Dave Waters, Senior Geoscientist Paetoro Consulting UK Ltd

Particulate Matter < 1 µm @ Surface, earth.nullschool.net, 20:00 GMT 28 Oct 2018

Start to finish

It’s a bit of a circus out there isn’t it. Everyone jumping on the clean and green bandwagon, everyone arguing that their energy is absolutely necessary, that all the other types are morally corrupt, and everyone tossing the phrases “green” and “clean” around like there is no tomorrow. All in order to grab that oh-so-desired social licence.

A problem, however, is that we are often prone to basing comparisons on little subsets of the supply chain, and to do that gives a picture that is bound to be false. It’s cutting out one little part of the picture and basing decisions on something way less than the whole. I have no particular axe to grind against one industry doing this more than any other – as far as I can see virtually all of them do it. Rather, the simple message - that it seems we all need reminding of - is that for comparisons to be anything more than vacuous hot air, we have to attempt investigation of the whole cycle from raw material sources, through the lifetime of operation, to the decommissioning and disposal of wastes.

Exactitude not required

Granted, this is difficult and often uncertain, but any comparisons that don’t do this just aren’t real comparisons. The value is not necessarily knowing the exact answer in quantitative terms, but to have gone through the thought experiment of trying to understand all that is involved. What am I talking about? Well let’s consider a few examples – such as big gas power plants, electric vehicles, wind farms, solar farms, nuclear power stations.

All of these examples involve materials simply for their basic construction. Concrete, plastics, metals, etc. Most of the substances needed for construction must themselves be refined from even more fundamental raw materials through energy intensive processes – these are a frequently forgotten factor in their total environmental cost, with associated pollutants of their own. Some of them, including some renewable and battery-based technologies involve the extraction of relatively rare materials – which typically means associated mining impacts. 

I’m not trying to run renewables et al. down here, the fact is that even with these things considered they often do still look attractive – the point is simply to include the whole formula, not a rose-coloured view of it. Other industries, including the gas power station and nuclear power station, also involve an element of mining or subsurface extraction for their fuel – i.e. gas wells, or uranium ore mining. Electric vehicles too – have a fuel – we cannot forget what is involved in creating that electricity supply. If it isn’t clean and green, then neither is the EV. A rechargeable battery doesn’t magically make the electricity – it only stores it chemically from some other generation process with costs and impacts of its own. 

Pollution & Decom.

Then of course there are the environmental impacts during operation – essentially the various forms of pollution. By pollution I mean the introduction of chemicals or physical effects into the environment artificially, in a manner that may have detrimental effects on it. Carbon dioxide emissions figure highly in the concerns here, and of course the simple physical footprint of any installation. 

Notice I’m carefully saying “may” in my definition. It shouldn’t be a pre-requisite of a pollution definition that the 100% certainty of their effect is known. The risk they might do damage is enough to warrant the label until such time it can be definitively proven they are not a problem. We would err on the side of caution if it was medicine we were taking, likewise any prescriptions for the planet. That’s not to lump all polluting processes together in the same bracket - some will be worse than others - so an effort to quantify the risk is also needed. Note that every manner of energy production has some pollutant effect, so we can't just stop thinking about an option because it pollutes - that would halt everything. It is always going to be a process of quantitative evaluation to minimise the pollution, never (sadly) one of totally avoiding it.

Lastly there are the decommissioning costs, and costs to ensure safe long-term disposal or recycling of any hazardous materials. Not just financial costs, but environmental costs. Again, the presence of impacts here doesn’t rule those things out – it can’t – because every option has them in some form. It’s just to say that it’s another one of the things that needs to be quantified in some manner in the total sum, for meaningful comparison, and to trigger thinking of mitigation and compensation where appropriate. 

Adding it up

What I’m trying to get through here, is that to compare the benefits and costs of the various technologies and energy options, we do have to look at the whole of the cycle and not just one little bit of it. Thinking of wind power without the physical footprint it has to make, thinking of nuclear without the waste disposal, or gas without CO2 emissions, or battery storage technologies without mining of raw materials, or electric vehicles without where the power comes from in the first place – none of these things make sense. 

To compare very different energy supply processes, we have to add up what is involved from the very start of the supply process to the very end. Otherwise any comparisons are not worth very much. These evaluations of the whole chain start to finish, don’t have to be exact, they don’t have to be perfect, they will always have uncertainty - but they do have to be present, and they do have to try to be quantitative. Even if they are wrong, they flag the things that need to be thought about and start a process of specific and auditable discussion. That is progress. Something that doesn’t do that might as well be an autumn leaf in the wind.

Everyone's a winner, babe

A corollary of looking at things is this overview manner – dare I say it in a “holistic” way – may be that there will be no one-winner. Different things might “win” in different places that have different raw resources available and different waste disposal options. I don’t know, time will tell – but as difficult as it might be, let's get these sums sorted when comparing things – because the stakes and the costs are high whichever route we choose.

This is especially important when considering timetables. For example, it is an admirable goal to seek a fully EV fleet by 2035 – but it’s all just talk unless we address the implications for the whole supply chain, including where the battery components will be mined from, and how the electricity will be generated.  I’m not suggesting this hasn’t been considered, but if so, it is rarely communicated in auditable quantitative fashion, and for real-world planning that needs to change. It is the difference between policy and platitudes.

Clean and green are two of the most emotive terms in energy production in 2018. They are an important control in obtaining social licence – i.e. the permission society gives for industrial processes to take place. They are not concepts without value, yet we have to be more rigorous in their usage for this to remain true – otherwise any “currency” they have will be devalued almost to nothing. It is a nonsense to describe something as either clean or green, unless some quantitative attempt to audit the whole supply chain from raw material to waste disposal has been made. Only then can meaningful comparisons and choices be made.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Paetoro Consulting