Abstract
This issue contains eight excellent papers from a wide range of perspectives and places and hence covering the many issues and approaches of interest to E&E: energy policy as it varies across the globe, increasingly shaped by ‘green’ concerns but also shaped by varying perspectives and ambitions. Energy policy itself influences our environments, both natural and social. Here objectives may conflict and compete. Analysis of these complex interactions between the generating of energy, its transportation, waste disposal and end-uses requires as serious and often difficult effort to understand environmental science as well as politics, economics and engineering. Social scientists must take care not to confuse ‘opinion’ or one school of thought with established fact, or see research undertaken in response to policy decisions and funded by ‘vested interests’ as value free, and necessarily unbiased.
Energy policy has become increasingly politicised because of the overwhelming importance of competing ‘market forces’ seeking market shares, investments, regulatory powers and of course customers. In all of these ‘battles’ environmental claims – threats and offered solutions – play a significant and growing role. For example, even the English language has been simplified if not debased. When energy people and governments, the media and even professionals who should know better now refer to carbon when they mean not the element C in coal, diamonds and graphene, but the colourless gas carbon dioxide which forms a tiny, if slightly rising part of our mixed-gas atmosphere. Limiting or even reducing this concentration of CO2 and a few other gases in the atmosphere – all highly variable throughout earth’s history – has become the Holy Grail, it would seem, of all energy policy. Or is there something else behind this belief in dangerous warming?
How robust are the claims that decarbonisation, reducing your carbon footprint, is essential for ‘life’ and even the survival of your grandchildren? Who are the drivers of this view, and who are the beneficiaries? Who pay and who will lose? To answer such questions requires political analysis, a subject not often enough attempted by our authors. There can be no ‘abatement’ of climate change or saving the planet, even policy without an available and ‘affordable’ (for whom?) solution. Decarbonisation may not affect the future climate, but what and whom does it affect today? Creating global solidarity alone might be boon to humanity, given the growing tension and hostilities Fuel for Thought (below) illustrates so alarmingly.
It is surely the promised solution to climate change – decarbonisation – that is attracting so many modellers, economists and engineers as energy problem solvers and inventors. They are invited to solve problems, or challenges as we now say, put to them by pressure groups – believers – as well as politicians seeking influence and power. All seek justification or reassurance from ‘science’, but science thrives by debate and rarely concludes with ‘consensus’. But enough of preaching, Fuel for Thought covers the months before ‘Brexit’, which happened in mid-June 2016 when the United Kingdom decided by referendum to leave the European Union, with potential major effects on European energy policy. In the wider world the oil price saga continued, as did the efforts of nuclear power to stabilise and expand with help of the climate threat; pressures to divest from ‘carbon fuels’ continue unabated with mixed success, and oil prices now hover around 450, with uncertain forecasts.
The paper by Oguz Kurdoglu evaluated the impacts of hydropower plant construction in Turkey – not directly on human beings, but on natural systems. This mountainous country with seasonal rainfall suffers from an energy deficit and seeks to reduce its dependence on imported energy. It seems to have rather aggressively expanded its HEP plant construction with detrimental impact on water flow, the destruction of forests and wildlife, even with impacts on tourism. There is no ‘free lunch’ as they say in England. Costs and benefits have to be carefully weighed as part of a highly political process that can only benefit from unbiased detailed information. Decisions may be made with much public involvement or behind technocratic doors, but in either case refusal and compensation, the writer argues, should play a role. The question must be asked: who will decide for whose benefit? The information provided here is essential for the development or expansion of hydro-electric energy supplies in all countries. The need for a close collaboration between the natural sciences and energy policy is demonstrated.
The second paper deals with an oilfield in Libya and is the work of Dusan S Danilovic, Vesna D Karovic Maricic, Nori EA Elhaddad and Branko A Lekovic. It also deals with a real world pollution issue, offering a new model to enhance waste water disposal from oil drilling. The objective was to find ways to avoid pollution of the subsoil and surface waters by discharges. A modern concept of water preparation is proposed and the method of waste water disposal refined by applying an integrated approach, including technological, economic and environmental aspects. The proposed method of implementation also has an economic dimension, searching for the lowest operating costs by using storage tanks and liquid hydrophobic filter tanks.
Justyna Chodkowska-Miszczuk, Jadwiga Biegańska, Stefania Środa-Murawska, Elzbieta Grzelak-Kostulska and Krzysztof Rogatka take us to the very interdisciplinary study of European Union funds in the development of renewable energy sources in Poland in the context of the cohesion policy. The authors aim to discover the role of European Union funds in the development of renewable energy sources, funds that are being made available with reference to a major EU ambition – cohesion. Over 900 projects were analysed in 16 administrative regions of Poland which had attracted 2 billion euro. ‘Evident disproportions’ were discovered, and preference given to large wind farms which remain highly subsidised. Regional funding differences were discovered.
The next paper by Li Li, Dengli Tang, Ying Kong, Yuanhua Yang and Dongjun Liu addresses a very real problem – urban air pollution in China. To deal with this cost effectively, spatial analysis is fundamental for developing an effective abatement policy. The most seriously polluted areas are identified in order to give policy guidance to authorities (hopefully already in existence and well-funded!) to control this form of air pollution, a global urban problem in spite of major efforts in developed countries since the 1980s to limit the emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions, as well as particulates. Much remains to be done, especially with respect to nitrogen oxide and particulates (from diesel fumes) but health improvement even here must be balanced against the costs – widely defined – and their social distribution.
The fifth paper also deals with air pollution in China, in particular the impacts of coal plants relocation on the concentration of fine particulate matter. It is the work of Dunguo Mou, Matthew Herington and Oluwasola E Omoju. The paper returns to the subject of air pollution from coal burn, a serious problem the Chinese government is committed to reduce by relocating coal-fired power stations. Again geographical data is important as is the measurement of PM2.5 concentrations. Based on these empirical parameters, the potential impacts of the proposed coal plants and those currently under construction were simulated. The results show that the new capacities will increase PM2.5 concentrations in northwest and northeast China, but that the amount will remain at acceptable levels and still lower than the levels of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Shandong.
The sixth paper is also by Chinese scholars, HE Ling-Yun and OU Jia-Jia who evaluate the taxing of sulphur emissions from a public health perspective and with reference to soil acidification. Policy makers need to know the contributions of individual industries to SO2 emissions. The paper therefore attempts to quantify the share of different industries in the total amount of SO2 emitted, estimates the socio-economic costs of these emissions, compares the impacts of different tax policies from a public health perspective and then outlines the policy implications for the Chinese government. It is concluded that indirectly an emission tax outperforms a direct tax in improving public health, and ultimately public welfare. The authors consider their findings relevant not only to China but also to other emerging economies.
The last two papers continue a tradition, to publish science-related papers that may err on the side of speculation or provoke controversy. Wallace Manheimer offers ‘Two heretical thoughts on fusion and climate’, arguing that nuclear fusion could contribute to mid-century power by breeding fuel for nuclear fission reactors rather than providing steam to generate electricity. Fusion breeding could provide with ‘sustainable, economical, carbon free energy with little or no proliferation risk’. Quite a promise! The second heretical thought involves climate. Assertions that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are leading to an environmental crisis can be checked out on the internet. If so, the paper suggests that the benefits of nuclear fusion could be realised long before it can economically generate steam and that the internet search suggests that future climate will not be significantly different from today before mid-century. Martin Hertzberg and Hans Schreuder, well known ‘climate sceptics’, share their thoughts on the ‘role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in climate change’. They evaluate the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus that the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is of anthropogenic origin and is causing dangerous global warming, climate change and climate disruption. The totality of the data available on which that theory is based is evaluated. Nothing, they demonstrate, in the data supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is a driver of weather or climate, or that human emissions control atmospheric CO2. The implications of this analysis, if accepted, for energy policy are obvious. Renewables and nuclear power would have a much harder time getting funded and many research and investment agendas would have to be revised.