How far are current Building Regs from Zero Energy House?

[Ed Davies]

36 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

We effectively "sequester" about 0.9 tonnes of CO₂ per year, by generating zero carbon power that's exported to the grid, and used by the house in place of power supplied by the grid. 

 

That's entirely the problem with this “net-zero” thinking: exporting to the grid does not sequester anything (unless excess power in the grid is used for carbon capture, which it isn't); it might reduce other people's emissions, which is of course a good thing, but it doesn't counteract the emissions you cause at other times. If the country was made up completely of houses just like yours then there'd still be emissions.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Ed Davies
Add emphasis

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

 

That's entirely the problem with this “net-zero” thinking: exporting to the grid does not sequester anything (unless excess power in the grid is used for carbon capture, which it isn't); it might reduce other people's emissions, which is of course a good thing, but it doesn't counteract the emissions you cause at other times. If the country was made up completely of houses just like yours then there'd still be emissions.

 

 

Precisely why I put inverted commas around the word "sequester", to make it  clear that nothing was really being sequestered directly at all.  The fact remains that for every kWh of zero carbon energy exported to the grid there is the potential to reduce emissions from generation by that amount.  Whether that happens in practice, or not, depends very much on the particular state of power generation at that instant.

[Ed Davies]

Right. But better to not call it “sequestering” at all. There's already enough muddled thinking about all this offsetting stuff. It's easy for a net-positive emissions house to cause less emissions than a net-negative one but many would assume otherwise.

[ProDave]

29 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

 

That's entirely the problem with this “net-zero” thinking: exporting to the grid does not sequester anything (unless excess power in the grid is used for carbon capture, which it isn't); it might reduce other people's emissions, which is of course a good thing, but it doesn't counteract the emissions you cause at other times. If the country was made up completely of houses just like yours then there'd still be emissions.

I was about to post something to that effect.  This is where grid scale storage is needed if we are ever going to get to a zero CO2 electricity grid.  But electricity generation can never be negative CO2

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, ProDave said:

This is where grid scale storage is needed

What do you mean by that?

TWh of storage, large units connect to the main bulk carriers, local, pre or post storage at substations.

[ProDave]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

What do you mean by that?

TWh of storage, large units connect to the main bulk carriers, local, pre or post storage at substations.

As the grid moves to renewable energy, most of that is somewhat variable. So in order to meet the peaks of demand, particularly when the wind is not blowing much etc, then storage is needed to store renewables when in surplus to cover the times of generation defecit.

 

Without sufficient storage, you will never be able to decommission the last fossil fuel power stations.

[DamonHD]

32 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I was about to post something to that effect.  This is where grid scale storage is needed if we are ever going to get to a zero CO2 electricity grid.  But electricity generation can never be negative CO2

 

So what's your view on BECCS?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage

 

Rgds

 

Damon

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, DamonHD said:

 

So what's your view on BECCS?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage

 

Rgds

 

Damon

Skeptical

 

Does it absolutely capture 100% of the CO2 produced? If so how and what does it do to it?

 

Or is it like burning wood, they are trying (and failing) to convince us that is CO2 neitral.

[SteamyTea]

24 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Without sufficient storage, you will never be able to decommission the last fossil fuel power stations.

Does not answer my question, just says we need storage.

[SteamyTea]

11 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

what's your view on BECCS

Lot depends what land area is used up. If, for simplicities sake, you can get 50 kWh/m².year with BECCS, but 75 kWh/m².year with PV and batteries. Then I would choose PV and batteries.