The big three alternates

The big three:

1.????? Demand reduction;

2.????? Renewables with energy storage;

3.????? Nuclear fission.

These three, like it or otherwise, lead the charge in any designated attempt to reduce fossil fuel combustion to around a quarter to a fifth of what it is now, over a multi-decade timescale.

Although the main stipulated reason for this premise is currently climate concerns related to combustion and other fossil resource related emissions (production & distribution methane leaks, SMR hydrogen), there are others. Increasing costs of ever harder to find & produce resource, adverse geopolitical resource concentrations, air quality, and long term preservation of limited resource for posterity are also significant drivers to want to do so. It is a good idea to learn how to reduce fossil fuel combustion for many reasons. The urgency and feasible timescale for doing so are debated. For the purposes of this article the premise is accepted. The discussion concerns how it might be achieved.

Item #1 - demand reduction - is largely infrastructure driven.? Urban planning, transport, energy efficient buildings, agriculture, industry, recycling, product longevity, demand management, general efficiency increases, electrification etc. Individual lifestyle choices are a part of it and matter but are not the biggest chunk.?The main part is installing infrastructure & options that make such choices easier, possible, and more effective - i.e. desirable - for organisations and individuals.

Item #2 is inextricably linked to energy storage because of the intermittency and variability – temporally and geographically – of renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, wind, and solar. Not every renewable source is intermittent, geothermal being an example, but the biggest (most widely deployed) ones are variable.

A nuance within #2 is how that energy storage is best dealt with, particularly the division between batteries, pumped hydro, liquid and compressed air, power-to-X (i.e. e-fuels including renewable power sourced hydrogen, methanol, ammonia etc), and various other options. Each of these have pluses and minuses in terms of magnitude and longevity of storage, and efficiency.? Many are still evolving, and none are without costs.

Another nuance is the perceived importance of HVDC long distance power transmission, which is expensive, but which can further mitigate intermittency issues.? It competes with e-fuel transportation for the long-distance renewable energy distribution/transmission question.? Another ongoing matter concerns national grid designs and the relative importance of national grids and smaller regional or microgrids.

Item #3 - nuclear fission - is more controversial in some places than others, and also has various flavours going forward, including new generations of reactors under development including molten salt and waste reprocessing variants. The relative roles of uranium, thorium, and cold-war plutonium stockpiles are also nuances within the option. ?

Nuclear waste questions have options in development for transmutation (transforming to non radioactive products) via reprocessing and/or in geological repositories. The relative importance, cost, and technical capabilities, of each is evolving and debated. A controversy is how much nuclear fuel resource, including plutonium, should be treated as fuel and how much as waste, given possible reprocessing options, and the proliferation and security concerns. Much material that is being proposed for a waste designation and is currently stored at surface "in limbo" still has the potential to deliver very large amounts of energy, but the facilities to do so are slow to emerge for these reasons of cost, maturity of technical development, and political/security sensitivities.

It's also worth noting that any shift from fossil fuel combustion to power for energy - relevant to both #2 and #3 - has a big natural element of #1, demand reduction, due to the inherently improved efficiencies. I.e. reduced heat losses.

Each of these headlined big three have strong advocates.? All have pluses and minuses of various worth to various places.? Some advocates of #2 renewables & #3 nuclear, suggest they are entirely enough on their own and that one should dominate, but with debates ongoing about the key nuances within each one.? Most recognise that #1 - demand reduction - is vital to any advance, though the scale of reduction required or possible enters a realm of greater debate.

We don’t have to know what the optimal answer is for all three to be advanced.? That is not a blank cheque for everything to be advanced indefinitely with equal priority and without discretion - especially at a taxpayer funded massive national roll-out level.? Results matter. ?There will be winners and losers. It is an indication though, that R&D and pilot studies should be wide ranging.? They are.?

Demand reduction, #1, is a priority and a low hanging fruit in many cases but needs long term planning and investment, and political buy-in which often remains in its infancy.? Its priority does vary with the extent of energy poverty present in a country. The better we can do #1, the more #2 and #3 will rise to the occasion. ?There is now enough uncertainty (absence of guarantee) in either proposition that #2 and #3 can do it all, for both to be progressed as a safeguard against scenarios that they can’t all do it on their own.? That makes life relatively simple in lots of ways.

In short, to advance all three significantly is a strategy that will vary only in how much of each.? The nuances of which components within each one of the big three deserve greatest focus and how each will succeed relative to one another, is a more difficult calculation – but demand reduction, renewables, and nuclear, all advance if we admit any possibility that any two of them might not be enough on their own to reach the goal.

If it transpires after several decades that some approaches are proving better than others and dominating/succeeding far better than the other, there is scope to adjust strategy accordingly – but the only thing that seems clear right now is that this is not clear right now.? That is said with all due respect to all the clever minds and thoughtful proponents of each.

So, #1 demand reduction, a no brainer; #2 renewables, a no brainer to check out, accommodating simultaneously a possibility that it might not actually prove practical to achieve everything on its own just with demand reduction.? This for a variety of reasons including raw materials, supply chains, geopolitical and ESG brakes, that are hard to know conclusively in advance.

In which case, #3 nuclear fission has a safeguarding role.? As much as a backup to #2, i.e. renewables, as a competitor, but also allowing at least a possibility that future advances may prove competitive at longer timescales.? Recognising that in 50 years’ time differentiation between the usefulness of #2 to #3 will be much more apparent, but that in the meantime putting all our eggs in the baskets of either #2 or #3 (both deployed with #1), would be to take a gamble we don’t really have to take.

There is a cost to advancing both of #2 and #3 now but it is likely much less than the cost of advancing only one and finding out too late that it is not up to the job on its own. There is in any case no real likelihood of nuclear, #3, being advanced everywhere, for a variety of reasons. Renewables are the first option most will test. Taking it to the limit, and seeing what is possible.

Having any doubt that demand reduction plus one of renewables or nuclear can meet all of the post fossil reduction demand - therefore practically means advocating all of demand reduction, renewables, and nuclear fission. To an extent in that order, but not waiting for any shortfall of renewables to also advance nuclear.? At least initially.

It doesn’t necessarily mean liking the need for the trio. Nuclear would not in this context take place everywhere - admitting that social licence simply won't allow it everywhere right now - but noting it will remain significant in many countries and grow in some others.

These big three then are the principal vehicles for a transition from fossil fuel combustion to designated levels.? Allowing decades for renewables and nuclear to demonstrate how much they can fill respectively, of the fossil fuel component that is left after demand reduction.

All those very passionate about one over all the others will be disappointed in this tack initially, but it seems pragmatic to accept nobody can provide guarantees at this point. Hence a cautious approach maintaining momentum on all three, albeit further informed by year on year progress, and similarly subject to the evolving nuances within each category, is advisable.

This, lest we forget, is on a premise of reducing fossil fuel combustion to around a quarter to a fifth of what it is now, over a multi-decade timescale.