Energy Security Challenges
The 2022 energy shock demonstrated that energy security for Europe is a topic requiring significant consideration if the continent is to safeguard its power supplies from external challenges and cut-offs. Each country must look after its own supplies, that much we understand. The crisis resulted in national shortages and a desperate scramble for hydrocarbon supplies:
- When French nuclear output halved due to maintenance issues, interconnector flows to the UK reversed, causing shortages and price hikes;
- When Germany was short of gas, they cut their interconnectors even to EU neighbours to conserve supplies;
- Norway, one of few European countries expected to be exporting renewable electricity after 2040, passed legislation allowing them to cut their interconnectors during times of system stress.
At the same time, investment in renewable energy was correctly (but largely ineffectively) targeted to wean Europe off import dependency.
Indeed, the challenge of energy security for Europe is baked into the continent’s energy transition plans. By 2040, only three European countries – Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland – expect to have surplus electricity during times of system stress, based on 2019 plans. There are even questions about the energy self-sufficiency of Switzerland.
France is expected to have sufficient for its own use but no exports. These predictions assumed France would build 40GW new nuclear on time and to cost. However, not a single nuclear power station has completed construction in the meantime. Further analysis here.
Times of System Stress
A “time of system stress” is any period of high demand and/or low renewable generation, which occurs continent-wide after sunset on a windless winter evening, continuing at least until well after dawn; the kalte Dunkelflaute weather patterns can increase this to up to a fortnight. Usually, these periods affect all European countries at the same time, so, if everyone is importing during such times, who is exporting? The results would be continent-wide shortages.
The planning assumption throughout the European Union and the United Kingdom is that each country can rely on imports during times of need, especially if contracts are in place. But contracts tend to be short-term, and Germany’s actions on gas show that even within the EU cannot rely upon that principle.
Indeed, which system operator would be prepared to tell their government they caused a black-out in a major city or industrial area because they were exporting the energy needed, even if against existing contracts? As the Norwegian legislation has shown, even if this occurs once, it will be prevented from recurring.
Reliance on neighbours gives no energy security.
System Resilience
If energy security is the primary challenge; the secondary challenge is the resilience of the system. Clearly, major gas and electricity interconnectors and energy hubs are vulnerable as was shown by the sabotaging of NordStream 2, and threats to electricity interconnectors. Reliance on a few major sources/lines of supply is not wise.
To safeguard our energy system we require multiple, distributed, large energy hubs. The more distributed the supplies/supply routes, the more resilient the system will be. But this meets two different challenges:
- Economies of scale: distributed resources are intrinsically less efficient, cost-effective and capable (yes, even batteries are much less so than advertised);
- Providing transmission-scale energy: no grid has enough energy to power any higher-voltage level of grid, as proved by National Grid’s first engineering report in their Distributed ReStart project.
- Ignore the conclusions, and all subsequent conclusions, which all say that more work needs to be done; read the text, which says that it is both practically and even theoretically impossible.
Which Energy Systems?
The energy transition is essentially very simple: replacing coal and hydrocarbons with electricity, hydrogen and products of the two of them. Each can be produced across the continent so energy hubs can be well distributed, helping energy security.
Very roughly, the 2010 energy system was ~25% electricity, ~25% liquid hydrocarbons and ~50% natural gas (coal is ignored, as that is mostly used for electricity generation). As electricity is much more efficient than hydrogen for many applications (e.g. light-use transportation, heat pumps), the 2050 energy system is likely to be ~⅔ electricity and ~⅓ hydrogen and its products. Hydrogen will be mostly created by renewable electricity.
Although electric vehicles dominate clean transportation, by 2050 it is likely that ~⅔ of vehicles of all sizes will be hydrogen powered and account for ~90% of transportation energy use. Conversely, ~⅓ vehicles will be electric and account for 10% of transportation energy use. Further discussion is here.
Energy Security for Europe: Consequences for Gas Grids
The energy transition is essentially very simple: replacing coal and hydrocarbons with electricity, hydrogen and products of the two of them. Each can be produced across the continent so energy hubs can be well distributed, helping energy security.
Very roughly, the 2010 energy system was ~25% electricity, ~25% liquid hydrocarbons and ~50% natural gas (coal is ignored, as that is mostly used for electricity generation). As electricity is much more efficient than hydrogen for many applications (e.g. light-use transportation, heat pumps), the 2050 energy system is likely to be ~⅔ electricity and ~⅓ hydrogen and its products. Hydrogen will be mostly created by renewable electricity.
Although electric vehicles dominate clean transportation, by 2050 it is likely that ~⅔ of vehicles of all sizes will be hydrogen powered and account for ~90% of transportation energy use. Conversely, ~⅓ vehicles will be electric and account for 10% of transportation energy use. Further discussion is here.
Intermittency
However, intermittency reduces the efficiency and plant-life of hydrogen and hydrogen-consuming industries and requires much more investment per unit output. Even without considering the effects of intermittency, powering by 40% load factor offshore wind requires 2.5X as much plant per unit output as powering with baseload electricity; powering it by 17% load factor solar requires 6X as much.
Therefore, large-scale long-duration storage should also be nearby, to remove the intermittency from the generation before it hits the electrolysers and other plant. The more plants that are co-located, the less energy storage and transportation is needed.
Energy Security for Europe: Consequences for Electricity Grids
To turn existing electricity grids renewable would, according to Breakthrough Energy, require increasing their size by about 3.5X. This is to accommodate the intermittency of generation and balancing with storage and other means, which they deemed unaffordable even for the US. If unaffordable for the richest nation in the world, what hope do other countries have? This is confirmed by McKinsey: “The energy transition will require a dramatic increase in capital spending on the electric grid, delivered at an unprecedented pace.”
Yet that is only the start of the challenge. The study ignored the costs of balancing services, which would increase costs greatly. Electricity will supply more needs than at present, according to the estimates above, rising from 25% of 2010 energy to ~67% of 2050 energy, potentially tripling the figure again. Hydrogen is created using electricity, increasing this total by another third. And that is only the transmission grid: a massive roll-out of electricity consumption (for heat pumps and electric vehicles etc.) would require a comparable increase in distribution grids.
Based on public announcements and information from Ofgem and National Grid, the current cost of reinforcing the onshore UK grid (excluding the grid connection itself) is ~£3bn per GW of new offshore wind, rising exponentially; less than a year before, it was evaluated at £1.75bn/GW. Most of those grid increases can be saved by connecting renewables to the grid through behind-the-meter large-scale long-duration electricity storage of sufficient scale and duration, of which Storelectric’s are the most efficient and cost-effective.
The grid connection is halved for offshore wind, reduced by ~⅔ for onshore wind and ~5/6 for solar. Beyond the grid connection, output is according to demand, which the onshore grid is already built to supply: the reinforcements required are therefore reduced by much greater factors.
System Operator Costs
System operation costs (i.e. the non-energy costs of the grid) also increase exponentially once renewable penetration passes 16% for systems with long-duration electricity storage at 5% of peak demand. If there is more naturally inertial large-scale long-duration electricity storage on the grid, the threshold rises; and vice versa if less.
In the first three years from crossing that threshold, system operation costs escalated by over 14X or £8bn p.a. with no end in sight to that escalation. DC-connected systems, even with grid-forming inverters, cannot provide the same range of services – and cannot provide them concurrently with the same operational capacity, as naturally inertial AC-connected systems do.
If the behind-the-meter storage associated with renewable generation is naturally inertial, then the savings are greatly increased, and grid operation is vastly simplified: the combined renewables-and-storage could then be managed by the System Operator almost exactly as it manages power stations, delivering concurrently all the ancillary benefits too.
Issues of Scale
To achieve energy security for Europe, storage must be at large scale and diverse durations:
|
Duration |
Example |
Appropriate storage type |
|
4-8 hours |
Evening peak and overnight |
CAES using salt caverns, pumped hydro |
|
8-12 hours |
Accounting for renewables’ intermittency |
CAES using salt caverns, pumped hydro |
|
12hrs-3 weeks |
Weather periods extending times of system stress, to kalte Dunkelfaute |
CAES using porous rock geologies, and/or hydrogen generation |
|
Seasonal |
When ideal balance of solar and wind is not achieved |
Hydrogen; or ~25% over-build of renewable generation against “contingency” or “reserve” contracts; or a combination of the two |
|
Inter-year |
Energy incident on the planet can vary by 15% or more, over very long and irregular periods |
Hydrogen; or ~25% over-build of renewable generation against “contingency” or “reserve” contracts; or a combination of the two |
Note that an over-build of renewables would not greatly help the first and third bullets, as there is little renewable generation during such periods.
Other Technologies
Other technologies can contribute to energy security, most notably nuclear. In any season, baseload demand is 40-60% of peak demand. Nuclear is best suited to delivering it: all variability is pure energy waste (like curtailment) and adds cost by consuming damping rods. As a rule of thumb, each GW of nuclear output (up to the limits of baseload demand) delivers the equivalent of 3GW offshore wind plus long-duration storage (8-12 hours duration or more), or 4-5GW onshore wind-plus-storage, or 6-10GW solar-plus-storage.
Biomass, biogas and similar generation also helps, but are severely curtailed by the lack of feedstock without impacting global agricultural output or conservation areas. Some bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) will be necessary for negative emissions to counteract those of hard-to-abate industries, though the issues, costs and inefficiencies of CCS are rarely (if ever) considered completely in such proposals.
Financial Support, or Regulation?
If the right regulatory and contractual systems are in place to ensure energy security, no financial support is needed other than for first-of-a-kind plants, and a few follow-on plants while a technology gets cheaper as it becomes better established. Most support for first-of-a-kind plants at full commercial scale should be in the proper domain of innovation funding, but it tends to be excluded from such funding on the grounds that the plant would trade commercially. This is a large part of the reason why so many technologies are commercialised overseas.
The right regulatory and contractual support includes:
- Contracts of suitable durations (half of the amortisation life of the plant?) to provide returns for new build, with lead times to build them;
- Covering the quality of the outputs, not just its quantity;
- Contracts for reserve power/capacity; etc.
These are considered in other documents.
