The United Kingdom's Experience with North Sea Oil and Gas

SUMMARY Oil has been important but not dominant in the UK economy. Extraction has been done mainly by private firms. Allocation of leases has been discretionary, and there has been little obvious attempt to slow the release of blocks. Oil taxation has been complex, mainly profit?based, and frequently changed, but not unsuccessful. Stabilisation, however, has failed; the country went into slump and high unemployment as oil sales and revenue boomed. The mistake was a failure to ‘lean against’ the factors producing a great rise in real effective exchange rate between 1977 and 1980. RESUME L'Expérience de la Grande Bretagne avec le Pétrole et le Gaz de la Mer du Nord Le pétrole a été important mais pas dominant dans l'économie de la Grande Bretagne. L'extraction a été effectuée essentiellement par des compagnies privées. L'allocation des bails s'est fait à discrétion et il y a eu très peu de tentative évidente de ralentir la vente de tranches d'actions. L'imposition du pétrole a toujours été très complexe essentiellement basée sur profit, et fréquemment changée, mais elle n'a pas été néanmoins sans succès. La stabilisation néanmoins a échoué. Le pays est retombé dans le marasme avec un haut niveau de chômage tandis que les ventes et revenus pétroliers montaient en flèche. L'erreur, c'était d'avoir manqué de ‘prendre appui’ sur les facteurs qui avaient produit la considérable hausse dans le taux d'échange réel effectif entre 1977 et 1980. RESUMEN La experiencia del Reino Unido con el petróleo y el gas del Mar del Norte En la economia del Reino Unido, el petróleo ha sido importante, pero no dominante. La extracción la han realizado principalmente firmas privadas. La concesión de usufructos ha sido discrecional y ha habido pocos intentos obvios para disminuir la liberación de obstáculos La tributación al petróleo ha sido compleja, principalmente basada en las utilidades, frecuentemente modificada, pero no carente de éxito. Sin embargo, la estabilización ha fracasado, el país cayó en una depresión y alto desempleo a medida que las ventas y utilidades del petróleo florecian. El error fue una falla en apoyarse en los factores que produjeron una gran alza an la tasa real de cambio efectiva entre 1977 y 1980

Maximizing the greenhouse gas reductions from biomass: The role of life cycle assessment

Biomass can deliver significant greenhouse gas reductions in electricity, heat and transport fuel supply. However, our biomass resource is limited and should be used to deliver the most strategic and significant impacts. The relative greenhouse gas reduction merits of different bioenergy systems (for electricity, heat, chemical and biochar production) were examined on a common, scientific basis using consistent life cycle assessment methodology, scope of system and assumptions. The results show that bioenergy delivers substantial and cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions. Large scale electricity systems deliver the largest absolute reductions in greenhouse gases per unit of energy generated, while medium scale wood chip district heating boilers result in the highest level of greenhouse gas reductions per unit of harvested biomass. However, ammonia and biochar systems deliver the most cost effective carbon reductions, while biochar systems potentially deliver the highest greenhouse gas reductions per unit area of land. The system that achieves the largest reduction in greenhouse gases per unit of energy does not also deliver the highest greenhouse gas reduction per unit of biomass. So policy mechanisms that incentivize the reductions in the carbon intensity of energy may not result in the best use of the available resource. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a flexible tool that can be used to answer a wide variety of different policy-relevant, LCA “questions”, but it is essential that care is taken to formulate the actual question being asked and adapt the LCA methodology to suit the context and objective

The Availability Model: Consultant's Working Paper Number 32

This note describes some results obtained from the Consultant's Availability Model. They are based on preliminary data provided by Y-ard on the reliability of devices, and by Kennedy & Donkin on the transmission scheme. It is estimated that about 20% of the total energy output of a system might be lost due to repairs of its component. (This does not include lossed due to routine maintenance activities) . Assuming a value of 5p/kwh, this is equivalent to a cost of about £40m per annum for a 2gw station. station. There are several possible ways of reducing such losses, however , the most important being: - The reduction of failure rates by improvements in design, added redundancy in critical areas, or additional preventive maintenance. The use of larger numbers of repair crews, boats, etc .. - The reduction of live repair times in order to take advantage of the short weather windows which occur during the winter months, and/or the improvement of access to devices so that repair work can be carried out in more severe sea conditions. The trade-offs which exist between investing money in these areas and the resultant savings in energy losses are discussed, with the conclusion that the optimal solution for any scheme is likely to be one that reduces such losses to a minimum, by capital investment or high O+M expenditure. The appendices give an outline of the Availability Model and a revision of the sea-state information given in Working Paper 24, based on a more extensive analysis of the data

The UK Transport Carbon Model : An integrated life cycle approach to explore low carbon futures

Peer reviewedPostprin

Variation in beliefs about 'fracking' between the UK and US

In decision-making on the politically-contentious issue of unconventional gas development, the UK Government and European Commission are attempting to learn from the US experience. Although economic, environmental, and health impacts and regulatory contexts have been compared cross-nationally, public perceptions and their antecedents have not. We conducted similar online panel surveys of national samples of UK and US residents simultaneously in September 2014 to compare public perceptions and beliefs affecting such perceptions. The US sample was more likely to associate positive impacts with development (i.e., production of clean energy, cheap energy, and advancing national energy security). The UK sample was more likely to associate negative impacts (i.e., water contamination, higher carbon emissions, and earthquakes). Multivariate analyses reveal divergence cross-nationally in the relationship between beliefs about impacts and support/opposition – especially for beliefs about energy security. People who associated shale gas development with increased energy security in the UK were over three times more likely to support development than people in the US with this same belief. We conclude with implications for policy and communication, discussing communication approaches that could be successful cross-nationally and policy foci to which the UK might need to afford more attention in its continually evolving regulatory environment

Assessing the economics of large Energy Storage Plants with an optimisation methodology

Power plants, such as wind farms, that harvest renewable energy are increasing their share of the energy portfolio in several countries, including the United Kingdom. Their inability to match demand power profiles is stimulating an increasing need for large ESP (Energy Storage Plants), capable of balancing their instability and shifting power produced during low demand to peak periods. This paper presents and applies an innovative methodology to assess the economics of ESP utilising UK electricity price data, resulting in three key findings. Firstly the paper provides a methodology to assess the trade-off “reserve capacity vs. profitability” and the possibility of establishing the “optimum size capacity”. The optimal reserve size capacity maximizing the NPV (Net Present Value) is smaller than the optimum size capacity minimizing the subsidies. This is not an optimal result since it complicates the incentive scheme to align investors and policy makers' interests. Secondly, without subsidies, none of the existing ESP technologies are economically sustainable. However, subsidies are a relatively small percentage of the average price of electricity in UK. Thirdly, the possibility of operating ESP as both as a reserve and do price arbitrage was identified as a mean of decreasing subsidies for the ESP technologies

Energy transitions and uncertainty: creating low carbon investment opportunities in the UK electricity sector

This paper examines how actors in the UK electricity sector are attempting to deliver investment in low carbon generation. Low carbon technologies, because of their relative immaturity, capital intensity and low operational costs, do not readily fit with existing electricity markets and investment templates which were designed for fossil fuel based energy. We analyse key electricity market and infrastructure policies in the UK and highlight how these are aimed at making low carbon technologies ‘investable’ by reducing uncertainty, managing investment risks and repositioning actors within the electricity socio-technical ‘regime’. We argue that our study can inform contemporary debates on the politics and governance of sustainability transitions by empirically investigating the agency of incumbent regime actors in the face of uncertainty and by offering critical insights on the role of markets and finance in shaping socio-technical change

Mechanical Properties of Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor Stainless Steel Cladding After Irradiation

The production of helium bubbles in advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) cladding could represent a significant hazard for both the mechanical stability and long-term storage of such materials. However, the high radioactivity of AGR cladding after operation presents a significant barrier to the scientific study of the mechanical properties of helium incorporation, said cladding typically being analyzed in industrial hot cells. An alternative non-active approach is to implant He2+ into unused AGR cladding material via an accelerator. Here, a feasibility study of such a process, using sequential implantations of helium in AGR cladding steel with decreasing energy is carried out to mimic the buildup of He (e.g., 50 appm) that would occur for in-reactor AGR clad in layers of the order of 10 lm in depth, is described. The implanted sample is subsequently analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, nanoindentation, atomic force and ultrasonic force microscopies. As expected, the irradiated zones were affected by implantation damage (<1 dpa). Nonetheless, such zones undergo only nanoscopic swelling and a small hardness increase (10%), with no appreciable decrease in fracture strength. Thus, for this fluence and applied conditions, the integrity of the steel cladding is retained despite He2+ implantation