UK overseas gas imports to surge to $11 billion by 2015

Reuters has a report on declining gas production in northern Europe - UK overseas gas imports to surge to $11 billion by 2015.

Britain's natural gas imports from outside the North Sea will surpass domestic production by 2015 and add more than $11 billion to import costs as domestic supplies dwindle and Norway increasingly struggles to fill the gap, Reuters research shows.

Estimates show that Britain's own gas supplies will fall from around 43 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year today to around 16 bcm in 2030 if they continue their average annual 5 percent decline since peaking in 2000, while demand is set to hold steady between 85 and 95 bcm.

Britain was a net exporter of gas until 2004, but a steady decline in output over the last few years has made it more reliant on imports, which have so far mostly come from Norway and, increasingly, Qatar.

Read More

Severn Tidal Power Project A Possibility Once More ?

The Independent reports that the on-again, off-again Severn tidal power project is under consideration again in the UK as the government searches for infrastructure projects to restart the economy - No 10 asks ministers: Can we now support £30bn Severn barrage?.

David Cameron has ordered ministers to consider backing a £30bn project to harness the tidal power of the Severn estuary, as the Government scrambles to find big infrastructure projects that could help kick-start growth. ...

With the potential to create 20,000 jobs, it is exactly the sort of big-ticket construction project that the coalition needs to find as George Osborne faces a growing clamour to change economic course.

Mr Davey is to consider the details of the Severn barrage plan. However, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Liberal Democrats, uneasy about the lack of growth, are to call on the Chancellor to authorise additional public borrowing to fund a wide range of green-energy schemes. Mr Davey's aide, Duncan Hames, has drawn up a policy to this effect.

The idea of a Severn barrage was rejected by the coalition in 2010, which argued there was "no strategic case at this time for public funding of a scheme to generate energy in the Severn estuary".

But Mr Cameron has been persuaded that the long-debated idea of a barrage is worth reconsidering, because the consortium Corlan Hafren says no state funding is required. Instead, investors from Kuwait, Qatar and a number of sovereign wealth funds have expressed support for the idea. ...

Securing government support is crucial, because time would need to be found for legislation to pass through Parliament. Peter Hain, the former Labour cabinet minister, quit his frontbench role earlier this year to champion the project. He has offered to pilot a bill through the Commons, which Mr Cameron has agreed to study.

"Tidal power is the only lunar energy source," Mr Hain said in a letter to Mr Cameron. "Tides can be forecast for years in advance, and therefore tidal power is highly predictable and consistent."

Stretching up to 18 kilometres from Brean on the north Somerset coast to Lavernock Point in South Wales, the scheme, Corlan Hafren claims, could provide 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs, saving one million tonnes of carbon every year. ...

The project is thought to include 1,000 turbines. The Severn estuary has a tidal range of 14 metres, which engineers have contemplated harnessing since the middle of the 19th century.

Read More

E.ON heats up plans for five deep-geothermal power plants in UK

Business Green has a post on efforts to build geothermal heat and power plants in Britain - E.ON heats up plans for five deep-geothermal power plants. The FT also has a look at geothermal power - in their case looking at Kenya - Geothermal: Kenya pins its hopes on steam power.

The UK's nascent geothermal energy industry has today received a major boost after it emerged that one of the UK's largest energy companies is working on plans to develop five new deep geothermal heat and distribution systems.

Ireland-based geothermal technology specialist GT Energy today revealed that it has inked a memorandum of understanding with energy giant E.ON that will see the two companies jointly develop a range of urban geothermal heat power plants.

The UK currently boasts only a handful of deep geothermal power plants, including a pioneering district heat system in Southampton that has been in place since 1986. However, a number of projects are currently under construction, including plans for a new geothermal power plant in Cornwall and a geothermal heat facility in the centre of Newcastle.

E.ON and GT Energy maintain that scientific studies have shown the UK has access to up to 100GW of geothermal energy potential, particularly in the South-West, North-West, and North-East.

They have also argued that deep-geothermal technology is well suited to urban settings where the resulting heat can be easily distributed to a variety of buildings in the area.

Read More

Harnessing The Power Of The Thames

ReCharge News has an article on efforts to harness tidal power (and/or river current power) from the River Thames - CoRMaT moves a step closer to taking the plunge in the Thames.

Nautricity’s 3kW Contra Rotating Marine Turbine (CoRMaT) may be small but the company has big plans for the concept. In the grandest version of its vision, hundreds of differently sized models of the turbine — rated up to 500kW — would be sited in clusters along the river from Westminster, in Central London, to Margate, where the Thames Estuary meets the North Sea, as part of a 50MW development.

The project is being developed by the Glasgow-based company with financier Energy Invest under the Thames Tidal banner. The goal is to prove the viability of a “free-floating" turbine in the currents of the longest river in England, and a gigabyte of data has been collected in the first phase.

“This first stage of this project aims to glean an understanding of how a device of this nature — which is unique insofar as it does not have a rigid supporting system holding it to the seabed — would perform in the river environment," says Nautricity chief executive Cameron Johnstone.
The turbine, unlike the majority of its seabed-mounted brethren, is designed to be anchored in place by a single-point mooring line, steering nose-first into the current, guided by its two contra-rotating rotors.

“The Thames is an ideal testing ground because of the intense river use and the wakes and washes generated by vessels that use it, which create a range of cross-dynamics. Early indications from our data are that cross-waves have very little impact on the device’s performance," says Johnstone.

The CoRMaT evolved from a decision by its designer to buck the trend among first-generation tidal turbines to “marinise wind turbines", building broad-bladed machines mounted on heavyweight foundations.

“We wanted to start with a clean sheet in devising a hydrokinetic device purely for a tidal stream,’’ says Johnstone. ‘‘At the same time, we wanted to keep costs down and found that one of the biggest is accounted for by the structural support system, which can be 40% of the total."

Both objectives were met by the contra-rotating rotors concept. The rotors — one of which has three blades, the other four — turn in opposite directions, using the “natural physics" of the flow to balance the turbine in the tidal stream by having the reactive forces of the first rotor countered by the reactive forces in the second. The different numbers of blades on the two rotors prevents one from eclipsing the other in operation, ensuring there is never a “lull" during power delivery, and smoothing output.

Renewable Energy Focus has a look at efforts to quantify the tidal power potential of the UK - ETI models the UK’s tidal energy resources.

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) will model the UK's tidal energy resources to improve understanding of the possible interactions between tidal energy extraction systems as they are deployed between now and 2050. ...

The tidal resource project aims to develop models of the whole UK continental shelf that will be used to investigate how energy extraction at one site may affect the energy available elsewhere.
A wide range of possible future tidal stream and tidal range sites, with differing technology possibilities will be represented in the models.

The project will identify how the interactions between different sites around the UK combine to form an overall effect, and what constraints these interactions could place on the design, development and location of future systems.

The models will be made available through a service provided by HR Wallingford to the wider marine industry to help inform future plans and strategies for tidal power.

The John O’Groats Journal has an update on interest in tidal power in northern Scotland - Pentland Firth energy pledge hailed as 'good news’

HOPES have been raised for the future development of marine energy in the Pentland Firth following a multi-million-pound Scottish Government pledge – but questions remain over how exactly it will work.

First Minister Alex Salmond announced on Monday an £18 million commitment to help develop the country’s first commercial wave and tidal power arrays in the firth, Orkney and other Scottish waters.

The money is to be used to take developers from single-test machines to the stage where they have multiple machines in the water.

Caithness and North Sutherland Regeneration Partnership programme manager Eann Sinclair welcomed the news but warned details are sketchy at best. “Any money that goes into the wave and tidal industry at the moment is good news and the fact that the overwhelming focus for the whole of Scotland – if not the whole of the UK – is the Pentland Firth means that we should all be welcoming it," he said.

Read More

North Sea gas production falls 25%

The Guardian has an article on declining UK natural gas production - North Sea gas production falls 25%.

North Sea gas production has slumped by 25% in the second quarter of the year, an alarming increase in the rate of decline that will cut tax revenues and could put more pressure on government to agree controversial shale gas developments.

Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) also show a 36% rise in coal imports, but a leap from 6.3% to 9.6% for the amount of electricity generated by wind and other renewables.

The department records that the output of oil and associated gas liquids fell by 16% in the three months to the end of June, compared with a year earlier – the biggest decline since records began 16 years ago.

This left Britain importing 3.6m tonnes of oil in the second quarter, compared with 2.8m tonnes in the same period of 2010, even though total oil demand fell by 1.7%.

Read More