Professor Paul Younger, a native of the North East of England, started by reminding everyone that the North East had been the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and also the global birthplace of carboniferous capitalism – the coal-based energy economy.  Ironically, the coal-based economy was originally driven by renewable energy - starting in 1672 with a series of water wheels to drain a mine. In many ways this area is still at the forefront of energy production and development.  Some say it has a bigger carbon footprint per capita than other regions but that is only true if you add in all the industries which are still used to support the rest of the country. As regards domestic consumption it has a smaller carbon footprint than most other regions. The NE has more industry than other regions, particularly in the energy field, and the benefit of this will be apparent in the near future; almost uniquely in England, our region is in a reasonable position to survive what is coming. It has the UK’s largest biomass plant, the largest bio-diesel plant and is constructing the largest bio-ethanol plant. The photovoltaic [PV] activity has grown because of the local history in glass. At Romag in Consett there is one of the largest PV production lines in Europe producing the largest architectural PV modules in the world. Hydrogen is something for the future. In the Tees Valley there is an extensive storage and distribution grid – 26 km  of distribution pipelines and 1000 tonnes storage capacity in a densely populated area which has been in operation safely for 60 years. If there is to be a hydrogen economy the NE is in pole position.

Paul Younger is also leader of Energy Research NE England [ERNEE] a consortium of 3 Universities, Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham, the New and Renewable Energy Centre [NaREC] in Northumberland and the Centre for Process Innovation [CPI] at Wilton in the Tees Valley.  The NE has a major high-voltage testing lab, fuel cell development facilities, expertise at transportation and reducing emissions, work on new devices and whole system applications for PVs and a wind and wave energy research centre.  Paul Younger’s own institute is named after Sir Joseph Swan of local fame who invented the light-bulb – Edison had to buy his patents. Swan also invented the cellular lead plate for batteries.           

Eastgate Borehole in Weardale is the first geothermal exploration borehole in the UK for more than 20 years  passing through boulder clay, sedimentary strata and Whin Sill to reach the radiothermal Weardale Granite. Groundwater in fractures in the granite is far warmer than would usually be the case at these depths and plans are well advanced to use the heat to support a small leisure development. It will be used for a spa development and for district heating - and perhaps electricity in the future - for a new ‘renewable’ model village.  It is believed there is potential in the area for further similar developments

Regarding climate change Professor Younger says the time for talking is over. In 2002 he published a paper with European colleagues on major water systems in Europe and their sensitivity to climate change. The work was done in the mid nineties when transient Global Circulation Models were unavailable. Interpolations were made from results from simpler steady state models which would simulate the annual climate patterns on the planet for given CO2 concentrations Three scenarios had been considered – worst, medium and best cases. It is now evident that the worst case scenario has been experienced in the real world.

Paul Younger highlighted a tendency amongst many leading politicians and their advisors [whom he dubbed “the Technophiles”], to place all their faith in the ability of future technologies to solve the climate change problem, while unlimited economic growth continues unhindered. The necessity of addressing social and cultural barriers to climate change adaptation are barely considered, let alone the ultimate unasked question about limits to growth, which fast-dwindling, non-renewable resources are making ever more pressing. The favourite fixes of the technophiles are nuclear, carbon capture and storage and distributed micro-generation.  Let us consider the different technologies.

Nuclear Energy
The ore resources globally are limited. At current consumption rates, there is enough for 50 years at most but with world-wide plans for increasing production this will shorten dramatically.  Also, the carbon emissions from mining, processing and transport of uranium are greater than for coal. As the UK has no ore the carbon emissions involved will be the responsibility of another country; outsourcing our carbon emissions make it attractive to government.   There are other issues around such as nuclear waste; geology is an ‘observation science’ and we cannot do forward looking experiments, eg into the next glaciation phase.

Carbon Capture and Storage  is much vaunted but there are some problems. The current technology is at low temperatures [using amines], is extremely expensive and has only been done in isolated oil and gas fields to get a source of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery. A different technology is required. So far there is no economic large-scale higher temperature method of CO2  separation and we need to capture CO2 before the final burn.   We have thought of ways of doing this but so far it has not been proven. None of them are ‘market ready’.  Transmission of CO2 is another problem especially from inland areas such as the Midlands – pressure and temperature issues etc. The technical problems probably can be solved but it will be costly; there are also wayleaves - charges and permission for crossing the land en route. If the product in the pipe is going to be for sale [eg gas], the money will be available but waste is a different matter. The Professor’s background in ground-water engineering causes him to be concerned about storage. The enthusiasm of oil companies is self-serving as they want to use the CO2 to enhance oil recovery but there are huge hydraulic problems. The areas from which the oil and gas has been taken were already ‘tight’ formations but after the oil and gas have been removed they have been compacted and are even tighter and less permeable than they were originally and significantly less permeable than he was used to squeezing water into on land sites.  The issues have been largely ignored or brushed over. They need thinking about. He is concerned about CCS at least in depleted oil and gas reservoirs.

Distributed Micro-generation  sounds great, but connecting power sources to the distribution end of networks has problems. He used the analogy of catching rainwater and trying to feed any you didn’t want back into the mains.  The gradient is against you. However with energy, it can work at ‘hobby’ levels. The planning situation is in a mess with the visual situation considered first. Changing planning restrictions has been mooted but is yet to happen..

Ground Source Heating and Cooling Systems. [GSHCS]
In many ways this technology’s time has arrived. It is an increasingly popular option for space heating and cooling for domestic and public commercial buildings. It has many advantages - low

carbon emissions and no measurable emissions of any other sort and if you use green electricity to drive the system it can be a zero carbon emission technology. However, it too can have problems.  If these are installed too close together it can lead to permafrost and perhaps destroy foundations. Building regulations now have an obligation for 10% renewables and GSHCS have less planning restrictions, visibility and cost than other options.[eg solar panels] A map of open-loop systems in London showed there is already interference and these systems will fail and not be ‘renewable’ but just an expensive heating system. The people involved have been told clearly that these systems will fail in three years and why this will happen but either they do not understand the science or perhaps do not want to know.

Coal 
Talking about coal may seem backward looking -  is it the bete noir or is it the best bet?  How much fossil fuel is left?  North Sea oil and gas passed its peak production in 1999.  We are now certain that global peak production will fall between 2017 and 2021. Oil will be substantially exhausted by 2050 and gas by 2070.  Coal reserves, however, will last at least until 2200 and in the UK there is enough until 2600.

Prices of gas and oil are going up and will continue to increase and production rates will fall. Globally, we now have ‘a dash for coal’ which started in 1999-2000. Currently there are two proposals for cleaner coal power stations at the coast in the NE. At Blyth a  RWE npower  – 2.4 GW supercritical boiler plant which will be ‘CCS ready’ and in the Tees Valley – coastal energy 8000MW IGCC plant with CCS. Both will rely on imported coal but many such imports are from countries with poor health and safety mining regulations and death rates similar to the UK in the 1920s.  There is a moral issue here but also one of security of supply. Fortunately the UK still has substantial coal resources in the NE and off Lincolnshire and Norfolk.  Although we have mined more coal than anyone else for 400 years, we have abstracted only ¼ so far and that was largely exported from our region.

So is it realistic to think of using our coal resources? There are many ways of doing this.  Prof. Younger briefly looked at coal bed methane which is already under development in Scotland. We drill into previously un-mined seams, pump out the ground water to below the seams and methane comes out naturally.  This is the gas that used to cause explosions. This method is used in other parts of the world but we have so far ignored it although there are extensive resources. It is much cleaner than burning coal.  You still get CO2  but it is only a fraction of the amount  you get from burning coal.

The other one Prof. Younger looked at briefly is underground coal gasification. The UK paid one quarter of the cost of a trail in Spain in the mid 1990s which was very successful, as we now know how to do it. It involves drilling two wells, approximately 100 metres  apart, down to the seam and then steered drilling in the seam until the two wells nearly meet. We put in a control retractable injection point and inject steam and either oxygen or air, preferably oxygen.   The whole seam is gasified. Gasification means partially oxidising the coal to produce a gas that still has a calorific value – usually about 80% of the original energy in the coal. The gas passes from the production well to the power station. A void will have been created where the seam used to be and this is a far better prospect for storing the CO₂ arising than trying to squeeze it into natural formations. We have been discussing doing this at a depth of 1000 metres or more – a long way down. Basically we have the possibility from our production well to separate the CO₂  before we  use the rest of the calorific value in the gas to produce electricity. We can also obtain more CO₂ later if we want to - it will depend on the cost of the technologies. The possibility is also there to inject the CO₂  back into the voids. The gas produced is called syngas – a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide. This system could make a huge difference.  We have the resources to do this, but do we have the will?

Sustainability to Paul Younger simply means inter-generational justice.   ‘Sustainable development meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. [Brundtland Report 1992]  The question is how can finite resources ever fit into this concept? Am I right to talk about using coal? We have sufficient coal for hundreds of years but it will run out eventually. How can I justify using coal?  I would say only if the energy is used prudently to unlock better energy technologies for the future and only if we can use it to buy a sustainable future so that future generations can have a sustainable energy economy.  That is the only morally defensible way to use finite resources such as coal, uranium and gas. 

Concentrated Solar Power is one of the ideas for the future. This uses loads of reflectors and is either PV [photovoltaic] producing electricity direct or using mirrors to heat water which then runs a conventional steam turbine. A slide showed a solar energy plant in Spain which produces 11MW with a capacity factor of at best 50% [the amount of time it could function]  which would supply power for about 6000 homes  and the proposed  plant at Blyth which would provide 2400 MW with a capacity factor of 75%. Both would cover a similar ground area. However the steel, pipework and glass for solar arrays and transmission cables need power for their production and for this I think we will need the use of fossil fuels.

There is a very ‘sobering’ book written by Ted Trainer Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society, published by Springer.  Ted Trainer is a renewables enthusiast and he set out to demonstrate that renewable energy could fulfil all the demands of a consumer society by looking carefully at resources, current technologies and reasonably anticipatable future renewable technology but he found it couldn’t. The crucial points were the efficiency of converting technologies and the patchiness of resources. Professor Younger quoted Mahatma Gandhi “The world has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”.

We must move to renewable sources of energy but it has to be accompanied by a parallel change in how we organise society. We must have at least as great a moral revolution in how we behave as human beings as we must have a technological revolution. A sustainable future may be possible, getting there without fossil fuels isn’t.  We should have used revenue from our North Sea oil and gas to develop new sustainable technologies but we wasted that opportunity. It is my fervent prayer and indeed crusade that we will use our remaining coal reserves wisely to pave the way to future renewable energies where we maximise the use of solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal energy.  My answer to the technophiles is that unless we have an equivalent ethical and moral development, no amount of technological development is going to be sufficient.