Blue-NG: No Geopressure at Beckton, instead it’s the World’s Most Efficient Generator

Posted by Nyla Sarwar on January 21, 2009 at 22:25
Energy, UK

After my previous post about Blue-NG’s plans to harness geopressure technology from the UK gas pipeline to generate renewable electricity, raised considerable interest, I have looked into some of the points of discussion and felt a further blog was necessary.

An architect's drawing for the planned building at Beckton

An architect's drawing of the planned site at Beckton, East London

The first of the eight schemes will install a highly efficient power station at a pressure reduction station (PRS) in Beckton, East London. It will utilize innovative Combined Heat and intelligent Power (CHiP) technology, with an expected energy potential of 19.5MWe – enough to power 50,000 homes. Click here to see the BBC’s report on this scheme.

Blue-NG has confirmed that there is no use of geopressure technology to generate ‘clean’ energy as detailed in the previous post, and other reports of the project. Blue-NG confirmed that despite early consideration of geo-pressure options for 2OC‘s agreement with the National Grid, this project is now only concerned with CHiP technology to capture heat, and not pressure.  Whilst 2OC campaigned for geopressure to be recognized in the Renewables Obligation, this will only benefit geopressure projects they may develop later; however this scheme will still benefit from ROCS for the use of fuel and heat.

Nevertheless, Blue-NG claim that the CHiP (click here for diagram) is the world’s most efficient generator, reaching a maximum efficiency of 96% and therefore boasts a number of environmental benefits.

It will produce electricity in three ways:

1.     A diesel engine will produce electricity from burning liquid biomass – locally grown and sustainable rapeseed oil sourced from within 50 miles of London. This will replace the gas boilers currently used to pre-heat the gas at PRSs to avoid unacceptable temperature drops (which may freeze pipes and valves) during the normal gas pressure reduction process.

2.     Surplus heat will be captured and used for local district heating

3.     The remaining surplus heat will be used to heat the natural gas in the National Grid’s PRS as part of its normal process operation, to ensure pipes and valves do not freeze as the pressure of the gas is reduced. 

Despite support from Greenpeace, the project has attracted criticism from some environmental organizations, including Biofuels Watch, who remain concerned about the health and sustainability issues relating to production of electricity from biofuels. They claim that the use of biofuels provokes a number of issues, including the displacement of food, human and animals, as well as leading to deforestation in developing countries from which they are imported.

However, Blue-NG highlight that the Section 106 agreement – a condition applied to the project by Newham council, requires them to source their fuel from sustainable sources, and prove that they have not displaced crops. This would allow the council to monitor the fuels used by the plant at any time, although some argue that this may still be difficult to police.

Richard Lyddon, from Blue-NG added that, the company’s sustainable procurement policy, developed with support from Greenpeace, commits them to sourcing rapeseed oil, (which will be processed) from credited farmers within 50 miles of the site.

Rapeseed is currently used as a break crop by farmers, and as a result of the EU abandoning the ‘set-aside’ policy for farmers, 10,000 hectares of land is expected to become available for growing rapeseed in the 50 mile radius from which Blue-NG will be procuring these crops. Lyddon confirmed that the project would only use rapeseed oil, and not palm oil, which was mentioned in an original tender. However, objectors of the project remain skeptical about whether the plan to source such a level of biofuels locally is realistic, and recognize the additional environmental costs of shipping the fuel to site.

Whilst Blue-NG plan to contribute to climate change mitigation through ongoing implementation of their CHiP technology after the 8 planned schemes and the government continues to incentivise biofuels through the Renewables Obligation (RO), many environmental organizations, including Biofuels Watch, remain unconvinced and argue that biofuels are simply unsustainable.

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6 Comments to Blue-NG: No Geopressure at Beckton, instead it’s the World’s Most Efficient Generator

John Ackers
21 January 2009

The difficulty is that Greenpeace gave support to the original planning application at Beckton on the basis that it would use geo-pressure. And councillors considering the application would have been heavily influenced by Greenpeace’s written letter of support, ignoring other more critical objections from smaller environmental groups such as biofuelwatch.

Community heating systems are great in theory and are going to be very important going forwards. But the source of the heat energy needs to be located in the middle of an area of demand for heat. That might not necessarily be the site of a gas pressure reduction station. Otherwise the heat losses in longer piping lengths will undermine blue-NG’s claim to be building the world’s most efficient generator.

The BBC report says ‘this is how we might all get our electricity’ – from rapeseed within 50 miles from London. Just how could this be scaled up? was this another misleading statement from Blue-NG?

Robert Palgrave
22 January 2009

OK, so Blue NG have come clean and there is no geo-pressure – but only it appears after you chased them. Have they written to The Guardian pointing out that David Adams’ report last week was completely wrong? (I have to save them the trouble)

Now let’s run some numbers. Beckton is supposed to use 56,000 litres of vegetable oil per day. The calorific content of that quantity of oil does match pretty closely with a continuous power of 20MW. So, I can believe 56,000 litres per day. And possibly that could come from farms within 50 miles of London, making lots of assumptions about how much land is going to be freed up after release from EU set aside controls.

However, if you scale this up to say 200 such stations across the UK, the total annual oil consumption becomes about 4 million tonnes, which is just over double the TOTAL UK production of rapeseed oil in 2005-6.

(http://www.neoda.org.uk/pages/market_update.html)

And the 2OC website talks about there being 2000 (not 200) suitable gas pressure reduction sites in the UK. Completely unsustainable if just a fraction of these are burning 50,000 litres per day.

Just in case you are in any doubt about the level of concerns on the large scale use of biofuels, please consider these comments, from the Govt’s own scientific advisors in The Guardian 25 March 2008:

“In an outspoken attack on a policy which comes into force next week, Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said it would be wrong to introduce compulsory quotas for the use of biofuels in petrol and diesel before their effects had been properly assessed.”
and
“John Beddington, the government’s current chief scientific adviser, has already expressed scepticism about biofuels. At a speech in Westminster this month (March 2008) he said demand for biofuels from the US had delivered a “major shock” to world agriculture, which was raising food prices globally. “There are real problems with the unsustainability of biofuels,” he said, adding that cutting down rainforest to grow the crops was “profoundly stupid”.”

Blue NG’s website at http://www.blue-ng.com/oursupporters_quotes.html still has the old endorsements from Greenpeace, Be the Change etc, including the comment from John Sauven, which refer to gas pressure as a source of energy:

“Blue-NG’s innovation is to integrate the concept of using the energy created, when gas pressure is reduced, into a CHP and by so doing increase significantly the electrical efficiency of the resulting CHP”

Blue NG should go back to these organisations and ask them if they would like to update the endorsements on the basis of there being no geo-pressure.

Diesel to liquids
22 January 2009

I think that this is going to have to be the way of the future, if we want power, fuel economy and longevity in our autos.

Dan
22 January 2009

Great post. Has anyone talked to Greenpeace about this – or anyone know their views?

Robert Palgrave
22 January 2009

Dan,

yes representations have been made to Greenpeace and are continuing to be made. They seem to have been swayed by the idea that this is a ‘CHP’ and is therefore a ‘good thing’, rather than treating this as something which adds to the environmental problems caused by biofuels in transport. (which they campaigned against!)

Diesel to Liquids – don’t understand your post: this scheme is nothing to do with cars, and if you are being supportive of Blue NG’s scheme, do you really want to see the whole of the UK’s agriculture turned over to producing fuel for power generation and for cars? You’re swapping food security for fuel security if you do, and accelerating climate change

Nyla Sarwar
23 January 2009

A 5 minute chat with Friends of the Earth yesterday suggests that they did still expect to see some geopressure at Beckton.

They re-affirm their reluctant support (see Blue-NG website), stataing that they would like to see a government framework to ensure the vegetabole crops used do not displace food crops- which they feel is inevitable, depsite local sourcing.

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