There is a non-technical overview of the ideas at http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/csp.htm . It should be clear without one needing much technical knowledge. Mirrors are used to concentrate sunlight to create heat and then the heat is used to raise steam which drives turbines and generators, just like any ordinary power station. This is quite different from photovoltaic ‘solar panels’.

The main reasons why the TRANS-CSP report suggests that about 15% of Europe’s electricity might come from CSP imports by 2050 are:

1 They are keen that local people in sun belt countries should be supplied with electricity first.

2 It takes time to plan and build the necessary CSP power plants.

3 There are lots of other sources of renewable energy and it is good to have wide variety of different sources rather than relying on one source.

If people decided they wanted to do things faster or to build more CSP plants, I am sure it could be done. Now that the Secretary General of the UN has said that climate change is as much as a threat as war, perhaps everything should now be done as fast and as vigorously as it is in war time.

In principle, a small portion of the Sahara desert could generate all of Europe’s electricity.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Gerry

Gerry, that material on CSP is interesting, but it is difficult for we non-technical people to come to any conclusions. I clicked on your name and got the TREC UK site. Do you have a connection with the project?

I noticed that in one of the links two German scientists had worked out that covering 0.5% of the world’s deserts with concentrated solar panels would be equal to the world’s electricity. Yet there was said to be no more than 15% of Europe’s power from this source by 2050. Any reason?

The incident last year at a nuclear plant ot Forsmark in Sweden is a worry.

I refer to ‘concentrating solar power’ (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US “could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or ***about seven times the current total US electric capacity***” (emphasis added).

CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, there are not many of these in Europe! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient ‘HVDC’ transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may, for example, be transmitted from North Africa to Berlin with only about 10% loss of power. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by the wind energy company Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.

In the recent ‘TRANS-CSP’ report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. That report shows in great detail how Europe can meet all its needs for electricity, make deep cuts in CO2 emissions, and phase out nuclear power at the same time.

Further information about CSP may be found at http://www.trec-uk.org.uk and http://www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .

A policy of denial

Feb 8th 2007 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition
The nuclear lobby warms to a changing future in the energy world

STEPHAN KOHLER climbs mountains and used to assess the safety of nuclear power plants. Now he is chief executive of DENA, a government agency to promote energy efficiency. Nothing can persuade him that nuclear power is an acceptable risk—unlike mountain-climbing, which, he says, puts only his life in danger.
AFP Thought embargo?

Mr Kohler is not alone. Millions of Germans want to end their exposure to atomic power, hence the agreement back in June 2000 by the main political parties and the nuclear industry to shorten the life of the country’s 17 plants and shut them all down by around 2020. In November 2005 that timetable was confirmed by the new government’s coalition agreement.

But the world has changed. Amid the political games being played by Russia and its neighbours, Germany’s oil and gas supplies appear less secure. And as the current president of the European Union and the G8, Germany is trying to provide leadership in the new war against CO2 emissions. It wants to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Key to the energy plan, besides more wind farms and solar panels, and less leaky buildings, is the development of clean coal-fired power plants. But the technology is in its infancy. Two pilot plants will not be ready before 2014.

One answer: stretch the average life of nuclear plants, which are emission-free, from the agreed 32 years to a scientifically acceptable 40 (in America their life is already being stretched to 60 years). Then there would be time to develop better clean and renewable technology. “The disadvantages are hard to see,â€? says Manuel Frondel at RWI, a research group. “Even if we shut down all our atom plants we would probably import nuclear power from France or central Europe: that would be pushing the problem to the west and east. We still haven’t found more than interim solutions for storing nuclear waste, but that quest is not insoluble, and it is not exacerbated by continuing to run plants.â€?

A timely piece of research by Deutsche Bank boldly states that phasing out nuclear power plants “is not a viable policy option.â€? Instead it recommends stretching their life to 60 years and taxing the windfall profits to subsidise clean coal plants, which could not otherwise compete with gas-fired alternatives. So confident is Deutsche Bank that this government, or the next, will have to revise its nuclear policy, that it assumes the change in its forecasts for the share prices of RWE and E.ON, Germany’s two biggest nuclear operators.

The power companies have started manoeuvring. In December, RWE and EnBW, another German nuclear operator, each made applications, under the terms of the 2000 agreement, to shift capacity from a younger nuclear plant to one that is older. Both argue that this will allow them to operate and phase out two side-by-side plants—one old, one newer—in harmony, and it will buy them time to develop alternative technologies. “This is not just cosmetic pre-election tactics,â€? says Utz Claassen, chief executive of EnBW.

But Mr Claassen—not known for his political naivety—is aware that 2009 will bring new federal elections and the end of the coalition agreement. Unless the lives of his and RWE’s oldest plants are reprieved by a capacity shift, then that is about the time they will have to be shut down. A Deutsche Bank-style extension to 60 years would allow the veteran plants to purr on beyond 2030.

The nuclear lobby is being very careful, but “there should be no Denkverbot [thought embargo]â€?, says Bernd Arts of the Atomforum in Berlin. Chancellor Angela Merkel herself is displaying symptoms of schizophrenia on the subject: “I stick to the coalition agreement,â€? she told the Sunday Bild newspaper on February 4th. “But whoever wants to get out of nuclear energy must find some serious answers to meeting environmental targets. Renewable energy cannot be a complete answer by 2020.â€?

We are almost certainly committed to a temperature rise of 2C plus compared to pre-industrial times (1750-1850).

Take a look at Figure 2 on page 5 of the Executive summary of the Stern Review (pdf) and note what is likely to occur in the 2-3C band. It includes:

- Small mountain glaciers disappear worldwide – potential threat to water supplies in several regions.

- Greater than 30% decrease in runoff in Mediterranean and Southern Africa.

- Coral reefs ecosystems extensively and eventually irreversibly damaged.

- Many species facing extinction (20 – 50% in one study).

- Possible onset of collapse of all or part of the Amazonian rainforests.

- Risk of weakening of natural carbon absorption.

- Onset of irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

The last three of these are ‘tipping points’ that would in themselves cause further warming.

If you can credibly assure me that none of the above will occur, and I mean no risk whatsoever, then I might begin to relax.

(This argument based on Figure 2 of the Stern Report was derived from this article by Tol and Yohe .)

Stuart, it’s true that the Liberals in Canada were slack when they were in power. They may be opportunistic and hypocritical now that they are in opposition, but it could also be that the climate of opinion has changed there too. I’m not close enough to Canadian politics to know.

As for the Queensland decision, if the tribunal had taken Geoff R’s view and said that blocking the mine on greenhouse policy grounds was ultra vires then most people would have copped it without fuss. But instead it asserted that greenhouse grounds don’t exist – it’s all a conspiracy by greenies. This is a very different proposition that takes them much further into the judicialisation of politics.