Energy

Communications around fracking have gone wrong

I’m back from a week surfing in Portugal. It was glorious, as always. Having grown up by the sea I learned to sail at ten, started racing dinghies at 13, collected multiple bumps and bruises, lived on a boat on the Thames in London and, it’s safe to say, I feel at home in the water. Ok, some of us are real water babies, others less so. A friend of mine simply won’t go near the sea for fear of waves. She’s in her thirties but still terrified by its power. Fair enough. Not ideal when it’s your holiday buddy on a surf trip, but hey. You can see what’s coming here. Quite simply, water plays a vital role in our lives – for surfers and non surfers alike. It’s arguably the world’s most precious resource and something we interact with daily. Mineral water providers have long been extolling the virtues of the ‘purest’ water, in a continual game of one-upmanship. One can even buy the ultimate in purity shipped over from Fuji. I just also happen to find it peaceful to be near and in, most of us do. The human body is 60% water so, fundamentally, when we protect it we’re protecting over half of our own selves, our physicality. So, as the pressure on our natural resources grows, the content of our food and water systems becomes increasingly questioned, is it any wonder we hold water in such high regard? Which is how I get to fracking. To begin, I believe clean technology is the answer to our energy future. I want to see us moving away from fossil fuels as fast as feasibly possible, and know wholeheartedly that this is the answer to a sustainable and prosperous economy. But, opinion aside, I am also in the […]

The power under the ocean

Japan is known to be a country with few natural energy resources. Her current energy self-sufficiency rate is only 4%, although it is normally closer to 20% if nuclear power stations, currently almost all off-line, are included. Japan depends on oil for more than 50% of the energy supply, importing about 90% of it from the Middle East with all the political and security risks to stability of supply involved. Under these circumstances, Japan has been expanding her horizons in the search for sources of energy. Through marine research, the seabed around Japan has started to show the first glimmers of being an unopened treasure chest of potential energy. Methane hydrate, otherwise known as ‘Burning Ice’, is the only energy resource mined in Japan apart from coal. Experimental drilling off the Atumi peninsula ran from February to March this year as part of a national research project. According to the published results, the volume of methane hydrate deposits is estimated to be the equivalent 90 to 100 years of Japan’s natural gas consumption. There are substantial reserves of methane hydrate between 100 to 300 meters from the seabed in the sea off Niigata and around the East Nankai Trough. Developing this field would be the world’s first trial of offshore production of methane hydrate. Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) research organisation under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has led this project, supported by the deep-sea scientific drilling vessel ‘Chikyu’, operated by Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) under Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. There are still a lot of issues to be resolved before industrial production can begin, such reduction of mining costs, but the Government has high expectations. The Chikyu research vessel has made a number of other significant […]

Energy from biomass without damaging food production

As much as one fifth of the world’s energy could be provided by biomass materials without reducing farming land space used for growing food, according to the latest comprehensive scientific report. Biomass is biological material obtained from living or recently living organisms that can be processed into electricity, fuel and heat. Biomass for energy can be obtained from a diverse range of sources, the most important of which are energy crops, agricultural and forestry residues, wastes and existing forestry. But debate continues to surround the role of biomass in the future energy system, with some believing it has the potential to fuel the planet, and others fearing it could ruin the environment. Many believe biomass can address concerns relating to climate change, energy security, rural developmentÊandÊaccess to modern energy services in developing countries. To establish the facts, scientists at Imperial College have reviewed the size of the global resource of energy from biomass, examining evidence from more than 90 international studies. The report addresses key controversies in the energy field and the main concerns relating to the production of biomass including the sustainability of increasing crop yields and the prospect that competition for land will impact on food production. According to the report, the main reason that scientists disagree on biomass is that they make different technical and ethical assumptions about population, diet, and land use. One major disagreement concerns the speed with which productivity improvements in food and energy crop production can be rolled out. “If we make the best use of agricultural residues, energy crops and waste materials, then getting one fifth of current global energy supply from biomass is a reasonable ambition,” said Dr Raphael Slade, the report’s leading author and a research fellow at Imperial College London. Achieving more than a fifth is technically possible […]

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