at mining sites as well as mining accidents. But notwithstanding those doubts, projects such as Drax’s White Rose are supposed to be the next important step to demonstrate and eventually commercialise the technology.

Next in line?
Shell, CC BY-NC-ND

In 2010 the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) aim was to ensure CCS was ready for commercial deployment by 2020, with a number of publicly-funded demonstration projects to learn from (four in the UK and several others across Europe) before that. The government will now struggle to get more than one demonstration project up and running by 2020 – not to speak of any commercial deployment.

The most likely project to receive funding might now be the Shell-operated Peterhead project which (alongside White Rose) had been selected as one of the two preferred bidders in the government’s re-launched CCS commercialisation competition in March 2013.

Haven’t we been here before?

The Drax decision on the White Rose project reminds us of other frustrating moments in carbon capture’s history. During the first government competition for a CCS demonstration project, all the bidders eventually withdrew. The Longannet project in Scotland was the last competitor, before the consortium consisting of ScottishPower, National Grid and Shell eventually pulled out in October 2011 after higher than anticipated costs and lengthy negotiations with the energy and climate change department and the Treasury.

So why is it so difficult to get large-scale integrated carbon capture demonstration projects off the ground?

We tried to answer this question by looking at two examples of proposed projects: Longannet in the UK (which did not go ahead) and Quest in Canada (which is currently under construction). Our research suggests that the answer lies in a complex interplay of political and economic factors.

We found that, in the UK context, several factors prevented the Longannet project from going ahead. For a start, there was a preference for a competition process with a narrow focus on post-combustion coal technology; there were disagreements between the department and the Treasury during the negotiations with the consortium – and there was the fact that utilities like ScottishPower have a number of other options for decarbonisation, such as investing in renewables. Combined, these factors mean firms find it hard to justify investments in carbon capture.

Alberta’s experience

By contrast, in Canada, the overriding concern for the Quest project is to use carbon capture to decrease the carbon footprint of tar sand production in order to prevent a potential threat to international market access (through the Californian low-carbon fuel standard). The Quest project is attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of bitumen processing connected with the tar sand production to similar levels of that of “normal” oil and is therefore of major strategic importance for the companies involved as well as the province of Alberta.

One method for CCS used by SaskPower in Canada.
SaskPower, CC BY-NC-ND

In 2014, the energy sector accounted for approximately 28% of Alberta’s total GDP. Energy resource exports to the US alone account for 75% of its total commodity exports. These are very strong incentives to invest in carbon capture and storage whereas the private benefits of such investments in the UK are much less clear, especially in the absence of a strong carbon price signal.

All of this suggests that the Department of Energy and Climate Change needs to sit down and honestly analyse the current situation of the technology in the UK – and decide what role it should play in decarbonising the UK economy. This assessment should take into consideration the progress made with renewables as well as the (lack of) progress with nuclear power. If CCS should play an important role (for example in the industrial rather than the power sector), then decisions need to be taken on which incentives need to be provided to enable private-sector investment in carbon capture and storage demonstration projects and push towards subsequent commercialisation.

Simply to keep going as we are will not lead to commercialisation anytime soon. While the ambition was to lead the world in carbon capture development, this now seems an unrealistic prospect given limited progress while other countries such as Canada are pushing ahead.

The Conversation

Florian Kern, Co-Director Sussex Energy Group and Senior Lecturer at SPRU-Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Paula Kivimaa writes for for ‘Energy Researchers Finland’ on energy saving in housing.

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Paula Kivimaa of the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand wrote an article recently for ‘Energy Researchers Finland’ arguing a need for energy services integrating energy saving and renewable energy measures into both new and existing housing stock, drawing on previous research as well as her personal experience as a homeowner and renter Finland and the UK. She points out that energy service business models targeting households are rare, outlining some key challenges and barriers for this.  You can read the full article here:  ‘Is there an emerging market for energy services targeting households and why should there be?’

Photograph of paula kivimaa

Dr Paula Kivimaa

Paula Kivimaa is a Senior Research Fellow at SPRU, Senior Researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute and has an affiliation of Docent at Aalto University, Finland. She has over ten years’ experience in research dealing with the interface between environmental innovations and climate, energy, transport and environmental policies. Her recent research is focused on analysing transport and energy policy as well as intermediary organisations from the perspective of sustainability transitions. She has experience in managing several projects funded by Finnish research funding agencies. She has published scientific articles in journals such as Research Policy, Environmental Policy and Governance, Environmental Politics, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Transport Geography as well as research reports issued, for example, by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Partnership for European Environmental Research

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